"Predisposed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disposed, inclined, favorable; favorably- minded, favorably inclined, favorably disposed; nothing loth; in the vein, in the mood, in the humor, in the mind. ready, forward, earnest, eager; bent upon &c (desirous) 865; predisposed, propense^. docile; persuadable, persuasible; suasible^, easily persuaded, facile, easy-going; tractable &c (pliant) 324; genial, gracious, cordial, cheering, hearty; content &c (assenting) 488. voluntary, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... That Henry's high spirit predisposed him to listen with readiness and satisfaction to the suggestions of his subjects in this behalf, we may well believe; but that he would have been driven by a dominant ambition to engage in a war ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... that the wound in his head predisposed him to mental unsoundness, but it does not appear to be claimed that ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... to the bubbling spring for water, he allayed his thirst with now and then a drop of moisture from the roof, which, had it fallen anywhere but on his tongue, would have been congealed into a pebble. For a man predisposed to stoniness of the heart, this surely was unwholesome liquor. But there he dwelt, for three days more eating herbs and roots, drinking his own destruction, sleeping, as it were, in a tomb, and awaking to the solitude of death, yet esteeming this horrible ...
— The Man of Adamant - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Wabash, and left her with one daughter and a large tin box full of good securities. She never afterward altered the style of her dress, and she took much comfort in feeling free from all further allegiance to milliners. In fact, she had a nature which was predisposed to comfort. She had been fond of her husband, but she had been a little afraid of him, and, when she had wept her grief into tranquillity, she felt a certain satisfaction in finding herself the absolute mistress of her ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... The French nation, predisposed to skepticism by its prevailing acuteness, has never lacked representatives of skeptical philosophy. The transition from the philosophers of doubt whom we have described to the great Bayle was formed by La Mothe le Vayer (died 1672; Five Dialogues, 1671), ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... ways and deeds and habits of God's servants, since he judges them fixed not by man, but by God. For, just because things are not pleasing to us and do not go according to our habits, we ought to be predisposed to believe that they are pleasing to God. We ought not to judge anything at all, nor can we, except what is manifest and open sin. And even this the soul enamoured of God and lost to itself does ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... whom it has excluded from its coveted honors and privileges. They have yet to learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy and relative: it is great by their allowance: its proudest gates will fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. For the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages which ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... all this wide realm had been free. To exist there legally slavery must therefore be established by Congress, making the case very different from the cases of Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, which came under United States authority already burdened. This predisposed many who were not in general opposed to slavery, against extending the institution hither. Early in the war a bill had passed the House, failing almost by accident in the Senate, which contained the famous Wilmot Proviso, so named from its mover in the House, that, except for crime, neither slavery ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... matter over, the less he liked it. For it convinced him that there was someone desirous of doing him an injury by means of the very master who was already predisposed to believe evil of him. It was rather a damper after the glorious result of the sports, and Railsford tried to laugh it off and dismiss the whole matter ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... list for trial, it was the first that was ready, and it was accordingly ordered out by the judges for an experimental trip. Yet the "Rocket" was by no means the "favourite" with either the judges or the spectators. Nicholas Wood has since stated that the majority of the judges were strongly predisposed in favour of the "Novelty," and that "nine-tenths, if not ten-tenths, of the persons present were against the "Rocket" because of its appearance." Nearly every person favoured some other engine, so that there was nothing for the "Rocket" but the practical test. The first trip made by it was quite ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... ancients supposed that a moderately large head denoted a well-conditioned person, studious, and possessed of a good memory and understanding. Those with large heads were supposed to be dull and stupid, gluttonous, rough in their manners, frequently melancholy, and predisposed to madness. ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... was about all the society she craved; moreover in her girlhood she had been accustomed to rather remote plantation life, with its long intervals of absence of society. Mr. Jocelyn's business took him out among men even more than he relished, for his secret indulgence predisposed to solitude and quiet. He was living most of the time in an unreal world, and inevitable contact with his actual life and surroundings brought him ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... the Athenian kings, had incurred the consecrating misfortune of insanity. Suddenly this person appeared in the market-place, wearing the peculiar badge that distinguished the sick [196]. His friends were, doubtless, well prepared for his appearance—a crowd, some predisposed to favour, others attracted by curiosity, were collected round him— and, ascending to the stone from which the heralds made their proclamations, he began to recite aloud a poem upon the loss of Salamis, boldly reproving the cowardice of the people, and inciting them again to war. His ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vengeful hostility against these marauders of the mountains. The Blackfeet came to a halt. One of the chiefs advanced singly and unarmed, bearing the pipe of peace. This overture was certainly pacific; but Antoine and the Flathead were predisposed to hostility, and pretended to consider it ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... Upper Burma, men who were old school friends and were doing a leisurely tour to Japan and America, men of his own profession who had leave to dispose of; all or any of these might arrive with a servant and a portmanteau. Whoever it was, Hartley was predisposed to give him a welcome. He had come just when he was wanted, and he hurried in, a light of pleasure in his ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... petition," he replied, "and I will see that the empress gets it. But I advise you to ask her majesty for a respite, for if you say that you won't obey, she will be predisposed against you." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... memorable Convention was a dignified assembly gathered in a serious mood in a city of some antiquity and social charm. From the first, however, a latent antipathy between the Northern and the Southern delegates made itself felt. The Northerners, predisposed to a certain deference towards the South and prepared to appreciate its graceful hospitality, experienced an uneasy sense that they were regarded as social inferiors. Worse trouble than this appeared when the Convention met for its first business, the framing of the party platform. Whether the ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... sunshine-coloured fists Beyond his dimpling wrists Were never closed For saving or for sparing— For only deeds of daring Predisposed. ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... at once set to work, and with daily drills and unremitting labor in clearing away the forest and throwing up earthworks, succeeded at last in putting the settlement in a reasonable state of defense. It was no easy task. The fatiguing labor, incessant rains, and scanty food predisposed them to the dreaded fever. Ashmun himself was prostrated; his wife sank and died before his eyes; and soon there was but one man in the colony who was not on the sick-list. At length the long-expected assault was made. Just before daybreak on the 11th of November ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... papier-mache business of the United States, and Mr. Blackrock, an elderly man with a young toupee and particularly gaunt cheek-bones, who was a corporation lawyer of considerable note. Both gentlemen greeted Mr. Turner as one toward whom they were already highly predisposed, and Mr. Princeman and Mr. Westlake also shook hands most cordially, as if Sam had been gone for a day or two. Mr. McComas placed a chair ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... And the whole apparatus of language and mental communication is beset with like dangers. The language of the savage is I suppose purely positive; the thing has a name, the name has a thing. This indeed is the tradition of language, and even to-day, we, when we hear a name are predisposed—and sometimes it is a very vicious disposition—to imagine forthwith something answering to the name. WE ARE DISPOSED, AS AN INCURABLE MENTAL VICE, TO ACCUMULATE INTENSION IN TERMS. If I say to you Wodget or Crump, you find ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... Doctor was not arguing for victory. In fact, what he wanted was to call out the opinions of the old physician by a show of opposition, being already predisposed to agree with many of them. He was rather trying the common arguments, as one tries tricks of fence merely to learn the way of parrying. But just here he saw a tempting opening, and could not resist ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... striven to invent ever so fanciful origins for opinions and belief in his solicitude for the credit of humanity. As it is, he distorts the history of religion only to humanity's discredit. How, if the people were always predisposed to virtue, were priests, sprung of the same people and bred in the same traditions, so invariably and incurably devoted to baseness and hypocrisy? Was the nature of a priest absolutely devoid of what physicians call recuperative force, restoring him to ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... Richelieu (1624-1642) had recognized the need for a French navy and had given a great impetus to ship-building, France had become inextricably entangled in European politics, and the navy was half forgotten in the ambitious land wars of Louis XIV. The English, on the other hand, were predisposed to the sea by the very fact of their insularity, and since the days of the great Armada, their most patriotic boast had been of the deeds of mariners. In the commercial wars with Holland, the first great English admiral— ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... regions, it is generally believed that some condition of the soil and water and of the local vegetation is responsible for it. It is more prevalent some years than others, and is most common in old countries, where the soil is more or less depleted. Cattle pastured on low, swampy land become predisposed to it. It occasionally happens, however, that one individual in a herd suffers though all are fed alike; in such cases the disease must arise from the affected animal's imperfect assimilation of the nutritive elements of the feed which is ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... themselves are insulting, Our priests would see no hidden purpose in your story. They would be