"Prone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... There was the usual party of tourists following the guide through narrow passages and echoing chambers, and peering into the rooms where Charles Stuart endured his exile, and making those lively remarks and speculations whereby the average tourist is prone to reveal his hazy notions of history. Happily Vixen knew of quiet corners upon the upward walls whither tourists rarely penetrated; nooks in which she had sat through many an hour of sun and shade, reading, musing, or sketching with free untutored pencil, for the mere idle delight ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... this we do not permit ourselves to be influenced by annoyances or dislikes. The threats and insults, and the challenges, which have been made have, no doubt, excited also with us a feeling of irritation, which does not easily happen with Germans, for they are less prone to national hatred than any other nation. We are, however, trying to calm our countrymen, and we shall work for peace with our neighbors, especially with Russia, in the future as well as in the past. When I say especially with Russia, I express the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... "So prone is man to society, and so happy in it, that, to relish perpetual solitude, one must be an angel or a brute. In a solitary state, no creature is more timid than man; in society, none more bold. The ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... experiment, or social crisis—call it which you will—has arisen, when labour has again reached the point where the demand exceeds the supply, we are to admit an influx of strangers amongst us, and thereby entail upon ourselves and posterity the evils of prospective pauperism. We have been already too prone, in matters relating rather to the luxuries than the necessities of our social system, to give undue preference to the foreigner. British art has, in many branches, been thereby crippled and discouraged, and a cry, not unnatural surely, has ere now been raised against the practice. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... who were very frequent in their visits, the buxom dame (who had now assumed the title of Mrs.) contrived, like the friars of old, to indulge in the gratification of those passions to which it is said real saints are not prone. Some of her neighbours were in consequence so ill-natured as to say, that her conversion was not sincere, but that it was a mere cloak to cover certain practices. But my readers are aware that we must not believe all that the world says. Mrs. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... crossed it, not from ill-will to the men, but that they might be beholden to him and the Achaeans, not to Titus and the Romans. For when he came to be General himself, he restored them. So impatient was his spirit of any subjection, and so prone his nature to contest everything with men ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... portion of the time in which I was absent, I feared I should not be able to write, from mere memory, a statement so minute and connected as to have the appearance of that truth it would really possess, barring only the natural and unavoidable exaggeration to which all of us are prone when detailing events which have had powerful influence in exciting the imaginative faculties. Another reason was, that the incidents to be narrated were of a nature so positively marvellous that, unsupported as my assertions must necessarily be (except by the evidence of a single individual, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... forward hold lies prone, conning his map, and marking the gradual approach of the "Harnessed Mule" to the red cross marked there. Frequently he is compelled to raise himself into a sitting position to give vent to the merriment ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... back, and he knew why he was there. Water— he knew where there was water if he could keep on recollecting till he reached the place. And could he reach it? His hands and arms gave way, and he lay prone, sobbing hoarsely in his misery and despair. There was water, plenty of water, if he could reach it—if his mind would only hold out, and his strength last till he had taken one long deep draught of the cool, sweet drink. And he could ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... age. They, like all their contemporaries, were besieged by errors, ancient, inveterate, traditional; and accidentally, from one cause special to themselves, they were not merely liable to error, but usually prone to error. This cause lay in the polemic form which so often they found a necessity, or a convenience, or a temptation for assuming, as teachers ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... "luck" of the adventurer. He might have sniped the guards anyway, but he had it easier. From fifty yards away, prone and carefully sighting, he took the three lives that had been so viciously, so ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... de Flandre over there, who pretends to be a Hans Kraut, as I am," said the jug with the silver hat, pointing with his handle to a jug that lay prone on its side in a corner. "He has copied me as exactly as it is given to moderns to copy us. Almost he might be mistaken for me. But yet what a difference there is! How crude are his blues! how evidently done over the glaze are his black letters! He has tried to give himself my very twist; but what ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... more dignity and formality in your manner are a concession you owe to your family. You know as well as I do that a young girl in your position does not converse haphazard with any stranger that she happens to find prone in the woods. It's not done, Mary, and what is more, I will not have it. This impertinent young counter-jumper probably was only too ready to seize upon any excuse to address you. You should have given him the information he asked and ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court has been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half dressed, to ask questions; and the two ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... The Man who lay prone in anguish beneath the olive-trees comes forth in serene tranquillity, and gives Himself up to the death for us all. His agony was endured for us, and needs for its explanation the fact that it was so. His victory through prayer was for us, that we too might conquer by the same weapons. His voluntary ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... merely insensible, and the agony of uncertainty seemed to drain her of all strength. For a few moments she lay where she was, unable to control the trembling of her limbs, her aching eyes staring fixedly down at the still, prone figure on the ledge below. But the paralysing terror passed, and, at length, though still rather shakily, she dragged herself to her feet. She must go to him—somehow she must get down to where ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the chorus, but his voice failed him, his head sank down upon his breast, and, in a drunken stupor, he rolled from his seat, prone upon the ground. ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... steadily onward, while the Texan searched the trail with keen eyes that missed nothing. Suddenly he drew up his horse. Blizzard had shied at something lying prone ahead of them, and The Kid's eyes had seen ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... sack-cloth, strewn with ashes, Seated on a desolate throne 'Mid the spectral walls of stately domes And the skeletons of regal homes, Francisco weeps while westward thrashes Through the wrecks of mansions, stricken prone By the rock of earth and sweep of flame Which, unheralded and unbidden, came In the greatness of her pride full-blown And at the zenith of her ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... religious difficulty; neither may you be a Pathan, because you in no way resemble one, nor do you speak the Pushtu tongue. But I will be a Pathan, because I can speak that language; therefore they will respect me as a man prone to fight readily and well. And knowing that no Pathan would demean himself by being servant to a man of no account, they will more readily respect you, although you are neither Sikh nor yet Pathan but are supposed to be a Punjabi Mussulman. Therefore, sahib, you must take a middle course between ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... varying character are developed in connection with acids, from the milk sugar. Other volatile products imparting bad flavors usually accompany gas production. These fermentations are of most serious import in the cheese industry, as they are especially prone to develop in the manufacture of milk into certain types of cheese. Not often is their development so rapid that they appear in the milk while it is yet in the hands of the milk producer, but almost invariably the introduction of the causal ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... mind is ever prone to reason, when we ought to believe; to be at work, when we ought to be quiet; to go our own way, when we ought steadily to walk on in God's ways, however trying to nature. When I was first converted, I should have said, What harm can there be to take ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... conviction of outlawry and a desolation passing speech. He looked for comfort, for promise of restoration, and found none, in things material or things intellectual, in others or in himself. For his mind, always prone to apprehend by images rather than by words, and to advance by analogy rather than by argument, discovered, in surrounding aspects and surrounding circumstance, a rather hideously apt parable and illustration of its present state. Just as this seemingly fair city was proven, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... that which is commonly imagined. The logical coherence of any series of events, as of any process of Nature, possesses an innate attraction for the inquisitive element of which few intelligent minds are devoid. Unfortunately, technical men are prone to delight in their technicalities, and to depreciate, with the adjective "popular," attempts to bring their specialties within the comprehension of the general public, or to make them pleasing and attractive to it. However it may be with other specialties, the utility of which is more willingly ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... we French storm'd Ratisbon: A mile or so away On a little mound, Napoleon Stood on our storming-day; With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, Legs wide, arms lock'd behind, As if to balance the prone brow Oppressive ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... trees and bushes, picking fruit and nuts, eating leaves and stems and flowers of plants. They wandered down to the river to lie prone on the sand, dip their faces into the clear cold water to drink. During the heat of the day they bathed in the river, and as they lay on white sand or grassy slopes ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... prematurely overhead, with little or no effect upon the slumberers, only a cry of pain as one and another received a wound or a death shot from the flying fragments. The charge of Pickett is over, the day is lost, and men fall prone upon the earth to catch breath and think of the dreadful ordeal just passed and of the many hundreds lying between them and the enemy's line bleeding, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... develop long-term strategies to improve their food production. The World Bank will invest up to $4 billion in the next few years in improving the grain storage and food-handling capacity of countries prone ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... things in the world are ideas. We are so familiar with the things that are the material embodiment of ideas—buildings, roads, vehicles and machines—that we are prone to forget that without the ideas that gave them birth all these would be impossible. A house is a mass of wood, stone and metal, but all these substances, collected in a pile, do not suffice to make ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... "There you have the situation in a nutshell, my friends. Trust a clever woman's intuition. I am indeed right. Never was consciousness of right so impressed upon my mind—prone as I am always to doubt my own conclusions. I am, in fact, right because I cannot be wrong. Trust me. My own safety is absolutely assured, for we are concerned with the operations of men like ourselves—at least, I hope very different from ourselves, but men, nevertheless. It was your fate to revive ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... aberrations of foliage almost as fantastical as the mental bent which in man is displayed by the sticking of straws in the hair. "Phyllomania" is the recognised term for this waywardness. One of the trees of this locality, the raroo (CAREYA AUSTRALIS), seems singularly prone to the infirmity, for without apparent cause it abandons habitual ways and clothes its trunk and branches with huge rosettes of small, slight, and ineffective leaves, evidence, probably, of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... prey, If that perchaunce some boggie fenne is nie. Soon as the muddie natyon theie espie, 245 Inne one blacke cloude theie to the erth descende; Feirce as the fallynge thunderbolte they flie; In vayne do reedes the speckled folk defend: So prone to heavie blowe the arrowes felle, And peered thro brasse, and sente manie to ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... mind is prone to superstition. Yet she is, being but a woman and a negress, a good soul, and thrifty, though requiring, like all lower animals, occasional chastisement. I married her on philosophic grounds. A wife was necessary to me for several reasons: but mindful that the philosopher should subjugate ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... brother. There was nothing about the building of nests with which he was not familiar. He could have helped in the task, if the birds had not been so shy, and if he had possessed beak and claw instead of clumsy fingers. He would sit near a beehive for hours without moving, or lie prone in the sandy road, under the full glare of the sun, watching the ants acting out their human comedy; sometimes surrounding a favourite hill with stones, that the comedy might not be turned into tragedy by a careless ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... was deterred from graduating, but knowledge is just as beneficial, whether acquired in school or out. Thurlow Weed never had the advantages of a college, but stretched prone before the sap-house fire, he laid the foundation upon which he built that splendid reputation as an able editor; Elihu Buritt never saw the inside of a college school-room as a student, but while at the anvil, at work as a blacksmith, with ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... later said of him that he was in constant danger of "falling off forward." Highstrung and restless, sitting still did not come naturally until he had learned to read books all by himself, and he could hardly be called introspective. While prone to futile regrets, largely under the influence of his mother's morbid attitude, he gave little attention as a rule to ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... prefects of the city and to certain of her own ruffians [mercenary body-guard] with all speed to go out of the city, under arms, and to punish the authors of the violence, sparing no one. Now as these armed men, who were prone to act cruelly at every opportunity, left the gates of the city, they came upon a number of clerks busy just outside the city walls with games,—men who were entirely without fault in connection with the aforesaid violence, since those who had ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... point where a stream of water crossed the trail the party halted while the lions and the men drank. They motioned to their captors to drink too, and as Bertha Kircher and Smith-Oldwick, lying prone upon the ground drank from the clear, cool water of the rivulet, they were suddenly startled by the thunderous roar of a lion a short distance ahead of them. Instantly the lions with them set up a hideous response, moving restlessly ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... persuaded into quaffing a mug of delicious, creamy stout at the canteen with a genial old sergeant, a bronzed veteran who has seen active service in several of the tough expeditions that England seems ever prone to undertake in various uncivilized quarters of the world; after which I wheel away over old Roman military roads, through Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire, reaching Fenny Stratford just in time to find shelter against ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... says, after we had been talking about the philosopher and his vagaries and whimsicalities,—"God bless you for exalting me in my beloved grandpa's good graces. You can't think how dearly I do love him, legislation and all that apart; and yet, if there ever was a woman peculiarly prone to love and admire a man for his public affections and public usefulness, I do say I am that she, and that I could not love a paragon of beauty, wit, and private kindness, if he looked on the good or ill being of mankind with indifference or scorn, or with anti-social feelings. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... a storm swept down the mountain pass with sudden fury, uprooting trees a century old, and rending mighty rocks with sword thrusts of its lightning. And when it passed Aldebaran lay prone upon the earth borne down by rocks and fallen trees. Lay as if dead until two passing goat-herds found him and bore him down in pity to ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... spires (Fig. 145); while the crossing is embellished with a sumptuous dome and lantern or cimborio, added as late as 1567. The chapels at the east end, especially that of the Condestabile (1487), are ornate to the point of overloading, afault to which late Spanish Gothic work is peculiarly prone. Other thirteenth-century cathedrals are those of Leon (1260), Valencia (1262), and Barcelona (1298), all exhibiting strongly the French influence in the plan, vaulting, and vertical proportions. The models of Bourges and Paris with their wide naves, lateral ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... said that Coates invariably closed the windows before leaving the house, but here the window was open. Prone upon the floor was stretched ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... number of works for the pipe-organ, few are so marked by that purposeless rambling organists are so prone to, as the "Fantaisie." The "Melody and Intermezzo" of opus 20 makes a sprightly humoresque. The "Andante Religioso" of opus 17 has really an allegretto effect, and is much better as a gay pastorale than as a devotional exercise. It is much more shepherdly than the avowed "Pastorale" ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... last contribution to The Alleynian. Its strictures are far too sweeping; it has the dogmatism and the note of certitude to which youth is prone. But it is animated by a fine spirit. Very characteristic is the emphasis placed in it on the ideas of duty and unselfishness. The passion for sacrifice was ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... betrayal,—any woman who wilfully allows an offer only to refuse it, lowers not only herself but her whole sex, for a long, long time after, in the lover's eyes. At least, I think so;—as I was thinking, in the way old bachelors are prone to moralize over such things, when, coming out of Guy's room, I ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... according to Polybius, ought to be the chief study of a general. He was told, that Flaminius was greatly conceited of his own merit, bold, enterprising, rash, and fond of glory. To plunge him the deeper into these excesses, to which he was naturally prone,(760) he inflamed his impetuous spirit, by laying waste and burning the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... entering the narrow gorge that leads to the fort on the hill, when, right on the pathway before me, I saw the prone figure of a child. Almost my elephant's feet were upon it before the sage brute himself stopped and trumpeted a warning to us in the howdah, for, the tiger's body occupying the place where the mahout was wont to ride, the latter ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... introduced him to our reader's notice, we endeavoured to depict him as he then really was,—a man of strong principles, warm heart, and many noble qualities; but one, prone to over-estimate the value of birth and fortune—with a large proportion of pride and reserve—and with ideas greatly tinctured with the absurd fallacies of the mere man ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... soil. They held the mine, the lake, the river, the forest, and the township in free and common soccage. They were sometimes merchants and sometimes soldiers. They were all ready to trade with their white invaders, all prone to quarrel among themselves. The Iroquois and Hurons were ever at war with each other. When not smoking they were sure ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... everything but the object of his quest—Harry Hardy, lying far below in the dripping main drive of the Silver Stream. His large dark eyes, staring unblinkingly, seemed as if set on a vision of his friend prone on the muddy floor of the drive, with the treacherous waters stealing amongst his hair. The present mission had nothing in common with those fanciful adventures that had served to make the boy the wonder and despair of his native township. Richard Haddon was entirely forgotten for the time ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... absurd cry ceased, and that the South be made to bear its own load of guilt. Ever arrogant, chafing at the intellectual supremacy of the North, envious of its prosperity, despising with all the rancor of a lawless 'chivalry' our regard for the rights of persons, prone to dissipation, and densely ignorant of the great tendencies to progress which characterize the civilization of the nineteenth century, the Southerner has ever felt the same tendency to break away, and be off, which a raw, fiery, conceited youth feels to sunder wholesome domestic ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... journalist in The Express, "forget the shudder with which I saw a very well-known dramatist at a garden party eating strawberries with his gloves on." We ourselves sometimes have these sudden sensations, but, unlike the writer, are very prone to let them slip out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... a man's health is, so much the more prone is he to sin. The more fat the sow is, the more she loves the mire. It is not so hard to sit up a night or two, as to watch for a whole year; just as it is not so hard to start well as it is to hold out to the ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... than a minute behind him, and she sat in the drawing-room to await Miss Derrick's return; Mumford kept apart in what was called the library. To her credit, Emmeline tried hard to believe that she had learnt the whole truth; her mind, as she had justly declared, was not prone to ignoble imaginings; but acquitting her husband by no means involved an equal charity towards Louise. Hitherto uncertain in her judgment, she had now the relief of an assurance that Miss Derrick ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... dark as the staircase; so that when she turned a handle and flung a door open there was a sudden glare of light. At the same moment she uttered a shrill scream, and retreated backward. She had caught a glimpse of some horrible thing—she hardly knew what. It was the body of the man Kirski lying prone upon the uncarpeted floor, his hands clinched. There was a dark pool of blood ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... it, Aunt. Church of England. But I can see what has happened. You have been allowing old Bones to cloud your judgment. I never knew a fellow so prone to jump to idiotic conclusions. No doubt he heard that I had come in search of Indians and, without a single inquiry, decided that I had ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... as prone he fell, No pity could impart; But still his Gelert's dying yell Passed heavy on ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... see the castle?" and he replied, "We can see it best in the winter when the leaves are off the trees. In the summer time it is apt to be hid!" The summer bounty hid the castle; the winter barrenness revealed it! And so it is in life. In the season of fulness we are prone to be blind to "the house of many mansions," and we forget the Master of the house, the Lord our God. Our material ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... a delightful day with Dr. Chrysander at his home in Bergedorf, near Hamburg, and he told me the story of how on one occasion, when Keiser was incapacitated by the vice to which he was habitually prone, Handel, who sat in his orchestra, was asked by him to write the necessary opera. Handel complied, and his success was too great to leave Keiser's mind in peace. So he reset the book. Before Keiser's setting was ready for production ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and we'd have to take you over to the hospital," commented Smythe, as he looked at me, while I lay prone on my back, resting, under ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... been already given to induce a supposition that the State governments will too naturally be prone to a rivalship with that of the Union, the foundation of which will be the love of power; and that in any contest between the federal head and one of its members the people will be most apt to unite with ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the more necessary because, I believe, the teaching profession is unduly prone to pessimism. One might think at first glance that the contrary would be true. We are surrounded on every side by youth. Youth is the material with which we constantly deal. Youth is buoyant, hopeful, exuberant; ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... them steadfastly, they had been emboldened then to slap his face, whereupon he turned and gave them both the beating of their lives—bloodying their noses and bruising their lips with hard blows against their front teeth, and finally leaving them, mauled and prone, in the dirt. Moreover, in the onlookers a sense of the everlasting fitness of things had triumphed over race prejudice and allowed them—two freeborn, sovereign whites—to be licked by ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... a brief space of silence, which seemed to be spent in listening, the murmur of voices above him recommenced, when he likewise recommenced his stealthy approaches. When he had advanced so far as to be no longer able to walk upright without risk of discovery, he threw himself prone on the ground, and like a black-snake went crawling along on his belly, inch by inch, foot by foot, yard by yard, warily, noiselessly, slowly—his rifle laid along the hollow of his back. Thus painfully had he worked his way for ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... perhaps to have turned his head not quite in the direction that the Master-egalo-megalomaniac of Berlin intended. I gather that Jemal the Great was not so much impressed by the magnificence of William II. as to fall dazzled and prone at the Imperial feet, and lick with enraptured tongue the imperial boot polish, but rather to be inspired to do the same himself, to become the God-anointed of the newly acquired German province, which is Turkey, and make a Potsdam of his own. ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... as men should fight, in the pungent half-gloom, colliding or falling prone as the vessel pitched, eyes fixed straight ahead, following the powerful silver lines of water which ribbed the dark and splashed against the steaming steel; white-yellow smoke spirals writhed about their heads like some grotesque saraband; coatless, shirtless, ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... The excited whinny of a horse mingled with the sound of two shots fired in rapid succession, a rustling noise among the hay, a groan, and silence. Before he set foot on the ladder Sobrenski shouted to the rest of the conspirators to bring a light. He did not wait to look at the prone figure, but made straight for the door. His business it was first to see whether his quarry were ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... unless it referred to farriers or the res venatica. He was unmarried. The time which other men gave to their wives and families he bestowed upon his hounds. To his stables he never went, looking on a horse as a necessary adjunct to hunting,—expensive, disagreeable, and prone to get you into danger. When anyone flattered him about his horse he would only grunt, and turn his head on one side. No one in these latter years had seen him jump any fence. But yet he was always with his hounds, and when any ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... has seen it before, I want him to hold up his hand," continued the scout master, knowing how prone boys are ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... would for ever be haunted with the channering question whether she would have accepted him as groom? And if in his pain he were one day to utter it, and she in her honesty were to confess she would not, must she not then fall prone from her pedestal in his imagination? Could he then, in love for the woman herself condescend as marquis to marry one who might not have married him as any something else he could honestly have been, under the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... said, and it was noticeable that he was prone to clip his words, and to use the singular, in lieu of the plural, when the latter would have been more conventional, "My dear friend, glad see ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... The working-man who makes efforts to improve himself is encouraged; the working-man who rises is taken by the hand; the working-man, whatever he does, is never sneered at. But it's very different with the shopkeeper. Naturally a little prone to servility—that comes from the very necessities of the situation—and laudably anxious to attain the level of those he considers his superiors, he gets laughed at on every hand. Being the next class below society, society is always ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... in the stress of anxious speculation she was making bad work of her painting! This would never do! She took a long stride backwards, and over went Miss Ricker's long-suffering easel, prone upon the floor, carrying with it a neighbouring structure of similar unsteadiness, which was, however, happily empty, save for a couple of jam-pots filled with turpentine and oil! These plunged with headlong impetuosity into space, forming little rivers of stickiness, as they ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... as large as the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. The height of the latter is 151 feet.] After standing little more than half a century, it was overthrown by an earthquake. For nine hundred years the Colossus then lay, like a Homeric god, prone upon the ground. Finally, the Arabs, having overrun this part of the Orient (A.D. 672), appropriated the statue, and thriftily sold it to a Jewish merchant. It is said that it required a train of nine hundred camels ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... tempest: tree and tree Stir themselves from the stupor of the night, And every strangled branch resumes its right To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge, Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... pompous, meaningless hieroglyphics which he felt it his duty to interpret to men, hinderances and trammels to the development of his genius. The laurel tree of Petrarch's garden is a fair type of one phase of the poet's own speech, prone to derive its significance from extraneous sources and overloaded with borrowed metaphor. But the laurel receives a new meaning if we picture to ourselves Madonna Laura reclining in its shadow on the banks of the little river, with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... came reassurance and something like ease of mind. He heard a sound of voices at the front of the house, and sprang to his balconied window to listen. Captain Stewart and O'Hara were walking upon the brick-paved terrace and chatting calmly over their cigars. The man above, prone upon the floor, his head pressed against the ivy-masked grille of the balcony, listened, and though he could hear their words only at intervals when they passed beneath him he knew that they spoke of trivial matters in voices free of ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... valley, there appeared to be an immense circus-ring, the verdure having been burnt and the earth baked by the flame. The ring was quite round, as the wind had driven the flame in one direction after another, and the effect of the great golden flame lying prone upon the earth, swaying and swirling with the wind in every direction, was most startling. The great beast Apollyon, minus the smoke, seemed to have come forth from his lair again. The cost of piping is now estimated, at the present extremely ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 520, December 19, 1885 • Various
... hand, the Hindus may be on the whole less prone to violence than the Mahomedans, with whom the sword is still the symbol of their faith, the grave agrarian disturbances which have twice this year resulted from the "Non-co-operation" campaign ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... of this period is illustrated by the reports of travelers; but the reader must remember that the traveller carries his prejudices, is prone to find in striking exceptions the characteristics of a region, and is exposed to misinformation by the natives; many of these travelers are, nevertheless, keen observers, well worth attention, and, when checked by comparison with others, they are a useful source. ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... intoxicate her victims. It was the custom at that time for public women to have their names on their foreheads, and as they represented the abominations of social life, they were often named after cities. The writers of the Bible are prone to make woman the standard for all kinds of abominations; and even motherhood, which should be held most sacred, is used to illustrate the most revolting crimes. What picture can be more horrible than the mother, in her hour of mortal agony, watched by the dragon with his seven heads ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Prone in another ditch (he had changed his ditch as his man had changed his position), and holding apart so small a patch of the hedge that the sharpest eyes could not have detected him, Rogue Riderhood watched the bather dressing. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... large harbour which struck his fancy was named in honour of the saint's day, Puerto de la Conversion de San Pablo, for the sun seldom went down without a Spaniard of those days thus propitiating a saint. We are more prone to honour the devil in these matters. The Gila they called Rio del Nombre de Jesus, a name never used again. So it often happens with names bestowed by explorers. The ones they regard most highly vanish, while some they ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... succeed or no. The memories of those days would come to him now that he no longer had his youthful egoism to preserve. Instead of flying before the face of suffering he set out to look for it. He did not need to go far to find it. In the state of mind in which he was he was prone to find it everywhere. The world was full of it, the world, that hospital.... Oh, the agony, the sorrow! Pains of the wounded body, quivering flesh, rotting away in life. The silent torture of hearts under gnawing grief. Children whom no one loves, poor hopeless girls, women seduced ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... our foul days do exceed our fair; And as our bad, more than our good works are, E'en so those lines, pen'd by my wanton wit, Treble the number of these good I've writ. Things precious are least numerous: men are prone To do ten bad for ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... disapproval. They disapproved, seriously so, at the first instant's glimpse of her. They thought—such ardent self-deceivers were they—that they were shocked by her swimming suit. But Freud has pointed out how persons, where sex is involved, are prone sincerely to substitute one thing for another thing, and to agonize over the substituted thing as strenuously as if it ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... heart more wise Than when Love smites it, nor defies More scornfully life's misery, And for no other lord Will it all dangers face so readily. When thou thy aid dost lend, O Love, is courage born, or it revives; And wise in deeds the race of man becomes, And not, as it is prone, In ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... threatened with palsy; but after some hours his perplexity was all at once cleared up by the natural solution of the problem which was troubling him, worked out, as he believed, in the obscure and restless interval. "Jumping to a conclusion," a process to which the female sex is said to be especially prone, is often due to unconscious cerebration, the reasoning being so rapid that the consciousness cannot follow the successive steps. It is related that Lord Mansfield once gave the advice to a younger friend newly appointed to a colonial judgeship, "Never give reasons for your decisions. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... night the mind is weak. I came back into the bedroom where my husband was asleep, closing my eyes as I passed through, and went off to the open terrace beyond, on which I lay prone, clasping to my breast the end of the sari tied over the gold. And each one of the rolls gave me a ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... accomplishing the latter, for he was both zealous and familiar in my service: indeed, this is one of the nuisances appertaining to the institution; a pet slave seems hardly to understand the desire for privacy, and is prone to consider himself ill-used if you presume to dispense with his attendance. His ideal of a master is one who needs a great deal of waiting on in trivial, unlaborious ways, who tolerates all shortcomings and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 6th, When the prone position is resumed, make a uniform and efficient pressure along the spine, removing the pressure immediately, before rotation on the side. (The pressure augments the expiration, the rotation commences inspiration.) ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... to tell he had discounted all this, knowing what an impetuous lot his followers were, and how prone to push aside all thought of personal danger when tempted to perform some act that ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... sound? Yes, a long-drawn, quivering, piteous sigh; and as their eyes grew more accustomed to the night, out of the darkness something white shaped itself—something prone and helpless, lying on the gravel beneath the lowest step. They did not stop to speculate as to what it might be. With a single impulse, Jack and Harold sprang down, and between them they carried back into the hall the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... back pain. The muscles of the back have nerve pathway connections to the large intestines; weakness in the intestine causes weakness of the back and makes it prone to injury. But the problem is the intestine, not the back. And the only way to make the back stay better is to heal the intestine. Many athletes have very similar problems. For example, they get knee injuries and think there is something wrong with their knee. Or they ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... looking at one of the photographs on the mantelpiece with a slight smile on his face. One or two mournful whistles produced no apparent result. So Binks decided it was time for desperate measures. He stood up; and, with his head on one side, he contemplated his hated adversary, prone on the carpet. Then he gave a short sharp bark—just as a reminder. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... Grant's investment is complete— A semicircular one. Both wings the Cumberland's margin meet, Then, backwkard curving, clasp the rebel seat. On Wednesday this good work was done; But of the doers some lie prone. Each wood, each hill, each glen was fought for; The bold inclosing line we wrought for Flamed with sharpshooters. Each cliff cost A limb or life. But back we forced Reserves and all; made good our hold; And ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... See the thirty-second Oration of Gregory Nazianzen, and the account of his own life, which he has composed in 1800 iambics. Yet every physician is prone to exaggerate the inveterate nature of the disease which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... may be very cheap For the chap Who is rich, to pay a heap For a nap On a sofa that is prone To a prominence of bone, Or a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... devil always has an imp or two in every house, and my imps are getting lively. The good lady, the dear, kind lady, the sweet, excellent lady, Nemesis, whom alone I adore, has fixed her wooden eye upon me. I fall prone; spare me, Mother Nemesis! ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frightened, drew back from him, he crept out of his chair and fell prone at her feet. Afterward his hands stretched forward toward her, clutching, and then ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... in hand, a man was peering down over the edge of the hole. He peered for a long time at the prone and motionless body beneath him. After a while the stranger sat down on the edge of the hole so that he could see into it, and rested the revolver on his knee. Reaching his hand into a pocket, he drew out a wisp of brown ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... possible inducement to this except a crude love of ornament, or a mere imitation of a prevailing fashion, which is another manifestation of the same propensity. The inconvenience of being branded for life should have been felt by men prone to desertion; but the descriptive lists which accompany every crew were crowded with such remarks as, "Goddess of Liberty, r. f. a."—right forearm—the which, if a man ran away, helped the police of the port to identify him. My memory does not retain the various ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... people who make this their business, and it is believed that they often hasten the demise of the sufferers by convenient means. Human life is held of very little account among these people, whose faith bridges the gulf of death, and who were at one time so prone to suicide by drowning in the Ganges, as to render it necessary on the part of the English to establish watchmen every night along the city shore of the ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... is all right,' said her aunt, rushing up to her with warm congratulations, ready to flatter her, prone to admire her. It would be something to have a niece married to Adrian Urmand, the successful young merchant of Basle. Marie Bromar was already in her aunt's eyes something ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... such as to justify an extended notice of him, or a detailed examination of his abilities as a soldier. That he possessed military endowments of a very high order is conceded by most persons, but his critics add that he was dangerously prone to caution and inactivity. Such was the criticism of his enemies at Washington and throughout the North, and his pronounced political opinions had gained him a large number. It may, however, be permitted one who can have no reason to unduly commend ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... public scorn. He wondered, but not long Had leisure. Wondering at himself no more, His visage drawn, he felt; too sharp and spare His arms clung to his ribs, his legs entwining Each the other, till supplanted down he fell, A monstrous serpent on his belly prone, Reluctant, but in vain. A greater power Now ruled him, punished in the shape he sinned, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... looked at her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life as it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to it, or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of the life, and ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... want of love that makes thee so easily give me up. My feeble and jealous heart is ever prone to suspect; yet I ought at length to be above ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... observed her husband's unskillfulness, she would indignantly cast aside her parasol, and grasp the fishing rod. However it may be, whether the water queen below wished to compliment the earthly queen above,—we know that ladies are prone to be polite to each other—or that some truant fish remained behind to become an easy prey to the enemy, suffice it to say that Mistress Ulrica was generally fortunate; but she did not—as she might have done—make use of her advantage, as she herself would say, "to cause her husband to blush ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... Oh, that I had never waited! How does it happen though, so many Neighbours prone to pry, as I am, Are not caught thus by ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... unconsciously apt to give it a little coherency. Besides, Columbus had a solemn belief that he was a peculiar instrument in the hands of Providence, which, together with a deep tinge of superstition, common to the age, made him prone to mistake every striking dream for a revelation. He is not to be measured by the same standard with ordinary men in ordinary circumstances. It is difficult for the mind to realize his situation, and to conceive the exaltations of spirit to which he must have ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... Tuck," burbled Ev from his customary prone position on the couch. "Have a toddy, and get that tired, cold ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... anything but a comfortable shelter in time of storm. The kowa is erected by the women, who are little more than drudges, and as an Apache may have as many wives as he feels able to support, he may have as many homes as circumstances require. The various wives are prone to be quarrelsome among themselves, for which reason a man usually maintains one wife on one part of the reservation and another wife ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... write bombast? The truth is that the two defects of style in the speech are the very defects we do find in his writings. When he wished to make his style exceptionally high and passionate he always ran some risk of bombast. And he was even more prone to the fault which in this speech seems to me the more marked, a use of metaphors which sound to our ears 'conceited' or grotesque. To me at any rate the metaphors in 'now is he total gules' and 'mincing with his sword her husband's limbs' are more disturbing than any of the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... issues: deforestation (only small portions of the original forests remain) largely as a result of the continued use of wood as the main fuel source; as a consequence of cutting down the forests, the mountainous terrain of Futuna is particularly prone to erosion; there are no permanent settlements on Alofi because of the lack of natural fresh ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... mellow and harmonious change in pictures, but occasionally alterations altogether unfavourable. To ensure the former and prevent the latter, the attention of the artist in the course of his colouring should be to the employment of such pigments and colours as are prone to adapt themselves, in changing, to the intended key of his colouring, and the right effect of his picture. Thus, if he design a cool effect, ultramarine has a tendency through time to predominate and aid the natural key of blue. He will, therefore, compromise the permanence of this effect, if ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... not prone to let his wife into his confidence; but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. All her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold, and she urged her husband to comply ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... desire to obtain, tho they by various ways think to arrive at them. For every man has natural good in himself, because every man desires to obtain the true good; but it is hindered by the transitory goods, because it is more prone thereto. For some men think that it is the best happiness that a man be so rich that he have need of nothing more; and they choose life accordingly. Some men think that this is the highest good, that he be among his fellows the most honorable of his fellows, and they with all ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... the mitrailleuse spits out a regular hail of death, vicious, whiplike, never-ceasing cracks. Two horses are down and three men lie prone ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... shall you finde: My manly shape hath yet a womans minde, Prone to reveale what secret she doth know. God pardon me, I was about to show My transformation: peace, they ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... his revolver spoke and one of the men threw up his hands with a yell and pitched out of the open door. His companion still kept his post, pumping shots at the prone figure. Twice more the muzzle of Silent's gun jerked up and the second man crumpled on the floor of ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... me that he hath strong misgivings. But it is best not to appear too secure.—Ah, Sir Ralph," he added, coming forward, "I was right, you see, in my caution. I am a man of peace, and strive to prevent quarrels and bloodshed. Quarrel if you please—and unfortunately men are prone to anger—but always settle your disputes in a court of law; always in a court of law, Sir Ralph. That is the only arena where a sensible man should ever fight. Take good advice, fee your counsel well, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... quite unswayed by the prejudices of other people. The general tone of his thought was sombre. Lord Lytton described, with curious exactness, the "massive temple," the "large slouching shoulder," and the "prone head," which "habitually stoops"— ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... long been still. Began the swelling air with sighs to fill: The water-nymphs, who motionless remain'd, Like images of ice, while she complain'd, Now loos'd their streams; as when descending rains Roll the steep torrents headlong o'er the plains. The prone creation, who so long had gaz'd, Charm'd with her cries, and at her griefs amaz'd, Began to roar and howl with horrid yell, Dismal to hear and terrible to tell! Nothing but groans and sighs were heard around, And ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... different man, in some respects; not, however, in any great or essential article, upon which he had fully employed his mind, and settled certain principles of duty, but only in his manners, and in the display of argument and fancy in his talk. He was prone to superstition, but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous and the mysterious, his vigorous reason examined the evidence with jealousy[1289]. He was a sincere and zealous ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... though they had been cut out by one of those scientific tailors of the Flying Island of Laputa, who took measure of their customers with a quadrant. The tailor, in fact, might rise to be one of the monied men of the village, was he not rather too prone to gossip, and keep holidays, and give concerts, and blow all his substance, real and personal, through his clarionet, which literally keeps him poor both in body and estate. He has for the present thrown by all his regular work, and suffered the breeches ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... him, and already he is engaged for two festivals in the spring. I am hoping that a taste of success will give him more self-reliance. He needs it, if ever he is to impose himself upon the dear public. Even the critics are prone to take a man at his own valuation, and one of the best American musicians is working in a corner, to-day, because he finds it a good deal more interesting to work towards future successes than to exploit his past ones in the ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... very much whether any modern woman would cherish a mid-Victorian sentiment like "Always Faithful." On the other hand, many men might. His experience as a detective had led him to the belief that men were more prone to such sentiments than the other sex, though their conduct rarely accorded with ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Except for the figures lying prone in the snow they were quite alone. "Dey must haf done," he said, ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns |
