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More "Propensity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of centenarians of the supposed weaker sex has led to the revival of some amusing theories tending to explain this phenomenon. One cause of the longevity of women is stated to be, for instance, their propensity to talk much and to gossip, perpetual prattle being highly conducive, it is said, to the active circulation of the blood, while the body remains unfatigued and undamaged. More serious theorists or statisticians, while commenting on the subject of the relative ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... this amiable propensity, I was internally speculating concerning the cause of the rider keeping aloof from us, when my companion, elevating his deep voice so suddenly and so sternly as at once to recall my wandering thoughts, exclaimed, 'In the name ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... It is not time, but a man's propensity to anger, or his pertinacity in anger, that is the chief point of consideration in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... sorry I am!' she cried, 'that this thing has happened. But you are very fortunate that it has occurred in my house, rather than in somebody else's, for I know what measures to take to cure you of the propensity to crime which you have so clearly shown. I shall, of course, have to send you away immediately; for I could never again trust you in my home, for although it is only a trifle that you have stolen,—yes, deliberately stolen,—yet anyone who takes only a pin that belongs to another, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... Dibdin, a convivial, but always a sober man, gives a delicate allusion to the drinking propensity, in the following toast:—"May the man who has a good wife, never be addicted ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... evolutionary doctrine is driven not by any change in our basic objective, which remains peace and freedom for all mankind. Rather, the need for change is driven by the inexorable buildup of Soviet military power and the increasing propensity of Soviet leaders to use this power in coercion and outright aggression to impose their will ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... money satisfied his vanity. It gave him prestige, power, the attention he craved. He could call any flashy talker's bluff when his pockets were full of money. It imparted self-assurance. He could the better indulge his propensity for resenting slights, either real or fancied. Money would buy him out of trouble. Yes, Smith liked the feel of money. He took a roll of banknotes from the belt pocket of his leather chaps and counted them for the ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... to the confusion, the dogs became affected with the spirit of excitement that filled their masters, and gave vent to their feelings in loud and continuous howling which nothing could check. The imitative propensity of these singular people was brought rather oddly into play during the progress of traffic. Buzzby had produced a large roll of tobacco—which they knew the use of, having been already shown how to use a pipe—and cut off portions of it, which he gave ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Portuguese Spring and Tank there.—Attempt of the Danes to land and build a Fort.—Eligibility of the Situation of Santa Cruz, for a Commercial Depot to supply the whole of the Interior of North Africa with East India and European Manufactures.—Propensity of the Natives to Commerce and ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... by all means," chose Judith, who, being used to the privileges of selection from a variety of offered foods and beverages, was apt to want what was not set before her, when at a private table. Juliet understood this propensity of her friend and slyly took advantage of it. As it happened, she knew that at the moment she was quite out of chocolate, but she had counted advisedly upon Judith's choice on a hot June day, and she smiled to herself as she chopped ice ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... but did not survive long. Pairs have often been shot in the same jungle, but seldom in close proximity, and it accords with all experience that they betray an aversion to each other's society, except at the one season. This propensity of the father to devour his offspring seems to be due to jealousy or to blind unreasoning hate. To save her offspring the female always conceals her young, and will often move far from the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... dull and slow-witted in company. 'The barber's son learns to shave on the Ahir's head.' 'The cow is in league with the milkman and lets him milk water into the pail.' The Ahirs are also hot-tempered, and their propensity for drinking often results in affrays, when they break each other's head with their cattle-staffs. 'A Gaoli's quarrel: drunk at night and friends ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... oven-hole; it was seized on, and not only was the night-cap dragged out, but all the missing and not missing articles which the hedgehog had purloined; most of them were much torn, and it was supposed that the poor beast had taken possession of them to make a soft bed. I have not seen such a propensity noticed elsewhere, and it may be a useful hint to those who keep hedgehogs. All endeavours to make this animal friendly were unavailing; but I am told, that hedgehogs are frequently quite domesticated; and even shew ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... master's affairs, and in his own adventures of fun and mischief; and so managed matters, that the credit he acquired by the former bore him out, or at least served for his apology, when the latter propensity led him into scrapes, of which, however, it is but fair to state, that they had hitherto inferred nothing mean or discreditable. Some aberrations there were, which David Ramsay, his master, endeavoured to reduce to regular order when he discovered them, and others which he winked at—supposing ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... residence in Brooklyn. But in process of time Hiero (or, as he was then called, Henry) took it into his head to return to the original family mansion and live there. No objection was made; in truth, Henry's oddities, awkwardnesses, and propensity to dabble in queer branches of research and experiment may have allayed the parting pangs. Back he blundered, therefore, to the banks of the Hudson, and established himself in his birthplace. What ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... callous. Iago is, to be sure, an extreme instance of the kind; that is to say, of diseased intellectual activity, with an almost perfect indifference to moral good or evil, or rather with a decided preference of the latter, because it falls more readily in with his favourite propensity, gives greater zest to his thoughts and scope to his actions. He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion- -an insatiable craving ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... genealogy of a treacherous massacre of a whole tribe of Nahals by his ancestor in Akbar's time, in recognition of which the Jitgarh pargana was granted to the family. Mr. Kitts speaks of the Nahals of Berar as having once been much addicted to cattle-lifting, and this propensity still exists in a minor degree in the Central Provinces, accentuated probably by the fact that a considerable number of Nahals follow the occupation of graziers. Some of them are also village watchmen, and another special avocation of theirs is the collection of the oil of the marking-nut tree ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... pricked ears, and ferocious countenance, presented a somewhat formidable appearance. This animal happening to grunt, one of them was so much terrified, that he became, from that moment, uneasy, and impatient to get out of the ship. In carrying his purpose into effect, however, he did not lose his propensity to thieving, for he seized hold of, and endeavoured to carry off, the smith's anvil: but, finding it infinitely too heavy for his strength, he laid hold of the large hammer, threw it on the ice; and, following it himself, deliberately laid it on his sledge, and ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... the partridge; for, if I fed the poor, and comforted the sick, and instructed the ignorant, yet I should be nothing worth, if I smote the partridge. If anything ever endangers the Church, it will be the strong propensity to shooting for which the clergy are remarkable. Ten thousand good shots dispersed over the country do more harm to the cause of religion than the arguments ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... delighted with the poems of Mickle and Langhorne: "There is a period in youth when the mere power of numbers has a more strong effect on ear and imagination than in after-life." With these comments we may put Lockhart's sagacious remark: "His propensity to think too well of other men's works sprung, of course, mainly from his modesty and good nature; but the brilliancy of his imagination greatly sustained the delusion. It unconsciously gave precision to the trembling outline, and life and warmth to the vapid colours ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... into two great classes—the one where a person invested with power is induced by payment to use it unjustly; the other, where power is obtained by purchasing the suffrages of those who can impart it. It is a natural propensity, removable only by civilization or some powerful counteracting influence, to feel that every element of power is to be employed as much as possible for the owner's own behoof, and that its benefits should be conferred not on those who best ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... behalf, that of course she won't fall in love. We know that she will, sooner or later; and probably as much sooner as opportunity may offer. That is our experience of the genus girl in the general; and we quite approve of her for her readiness to do so. It is, indeed, her nature; and the propensity has been planted in her for wise purposes. But as to this or that special sample of the genus girl, in reference to this or that special sample of the genus young man, we always feel ourselves bound to take it as a matter of course that there can be nothing of the ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... and distance between them. Some people quoted him indeed, in this respect, as a pointed commentary, and not a flattering one, on his icy patron—but the world is prone to misconstruction, and Mr Carker was not accountable for its bad propensity. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... you going to say in your reply?" laughed Alice. "I know your matchmaking propensity. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... literally starve and cripple both mind and body in the slums of cities and towns. The natural result is that in their eager search for means of livelihood they are forced to have recourse to all sorts of expedients. Hence, all this talk about the "criminal features" of the Jewish character and their propensity for financial speculation, which propensity is, however, easily forgiven and even encouraged in the "true-Russian" representatives of our commercial interests. On the other hand, the Jews lower "the standards of living" by offering their services often at a very low price. Thus a peculiar "social ...
— The Shield • Various
... repositories to the remotest corners of the land. Let no one be alarmed at the mention of the word Puritan. There are some people who have no other notion of a Puritan than that of a close-cropped, saturnine personage, having a nasal twang, who is forevermore indulging an insane propensity to sing psalms, quote Scripture, or burn witches. These are the people who can never see into the profound deep of a great truth, but are quite ready to laugh at its travesty or caricature. And what high or holy truth has not been caricatured? For ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... supporters of "Ireland for the Irish," he argued in the same breath that every liberal institution suitable to Englishmen, with their long training in self-government and instinctive reverence for law, must needs be extended to Irishmen, with their long training in anarchy and instinctive propensity to lawlessness. He prevailed, however, in the house of commons, where a hostile amendment was decisively rejected, and the bill, having passed rapidly through committee, was read a third time by a large though ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... long by the sound of loud growlings, which made Uncle Mark and several of the party start to their feet, with guns ready to receive the bear from whom they expected an attack. Recollecting Jacques' propensity to practical joking, I lay quiet; and I heard my uncle come back soon afterwards, growling almost as much as the supposed bear, and observing that the brute had got off, though it must have been close to the camp. I said nothing, though I suspected who had performed the part of the bear. The next ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... already so drowsy from the excessive cold that he was only glad of the pretext for remaining still, and yielding to the uncontrollable propensity. But Mr. Holt pulled him on his feet and commanded him to gather brushwood and sticks, while he went about himself picking birch-bark off the dead and living trees. This he spread under the brush and ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... root of all spiritualism. Would Mr. Spencer have had us believe that the dog's fear of the rolling parasol was a logical deduction from its canine dreams? This would scarcely elucidate the problem. The dog and the horse share apparently Schopenhauer's metaphysical propensity with man. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... sweat of his brow. One is driven to contrast this feeling, of which on all sides one sees such ample testimony, with that sharp desire for profit, that anxiety to do a stroke of trade at every turn, that acknowledged necessity of being smart, which we must own is quite as general as the nobler propensity. I believe that both phases of commercial activity may be attributed to the same characteristic. Men in trade in America are not more covetous than tradesmen in England, nor probably are they more generous or philanthropical. But that which they do, they are more anxious to do thoroughly ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... effect to their meaning, and all the varieties of dumb show, of gesticulation, shrugs, and wise shakes of the head, are called into requisition, to effectually and unmistakably express their ideas. The usages of good society are regarded by them as a great restraint upon their besetting propensity to expatiate in phrases of grandiloquence, and to magnify objects of trivial importance. They are always sure to initiate topics which will afford scope for admiration; they delight to enlarge upon ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... strange notion of his own, he explained by maintaining that in certain vessels which are susceptible of an internal pruriency, and thence produce laughter, the blood is set in commotion, in consequence of an alteration in the vital spirits, whereby involuntary fits of intoxicating joy, and a propensity to dance, are occasioned. To this notion he was, no doubt, led from having observed a milder form of St. Vitus' dance, not uncommon in his time, which was accompanied by involuntary laughter, and which bore a resemblance to the hysterical laughter of the moderns, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... consequence is, she's always layin' for you. It's the effete East, my boy, that's ruinin' her. It's them ideas she gets in New York and Boston that's made her and me what we are. I don't mind her havin' 'em, if she didn't shoot. But, havin' that propensity, them principles oughtn't to be lying round ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... Flinging all thoughts of her dependence on David—of the money she had come to ask—of her leave-taking on the morrow—to the winds, Louie revenged herself amply for her week's unnatural self-control, and gave full rein to a mad propensity which had been gradually roused and spurred to ungovernable force by the trivial incidents of the afternoon. She made mock of Lucy's personal vanity; she sneered at her attempts to ape her betters, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and seemed to value himself not a little on the distinction. Pride in skepticism is a peculiar distinction of young men. It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures. Elderly skeptics generally regard their ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... crop of comments on his inaccuracies. One reviewer pointed out that Chesterton had said that every postcard Dickens wrote was a work of art; but Dickens died on June 9th, 1870 and the first British postcard was issued on October 1st, 1870. "A wonderful instance of Dickens's never-varying propensity to keep ahead of his age." After all, what did such things matter? Bernard Shaw, however, felt that they did. He wrote a letter from which I think Gilbert got an important hint, utilized later in his introduction to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Commons from then until his death, twice representing Westminster. He was made Paymaster-General of the Forces and one of the Lords of the Treasury. He seems to have been an active-minded man, with considerable business propensity. He devised a scheme for paying the troops out of his private purse, and levying a certain percentage on them for the convenience. As the pay of the army was much in arrears, and at all times irregular, this arrangement was thankfully accepted. The King saw ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... husband, Goneril's touch had the dread operation of the heathen taboo. Now Goneril brooked no chiding. So, at favorable times, he, in a wary manner, and not indelicately, would venture in private interviews gently to make distant allusions to this questionable propensity. She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it was witless to be telling one's dreams, especially foolish ones; but if the unfortunate man liked connubially to rejoice his soul with such chimeras, much connubial joy might they give him. All this ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the dancers were in costume. The Conte Leandro Lombardoni,—lady-killer, Don Juan, and poet, whose fortunes and misfortunes in these characters had made him the butt of the entire society, and had perhaps contributed, together with his well- known extraordinarily pronounced propensity for cramming himself with pastry, to give him the pale, puffed, pasty face, swelling around a pair of pale fish-like eyes, that distinguished him,—the Conte Leandro Lombardoni; indeed, had gone to the Castelmare ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... propensity of any one is very hard to be overcome. If a dog were made king, would he ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... argued on the supposition that the emancipated negroes would be as efficient as other free laborers. But whatever theorists, who know nothing of the matter, may think proper to assume, we well know that this would not be so. We know that nothing but the coercion of slavery can overcome their propensity to indolence, and that not one in ten would be an efficient laborer. Even if this disposition were not grounded in their nature, it would be a result of their position. I have somewhere seen it observed, that to be degraded by opinion, is a thousand fold worse, so ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... harmless, and retired as to escape the defamation which is daily and hourly poured forth by the venal crew to gratify the idle curiosity or still less excusable malignity of the public. To mark out for the indulgence of that propensity individuals retiring into the privacy of domestic life—to hunt them down and drag them forth as a laughing stock to the vulgar, has become in our days with some men the road even to popularity, but with multitudes the means of earning ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... first sign of moral principle, or of the concrete or its heroisms, or the simpler affections of the heart, Poe's verses illustrate an intense faculty for technical and abstract beauty, with the rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal themes, a demoniac undertone behind every page—and, by final judgment, probably belong among the electric lights of imaginative literature, brilliant and dazzling, but with no heat. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... somewhat less inhuman), are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... Chonita and Valencia were famous rivals in its rendering, always the sala-stars to those not dancing. Valencia was the perfection of grace, but it was the grace now of the snake, again of the cat. She suggested fangs and claws, a repressed propensity to sudden leaps. Chonita's grace was that of rhythmical music imprisoned in a woman's form of proportions so perfect that she seemed to dissolve from one figure into another, swaying, bending, gliding. ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... dialect of the language of that country, and evidently belong to the Gallic race. They are called Walloons, and are distinguished from the others by many peculiar qualities. Their most prominent characteristic is a propensity for war, and their principal source of subsistence the working of their mines. They form nearly one-fourth of the population of the whole kingdom, or about one million three hundred thousand persons. ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... distinguishable in the initial phase of their development; both arise from the desire of the successful men to put their prowess in evidence by exhibiting some durable result of their exploits. Both also minister to that propensity for mastery which pervades all predatory communities. From the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends itself to include the products of their industry, and so there arises the ownership of things as well as ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... distinguished by courtesy—a courtesy of that kind which is quite independent of artificial breeding, and which proceeds solely from natural motives of kindness and from an innate anxiety to please. Few of the people pass you without a salutation. Civil questions are always answered civilly. No propensity to jeer at strangers is exhibited—on the contrary, great solicitude is displayed to afford them any assistance that they may require; and displayed, moreover, without the slightest appearance of a mercenary motive. Thus, if you stop to ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... sending most of it home. Their society seemed to be a loose theo-socialism, and their religion an absurd potpourri of most of the major monotheisms of the Federation period, plus doctrinal and ritualistic innovations of their own. Aside from their propensity for sharp trading, their bigoted refusal to regard anybody not of their creed as more than half human, and the maze of dietary and other taboos in which they hid from social contact with ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... recognised a fact recognised by thousands of women with exasperation, sometimes with despair—that men would often hate in their wives the thing that draws them to women not their wives. The Pimpernel Schleys of the world know this masculine propensity of seeking different things—opposites, even—in the wife and the woman beyond the edge of the hearthstone, a propensity perhaps more tragic to wives than any other that exists in husbands. And having recognised this fact, Lady ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... their character, and is due in some degree to the quiet deliberation of their manners, and their love of repose rather than of action. The young are obedient to the wishes of their elders, and seem to feel none of that propensity to mischief which European boys exhibit. How long would tame squirrels continue to inhabit trees in the vicinity of an English village, even if close to the church? They would soon be pelted and driven away, or snared and confined in ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... twentieth-century physician would deny the cloud-suffering association, he would not deny Clayton's propensity for observation and his attempts to discern relationships. The approach of the better seventeenth-century Virginia physician can be labeled scientific even if his ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes
... have written shall in any degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit of idolising either the living or the dead. And we think that there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated intellect than that propensity which, for want of a better name, we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged by the examples of its predecessor. The First Empire had conquered most of the known universe by political intrigue and sheer military strength; it had fallen because that same propensity for political intrigue had gained over every other strength of the Empire, and the various branches and sectors of the First Empire had begun to ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... beauty, as in some of the birds, are secondary. It is quite certain that the animals that store up food for the winter do not take any thought of the future. Nature takes thought for them and gives them their provident instinct. The jay, by his propensity to carry away and hide things, plants many of our oak and chestnut trees, but who dares say that he does this on purpose, any more than that the insects cross-fertilize the flowers on purpose? Sheep do not take thought of the wool upon their backs that is to protect ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... merely giving loose to the imagination and the emotions as they follow out the wild train of incoherent thought, or are agitated by impulses of spontaneous and ungoverned feeling. Ascetic Christianity ministered new aliment to this common propensity. It gave an object, both vague and determinate enough to stimulate, yet never to satisfy or exhaust. The regularity of stated hours of prayer, and of a kind of idle industry, weaving mats or plaiting baskets, alternated with periods of morbid reflection ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... of a croaking disposition, do not we, Helen?' said Elizabeth; 'you see both that propensity, and a love of marshes, are but indications of a ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... afterguard can ever reasonably hope to be. The skipper, in particular, took the loss of this very promising officer deeply to heart, not only because of the esteem in which he held him, but also, I fancy, because he was worried by the conviction that the accident was very largely due to his own propensity to ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... other horses, and indeed made always of his own kind his special scapegoat of the dispensation of Providence. 'Tis little I know about that great mystery of the animal creation and its relation toward the human race, but verily I believe that that fine horse of mine, from his propensity for kicking and lashing out from his iron-bound hoofs at whatever luckless steed came within his reach whenever the world went not to his liking, could not see an inch beyond the true horizon limit of the horse race, and attributed all that happened on earth, including man, to the agency of his ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... yet a resource; a resource against which neither modesty nor equity plead; a resource which, on the contrary, has every moral propensity, every divine obligation, in its favour: ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... when the game was over, and at seven o'clock that evening we were on the road for Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which was to be our next stopping point. The great majority of us retired early, but the sleep that we got was scarcely worth talking about, as Tom Daly, whose propensity for practical jokes was unbounded, kept the car in a roar of laughter. No one was exempt that could be reached, and as a result there was no sleep ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... yes, that it is." Antonio recognised in the old crone the singular beggar-woman who was generally to be seen on the steps of the Franciscan Church, chuckling to herself and laughing, and soliciting alms from the worshippers; he himself, urged by some inward inexplicable propensity, had often thrown her a hard-earned penny, which he had not had to spare. "Leave me, leave me in peace, you insane old woman," he said; "but you are right, it is hunger more than my wound which has made me weak and miserable; for three days I have not earned a farthing. I wanted to go over to the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... inflicted by Montgomery in the tournament held eleven days before. Of this weak and worthless prince, all that even his flatterers could favorably urge was his great fondness for war, as if a sanguinary propensity, even when unaccompanied by a spark of military talent, were of itself a virtue. Yet, with his death the kingdom fell even into more pernicious hands, and the fate of Christendom grew darker than ever. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... duly chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last, time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up in the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... His voice is melodious, and he is eminently endowed by nature with the gift of eloquence. A person of your penetration will therefore readily imagine, that his society is courted by the fair. His propensity to the tender passion appears to have been very great, and he of consequence lays himself out in a gallantry that I can by no ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... very gravely. He was still a little suspicious of his chum's propensity to tease. It did not tend to make him less uneasy when, a little later, Captain Eri opened the parlor door and whispered, "Say, Perez, I've jest thought of some-thin'. What are you goin' to say to M'lissy Busteed? Her heart 'll ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... they are afterwards too fond of similar useless baubles."[3] This species of delight is soon over, and is succeeded by a desire to triumph in the ignorance, the credulity, or the cowardice, of their companions. Hence that propensity to play tricks, which is often injudiciously encouraged by the smiles of parents, who are apt to mistake it for a proof of wit and vivacity. They forget, that "gentle dulness ever loved a joke;" and that even wit and vivacity, if they become troublesome and mischievous, will be feared, ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... European aristocracies, I am quite ready to be grateful for a beneficent change, and I have again and again made light of the wailings of persons who persist in chattering about the good old times. But I am talking now about the spirit of the gambler; and I cannot say that the human propensity to gamble has in any way died out. Its manifestations may in some respects be more decorous than they used to be; but the deep, masterful, subtle tendency is there, and its force is by no means diminished by the advance of a complicated civilisation. Often and often I have mused quietly ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... stings me almost to madness," exclaimed Arthur, rising and pacing the apartment with hurried steps, "when I reflect that that woman, knowing well his fatal propensity,—knowing, too, how powerful was her influence over him, for, poor fellow, I believe he would have laid down his life for her sake, was the immediate instrument of leading to destruction one who might,—had she encouraged him in his resolution to abstain, instead of luring him to depart from ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... which melts before us like a mirage. Once, indeed, on the sacred mountain of Sinai, a vision greets the weary pilgrim, in which a guardian angel talks in the best style of Sidonia or Disraeli. But we are constantly distracted by our guide's irresistible propensity for a little political satire. A Syrian Vivian Grey is introduced to us, whose intrigues are as audacious and futile as those of his English parallel, but whose office seems to be the purely satirical one of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... reason to send Mary away. But I gave her a "good talking." I think she is pretty well cured of her propensity ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... had seen that gentleman issue, but before the nature of my business could be disclosed, that rigid dame assailed me with a tremendous storm of abuse, when my valet, in his zeal to serve me, or rather indulging in a propensity to retaliate, retorted the lady's freedom of tongue with rather too ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... I had nothing better to occupy my attention; and presently a peculiarity of this vision—not shared by the others I had seen—forced itself upon my notice, inasmuch as that, while the other phantom ships that I had seen had exhibited a propensity to rush over the surface of the ocean at lightning speed, and to appear in half a dozen quarters or more in as many seconds, this one obstinately persisted in maintaining the precise position in which I had at first ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... sir, poor Charles thought to make it all right by marrying Mrs. Brumby;—and she was very fond of him and the thing was all but done, in spite of her sons, who were in a rage as you may fancy. But Charley, sir, has such a propensity for humbug that he will tell lies when there is no earthly good in lying. He represented his chapel at twelve hundred a year, his private means as so-and-so; and when he came to book up with Briggs the lawyer, Mrs. Brumby's brother, it was ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gave him audience in their theatre, where he addressed them in such Greek as he could command, which, we may well believe, was not exactly such as Cineas would have spoken. An exquisite sense of the ridiculous belonged to the Greek character; and closely connected with this faculty was a strong propensity to flippancy and impertinence. When Posthumius placed an accent wrong, his hearers burst into a laugh. When he remonstrated, they hooted him, and called him barbarian; and at length hissed him off the stage as if he had been a bad actor. As the ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to doubt and conjecture; but the few known facts justify the inference that she neither merited nor found much pity in her disgrace, and that William erred through boyish indiscretion rather than from vicious propensity. She bore him two children, and he neither married her nor was required by public opinion to marry her. The respectability of their connexions gave the affair a peculiar interest, and afforded countenance to many groundless reports. By her friends ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... there, but in their fissures rose stately trees, under whose umbrage nestled the villages of the people. We found the various village elders greedy for cloth, but the presence of the younger son of Nzogera's men restrained their propensity for extortion. Goats and sheep were remarkably cheap, and in good condition; and, consequently, to celebrate our arrival near the Malagarazi, a flock of eight goats was slaughtered, and ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... partiality; a mark set up for everybody to observe and judge of; and last of all, suppose one employed in discouraging vice, and recommending the reverse, at the turbulent age of twenty-three, when it is possible I may have as great a propensity that way as any of the men that I converse with." He had difficulties of character to contend with, as well as difficulties of age. His temper was quick; he knew it. "My temper is much too warm, and sudden resentment ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... estimation he was as faultless as in Marianne's; and Elinor saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity, in which he strongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, of saying too much what he thought on every occasion, without attention to persons or circumstances. In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other people, in sacrificing ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... country, and in every department of taste, the earliest object of art is, the display of the power of the artist; and it is in the last period of its improvements alone, that this miserable propensity is overcome. It is hence that the imitation of Nature is not what is at first attempted; that the forms which she presents are uniformly neglected, and the merit of the artist is thought to consist in such artificial ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... know that I have any special mission for saving young men. I sometimes think that I shall have quite enough to do to save myself. It is strange what a propensity I feel for the wrong side ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... after listening to Cherubini's music, grew irritable to excess; and, if any body mounted him, would seek relief to his wounded feelings in kicking, more or less violently, for an hour. This habit endeared him to my brother, who acknowledged to a propensity of the same amiable kind; protesting that an abstract desire of kicking seized him always after hearing good performers on particular instruments, especially the bagpipes. Of kicking? But of kicking what or whom? I fear of kicking the venerable public collectively, creditors without exception, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... not to talk before he left—he feared Drake's propensity for speech. But he was the only man in Lost Valley whom he ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... you forgotten, when my soul seeks communion with our common Father; and when I strive most earnestly to overcome some evil propensity, or to make some generous sacrifice, the thought of you gives ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... opera-glass, the glass itself was not there. With immense energy he resumed his detective duties, and was so fortunate as to recover the glass in a short time. Thus peace was restored, and the natives were taught to feel that their propensity to steal would prove a source of great annoyance and some danger to them, should they venture to give way to it ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... prey to curiosity—the same propensity which has caused the death of many bipeds and quadrupeds. The action of the torch puzzled him, no doubt. He had seen fire before, and probably had been burnt—so he knew enough to give it a wide berth; but it is doubtful whether he ever saw a flaring torch held over the head of a boy ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... a shield of indifference; but it is equally true that any reasonably acute mind, if only charitably disposed, can readily distinguish between an inactivity which springs from craven or sluggish propensity, and that other which belongs to constitutional temperament, and which, while passing calm and dispassionate judgment upon excesses of opinion of either party, contributes insensibly to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... applies to old maids. As those delightful creatures now-a-days, not content with being grey aspire to be actually blue; we cannot help recommending to them a kind of study, for which their propensity to cutting up renders them peculiarly adapted; we mean Anatomy. And since it is on the foulest and most odious points of character that they chiefly delight to dwell, we more especially suggest to them the pursuit ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... things, of which he often repented, and which he more often repeated, he writ, for his own private use, a little book called the 'Christian Hero', with a design principally to fix upon his own mind a strong impression of virtue and religion, in opposition to a stronger propensity towards unwarrantable pleasures. This secret admiration was too weak; he therefore printed the book with his name, in hopes that a standing testimony against himself, and the eyes of the world (that is to say, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... enough that we adopt the principles already insisted on by some of our wisest medical men, and even by one or two medical societies,[Footnote: Those of Connecticut and New Hampshire.] that children in this way often acquire a propensity for exciting drinks, that may end in their downright intemperance. What if it should not, in every case, proceed quite so far as to make the child a drunkard? If it but lays the foundation of a constitutional fondness for excitements, it tends ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... Impeachment—as well might a rabbit, that breeds six times a year, pretend to know any thing of the gestation of an elephant."] took the wrong, the pedantic, and the unstatesmanlike side of the question,—while in all these indications of the spirit of that profession, and of its propensity to tie down the giant Truth, with its small threads of technicality and precedent, we perceive the danger to be apprehended from the interference of such a spirit in politics, on the other side, arrayed ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... these strange feats, I knew them to be highly absurd, yet the impulse to perform them was irresistible—a mysterious dread hanging over me till I had given way to it; even at that early period I frequently used to reason within myself as to what could be the cause of my propensity to touch, but of course I could come to no satisfactory conclusion respecting it; being heartily ashamed of the practice, I never spoke of it to any one, and was at all times highly solicitous that no one ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... his arrival, the town in which we have laid the scene of this legend felt the usual impulse of an intense curiosity to see so celebrated a character. The Dead Boxer, however, appeared to be exceedingly anxious to gratify this natural propensity. He walked out from the head inn, where he had stopped, attended by his servant, merely, it would appear, to satisfy them as to the very slight chance which the stoutest of them had in standing before a man whose blow was ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... commenced among the convicts of disposing of the slops and blankets which they had lately received to the Lascars, who, trembling with the cold even of this climate, very readily availed themselves of their propensity to part with them; which was so great, that it became necessary to punish with severity such offenders as ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... length he left the town, and went to reside at a distance, where, for a time, he refrained from drinking, was married, and every thing seemed prosperous around him; but instead of being thankful to God for his mercy, and watching against his besetting sin, he gave way to his old propensity, and brought misery ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... Afy was with him had been long and deeply imbued within her; it was the long-continued and firm conviction of all West Lynne, and a settled belief, such as that, is not easily shaken. Was Afy telling the truth? She knew her propensity for making false assertions, when they served to ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... former, so, taking it off the fire, he set it on the ground hard by. Mr. M—— coming up a moment after, and yielding to the universal desire to "poke the fire," stepped into the pan of pork. While we were laughing over his propensity for tumbling into things, Carriere, who, poor fellow, was still suffering terribly from rheumatism, limped up with a log on his shoulder, and also fell foul of the pork. At the same moment a lantern appeared in the distance, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... and she still thought it might be chiefly so accounted for; but his assertions had left an impression on her mind, which a consideration of the character and former conduct of Montoni did not contribute to efface. She, however, checked her propensity to anticipate evil; and, determined to enjoy this respite from actual misfortune, tried to dismiss thought, took her instruments for drawing, and placed herself at a window, to select into a landscape some ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... who are denizens of "the land of song," should take especial delight in mere abundance of discordant noise. Yet such is unquestionably the case. They are in their festive hours the most noisy people on earth. And the farther southward you go the more pronounced and marked is the propensity. You may hear boys and men imitating the most inharmonious and vociferous street-cries solely for the purpose of exercising their lungs and making a noise. The criers of the newspapers in the streets must take an enthusiastic delight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... was rather a good-looking man, apparently about thirty-five years of age. No evil propensity was expressed in his features; and our heroes could not help thinking that he had been guilty of no greater crime than a ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... and a large propensity for hero worship could have found anything impressive in the young man who stood before the managing editor's desk. He was thin to emaciation, his face was gaunt and unshaven, a thin dark moustache straggled on his upper ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... you. In Death we have both learned the propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say, then, commence with the moment of life's cessation—but commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into a breathless ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... understand the use of refusing to gratify their present appetites in order to provide for any distant emergency—they preferred to revel in the plenty of summer, and to rove to other places in winter in search of food, by which propensity they were scattered above one hundred and twenty miles along the coast. Yet, even these wanderers were the means of exciting the attention of their kindred to the gospel, by telling them of the strange things they had heard at Nain. It was therefore resolved to follow the leadings of Providence, ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... went to the extreme edge and looked over. A deep, dull roar smote upon his ears; he was bewildered and satisfied. Knowing the Indian propensity to exaggerate, he had half expected to find merely a cascade wilder than anything above; or perhaps a wide straggling series of falls. It was neither. The entire river gathered itself up, and plunged sheer into deep water below. The river ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... whiskey, nor gun-powder. A steamboat, coming from New Orleans, brings to the remotest villages of our streams, and the very doors of the cabins, a little Paris, a section of Broadway, or a slice of Philadelphia, to ferment in the minds of our young people, the innate propensity for fashions and finery.... Cincinnati will soon be the centre of the 'celestial empire,' as the Chinese say; and instead of encountering the storms, the seasickness, and dangers of a passage from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic, ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... triangular area of slightly over four acres, where the market is held every Saturday, and where once a year is also held that great event of Nottingham, the Michaelmas goose fair. Here also disport themselves at election-times the rougher element, who, from their propensity to bleat when expressing disapprobation, are known as the "Nottingham lambs," and who claim to be lineal descendants from that hero of the neighboring Sherwood ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... of doors after dark to be provided with a pass—a law which is found oppressive by the best class of natives, educated and respectable men, though defended as necessary for public order, having regard to the large black population of the lower class, and their propensity to drink and petty offences. There are also certain "labour laws," applying to natives only, and particularly to those on agricultural locations, which are intended to check the disposition of Kafirs living on native reserves to become idle or to take to vagrancy. Doubtless ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... too. Moreover, the colonel does not deny that the Expedition achieved all possible success. But he considers most objectionable that self-asserting propensity to boast about it associated as it so often is with an unctuous piety. "Of course," he said, "it's only one of the signs of the times; and it is just these times that don't please me. All this outward show in religion is detestable. It was just so in Berlin ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... liang of the monetary scale. But the value of these terms is reckoned in chen, and changes with almost every district. This necessity for vigilance, together with the frequency of bad silver and loaded yambas, and the propensity of the Chinese to "knock down" on even the smallest purchase, tends to convert a traveler in China into a veritable Shylock. There being no banks or exchanges in the interior, we were obliged to purchase at Kuldja all the silver we would ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... cut you up like gourds. I did as much by as powerful people at nineteen years old, and I know little as yet, in three-and-thirty, which should prevent me from making all your ribs gridirons for your hearts, if such were my propensity: but it is not; therefore let me hear none of your provocations. If any thing occurs so very gross as to require my notice, I shall hear of it from my legal friends. For the rest, I merely request to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... With an unfailing propensity to lay hold of to whomsoever he spake, Mr. Lester Goldmark placed his white-gloved hand upon the white-gloved ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... The converse of the proposition is, of course, true also. You feel, then, that your motives of action are selfish—that they regard your own elevation and honour as first, and good to your neighbour as only secondary. Now, by opposing instead of indulging this propensity to make all things minister to self, it must grow weaker, as a natural consequence. Is ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... the wise legislators of all countries, who aimed at improving instincts into morals, and at grafting the virtues on the stock of the natural affections. They, on the contrary, have omitted no pains to eradicate every benevolent and noble propensity in the mind of men. In their culture it is a rule always to graft virtues on vices. They think everything unworthy of the name of public virtue, unless it indicates violence on the private. All their new ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... but sin is a reproach to any people." All attempts to correct the depravity of man, to stay the headlong propensity to vice, to abate the madness of ambition, will be found deplorably inefficient, unless we apply the restrictions and the tremendous sanctions of religion. A profound regard and deference for religion, a constant ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... productions to be immortal, as every band of youthful poets does, and dreamt of a future of poetic glory for Steyn by which it would vie with Mantua. Their environment of clownish, narrow-minded conventional divines—for as such they saw them—neither acknowledged nor encouraged them. Erasmus's strong propensity to fancy himself menaced and injured tinged this position with the martyrdom of oppressed talent. To Cornelius he complains in fine Horatian measure of the contempt in which poetry was held; his fellow-monk orders him ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... sport of this progressive age! With his primitive but natural acceptation of Nature's law of supply and demand, what would he think of the gentlemen who killed fish to rot in the sun or drove a few thousand buffaloes over a precipice—all for sport? It is probably the propensity to "do murder" which accounts for these things, for "sport," within decent and proper limits, is a good thing, and has been favored by the best of men in all ages—fishing particularly, because it predisposes to pleasant contemplation, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... business shows the spirit of gambling so largely developed in nations of Spanish descent. The Mexicans are noted for it, and Santa Ana, who spent his exile in Cuba, and recently sailed from Havana for Vera Cruz, indulged in the propensity to a great extent. But he had two strings to his bow, and whilst playing his fighting cocks was also playing for an empire, and has won the game. How long he will hold it ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... inveterate tenacity with which a drunkard's habits cling to him through life? He may repent—he may reform—he may look with actual abhorrence upon his past profligacy; but amid all this reformation and compunction, who can tell the moment in which the base and ruinous propensity may not recur, triumphing over resolution, remorse, shame, everything, and prostrating its victim once more in all that is destructive and ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... bread-raising originally consisted in adding to the dough definite proportions of muriatic acid and carbonate of soda, by the union of which carbonic acid gas and common salt were produced. This process was soon abandoned, however, on account of the propensity exhibited by the acid for eating holes in the fingers of the baker as well as in his bread pans; and a more convenient one for hands and pans, that of using soda or salaratus with cream of tartar or sour milk, was substituted. When there ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... begin, that is to say, the moment when Madame would set out with her maids of honor. Besides, as a matter of course, everybody at the chateau was ignorant of the interview which had taken place between La Valliere and the king. Montalais, perhaps, with her usual chattering propensity, might have been disposed to talk about it; but Montalais on this occasion was held in check by Malicorne, who had securely fastened on her pretty lips the golden padlock of mutual interest. As for Louis XIV., his happiness was so extreme that he had forgiven ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of fire among his subjects, which continues even to this day in some places in Persia. Others assert that Ham was the author of it, and then his son Canaan; and it is most probable that the unfortunate sons of an accursed father were the first who, following the propensity of their own heart, sought out sensible objects to which they might offer a superstitious worship. As the two sons of Ham, Canaan and Mizraim, settled, the one in Phoenicia, and the other in Egypt, it is probable that these were the first nurseries of idolatry; and the sun, being looked ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... loving care of his "other mother," the teacher. He is living, not simply preparing to live. All life should be joyous, spontaneous, natural. The Rousseau Idea, which was modified and refined by Froebel, is the utilization of the propensity to play. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander about the pier-heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... to those, who have only transient glimpses of their charms, to wish very earnestly for a removal of those impediments, that obstruct their more frequent presence. This not being attainable in a lawful way of customary intercourse, the natural propensity of men to overcome difficulties of this kind, incites them to leave no expedient untried to gain admittance to what perhaps was at first only the object of their admiration, but which, by their being refused an innocent gratification of ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... therefor. While this may or may not be true, it seems to be certain that the warlike commissioner is enforcing the decision not so much in the spirit of the law, which he pretends to vindicate, as with a malicious propensity to annoy his political opponents. He was not gracious enough to consider that our farmers were without perhaps a single exception, ignorant of the existence of so stringent a ruling, (if, indeed, it does exist,) and he did ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... the Archbishop bless it in the cathedral before Santa Guadalupe. During the ceremony, it was said, there grew a fine head of flaxen hair on the image and it received beautiful blue eyes. And it had the miraculous propensity to ever after wink its eye in the presence of a priest and at the approach of a Christ-hating Jew, it would spit. This virtue saved much wealth for the family of Don Jose, as they were ever put on ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... he had foreseen and forestalled it, before going off to the barque, by carefully gathering up and stowing away such few traces of a woman's presence as Flora had left behind her. That Turnbull had followed the natural propensity of men of his stamp was made clear immediately upon Dick's return, for, quite unabashed, ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... them, as they walked together, receiving Cicero with respect into the middle place. And being, as Plato would have, the scholar-like and philosophical temper, eager for every kind of learning, and indisposed to no description of knowledge or instruction, he showed, however, a more peculiar propensity to poetry; and there is a poem now extant, made by him when a boy, in tetrameter verse, called Pontius Glaucus. And afterwards, when he applied himself more curiously to these accomplishments, he had the name ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... rascality; Simpson's Ranges became notorious as the most reckless gambling-field in the country. Card-playing was the recreation the diggers most indulged in here, if we except a decided penchant for Chow-baiting. Done found that already the gambling propensity had impressed itself on the lead, and the luckiest man on Simpson's was a short, fat, complacent Yankee, who refused to handle pick or shovel because, as he said to Done, it might spoil his hand. Jim did not doubt that hands so slick in the manipulation of cards were worth all ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... breathed Mrs. Hawthorne, after a little silence in which Gerald had been thinking with a very sickness of sympathy of Brenda and the sinister propensity of the Fates for bringing to nothing the most valiant dreams and hopes; and Mrs. Hawthorne had been thinking entirely of Gerald, whose own heart was so much more certainly revealed by what he said than could be ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... vast tracts of land, which, by the application of industry and art, would yield sustenance to millions of men. But whether, on the other hand, the encroaching spirit of the inhabitants of the United States, that restless, rambling propensity which has driven their settlers southwards into Mexico, and westward to the Pacific, should be indulged to the extent of exterminating and dispossessing the original owners of the territory before the new occupants have real need ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... any profit could be expected, she managed with the utmost frugality. The Dr. mean time acted the part of a tutor to miss, in Arithmetic, Latin, and Mathematics, to which she discovered the strongest propensity. All things being properly disposed for the grand operation, the vitriol furnace was set to work, which requiring the most intense heat for several days, unhappily set fire to the house; the stairs were consumed in an instant, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... was as near the aboriginal as it was possible for a white man to approach. He was a Siwash (male Indian) with one exception—his love of the coin. But then, he had an object in this ambition; and a fault, if it is a means to a worthy end, must be commended. He had this propensity developed to the most pronounced degree. It was a disease with him, for which there was no cure. In outward appearance he was a typical B.C. specimen of the obsolete "coureur de bois" of eastern Canada during the ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... death of the great monarch who filled the throne; and all men hastened with alacrity to take the oath of allegiance to his son and successor. This prince was in the twenty-third year of his age, was of an agreeable figure, of a mild and gentle disposition, and having never discovered a propensity to any dangerous vice, it was natural to prognosticate tranquillity and happiness from his government. But the first act of his reign blasted all these hopes, and showed him to be totally unqualified for that perilous situation in which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... The propensity to attribute happy events to our own agency, little as we understand what we mean by it, and to attribute only untoward results to external forces, has its ground in the primitive nexus of experience. What we call ourselves is a certain cycle of vegetative processes, bringing ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... cause no such remark as in a solitary village, and thither he conducted his lady. O ill-starred John Hayes! whither do the dark Fates lead you? O foolish Doctor Dobbs, to forget that young people ought to honour their parents, and to yield to silly Mrs. Dobbs's ardent propensity for making matches! ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sickness or any other excuse that would serve. He was not a bad man, by any means, but a good-hearted old fellow. He had re-enlisted, along with the rest of us, when the regiment "veteranized." But his propensity for shirking duty, especially anything severe or unpleasant, seemed inveterate and incurable. He made me lots of trouble, for some time, after I became first sergeant. I was only a boy, and he was a man of mature age, about fifteen years my senior, and looking back ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... astonishing what a propensity the common sailors have to liquor. Forty odd years have I been in the service, and I've never found any difference. I only wish I had a guinea for every time that I have given a fellow seven-water ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... an interview, on the path, with Bamtz himself. She ran back to the hut to fetch him, and he came out lounging, with his hands in his pockets, with the detached, casual manner under which he concealed his propensity to cringe. Ya-a-as-as. He thought he would settle here permanently—with her. This with a nod at Laughing Anne, who stood by, a haggard, tragically anxious figure, her black hair hanging over ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... former, or ascribe to it the smallest merit or regard? Let us suppose such a person ever so selfish; let private interest have ingrossed ever so much his attention; yet in instances, where that is not concerned, he must unavoidably feel SOME propensity to the good of mankind, and make it an object of choice, if everything else be equal. Would any man, who is walking along, tread as willingly on another's gouty toes, whom he has no quarrel with, as on the hard flint and pavement? There is here ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... mansion erects itself, decorated also with turrets, with fine old windows and with a beautiful tone of faded red brick and rusty stone. It is a charming encounter for a provincial by-street; one of those accidents in the hope of which the traveller with a propensity for sketching (whether on a little paper block or on the tablets of his brain) decides to turn a corner at a venture. A brawny gendarme in his shirtsleeves was polishing his boots in the court; an ancient, knotted vine, forlorn of its clusters, hung itself over a doorway and ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... and for a moment I thought that he was going to say something harsh, and that we were going to have a quarrel through Bob Chowne's propensity for saying disagreeable things; but just then I happened to turn my head and saw a boat coming round the western corner of the entrance to ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment. The attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of human nature was remarkably exemplified in Johnson. His liberality in giving his money to persons in distress was extraordinary. Yet there lurked about him a propensity to paultry saving. One day I owned to him that 'I was occasionally troubled with a fit of narrowness.' 'Why, Sir, (said he,) so am I. But I do not tell it.' He has now and then borrowed a shilling of me; and when I asked for it again, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... much upon the amount of such knowledge possessed by the housekeeper who has the privilege of initiating them. Untidiness is almost equally universal among the same classes, and, being a natural propensity, is extremely difficult of eradication. It may be stated, however, that given an average 'greenhorn,' Irish or German, the notable and tidy housewife will make of her a very fair servant, as well instructed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... reiterated, have had the effect of fastening the odium upon the race of a peculiar propensity for this foul crime. The Negro is thus forced to a defense of his good name, and this chapter will be devoted to the history of some of the cases where assault upon white women by Negroes is charged. He is not the aggressor in this fight, but the situation demands that ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... women, and when the owner is not using it, he thrusts it in the back of his neck with the handle protruding. Sedan chairs are rushing hither and thither, borne upon men's shoulders, transporting both natives and Europeans on business errands. Here, as in southern Italy, one observes a propensity to eat, sleep, live, and die in the streets, exhibited by the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... child,' she says, 'I used to amuse myself and my brothers with inventing stories such as I had read. Having, I suppose, a naturally restless mind and busy imagination, this soon became the chief pleasure of my life. Unfortunately, my brothers were always fond of encouraging this propensity, and I found in Taylor, my maid, a still greater tempter. I had not known there was any harm in it, until Miss Shore, a Calvinistic governess, finding it out, lectured me severely and told me it was wicked. From that time forth, I considered that to invent a story of any kind was a sin. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... distinguished one drest exactly like the others, occupied like them, and differing in no one thing but in the form of her head. "For what reason is this woman here," asked Gall, "for her head announces no propensity to theft?" The answer was, "She is the inspectress of this room." One prisoner had the organs of benevolence and of religion as strongly developed as those of theft and cunning; and his boast was, that he never had committed an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... ecclesiastical history, looked upon as one of the brightest ornaments of this nation. Originally, his name was Winfred, or Winfrith, and he was born at Kirton, in Devonshire, then part of the West-Saxon kingdom. When he was only about six years of age, he began to discover a propensity to reflection, and seemed solicitous to gain information on religious subjects. Wolfrad, the abbot, finding that he possessed a bright genius, as well as a strong inclination to study, had him removed to Nutscelle, a seminary of learning in the diocese of Winchester, where he would have a much greater ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... turrets, with fine old windows, and with a beautiful tone of faded red brick and rusty stone. It is a charming encounter for a provincial by- street; one of those accidents in the hope of which the traveller with a propensity for sketching (whether on a little paper block or on the tablets of his brain) decides to turn a corner at a venture. A brawny gen- darme, in his shirt-sleeves, was polishing his boots in the court; an ancient, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... freed ourselves from tyrants and parasites; we must prevent their return. We are men, and experience has abundantly taught us that every man is fond of power, and wishes to enjoy it at the expense of others. It is necessary, then, to guard against a propensity which is the source of discord; we must establish certain rules of duty and of right. But the knowledge of our rights, and the estimation of our duties, are so abstract and difficult as to require all the time and all the faculties of a man. Occupied ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... the forlorn seriousness of adversity, have both been considered as dispositions favourable to love, while satirical writers have attributed the propensity to the relaxing effect of idleness, what chance then had Maria of escaping, when pity, sorrow, and solitude all conspired to soften her mind, and nourish romantic wishes, and, from a natural progress, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... have acted a father's part, not only by scores of such unthrifty old children as himself, but by a progeny of far loftier pretensions. It may be well for persons who are conscious of any radical weakness in their character, any besetting sin, any unlawful propensity, any unhallowed impulse, which (while surrounded with the manifold restraints that protect a man from that treacherous and lifelong enemy, his lower self, in the circle of society where he is at home) they may have succeeded in keeping under the lock and key of strictest propriety,—it ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the desire for stimulants is a natural propensity implanted in man's nature, as is manifest from the universal tendency to such indulgences in every nation. From this, it is inferred that it is an innocent desire, which ought to be gratified to ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... meeting an interesting person for the first time, one frequently endeavours to trace a resemblance with some previous acquaintance or friend. I have a similar propensity when I visit interesting cities; but I had difficulty in calling to mind any place to which I could liken Copenhagen. Between Sweden and Denmark generally, there are more points of difference than of resemblance. Sweden is the land of rocks, and Denmark of forest. Oehlenschlaegel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... march, close to the spot from which they set out in the morning, and that this cruel accident will occur for days in succession. The escape of Captain O'Brien from his French prison at Verdun, detailed with such spirit in his lively autobiography, offers remarkable instances of this propensity of the forlorn wanderer in a strange land. A corresponding incident is recorded in the narrative of the "Escape of a young French Officer from the depot near Peterborough during the Napoleon European war." He found himself ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... not know enough to be afraid of a pistol, and could not understand my murderous threats. He merely squatted down upon his heels on the snow, puffed his cheeks out with smoke, and stared at me in stupid amazement, as if I were some singular species of wild animal, which exhibited a strange propensity to jabber and gesticulate in the most ridiculous manner without any apparent cause. Then, whenever he wanted to ice his sledge-runners, which was as often as three times an hour, he coolly capsized the pavoska, propped it up with ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... advice and consolation. When his son left him he turned to his newspaper, and tried to read it—in vain. His mind was too ill at ease to admit of political matters. He was greatly grieved by this new misfortune as to Gerald, and by Lord Silverbridge's propensity to racing. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... had ever since his youth developed a peculiar kind of mean and silly propensity. Having moreover from tender infancy grown up side by side with Tai-Y, their hearts and their feelings were in perfect harmony. More, he had recently come to know to a great extent what was what, and had also filled his head ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... striking instance however of their propensity for clutching occurred when Burnett, by my order, shot a crow, in hopes that its sudden death might scare them; but instead of any terror being exhibited at the report or effect of the gun the bird had not reached the ground when the chief was at the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... was listening with silence and gravity to the reading of the testimony taken on the day previous. General Wallace produced on the spectators an impression a little different from the other members, by exhibiting an artistic propensity, which subsequently took a different direction in "Ben Hur." The most impressive sight was that of the conspirators, all heavily manacled; even Mrs. Surratt, who kept her irons partly concealed ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... the town again; still, we spent half a day in a most delightful manner, making a tour of the "rows" and the odd corners with quaint buildings. The tourist, fortified with his red-backed Baedecker, is a common sight to Chester people, and his "dollar-distributing" propensity, as described by the English writer I have quoted, is not unknown even to the smallest fry of the town. Few things during our trip amused me more than the antics of a brown, bare-foot, dirt-begrimed little mite not more than two or ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... them, when tired of or displeased with their locality, to transport them elsewhere. I was told that a street of stone huts, constructed for their use, is almost abandoned, by reason of the immobility of such residences. I consider this locomotive propensity a favourable trait in their character. Behind the barracks we stopped at a hut on the rising ground whereon the barracks ought to have been placed, and assuredly I never saw a more contented scene. There was a young negro, and, I believe, his wife, together with an old woman, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... notorious as the most reckless gambling-field in the country. Card-playing was the recreation the diggers most indulged in here, if we except a decided penchant for Chow-baiting. Done found that already the gambling propensity had impressed itself on the lead, and the luckiest man on Simpson's was a short, fat, complacent Yankee, who refused to handle pick or shovel because, as he said to Done, it might spoil his hand. Jim did not doubt that hands so slick in the manipulation of cards ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... abound in woods of any description, we are sure to be greeted by the loud voice of the Blue Jay, one of the most conspicuous tenants of the forest. He has a beautiful outward appearance, under which he conceals an unamiable temper and a propensity to mischief. Indeed, there is no other bird in our forest that is arrayed in equal splendor. His neck of fine purple, his pale azure crest and head with silky plumes, his black crescent-shaped collar, his wings and tail-feathers of bright blue with stripes of white and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... travel. So we see these English tourists, who undoubtedly were Messrs. Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney, have spoiled the roads of travelling between Ghat and Fezzan, as Englishmen have spoiled the routes of the Continent of Europe. This is the propensity of John Bull, to buy up everything and everybody abroad[29]. The Touarick added, "A deal of money is required, because there are many banditti." He meant not exactly robbers, but beggars, who, whilst begging, give you ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... try it," returned George, rather disgusted at the negro's propensity for big story telling. He arose and passed within, where the ample table was laid. Yet he could not eat the plain, sweet food which Rosalind's own hands had prepared. The dreadful sense of danger was too real a guest for any rest ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... demand for their services. To this mode of life the man was compelled to resort; and taking the chair every night, at some low theatrical house, at once put him in possession of a few more shillings weekly, and enabled him to gratify his old propensity. Even this resource shortly failed him; his irregularities were too great to admit of his earning the wretched pittance he might thus have procured, and he was actually reduced to a state bordering on starvation, only procuring a trifle occasionally by ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... so drowsy from the excessive cold that he was only glad of the pretext for remaining still, and yielding to the uncontrollable propensity. But Mr. Holt pulled him on his feet and commanded him to gather brushwood and sticks, while he went about himself picking birch-bark off the dead and living trees. This he spread under the brush and ignited with his tinder-box. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... possessing the slightest propensity either to extravagance in herself or to the encouragement of extravagance in others, the Princesse de Lamballe was a model of prudence, and upon those subjects, as indeed upon all others, the Queen could not have had a more discreet counsellor. She eminently contributed to the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Italian men of letters had reinforced those of his English friends; and he was now more than ever inclined to follow that "inward prompting which now grew daily upon me that by labour and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might {47} perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes as they should not willingly let it die." So, as his extant notes show, he was weighing a large number of subjects for the great poem, slowly settling on a Biblical ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... seldom out of call, Sir Charles swelled like a turkey-cock, and loftily consented to indulge Bella Bruce's strange propensity. From that hour she was never ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... with which a drunkard's habits cling to him through life? He may repent—he may reform—he may look with actual abhorrence upon his past profligacy; but amid all this reformation and compunction, who can tell the moment in which the base and ruinous propensity may not recur, triumphing over resolution, remorse, shame, everything, and prostrating its victim once more in all that is destructive and revolting ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... fault with this great lever—will; However deeply bedded in propensity; However firmly set, I tell thee firmer yet Is that great power that comes from ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... related to me her dream which was exactly the same as Margaret's in every particular; and as I had never observed in either of these ladies any propensity to superstition, I was struck with the singular coincidence of their dreams, and I felt convinced that they would soon be realized. The belief that future events are sometimes revealed to us during sleep, is one that is widely diffused among the nations of the earth. ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... but only new, and perhaps troublesome independent members of the confederation. The warlike proceedings of the Americans in Mexico was purely exceptional, having been carried on principally by volunteers, under the influence of the migratory propensity which prompts individual Americans to possess themselves of unoccupied land, and stimulated, if by any public motive, not by that of national aggrandizement, but by the purely sectional purpose of extending slavery. There are few signs in the proceedings of Americans, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... childrenwe are sisters children, and you may use me like one of your horses; ride me or drive me, Duke, I am wholly yours. But in my humble opinion, this young companion of Leather- Stocking requires looking after. He has a very dangerous propensity for turkey. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... This propensity to assign an exaggerated importance to personal affairs develops egoism, the avowed enemy of poise. An egoist necessarily assumes that the rest of the world attributes to his acts the importance ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... Prendergast understood past bitterness and present warmth, and, gratified to find that at least there was no galling at their mutual relations, responded with a smile and a caress that led Lucilla to continue—'As for the word that dismayed you, I only meant to acknowledge an unlucky propensity to be excited about any nonsense, in which any man kind is mixed up. If Sarah would take to it, I could more easily abstain, but you see her coquetries are with nobody more recent than ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... another man to do it in; but not, I venture to say in spite of Goethe, through innate inadequacy to his task and unconquerable weakness of the will; not, I venture to think in spite of Hugo, through immedicable scepticism of the spirit and irremediable propensity to nebulous intellectual refinement. One practical point in the action of the play precludes us from accepting so ready a solution of the riddle as is suggested either by the simple theory of half-heartedness or by the simple hypothesis of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... pleasing trait in their character, and is due in some degree to the quiet deliberation of their manners, and their love of repose rather than of action. The young are obedient to the wishes of their elders, and seem to feel none of that propensity to mischief which European boys exhibit. How long would tame squirrels continue to inhabit trees in the vicinity of an English village, even if close to the church? They would soon be pelted and driven away, or snared and confined in a whirling cage. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... a matter of course, everybody at the chateau was ignorant of the interview which had taken place between La Valliere and the king. Montalais, perhaps, with her usual chattering propensity, might have been disposed to talk about it; but Montalais on this occasion was held in check by Malicorne, who had placed upon her lips the padlock of mutual interest. As for Louis XIV., his happiness was so ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... though they had all that sublime energy which so often distinguished the projects of Superstition, were so far from being influenced by any superstitious propensity, that perhaps they cannot appear to more advantage than by being brought into comparison, or contrast, not with the sluggish piety of sequestered Monks, but with the bold and splendid feats of the most active and enterprising Fanaticism. Allow me, therefore, to recall ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... N. tendency; aptness, aptitude; proneness, proclivity, bent, turn, tone, bias, set, leaning to, predisposition, inclination, propensity, susceptibility; conatus[Lat], nisus[Lat]; liability &c. 177; quality, nature, temperament; idiocrasy[obs3], idiosyncrasy; cast, vein, grain; humor, mood; drift &c. (direction) 278; conduciveness, conducement[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... to say, but that, having been lately in a versifying mood, I have set to rhyme your story of the cook and the lottery ticket; and herein I have avoided that malicious propensity of our numerous tellers of stories, whose only pleasure, as it appears to me, lies in the plunging the heroes and heroines of their tales into inextricable troubles and difficulties, and in continuing them in a state of perplexity ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... side. The Flemings were disappointed at the scanty numbers of the English men-at-arms, and stared with wonder and contempt at the bare-legged Welsh archers and lancemen, with their uncouth garb, strange habits of eating and fighting, and propensity to pillage and disorder, though they recognised their hardihood and the effectiveness of their missiles.[1] The same disorderly spirit that had marred the Rioms campaign still prevailed among the English engaged on foreign service. No sooner were the troops landed at Sluys on August 28, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... applies to the Appetites and Affections applies to Benevolence; it is a distinct motive or urgency, and should have its scope like every other propensity, in ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... settled they made money, sending most of it home. Their society seemed to be a loose theo-socialism, and their religion an absurd potpourri of most of the major monotheisms of the Federation period, plus doctrinal and ritualistic innovations of their own. Aside from their propensity for sharp trading, their bigoted refusal to regard anybody not of their creed as more than half human, and the maze of dietary and other taboos in which they hid from social contact with others, ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... the Darrah family tree?" finished David quizzically. His eyes danced with delighted amusement across her puffs at the major as he added, "Must have been silversmiths dangling on most of his ancestral branches, judging from his propensity for making dollars; a million or two, stocks, bonds, any kind of ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... excitements of criminal detail; nor can there be conceived a more perverse or futile misapprehension than that which represents John Webster as one whose instinct led him by some obscure and oblique propensity to darken the darkness of southern crime or vice by an infusion of northern seriousness, of introspective cynicism and reflective intensity in wrong-doing, into the easy levity and infantile simplicity of spontaneous wickedness which ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Mohammed[201] and their companions and many Christian saints are incrusted with a heavy jewelry of anecdotes which are meant to be honorific, but are simply abgeschmackt and silly, and form a touching expression of man's misguided propensity to praise. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... his enormous achievements. He rose at five. By breakfast-time he had, as he used to say, broken the neck of the day's work. Writing to a youth who had obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel: "Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from not having your time fully employed—I mean what the women call dawdling. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... score off his tyrannising wife and the fortunate, amiable Percy. Nigel's jealousy of Percy—and not of Percy only, but in a less degree of most men Bertha knew—was not very far behind his wife's jealousy of him. A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering. Nigel sometimes found himself positively imitating Mary in many little ways; watching, and listening and ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... was no want of those of a different stamp; and as we had yet some venereal complaints on board, I took all possible care to prevent the disorder being communicated to them. On most occasions they shewed a strong propensity to pilfering; in which they were full as expert as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... Mandingoes, in particular, are a very gentle race, cheerful in their dispositions, inquisitive, credulous, simple, and fond of flattery. Perhaps the most prominent defect in their character, was that insurmountable propensity, which the reader must have observed to prevail in all classes, of them, to steal from me the few effects I was possessed of. For this part of their conduct, no complete justification can be offered, because theft is a crime in their own estimation; and it ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... hatred against Walter, had an especial reason to keep Eden as far as they could under subjection, in addition to their general propensity to bully and domineer. They did not care to torment him when Walter was present, because with him, in spite of their hostility, they felt it wise to maintain an armed neutrality. But whenever Walter was absent, they felt themselves safe. None of the other boys in their ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... proves?' said Tom, with an arch subsmile lighting on his eyes and mouth; and as a glow awoke on her pale cheek, he added, 'and won't you believe, too, that my propensity to "contemptuous irony" was all from my instinctive fear of what you could do ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hunting grounds vast tracts of land, which, by the application of industry and art, would yield sustenance to millions of men. But whether, on the other hand, the encroaching spirit of the inhabitants of the United States, that restless, rambling propensity which has driven their settlers southwards into Mexico, and westward to the Pacific, should be indulged to the extent of exterminating and dispossessing the original owners of the territory before the new occupants have real need of it, is a question admitting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... 28 male, explained by propensity to inversion, 29 many cases of have syphilitic fathers, 93 preference for, in women determined by change of leading erogenous zone, 81 determined by repression of puberty, 81 psychoanalysis in, 26 of, enlightens the ego-libido, ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... consciousness. I was still asleep, but I began to dream; a nightmare started into shape amid the blackness of my horizon, a nightmare compounded of a strange fancy which in other days had haunted my morbid imagination whenever with my propensity for dwelling upon hideous thoughts I ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... she had the misfortune to be left-handed, and a child flogged left-handedly had better be left unflogged. The world revolves from right to left. It will not do to whip a baby from left to right. If each blow in the proper direction drives an evil propensity out, it follows that every thump in an opposite one knocks its quota of wickedness in. I was often present at Toby's chastisements, and, even by the way in which he kicked, I could perceive that he was getting worse and worse every day. At last I saw, through ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... smouldering ferocity, which might have flashed fire in an instant (as the born gentleman seemed to think, for he had a wary eye upon him); and the easy yielding of all to a good-natured, careless, predominant propensity to sit down on the ground again: formed a very ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... ankle. She asked him to put his hand higher, and repeated 'Higher, higher,' till he touched the pudenda, and finally, at her request, put his finger into the vestibule. This girl was very handsome and amiable, and a favorite of the boy's mother. No one suspected this propensity." Again, a correspondent (a man of science) tells me of a friend who lately, when dining out, met a girl, the daughter of a country vicar; he was not specially attracted to her and paid her no special attention. "A few days afterward he was astonished to receive a call from her one ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... adequate substitute for them. No one need fear that the supply of mystery will ever give out; but a great deal depends on our taste in mystery; that certainly needs refining. What disturbs the so-called rationalist in the mystic's attitude is his propensity to see mysteries where there are none and to fail to see those that we cannot possibly escape. In declaring that one is not a mystic, one makes no claim to be able to explain everything, nor does he maintain that all things are ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... hit upon the way (but I could not make out by what means) of speaking a much purer English language than that which is in general spoken on the parent soil. This astonished me much; but it is really the case. Amongst his many good qualities he has one unenviable and, I may add, a bad propensity: he is immoderately fond of smoking. He may say that he learned it from his nurse, with whom it was once much in vogue. In Dutch William's time (he was a man of bad taste) the English gentleman could not do ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... selfishness, truckling, blustering, and duplicity, with no object but self, his own ease, and the gratification of his own fancies and prejudices."[97] "A more despicable scene," continues Mr. Greville, "cannot be exhibited than that which the interior of our Court presents—every base, low, and unmanly propensity, with selfishness, avarice, and a life of petty intrigue and mystery."[98] George the Fourth as king and regent was recklessly extravagant, but his expenditure was always upon self or the gratification of self. A hundred examples of his selfish nature might be given, but cui bono? ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... shattered remnants of the First, the nobles of the Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged by the examples of its predecessor. The First Empire had conquered most of the known universe by political intrigue and sheer military strength; it had fallen because that same propensity for political intrigue had gained over every other strength of the Empire, and the various branches and sectors of the First Empire had begun to use ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... it to him? But at this point she recognised a fact recognised by thousands of women with exasperation, sometimes with despair—that men would often hate in their wives the thing that draws them to women not their wives. The Pimpernel Schleys of the world know this masculine propensity of seeking different things—opposites, even—in the wife and the woman beyond the edge of the hearthstone, a propensity perhaps more tragic to wives than any other that exists in husbands. And having recognised this fact, Lady Holme knew that it would ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... non-selective bridging party lines, which at first seems amusing rather than serious, but which nevertheless is often a vexatious trouble, is that due to the propensity of some people to "listen in" on the line on hearing calls intended for other than their own stations. People whose ethical standards would not permit them to listen at, or peep through, a keyhole, often engage in ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... himself not a little on the distinction. Pride in skepticism is a peculiar distinction of young men. It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures. Elderly skeptics generally regard their unbelief ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... gourds. I did as much by as powerful people at nineteen years old, and I know little as yet, in three-and-thirty, which should prevent me from making all your ribs gridirons for your hearts, if such were my propensity: but it is not; therefore let me hear none of your provocations. If any thing occurs so very gross as to require my notice, I shall hear of it from my legal friends. For the rest, I merely request to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... the present one any objection be raised on the score of its truth, it can only be that its author was an Arab, as lying is a very common propensity with those of that nation; though, as they are such enemies of ours, it is conceivable that there were omissions rather than additions made in the course of it. And this is my own opinion; for, where he could and should give ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... married her, and become the possessor of her plump Money-Bags, full of Moidores, pilar Dollars, and pieces of Eight. Happily I was not permitted so to disparage my lineage, and put a coffee-coloured blot on my escutcheon. No, my Lilias is no Mulotter Quartercaste. 'Twas my roving propensity that made me set but little store by the sugar-eyes and Molasses-speech which Madam Soapsuds was not loth to bestow on me, a tall and likely Lad. I valued her sweetness just as though it had been so much cane-trash. With much impatience I had waited for the coming back of my friendly skipper, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... that firmness with which he behaved in these last moments of his life might probably be owing to natural courage, of which certainly Barton had a very large share. But the remains of virtue and religion, to which the man had always a propensity, notwithstanding that he gave way to passions which brought him to all the sorrows he knew, yet the return he made, when in the shadow of death, to piety and devotion, enabled him to suffer with great calmness, on Friday the 12th of May, 1721, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... From her coiffure an obstinate lock of hair would always stick out either in the front or at the back; even her most gorgeous costumes always looked tumbled and creased; and if nothing else went wrong, there would be invariably a pair of trodden-down shoes with which she could indulge in her old propensity. Curiosity and tattle were the ingredients of her conversation, in which she generally introduced such extraordinary expressions that when she began to scatter them in a mixed party, the guests (that ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... wild boy in his youth, with a strong propensity for drink—hereditary, unfortunately—which he was not so well able to satisfy on his father's croft, in Banffshire; so, to gain more liberty, he ran off and enlisted. When scarcely more than twenty he took up with a girl he met in one of the provincial towns in ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... here, similar to those at Pellew's Group, they were doubtless the same Asiatic nation, if not the same individuals, of whom so many traces had been seen all the way from the head of the gulph. The propensity shown by the natives to steal, especially our axes, so contrary to all I have known and heard of their countrymen, is not only a proof that they had been previously visited by people possessing iron implements, but from their audacity it would appear, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... meddling propensity common to all who have a gossiping disposition, or from the love of justice, which ought to make part of a prince's character, James was very fond of enquiring personally into the causes celebres which occurred ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... singular beggar-woman who was generally to be seen on the steps of the Franciscan Church, chuckling to herself and laughing, and soliciting alms from the worshippers; he himself, urged by some inward inexplicable propensity, had often thrown her a hard-earned penny, which he had not had to spare. "Leave me, leave me in peace, you insane old woman," he said; "but you are right, it is hunger more than my wound which has made me weak and miserable; for three ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Garden; a practice which had been discontinued since 1588. All the counties of England, in emulation of the capital, were fond of showing a well-ordered and well-appointed militia. It appeared, that the natural propensity of men towards military shows and exercises will go far, with a little attention in the sovereign, towards exciting and supporting this spirit in any nation. The very boys, at this time, in mimicry of their elders, enlisted themselves voluntarily into companies, elected officers, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... reign during 1706-1710, and in the following reign, as leader of the Whigs, exercised unbounded influence over George I.; narrowly escaped, chiefly through Walpole's help, being found guilty of accepting heavy bribes from the South Sea Company; lost office, and was displaying his father's propensity to underhand scheming by intriguing with the Tories and the Pretender's party when death cut short his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal ...
— The Federalist Papers
... in India is in high estimation with the pious Hindoos, who resort to it from the most remote parts of the empire. The town is surrounded by groves of trees, which are the residence of innumerable apes, whose propensity to mischief is increased by the religious respect paid to them in honour of a divinity of the Hindoo mythology, who is represented as possessing the body of an ape. In consequence of this superstition, such numbers of these animals ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... condemned for years. His extreme protectionism repelled not only the Democrats but the tariff reformers who had played an important part in the organization of the Liberal Republican party. Conservatives of both parties distrusted him as a man with a dangerous propensity to advocate "isms," a theoretical politician more objectionable than the practical man of machine politics, and far more likely to disturb the existing state of affairs and to overturn the business of the country ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... from their rites and institutes, as well as from the names, which they bequeathed to places, ample memorials, by which they may be clearly traced out. It may seem strange, that in the first ages there should have been such an universal defection from the truth; and above all things such a propensity to this particular mode of worship, this mysterious attachment to the serpent. What is scarce credible, it obtained among Christians; and one of the most early heresies in the church was of this sort, introduced by a sect, called by [531]Epiphanius Ophitae, by [532]Clemens of Alexandria Ophiani. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... disinterested motives in our constitution; but Appetite is not in any sense one of these. We may have instincts answering to the traditional phrase used in defining instinct, "a blind propensity" to act, without aiming at anything in particular, and without any expectation of pleasure or benefit. Such instincts would conform to Butler's notion of appetite: they would be entirely out of the course of self-love or self-seeking of any sort. Whether the nest-building ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... sufficient knowledge in the Latin tongue, and discovered a great propensity to learning, he was sent to the university of Paris, the most celebrated of all Europe, and to which the gentlemen of Spain, Italy, and Germany, resorted for ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... those who have read so far through my work will credit me with enough decency, tact, savoir faire, what you will, to prevent me from making a song for my own glory out of the words of other people. No! The true motive of my selection lies in quite a different trait. I have always had a propensity to justify my action. Not to defend. To justify. Not to insist that I was right but simply to explain that there was no perverse intention, no secret scorn for the natural sensibilities of mankind at ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... department." The Company have a steamboat and several sailing vessels, for the purpose chiefly of trading with the natives along the coast. The primary object, however, is not so much the trade, as to keep brother Jonathan in check, (whose propensity for encroaching has of late been "pretty much" exhibited,) and to deter him from forming any establishments on the coasts; there being a just apprehension that if once a footing were obtained on the coast, an equal eagerness might be manifested ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... to old maids. As those delightful creatures now-a-days, not content with being grey aspire to be actually blue; we cannot help recommending to them a kind of study, for which their propensity to cutting up renders them peculiarly adapted; we mean Anatomy. And since it is on the foulest and most odious points of character that they chiefly delight to dwell, we more especially suggest to them the ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... time, she said Though my husband so neglects me, I know that he is very fond of women in general, and ready to be captivated by any one, especially respectable woman who will give him a little encouragement. Acting on this propensity, I think, with your help, that something may be done. There is a young lady, a neighbour, the daughter of a very rich man, in great favour with the Rajah; she is a friend of mine, and is very like me. As my husband hardly knows her by sight, and scarcely ever sees me, it might be possible ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... This early propensity for asking questions grew on him till at twenty-three years of age he was a prodigy in this respect. So when we had Governor Wiseman we also had Fred Quizzle, the former to discourse, the latter to start him and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... are many individuals," he pursued after a pause, "of which we cannot imagine a blending of the successive persons to be possible. There, for instance, are cases where there exist radical and bitter oppositions and differences of character, and propensity between the youth and the manhood of the individual. In the case of such ill-assorted personalities a divorce ex vinculo individui may be the only remedy; and, possibly, the parties to it may be sent back to earth, to take their chances of ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... expedition. I repaired to this house, from whence my servant had seen that gentleman issue, but before the nature of my business could be disclosed, that rigid dame assailed me with a tremendous storm of abuse, when my valet, in his zeal to serve me, or rather indulging in a propensity to retaliate, retorted the lady's freedom of tongue with rather ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... to decide who may have been the governor or governors of the French nation, and the leaders of their armies, for several years past. Certain it is, that when men are indulging their inclination for the marvellous, they always show a strong propensity to accumulate upon one individual (real or imaginary) the exploits of many; besides multiplying and exaggerating these exploits a thousandfold. Thus, the expounders of the ancient mythology tell us there were several ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... my benefactor, Paramon Semyonitch,' Punin commonly added (he never spoke of Baburin except in this way), 'I should have sunk into the miry abysses of poverty and vice.' Punin was fond of high-sounding expressions, and had a great propensity, if not for lying, for romancing and exaggeration; he admired everything, fell into ecstasies over everything.... And I, in imitation of him, began to exaggerate and be ecstatic, too. 'What a crazy fellow ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... 1: It is not time, but a man's propensity to anger, or his pertinacity in anger, that is the chief point of consideration in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... falling back on his loaf and milk, with the pleasantest composure, and Bella stealing her arm a little closer about him, and at the same time sticking up his hair with an irresistible propensity to play with him founded on the habit of her whole life, had prepared herself to say: 'Pa dear, don't be cast down, but I must tell you something disagreeable!' when he interrupted her in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... coach-house which was being built, and with flaming cheeks and panting bosom struggled for breath. Pista, the cartwright, profited by the moment to approach, and with gay cries and gestures invite her to dance again. Pista was a handsome fellow, but had the unfortunate propensity of drinking on Sundays, and this time was evidently intoxicated. The vinous suitor was not to Panna's taste, besides, she was already tired, and she did not answer his first speech. But as he did not desist, but seized her arm to drag her up and ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... Peshawur, retired to Shikarpoor, which the Ameers of Sinde ceded to him; where, in place of conducting himself with prudence, he was so addicted to low intrigue with those about him, that his enemies availed themselves of this propensity to effect his ruin, and drove him from Shikarpoor, when, crossing the Indus, he fled through the desert by Juydalmeer, and returned to Loodiana. "The fitness," says Lieut. Burnes, "of Shah Shooja-ool-Moolk for the station of a sovereign seems ever to have ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... Fanny's propensity to novel-writing had for a time been kept down. It now rose up stronger than ever. The heroes and heroines of the tales which had perished in the flames were still present to the eye of her mind. One favorite ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... development of the canine teeth in the adult would seem to indicate a carnivorous propensity; but in no state save that of domestication do they manifest it. At first they reject flesh, but easily acquire a fondness for it. The canines are early developed, and evidently designed to act the important part of weapons of defence. When in contact with man almost the first effort ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... of education when divorced from religion. The effect on a few has been that the cultivation of their mental gifts in secular study has helped them to understand and assimilate Christian truth. Others, with a natural propensity for evil, have had their capacities for mischief quickened by the varied knowledge which they acquired. But with the vast majority of Indians, and more especially Hindus, English secular education does not alter their character, and except for the assumption ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... spouse, and seemed to consider it almost a religious duty that the latest of the Saint Legers should be so trained as to worthily sustain the traditions of his race. Not, it must be understood, that my father preserved the faintest trace of that unscrupulous, buccaneering propensity that was only too probably a strongly marked characteristic of the earlier Saint Legers; far from it; but it had evidently never occurred to him that it was even remotely possible that I should ever adopt any other profession than that of the sea, and, knowing from experience how indispensable ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... the South Sea islands are still cannibals, and most of them, even where this abominable propensity does not prevail, are of so artful and treacherous a character, that none should venture among them without the greatest precaution. Their friendliness arises from fear, and soon vanishes when they think themselves the strongest, and are not exposed to vengeance. I would not ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... giving her before she asks. 'In my epistle to Janet Wadham I spoke of moneys and estates being in thy hands. 'Tis a lie that will bring to thy mind more vividly than aught else my personality—suppressio veri; but if thou findest a like propensity in my babe, thou wilt deal gently but firmly with her for its correction. I give into thy keeping more than house, lands or titles. I would direct clemency toward my beloved servant; she has proven most faithful. My wife truly loved ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... is, avoiding duty on the plea of sickness or any other excuse that would serve. He was not a bad man, by any means, but a good-hearted old fellow. He had re-enlisted, along with the rest of us, when the regiment "veteranized." But his propensity for shirking duty, especially anything severe or unpleasant, seemed inveterate and incurable. He made me lots of trouble, for some time, after I became first sergeant. I was only a boy, and he was a man of mature age, about ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Christopher's which had lately been sold; and King George was thankful to get rid of a daughter whose haughtiness gave him trouble. In person, too, the princess royal was not very ornamental to the Court. She was ill-made, with a propensity to grow fat; her complexion, otherwise very fine, was marked with the small-pox; she had, however, a lively, clean look—one of her chief beauties—and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... soon known all over the continent to Abyssinia. The great deal of work I have had to do in attending to the sick has proved beneficial to me, for they make me speak the language perpetually, and if I were inclined to be lazy in learning it, they would prevent me indulging the propensity. And they are excellent patients, too, besides. There is no wincing; everything prescribed is done instanter. Their only failing is that they become tired of a long course. But in any operation, even the women sit unmoved. I have ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... rather than deceive her husband." Merolla, indeed, enlarges on the constancy of women, whether white or black, when lawfully married to their mates; and praises them for living together in all manner of love and amity. "Hence may be learned what a propensity the women have to chastity in these parts, many of whom meet together on the first day of Lent, and oblige themselves, under pain of severe penance, to a strict continence till Easter." In case of adultery the husband could divorce ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... friend, are you forgotten, when my soul seeks communion with our common Father; and when I strive most earnestly to overcome some evil propensity, or to make some generous sacrifice, the thought of you gives me strength not ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... vintage of my life, was cut off by the failure of my sight and my want of a fitting coadjutor. For the sustained zeal and unconquerable patience demanded from those who would tread the unbeaten paths of knowledge are still less reconcilable with the wandering, vagrant propensity of the feminine mind than with the feeble ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) na"ive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization or 'the system'; (b) a propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!); blind faith; (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look beyond the 'letter of the law' in exceptional situations; and (d) no interest in fixing that which is broken; ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... Night Lizards and Guanas. The former are inhabitants of warm climates, and from the ease with which they can adapt themselves to any positions, they may be troublesome visitors; they can run with ease about the walls and ceilings of rooms, like flies; and their propensity is to roam abroad in the darkness of the night. Their broad, ugly heads, and repulsive general appearance, have won for them the character of poisonous reptiles, but the truth is they are harmless. The Crested Lizards which the ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... frequented the monasteries for such rude knowledge as then yielded a scanty return for intense toil. His countenance was handsome, and would have been rather gay than thoughtful in its expression, but for that vague and abstracted dreaminess of eye which so usually denotes a propensity to revery and contemplation, and betrays that the past or the future is more congenial to the mind than the enjoyment and action of the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Harry, who find it easy to be good-natured, and who are soft by nature, as cats are—not from their heart, but through instinctive propensity to softness. When it suits them, they scratch, even though they have been ever so soft before. Count Pateroff is a cat. You, Harry, I think are a dog." She perhaps expected that he would promise to her that he would be her dog—a dog in constancy ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... vessel was declared ready for sea, he abstained from his usual indulgence, that he might be enabled to take charge of the property committed to his care, and find his way to his destined port. It was a point on which his interest overcame, for a time, his darling propensity: and his rigid adherence to sobriety, when afloat, was so well ascertained, that his character as a trustworthy seaman was not injured by his continual intemperance when in harbour. Latterly, however, since Newton ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... de Carranza mentions (Documentos ineditos, vol. XI, p. 279) Castro's muddle-headed knack of misunderstanding what was said to him, and his propensity to argue points, imagining that his opponents had said the very reverse of what they had said. As to Castro's lack of expository power, Luis de Leon states, 'tiene falta de lengua' (Documentos ineditos, ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... of Him who blamed St. Peter for his recourse to the sword. The very essence of Christianity is cast to the winds when Knox utters his laughter over the murders or misfortunes of his opponents, yielding, as Dr. M'Crie says, "to the strong propensity which he felt to indulge his vein of humour." Other good men rejoiced in the murder of an ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... favorite manana por la manano. In this instance the words express the state of development and habits of thought—one the lazy improvidence of the Eskimo, and the other the "to-morrow" of the Spaniard, who has indulged that propensity so far that his nation has ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... not without a severe struggle that I overcame a besetting propensity to confine myself to sedentary pursuits. The desire of retaliation soon became extinct. My pledge to my friend and sympathizer, that in two years I would cry quittance to my foe, would occasionally act as a spur in the side of my intent; but my two best aids in supplying me with the motive power ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... wit, however, is never at a loss for contrivances, while swayed by the influences of love or benevolence. Both, in this instance, may have aided invention. Plunkett had three strong claims in his favour: he was a handsome man—a soldier—and an Irishman. The general propensity of the Quakers, in favor of the Royal cause, exempted the sect in a great measure from suspicion, in so great a degree indeed, that the barriers of the city were generally entrusted to the care of their members, as the best judges of the characters of those persons who might be allowed to ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... differentiated from rabies by the persistence of muscular cramps, especially of the face and abdomen, which cause these muscles to become set and as hard as wood. In tetanus there is also an absence of a depraved appetite or of a willful propensity to hurt other animals or to damage the surroundings. The cow remains quiet and the general muscular contraction gives her a rigid appearance. There is an absence of paralysis which marks the advanced stage of rabies. The form of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... such disparate characters? The woman's strength and determination contrasted with the man's weakness and vacillation; her reasoning imperturbation, prudent foresight, and love of order and activity, with his excessive irritability and sensitiveness, wanton carelessness, and unconquerable propensity to idleness and every kind of irregularity. While George Sand sat at her writing-table engaged on some work which was to bring her money and fame, Musset trifled away his time among the female singers ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... A propensity to aspiration is a conspicuous feature in the Gaelic tongue[10]. The aspirating of a consonant has been {11} usually marked, in the Irish dialect, by a dot over the letter aspirated; in the Scottish dialect by writing h after it. All the consonants have their sounds changed by being aspirated, ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart
... crinoline is that, like the moon, they may move in a circle. Our greatest men, likewise, are susceptible to Luna's blandishments. In proof of this we may produce a story told by Mark Lemon, at one time the able editor of Punch. By the way, an irrepressible propensity to play upon words has reminded some one that punch is always improved by the essence of lemon. But this we leave to the bibulous, and go on with the story. Lord Brougham, speaking of the salary attached to a new judgeship, said it was all moonshine. Lord Lyndhurst, in his dry and waggish ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... involved—a gross error redolent of mischief—I cannot pretend to expose within the limits assigned me at present; and with the philosophical it needs no exposure. It may be sufficient here to say that it forms one of an infinite series of mistakes which arise in the path or Reason through her propensity for seeking ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Bach's fugues; and to get rid of him I whistle it again and tell him it is one of Chopin's impromptus. What his madness is I can never be quite sure, for he is very close, but have heard that he is fond of roasting cats alive; and that the mere sight of a cat is enough to rouse his terrible propensity, and drive all wholesome, innocent, harmless, natural ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... manifest. They saw the grouse, Franklin's fowl so well beloved by tenderfeet because of their propensity to sit still under fire and give an unsteady marksman a second shot. Fool hens, the woodsman called them, and the motley and mark of their weak mentality were a red badge near the eye. The fat birds perched on the tree limbs over the trail, relying on their mottled plumage, blending perfectly ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... little things which made him feel that in important matters he was left out of account. Roy would slap him on the shoulder and tousle his hair, but he would ask Tom's advice—and take it. Perhaps Roy had allowed his propensity for banter and jollying to run too far in his treatment of Pee-wee. At all events, the younger boy had found himself a bit chagrined at times that their discussions had not been wholly three-handed. And ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... such a tone, that they are afterwards too fond of similar useless baubles."[3] This species of delight is soon over, and is succeeded by a desire to triumph in the ignorance, the credulity, or the cowardice, of their companions. Hence that propensity to play tricks, which is often injudiciously encouraged by the smiles of parents, who are apt to mistake it for a proof of wit and vivacity. They forget, that "gentle dulness ever loved a joke;" and that even wit and vivacity, if they become troublesome and mischievous, will be feared, and shunned. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... agriculturists. Great rocks rose here and there, but in their fissures rose stately trees, under whose umbrage nestled the villages of the people. We found the various village elders greedy for cloth, but the presence of the younger son of Nzogera's men restrained their propensity for extortion. Goats and sheep were remarkably cheap, and in good condition; and, consequently, to celebrate our arrival near the Malagarazi, a flock of eight goats was slaughtered, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... other arguments, but they were not of the least weight with the impatient Horatio. He was obstinate in his entreaties, which he even with tears enforced, and Dorilaus, considering so strong a propensity as something supernatural, at last consented.—Never was joy more sincere and fervent than what this grant occasioned, and he told his benefactor that he doubted not but that hereafter he should hear such an account of ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... theory of Materialism, or even of Phrenology, were it assumed on the one side and admitted on the other, contribute to the establishment or verification of that law? Suppose it to be conceded that every mental faculty or propensity has a distinct cerebral organ, or, more generally, that the brain may be divided into three parts, representing, respectively, the animal propensities, the more elevated sentiments, and the intellectual faculties; could it be rationally inferred from this concession that human nature ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... clapped into some rustic prison-house, the doors of which he burst in the night and was no more heard of in that quarter. When I knew him, his life had fallen in quieter places, and he had no cares beyond the dulness of his dogs and the inroads of pedestrians from town. But for a man of his propensity to wrath these were enough; he knew neither rest nor peace, except by snatches; in the gray of the summer morning, and already from far up the hill, he would wake the "toun" with the sound of his shoutings; and in the lambing time, his cries were not yet silenced late ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... far that he allowed Josiah and Sarah to meet in his presence. And finally there was a frank three-cornered understanding. And that was that, when Josiah could show that he had ten thousand pounds in his own name, the marriage would take place. This propensity on the part of parents to live their children's lives is very common. Few be the parents and very great are they who can give liberty and realize that their children are only loaned to them. I fear we parents are prone to be perverse ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... there is a languor in his verses, which seems to indicate that he was not born with a poetical genius. That he was a lover of the muses, there is not the lead doubt, as we find him patronizing the poets so warmly; but there is some difference between a propensity to poetry, and a power of excelling in it. His lordship has writ but few things, and those not of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... speedily as possible each of the confederates assembled all his friends, relations, adherents, and retainers. Great banquets were held, which lasted whole days—irresistible temptations for a sensual, luxurious people, in whom the deepest wretchedness could not stifle the propensity for voluptuous living. Whoever repaired to these banquets—and every one was welcome—was plied with officious assurances of friendship, and, when heated with wine, carried away by the example of numbers, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a claim for him, and he must come out and attend to it. He must get rid of that propensity for tumbling down, though, for when we get fairly started here, I don't think we shall have time to pick ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... operation of the heathen taboo. Now Goneril brooked no chiding. So, at favorable times, he, in a wary manner, and not indelicately, would venture in private interviews gently to make distant allusions to this questionable propensity. She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it was witless to be telling one's dreams, especially foolish ones; but if the unfortunate man liked connubially to rejoice his soul with such chimeras, much connubial joy might they give him. All this was sad—a touching ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... to the same family as the civets. The Egyptian ichneumon, known also as Pharaoh's cat, was held sacred among the ancient Egyptians because of its propensity for destroying crocodiles' eggs, but unfortunately for Addison's illustration, it is now proved that the degenerate ichneumon does actually 'find his account' in feeding upon the eggs which he breaks, whether they be those of crocodiles or merely ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... duty-labour operated on me like the mace of a bad billiard-player, which gives an impulse to the ball indeed, but sends it off at a tangent different from the course designed by the player. Now, if I expend such eccentric movements on this journal, it will be turning this wretched propensity to some tolerable account. If I had thus employed the hours and half-hours which I have whiled away in putting off something that must needs be done at last, "My Conscience!" I should have had a journal ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... there, or so cheap as in Pall-Mall; but I do say that he may rest assured that Messieurs Debure would never, knowingly, sell him an imperfect book. Of the Debure, there are two brothers: of whom the elder hath a most gallant propensity to portrait-collecting—and is even rich in portraits relating to our history. Of course the chief strength lies in French history; and I should think that Monsieur Debure l'aine shewed me almost as many portraits of Louis XIV. as there are editions of the various works of Cicero in the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... naturally cruel, although they differ much in the propensity to annoy and reduce animals and each other under their individual control; the passive submit at once, but the energetic will not; it is then that the active assailant learns an important lesson, which can only ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... one propensity which sometimes had inwardly disturbed her without causing any outward show or manifestation on her part. At a very early age—perhaps it was when she traversed the ocean of waving grass—she remembered that she had ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... utilitarian vessel he is making. In the words of Santayana, "What had to be done was, by imaginative races, done imaginatively; what had to be spoken or made was spoken or made fitly, lovingly, beautifully.... The ceaseless experimentation and fermentation of ideas, in breeding what it had a propensity to breed, came sometimes on figments ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... there are also amateurs, who, beneath the cover of a well-established reputation, make small acquisitions slyly and unsuspectedly. They are very honest people they say, who with little scruple indulge their propensity for a rare book, a miniature, a cameo, a mosaic, a manuscript, a print, a medal, or a jewel that pleases them; they are called Chipeurs. If the Chipeur be rich, no heed is paid to him, he is too much above such a larceny to impute it to him as a crime; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various
... you little fool?' said his master. 'Are you afraid of old Tom Hardesty? If you are, you needn't be; nobody need be afraid of such an old coward as I am—darned if they need!' And feeling that he was growing melancholy, he determined to subdue the propensity, and to that end commenced cutting the complicated figure entitled a pigeon-wing. This exhilarating sport soon restored the grocer's good humor, and he laughed heartily and made such a racket altogether, that the boy gradually ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... all will act as a decoy to their own species, when in captivity themselves; and, in all compulsory service, which may be considered a species of captivity, man proves that he is imbued with the same propensity. Seamen that have been pressed themselves into the navy, are invariably the most active in pressing others; and both soldiers and sailors have a secret pleasure in recapturing a deserter, even at the very time when they are watching ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... intervals, much assists us. In poetry, the rhymes, the cadence, the alliteration, the peculiar structure of the poet's lines, aids us. All these are mechanical helps to the memory. Repetition seems much more agreeable to some people than to others; but it may be doubted whether a facility and propensity to repetition be favourable to rational memory. Whilst we repeat, we exclude all thought from the mind; we form a habit of saying certain sounds in a certain order; but if this habit be afterwards broken by any trifling external circumstances, we lose all our labour. ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... points for the differentiation of the pathological lie have been added to those offered by Delbruck, Risch, Koppen, and Vogt. The pathological liar lies, not according to a plan, but the impulse seizes him suddenly. This propensity grows stronger. Under strict supervision it comes to only an abortive attack, similar to what happens in cases of dipsomania, or of tendency to rove in which the repressed outbreak expresses itself in tormenting psychical and physical unrest. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... "represented an attack on over- interference, vested interests, superstition, and tyranny of every form. It showed a marked propensity to ignore history, and to judge everything by its immediate reasonableness. It pictured a society free from all laws and coercion, freed from all clerical influence and ruled by benevolence, a society in which all men had equal ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... any length of time, it permanently deforms the nails. Dipping the finger-ends in some bitter tincture will generally prevent children from putting them into their mouth; but if this fails, as it sometimes will, each finger-end ought to be encased in a stall until the propensity is eradicated. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... question is complicated by the number of opportunities and a variety of considerations. Here, then, this principle of ours comes in helpfully. The young man has to seek, not a road to wealth, but an opportunity of service; not money, but honest work. If he has some strong propensity, some calling of nature, some over-weening interest in any special field of industry, inquiry, or art, he will do right to obey the impulse; and that for two reasons: the first external, because there he will render the best services; the second personal, because a demand ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he was, stopped him short of a greater greatness; because, quick and imposing as he was in acting the part of a civil ruler, he was in reality a soldier and nothing else, and by the excess of the soldier's propensity (aggrandizement by force), he over-toppled himself, and fell to pieces. Soldiership appears to have narrowed or hardened the public spirit of every man who has spent the chief part of his life in it, who has died ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... and this opposition of wishes, though it will not be as sour as lemon, yet 'twill not be as sweet as sugar." And again: "If the snows will suffer me, I propose to spend two or three months at Barege or Bagneres; but my dear wife is against all schemes of additional expense, which wicked propensity (though not of despotic power) yet I cannot suffer—though, by-the-bye, laudable enough. But she may talk; I will go my own way, and she will acquiesce without a word of debate on the subject. Who can say so much in praise of his wife? Few, I trow." The tone of contemptuous ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... nourishment, Magdalen thought it kinder to let Agatha carry her off to bed, and then she confessed, what really gave a certain hope, that the pair had been in the habit of murmuring against "sister" so much that, considering poor Vera's propensity to strong language, it was quite possible that Hubert might think her cruelly oppressed, and for a freak carry her off to his mother to ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... his hat, and walked briskly away in the direction of The Tyee Lumber Company's office, quite oblivious of the fact that his interview with Nan Brent had been observed by a person to whom the gods had given at birth a more than average propensity of intrigue, romance, and general cussedness—Mr. Daniel J. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... astronomer by accident. He was taken from school on account of his illness, when Sacrobosco's book De Sphaera having been lent to him, he was so pleased with it that he immediately began a course of astronomic studies. Pennant's first propensity to natural history was the pleasure he received from an accidental perusal of Willoughby's work on birds. The same accident of finding, on the table of his professor, Reaumur's History of Insects, which he read more than he attended to the lecture, and, having been refused the loan, gave such an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... acquaintance, they are the most costly. "It is horrid to think that we should go out among our friends for the mere sake of eating and drinking," Mrs. Proudie would say to the clergymen's wives from Barsetshire. "It shows such a sensual propensity." ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
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