predisposed in favor of a Catholic and follower of James. They would give you letters where a commandant would not. It was good policy to go ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... bathing is possible, but scarcely probable, if ordinary precautions are taken. It is very bad practice to permit children to use one another's handkerchiefs or the handkerchief of an adult. Certain children are predisposed to attacks of "cold in the head" or acute coryza or nasal catarrh (these being the medical names for this condition). Sometimes this is an inherited characteristic. There is no doubt, however, that most of these children acquire the habit by bad ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... have the shamanist sickness endure physical torments; they have cramps in the arms and legs, until they are sent to a kam [shaman] to be educated. The tendency is hereditary; a kam often has children predisposed to attacks of illness. If, in a family where there is no shaman, a boy or a girl is subject to fits, the Altaians are persuaded that one of its ancestors was a shaman. A kam told Potanin that the shamanist passion was hereditary, like noble birth. If the kam's own son does ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... congenital or acquired phimosis. A contusion or a urinary fistula may be the exciting cause. With a phimosis the parts are not kept clean, but the gland is macerated and rendered tender and excoriated by retained secretions, and the irritation causes an epithelioma to grow in those predisposed to the disease, as is found to be the case when the tongue is irritated by a broken tooth, or the scrotum by the presence of soot in its folds. Syphilis has no direct influence in inducing the disease, but a syphilitic chap or ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... and an immense relief to the sorely-tried physique of the nation. For he was able to assure them, speaking with the authority of one who had taken first-class honours in Zoology, that the study of Greek more than anything else predisposed people to influenza by promoting cachexia, often leading to arterio-sclerosis, bombination of the tympanum, and even astigmatism of the pineal ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... Nature, it was the fault committed by the first ancestors of humanity in the exercise of their moral freedom which condemned their descendants to punishment, and by bequeathing to them an original taint predisposed them to sin. But this predisposition to sin does not condemn man fatally to its committal; he may escape from it by the exercise of his free will; and in the same way he may by personal effort raise himself gradually out of the state of material decline and misery to which ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... conceived that by submitting themselves to such gymnastics from infancy, certain men, already predisposed by atavism or a peculiar conformation, might succeed in doing things that would seem impossible to the common run of mortals. Do we not daily see acrobats remaining head downward for a length of time that would suffice to kill 99 per cent, of their spectators ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... "In your case, predisposed by the action of the drug, you have experienced the rush of these forces in undiluted strength. They wholly obliterate in you the sense of humour, fancy, imagination,—all that makes for cheerfulness and hope. They seek, though perhaps automatically ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... pretense. They talked openly of the facts and probabilities. It was not the first time, even in the experience of Dr. Cathcart, that a man had yielded to the singular seduction of the Solitudes and gone out of his mind; Defago, moreover, was predisposed to something of the sort, for he already had a touch of melancholia in his blood, and his fiber was weakened by bouts of drinking that often lasted for weeks at a time. Something on this trip—one might never know precisely what—had sufficed to ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... conspicuous for any extraordinary cruelties. Sent into the army, however, at an early age, and with a blood not remarkable for its mercurial aptitudes, he had calmly and deliberately imbibed all the starched theories and standard prejudices which a mind by no means naturally gifted was but too well predisposed to receive; and he was among the number of those (many of whom are indigenous to our soil even at the present day) who look down from a rank obtained, upon that which has been just quitted, with a contempt, and coldness, and consciousness of elevation, commensurate only with ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... though by rail, and as easy as that of the Persian gentleman who skimmed the air, seated on a piece of carpet, predisposed me to sleep. Such volumes of fine and various country air, and such an eight hours' procession of all sorts of natural pictures are not traversed without effect. Sitting in my well-stuffed chair, my elbows on the cushioned ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the chamber of her mistress. There she reminded him of all that Vaninka, haughty but generous, had allowed his sister to do for him. The few glasses of brandy Ivan had already swallowed had predisposed him to gratitude (the drunkenness of the Russian is essentially tender). Ivan protested his devotion so warmly that Annouschka hesitated no longer, and, raising the lid of the chest, showed him the corpse of Foedor. At this terrible ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... working the internal organs, it follows that there is less energy for working the muscles or the brain. So that an individual who habitually overfeeds becomes, after a time, easily tired, physically lazy, weak, perhaps if temperamentally predisposed, nervous and hypochondriacal. Moreover, over-eating not only adds to the general wear and tear, thus probably shortening life, but may even result in positive disease, as well as many minor complaints ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... comprehending the essentially prosaic and worldly nature of that religious revolution. He therefore lived and worked in a continual discord. This may not suffice to account for the unhingement of his reason. I prefer to explain that by the fatigue of intellectual labor and worry acting on a brain predisposed for melancholia and overtasked from infancy. But it does account for the moral martyrdom he suffered, and the internal perplexity to which he ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... accusations that have been made against him, not least of which is the charge of physical inferiority. The charge has been wholesale that the Negro differs from the white man physically, and that he is ethnically and strongly predisposed to certain fatal and contagious diseases. This stigma of disease has been placed upon him and repeatedly emphasized, but despite the fact that the effort has been made for years, by men learned in anthropology to find and prove the inherent inferiority of ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... predisposed to certain types of mood than are others. The organization of our nervous system which we get through heredity undoubtedly has much to do with the feeling tone into which we most easily fall. We call this predisposition ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... mouth. That predisposed me in his favor at once! I have always been "cracked" on pretty mouths! I remember that I used to say "Naughty Teddy!" to my own little boy just for the pleasure of seeing him put out his under-lip, ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... pleasure that we take from places is nothing more nor less than the pleasure we put into them. A person predisposed to boredom can be bored in the very nave of Amiens; and a person predisposed to happiness can be happy even in Camden, New Jersey. I know: for I have watched American tourists in Amiens; and once, when I had gone to Camden, to visit Walt Whitman in ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... unfavourable rumours on the subject of the joint-stock banks. The rumours to which he alluded had already reached the ears of Mr. Yatman from other quarters, and the confirmation of them by his lodger had such an effect on his mind—predisposed as it was to alarm by the experience of his former losses—that he resolved to go at once to the bank and withdraw his deposit. It was then getting on toward the end of the afternoon, and he arrived just in time to receive his money ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... does not decide your destiny." It is no more "wicked" to have the temperament of a homosexual than to have the weakness of an invalid. It is difficult for the spirit to dominate and to bring into a healthy harmony a body predisposed to illness and disorder. The greater the glory to those who succeed! Let us confess with shame that in this other and far harder case we have not only ignored the difficulty and despised the struggler, but—God forgive us—have, so far as in us lay, ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... domestic and unaffected hour, had apparently many qualities to conciliate and to charm. When the good news arrived of her father's safety, and safety achieved in a manner so flattering to a daughter's pride, it came upon a heart predisposed to warmth and kindness and all her feelings opened. The tears stood in her beautiful eyes, and they were tears not only of tenderness but gratitude. Fortunately Lord de Mowbray was at the moment absent, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... attached to all you say and do (you two I mean) in your several occupations seems at all events one hopeful sign among not a few gloomy ones. I suppose you and Mr. Keble little estimated the influence which even a casual word or sentence of yours exercises upon a man of my age, predisposed (it is true) to hearken with ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... accomplishment of a design larger than I can understand. So that these papers are not written primarily for all, nor with the same intention towards all who read them. They are designed first for those who are predisposed for their reception. Then they are intended to display in an orderly manner a point of view, and how things look from that point of view, to those who are not so predisposed. These latter will either develop into adherents as they read, or, what is more likely, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... a controversy raged as to whether sex is determined at the time of fertilization, before or after. Biologists now generally prefer to say that a fertilized egg is "predisposed" to maleness or femaleness, instead of "determined." The word "determined" suggests finality, whereas the embryo appears to have in the beginning only a strong tendency or predisposition toward one ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... passion, and that on the other hand almost anything that does so act is largely educative, however small a figure the process might make in a scheme of training. Strange indeed, furthermore, are some of the things that have stirred a subjective passion—stirred it, I mean, in young persons predisposed to a more or ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... if they get the chance. But those who are trying to help the soldier can do so with a good heart if they realize that in him they have a foundation on which to build. Already he is half a hero-worshipper. Already he half believes in the beauty of sacrifice and in the life immortal. Already he is predisposed to value exceedingly all that savours of clean, wholesome home life. On that foundation it should be possible to build a strong idealism which shall prevail against the flesh. And this is my last word—it is by building up, and ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... Duke entered upon him in the library, he was under the immediate influence of a stimulating talk with Philip d'Avranche and the chief officers of the duchy. With the memory of past feuds and hatreds in his mind, and predisposed against any Vaufontaine, his greeting was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and predisposed by the treatment he met with, poor boy. They say he drank quarts of iced things at the dinner and ball, and ate nothing. This may be only the effect of the shock, but his head is burning, and there is a disposition to wander. However, he has had his coup de grace, and that ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... entertained by her more worldly sisters to the house of Austria; but it was accepted as a personal compliment by the king himself, who was already fascinated by her charms, which, as he affirmed, surpassed those of her portrait, and was predisposed to view all her words and actions in the most favorable light. Avoiding Paris, which Louis, ever since the riots of 1750, had constantly refused to enter, they reached the hunting-lodge of La Muette, in the Bois de ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... her mother. It seemed to her in that moment as if his liking for her mother might prevent him from liking her, and, she did not know why, she was aware of a faint sensation of hostility toward him. Yet usually the fact that a man admired, or was fond of, Mrs. Mansfield predisposed Charmian in ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... the body is promoted by effective respiration, and waste matters are promptly removed, the chances that tubercle will be developed in persons who are predisposed thereto ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... failed to find out, and the management sent to Chicago for a real live detective who would not be predisposed to accept the "mystery" as such, but would do his utmost to find the cause of a phenomenon that was not only interrupting traffic ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... a concrete oil formed in the interstices of the cellary tissue. It sometimes agglomerates in animals whom art or nature has so predisposed, such as pigs, fowls, ortolans and snipe. In some of these animals it loses its insipidity and acquires a slight and ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... which he would undoubtedly answer: "I don't know, Dad," (disagreeable little boys like that always call their fathers "Dad" and stand with their feet wide apart and their hands in their pockets like girls playing boys' roles on the stage) "but I do know this, that all the Nordic peoples are predisposed to astigmatism because of the glare of the sun on the snow, and that, furthermore, if you were to place a common ordinary marble in a glass of luke-warm cider there would be a precipitation which, on pouring off the cider, would be found to be what we know as parsley, ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... produced in the cave of Trophonius are justly ascribed to medicated beverages. Here, the votary if he escaped with life, had his health irreparably injured, and the whole class of artificial dreams and visions, the effect of some powerful narcotic acting upon the body after the mind had been predisposed for a certain ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... greater part of their forces. They then proceeded to the palace, and commanded the priors to retire to their homes; and, on the way thither, one of them was in derision stripped by the soldiers. From this beginning (so much more easily are men predisposed to evil than to good) originated the pillage and destruction of the city; which for a whole day suffered the greatest horrors, neither women nor sacred places being spared; and the soldiery, those engaged for its defense as well as its assailants, plundered all ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... all were now at his mercy. He must accordingly be fully gratified. Precedents showed that in this way the scourge would be made to disappear. Moreover, it was believed that an immolation by fire would purify Carthage. The ferocity of the people was predisposed towards it. The choice, too, must fall exclusively upon the families ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... way you have made our friend very angry," he went on, easily; "and at present he is disposed to treat you with considerable harshness, to mete out the same harsh justice, in fact, that he accorded to two of the people who were engaged in the building of this house, and who were predisposed to blackmail him with a threat ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... may be predisposed to misconstrue the motive for giving publicity to the following letter, but others, it is hoped, will admit that the sole object has been, not to draw the reader's attention to the writer, but to confer credit on Southey. Many are the individuals who would have ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... feeling of disappointment and chagrin. This young person, already predisposed to regard a clergyman of his denomination with disapproval, had seen him for the first time under most humiliating circumstances. And he should never have the opportunity to regain her favor, or his own self-respect, by his efforts in the pulpit. No matter how well he might ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... you from Mr. Murray's, and I may say, from Murray, who, if you are not predisposed in favour of any other publisher, would be happy to treat with you, at a fitting time, for your work. I can safely recommend him as fair, liberal, and attentive, and certainly, in point of reputation, he stands ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... predisposed to happiness, such happy surprises are prolonged and constantly renewed; and this may be one of the innocent secrets of the intellect. Are there not a thousand ways of interpreting a feeling, even as there are a thousand ways of considering an object? Our mind observes it daily under ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... States of Holland of the import of English- dyed cloths), injured the trade of the West Riding manufacturers considerably. Their independence of character, their dislike of authority, and their strong powers of thought, predisposed them to rebellion against the religious dictation of such men as Laud, and the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts; and the injury done by James and Charles to the trade by which they gained their bread, made the great majority of them Commonwealth ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... had resented this warmly, and had rated her so severely as to what he called her wicked prejudice against Fred, that she had retired to her room in tears. This defeat of his favourite had not predisposed Harry to any more favourable opinion of his unknown cousin; but Fred, relieved from the presence of Alice, acted his part so well, and infused so genuine a ring into the tone of his congratulations, that he did much to dissipate the prejudice ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... substances, thus bountifully supplied by the hand of Nature, even where least to be expected, little doubt can be entertained, as it is well known to be a never-failing specific for scorbutic affections, to which all persons deprived of it for a length of time are probably more or less predisposed. ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... of those who instruct them. Oh, how easy to soften that age, in speaking of a God Who has made Himself a child, and Who died for us! to awaken the fear of the Lord, compassion for those who suffer, gratitude, divine love, in souls predisposed, by the grace of baptism, to all the Christian virtues! Ask the most zealous pastors, and all will tell you that no part of their ministry is more consoling than that which is exercised for youth, because the fruits are incomparably more abundant. Although all my efforts for the sanctification ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... light, the absence of shadows, the massive shafts, springing grey-white out of the jetlike ground, the fantastic trees, the absence of a sky, the deathly silence, the knowledge that he was underground—the combination of all these things predisposed Maskull's mind to mysticism, and he prepared himself with some anxiety to hear Corpang's explanation of the land and its wonders. He already began to grasp that the reality of the outside world and the reality of this world were ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... Silvere went to live with his grandmother Adelaide Fouque. Though poorly educated, he was fond of reading, and his lonely life with this old half-imbecile woman increased his own tendency to visionary dreamings. "He was predisposed to Utopian ideas by certain hereditary influences; his grandmother's nervous disorders became in him a chronic enthusiasm, striving after everything that was grandiose and impossible." His Uncle Antoine Macquart, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... black type: "PAINLESS PERKINS"; and, in smaller type underneath, the information that the extracting or filling of molars; crown and bridge work; or the fitting of artificial teeth, would be done by Painless Perkins in a "Particularly Pleasing Way," and that he was "Predisposed to ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... by her predecessor. Alberoni was the only person admitted to their privacy. This second marriage of the King of Spain, entirely brought about by Madame des Ursins, was very distasteful to the Spaniards, who detested that personage most warmly, and were in consequence predisposed to look unfavourably upon anyone she favoured. It is true, the new Queen, on arriving, drove out Madame des Ursins, but this showed her to be possessed of as much power as the woman she displaced, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... predisposed the public mind to a change. The study of a great variety of ancient writers, though it did not give a right direction to philosophical research, did much towards destroying that blind reverence for authority which had prevailed when Aristotle ruled alone. The rise of the Florentine ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and it is a fact that by some repetitions and contradictions, as well as by a tendency to let one down at what should be the critical point of his yarns, he has done something to alienate a public—such as myself—entirely predisposed in his favour. It remains to say, all the same, that this little volume is in the main a sincere and obviously well-informed account of the doings of the men of our air services, full of incident and achievement utterly beyond belief ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... of sickness are never interesting. I shall not dwell upon Miriam's illness of several weeks; the doctors pronounced it to be angina pectoris—a fearful and often fatal complaint, brought on in those constitutionally predisposed to it, by any sudden shock to mind or body. What could have caused its attack upon Miriam, they could not imagine. And Alice Murray, in fear and doubt, held her tongue and kept her own counsel. In all her illness, Miriam's reason was not for a moment clouded—it seemed preternaturally ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... acquaintance of the family. Sarah had been so long absent from the city, that she had in some measure been banished from the remembrance of the gentleman; but the recollections of Sarah were more vivid. There is a period in the life of every woman when she may be said to be predisposed to love; it is at the happy age when infancy is lost in opening maturity—when the guileless heart beats with those anticipations of life which the truth can never realize—and when the imagination forms images of perfection that are copied after its own unsullied visions. At this ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... It was said of two other friends, who achieved great distinction in the sphere of art, that when they first met in early manhood they "ran together like two drops of mercury," so completely coincident were their inclinations. So it was in this instance. Two men more predisposed to formulate plans for exploration could not have been thrown together. A passion for maritime discovery was common to both of them. Flinders, from his study of charts and books of voyages, had ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... indeed he had by a fine originality not resisted it altogether. That in itself, for an observer deeply versed in this lady, was attaching and beguiling. Another indication was that he found himself, in spite of such a break in the chain, distinctly predisposed to Nanda. "If she reproduces then so vividly Lady Julia," the young man threw out, "why does she strike you as so much less pretty than her foreign friend there, who is after all by no ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... mind, unless convertible to some selfish end. Witness the beautiful wife, wedded for what is misnamed love, yet becoming the scorn of a brutal husband,—the more bitter, perhaps, if she be also good. But, aside from those counteracting causes so often mentioned, it is as we have said: we are predisposed to feel kindly, and to think purely, of every beautiful object, until we have reason to think otherwise; and according to our own hearts will ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... that both the worker and investigator may realize, that, after all the work that is to be done is, in its essentials, exactly the same. With this realization from the beginning, the mind of the worker or investigator may be the more predisposed to note the eliminations of waste and the cutting down of time, effort and fatigue under the scientifically ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... distinction between a particular and general one, the emphasis with which the elements of the ideal name, are discriminated and blended, furnish to the careful reader already some superficial hints, as to the capabilities of such a plan to one at all predisposed to avail himself of them. And, indeed, this Poet's manifest philosophical and historical tendencies, and his avowed view of the comprehension of the Poet's business would have seemed beforehand to require some elbow-room,—some chance ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... The superiority in material resources, and certain solid and undeniable successes obtained at and early stage of the war, such as the capture of New Orleans, were known to be on the same side. Slighter grounds would in most cases have sufficed to persuade minds predisposed by sympathy that this side would win; yet the Southern advocates shuffled and played the cards well enough to induce an opposite conclusion in numerous instances. And no doubt many who began by simply believing that the South would succeed went ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... to him, also looking like fate. He remembers that portrait on the wall at Albuquerque, and how it had predisposed him in favour of the original. The features of Spano-Mexican type—so unlike those he had been accustomed to in his own country—had vividly impressed him. Gazing upon it he had almost felt love for the likeness. Then the description of the young ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... abdicate, but three years later the nation had become convinced that her abdication was highly desirable, and the solemn act took place on the 6th of July 1654 at the castle of Upsala, in the presence of the estates and the great dignitaries of the realm. Many were the causes which predisposed her to what was, after all, anything but an act of self-renunciation. First of all she could not fail to remark the increasing discontent with her arbitrary and wasteful ways. Within ten years she had created 17 counts, 46 barons ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... laugh to hear people talk about losing flesh—unless, of course, the decrease in weight is due to illness. No healthy person, predisposed to fat, ever lost any flesh. If that person gets rid of any weight, or girth, or fat, it isn't lost—it is fought off, beaten off. The victim struggles with it, goes to the mat with it, and does not debonairly drop it. He eliminates it ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... Castle was in consequence taken. Nevertheless the old Irish, according to their habit, took but slowly to this wonderful invention, though destined to revolutionize the art to which they were naturally predisposed—the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... Everything, therefore, predisposed me towards romanticism, not in form, for I was not long in understanding that this is a mistake, that though there may be two modes of feeling and thinking there can be but one form of expressing these feelings and thoughts—but towards romanticism ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Chambers were as they ought to be, I should believe it to be a great defect. If the administration had in both Houses a majority—not a mechanical majority ready to accept anything, but a fair and reasonable one, predisposed to think the Government right, but not ready to find it to be so in the face of facts and in opposition to whatever might occur; if a good Government were thus placed, I should think it decidedly better that the agreements of the administration with foreign ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... to be busy. It has not been usual here to make any express stipulation to the effect that the money, or part of it, raised by a loan is to be spent in England, but it is clear that when a nation borrows in England it is thereby predisposed to giving orders to English industry for goods that it proposes to buy. And even if it does not do so, the mere fact that England promises, by making the loan, to hand over so much money, in effect obliges her to sell goods or services valued at that amount as ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers
... woods are full of them; also the owl wagons. The difference between such men as those you have described and such men as you is that they were made to be thin men and to keep on being thin men regardless of their food consumption, and that your sort are naturally predisposed to fatness. You can't judge their cases by yours any more than you can judge the blood-sweating behemoth of Holy Writ by the plans and specifications ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... of my Uncle Prosper, and has done me a terrible injury. My uncle is a weak man, and has been predisposed against me from other circumstances. He thinks that I have neglected him, and is willing to believe anything against me. He has stopped my income,—two hundred and fifty pounds a year,—and is going ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the preceding century, that they probably never conceived that in so doing now they were committing any encroachment on the constitutional rights and privileges of the Lower House. But on this occasion the ill-feeling previously existing between the two Houses may be thought to have predisposed the Commons to seek opportunity for a quarrel. And there never was a case in which both parties in the House were more unanimous. Governor Pownall called the rejection of the clause by the Lords "a flagrant ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... predisposition to decline labour from his scrofulous habit of body,' which was increased by over-eating and want of exercise. It is a cruel mode of vindication to say that you are not indolent, but only predisposed by a bad constitution and bad habits to decline labour; but the advantage of accurate definition is, that you can knock a man down with one hand, and pick him up with ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... "That is, an over-dose of brandy was the immediate cause of the fit, and the continued use of stimulants through many years the cause of the paralysis. It is just another instance of a rum murder—that's hard language, but it's true—and the son is fearfully predisposed to follow in his father's footsteps. ...
— Three People • Pansy
... timid question as to whether Narcissus would mind putting up with them, as they were poor folk, and could well do with any little he cared to offer for his accommodation. There was something of a sad winningness in the woman which had predisposed him to the group, and without hesitation he at once accepted, and soon was walking with them to their home, through streets echoing with Lancashire 'clogs.' On the way he learnt the circumstances of his companions. The young woman was a widow, and the girl her daughter. Both ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... "I am not such a dogmatist as you suppose. Besides which, I very well know that you generally require proof for what you believe, and am, therefore, very strongly predisposed ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... but as to the effects most likely to result from it; that determination wears an aspect of scepticism, which, however much soever it may be unintentional in the mind of the writer, yet cannot but produce an evil impression on those who are already predisposed to carp and cavil at the evidences of ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... varied experience of terriers, and had nothing to learn from us. Yet I have no doubt that, with his instinctive courtesy, he divined the wishes of the family in regard to the newcomer, and was, therefore, predisposed in his favour. This, however, did not save the evidently much overawed youngster from a stern and searching examination, the most trying part of which seemed to be that long, silent, hypnotizing contemplation of him, which is Teddy's way ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... at the elbow results from sudden and violent flexion of the joint, the muscular effort causing stretching or laceration of the fascia that holds the nerve in its groove; it is predisposed to if the groove is shallow as a result of imperfect development of the medial condyle of the humerus, and by ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... sometimes embarrassingly misunderstood until the community becomes better acquainted with her mission and character. But the opposition of the Chinese on this account has been grossly exaggerated by those whose prior hostility to all missionary work predisposed them to make as much capital as possible out of the small gossip on this subject. Even if the misunderstanding were as general and as bitter as some allege, it would not follow that single women should be withdrawn, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... industrial soldier. Many trades now dangerous would be made safe if workers knew the risk they run, and if society forbade such trades needlessly to exhaust their employees. A perfectly sound man is predisposed to tuberculosis if he elects to work in stale, dust-laden air. Ill-ventilated rooms, cramped positions, lack of exercise in the open air, prepare lungs to give a cordial reception to tubercle bacilli. Rooms as well as persons become infected. Fortunately, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... fantasies, was laid to-day. Sometimes he had felt, Why does no one sympathise with my views; why, though they treat them with conventional respect, is it clear that all I have addressed hold them to be absurd? My parents are pious and instructed; they are predisposed to view everything I say, or do, or think, with an even excessive favour. They think me moonstruck. Lord Eskdale is a perfect man of the world; proverbially shrewd, and celebrated for his judgment; he looks upon me as a raw boy, and believes that, if my father had kept me at Eton and ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli |
