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Habit   Listen
noun
Habit  n.  
1.
The usual condition or state of a person or thing, either natural or acquired, regarded as something had, possessed, and firmly retained; as, a religious habit; his habit is morose; elms have a spreading habit; esp., physical temperament or constitution; as, a full habit of body.
2.
(Biol.) The general appearance and manner of life of a living organism. Specifically, the tendency of a plant or animal to grow in a certain way; as, the deciduous habit of certain trees.
3.
Fixed or established custom; ordinary course of conduct; practice; usage; hence, prominently, the involuntary tendency or aptitude to perform certain actions which is acquired by their frequent repetition; as, habit is second nature; also, peculiar ways of acting; characteristic forms of behavior. "A man of very shy, retired habits."
4.
Outward appearance; attire; dress; hence, a garment; esp., a closely fitting garment or dress worn by ladies; as, a riding habit. "Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy." "There are, among the statues, several of Venus, in different habits."
5.
Hence: The distinctive clothing worn commonly by nuns or monks; as, in the late 1900's many orders of nuns discarded their habits and began to dress as ordinary lay women.
Synonyms: Practice; mode; manner; way; custom; fashion. Habit, Custom. Habit is a disposition or tendency leading us to do easily, naturally, and with growing certainty, what we do often; custom is external, being habitual use or the frequent repetition of the same act. The two operate reciprocally on each other. The custom of giving produces a habit of liberality; habits of devotion promote the custom of going to church. Custom also supposes an act of the will, selecting given modes of procedure; habit is a law of our being, a kind of "second nature" which grows up within us. "How use doth breed a habit in a man!" "He who reigns... upheld by old repute, Consent, or custom"






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Habit" Quotes from Famous Books



... another story,"—"Oh, if I might but have a doll with bluer eyes." That's the right temper to work in, and to get work done for you in. But the vain, aged, highly-educated nation is satiated with beautiful things—it has myriads more than it can look at; it has fallen into a habit of inattention; it passes weary and jaded through galleries which contain the best fruit of a thousand years of human travail; it gapes and shrugs over them, and pushes its way past ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... is getting too subjective to be comfortable. The makers of symphonies tend to forget beauty altogether; their one effort is to put all their own petty trials and tribulations, their empty theories and speculations into cacophony. Even so far back as Beethoven's day that autobiographical habit had begun. "Beethoven," says Old Fogy, is "dramatic, powerful, a maker of storms, a subduer of tempests; but his speech is the speech of a self-centred egotist. He is the father of all the modern melomaniacs, who, looking into their own souls, write ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... a formal reparation to the students, which he did in a poem singing their many virtues. The original poem of The Student is a rather lively series of pictures, from which we learn that it was once the habit of studious youth at Padua, when freshmen, or matricolini, to be terrible dandies, to swear aloud upon the public ways, to pass whole nights at billiards, to be noisy at the theater, to stand treat for the Seniors, joyfully to lend these ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... and kicking him roughly as they did so, brought additional hardness to Stead. He had been flogged in his time before, and not without reason, and had taken a pride in not giving in, or crying out for pain; and the ancient habit acquired in a worse cause, came to his help. He scarcely recollected the cause of his resistance; all his powers were concentrated in holding out, and when after another "Now, vile prelatic spawn, is ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... attempts to get rid of its more offensive aspect by a singular and circuitous chain of moral emotions. We have experienced, it is said, that a certain attention to the comfort or advantage of others contributes to our own. A kind of habit is thus formed, by which we come at last to seek the happiness of others for their own sake;—so that, by this process, actions, which at first were considered only as inexpedient, from being opposed to self-love, at length and ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie

... in the afternoon. Mrs. Tyler sent for a carriage which she was in the habit of using whenever need required, and the driver of which was honest and personally friendly, though probably a secessionist, and proceeded to the Station House. By this time it was quite dark, and she was alone. Alighting she asked the driver to give ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... end of October, in the year 1830, Hortense determined to leave Arenenberg and go to Rome with her son, as she was in the habit of doing every year. ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... very small girl who had lost her mother was a person who ought to be pitied and made much of. She had probably heard some grown-up people talking her over in the early days, after her mother's death. So it became her habit to make great use of ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... almost do it without cutting the book, so that its value for purposes of after sale might not be injured. And yet Mr Booker was an honest man, and had set his face persistently against many literary malpractices. Stretched-out type, insufficient lines, and the French habit of meandering with a few words over an entire page, had been rebuked by him with conscientious strength. He was supposed to be rather an Aristides among reviewers. But circumstanced as he was he could ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... Then the gold contagion suddenly broke out and committed great ravages. "I caught it one rainy afternoon near the Exchange; my mother and sister instantly became affected, but my father, who was of a stout habit and robust temperament, and gifted with a very practical turn of mind, fortunately escaped, and devoted himself to our cure. Thanks to his judicious nursing, I was the first to recover." "The gold fever raged worse and worse, and I waited impatiently for it to give me employment; ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... am convinced, before he had well considered the situation he had fallen into the habit of attending a rendezvous in a backwater of the stream about a mile above Artenberg. Victoria never went out unaccompanied, and never came back unaccompanied; it was discovered afterward that the trusted old boatman could be bought off with the price of beer, and used to disembark and seek ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... Nevertheless, I bought a pound of dates (getting short weight by reason of immense flights of harpy flies who pursued and lighted upon their prey even in the very scales), which purchase I made not only with an eye to the little ones at home, but also as a figurative reproof of that too frequent habit of my mind, which, forgetting the due order of chronology, will often persuade me that the happy sceptre of Saturn is stretched over ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... might be well to say that the habit of putting down a fact or an idea bearing on a topic just as soon as it occurs to one is invaluable for a writer. All men have good memories; some persons have better ones than others. But there is no one who does not forget; and each catches himself very often saying, "I knew that, but I ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... My mother at length took him from me to nurse him. I patched my opportunity and escaped into the yard; thence through a small door in the large gate of the wall into the open field. There was a walnut-tree at some distance from the house, and near the side of the field where I had been in the habit of finding some of last year's nuts. To gain this tree without being seen by my father and those in the field, I had to use some precaution. I remember perfectly well having seen my father as I skulked toward the tree; he stood in the middle of the field, with his gun in his hand, to ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... promenaded, as his habit was, up and down the room. "Now let's see," he continued, "how I ought to proceed in order to discover the probable conduct of a man whose antecedents, traits, and mind are known to me. To begin with, I throw off my own individuality and try to assume his. I substitute his will for my own. I ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau

... not myself. There are moments when I envy every living creature that has the right to pair—either from hate or from habit. I am alone and shut out. What consolation is it to be able to say: "It ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... husband is still asleep. He has acquired the habit of remaining awake until late at night, reading and looking at engravings, and then he sleeps on until midday. As for that, it is quite a matter of habit; when I used to live in Vienna I was incredibly lazy about ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... satisfactorily proved, the ancients were certainly ignorant of maritime insurance; though there can be no doubt frauds similar to those practised at present were practised. According to Demosthenes, masters of vessels were in the habit of borrowing considerable sums, which they professed to invest in a cargo of value, but instead of such a cargo, they took on board sand and stones, and when out at sea, sunk the vessel. As the money was lent on the security either of the cargo or ship, or both, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... are," Laura repeated, slowly moving her head from side to side, as if to negative contradiction in advance. She smiled too; it was as if she had remembered a former habit, from politeness. ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... little cascades. Here I retreated every hot day, and follow it up this summer. Here I realize the meaning of that old fellow who said he was seldom less alone than when alone. Never before did I get so close to Nature; never before did she come so close to me. By old habit, I pencill'd down from time to time, almost automatically, moods, sights, hours, tints and outlines, on the spot. Let me specially record the satisfaction of this current forenoon, so serene and primitive, so conventionally ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... the grand in Nature and Art was early developed. During seven years he was at Oxford, where his mother lived with him and watched over him; until her death in his fifty-second year she always continued to treat him like a child, an attitude to which, habit and affection led him to submit with a matter-of-course docility that his usual wilfulness and his later fame render at first sight astonishing. At Oxford, as throughout his life, he showed himself brilliant but not a close or careful student, and he ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... of J.R.C. Tuckerman, I had formed a habit of breakfasting in summer on the little back porch that overlooks the river. Less radical departures from orthodox custom, it is true, have caused adverse comment in our watchful little town; but the spot ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... German cafe of an early morning after his long night's slavery at the copy-desk. His mind, embittered and sensitive to slights like a raw nerve, was brooding over the open taunt of the night city editor, who had been an office boy under him in the years gone by. From force of habit he seated himself at a table in the rear of the room, shunning the chance of having to face an acquaintance. Unfolding a copy of the city edition, which had been laid on his desk damp from the press-room, Seeley scanned the front page with scowling uneasiness, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)

... atter ol' Brer Rabbit Ter ax 'im ter call an' 'ten' de convention; But ol' frien' Wobble-nose had a quare habit Er knowin' a thing befo' it wuz mention', An he come 'fo' he got ...
— Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit • Joel Chandler Harris

... of a kind he had not anticipated, he is found unequal to it. Neither natural temper, nor acquired habit of mind, respond to the call. To pass through the French line, when the wind shifted, was an instigation too sudden and a risk too great for his own initiative. The balance of evidence shows that it was ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... that afterward he almost daily "happened in" to dictate to Mr. Cary's stenographer. Mr. Gould's private stenographer was in his own office in lower Broadway; but on his way down-town in the morning Mr. Gould invariably stopped at the Western Union Building, at 195 Broadway, and the habit resulted in the installation of a private office there. He borrowed Edward to do his stenography. The boy found himself taking not only letters from Mr. Gould's dictation, but, what interested him particularly, the financier's orders to buy and ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... forms. St. Frances had the faculty of seeing evil spirits when people beside her perceived nothing but natural forms. St. Gregory witnessed the devil entering into a man who indulged in and loved lies. A monk who determined to throw off his habit and forsake the monastery, was set upon by the devil in the form of a black dog. Other monks who broke their vows shared no better. Because a monk had been guilty of hoarding up a large sum of money, contrary to the rules of his order, he was denied Christian burial, and ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... my mind had been at peace otherwise, it would have been impossible for me to regain my habit of unconcern and reliance upon my own resources, deserted by the man in whom I had anchored my faith since boyhood. Thought of his guilt ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... to the "Blue Lion," and usually never by the same way every time, for fear of hardly ever being unable to get out of the habit of it. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various

... Sognfiord in Norway. He was of an age with Olaf Triggvison, and so much did the two resemble one the other that, when apart, they were often taken to be brothers. Both had the long fair hair and the blue eyes of the Norseland, both were of nearly equal height; and it was Kolbiorn's habit to strive, by wearing similar clothing, to increase the likeness between himself and his young master. But when the two were side by side the resemblance ceased, for then Olaf was seen to be both the taller and the more muscular; his hair was seen to be more ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... old Tennessean. As we were only "transient" acquaintances, I did not think of the brotherhood of the soldier in this emergency. The man of the "long coat" approached our table and raised my hat, which, either by habit or force of circumstances, I will not say, I had the moment before pulled down ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... Being slow to develop, patients rarely seek assistance until the organ has become so large as to be seldom restorable to a size where mechanical means can be wholly dispensed with for relieving the bladder. Most surgeons are too much in the habit of depending on the catheter for the relief of the patient, and usually instruct the sufferer how to use it, telling them that this, the catheter, is to be their only doctor for life. Great as is the relief afforded by the catheter, which has often saved ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... El Dorado and the dog-heads out of pure wickedness. Be it so. But all lies crystallise round some nucleus of truth; and it really seems to me nothing very wonderful if the story should be on the whole true, and these worthies were in the habit of dressing themselves up, like foolish savages as they were, in the skins of the Aguara dog, with what not of stuffing, and tails, and so forth, in order to astonish the weak minds of the Caribs, just as the Red Indians dress up in their feasts ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... M. Loderingo di Liandolo; one an adherent of the Guelph, the other of the Ghibelline party. It is to be remarked, that the Joyous Friars were called Knights of St. Mary, and became knights on taking that habit: their robes were white, the mantle sable, and the arms a white field and red cross with two stars. Their office was to defend widows and orphans; they were to act as mediators; they had internal regulations like other religious bodies. The ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... Yes, but nothing worthy of consideration, much less of repetition. Had he not loaned Mr. Waring his team and carriage to drive Madame to town that morning? No. How did he get it, then? Took it! Was Monsieur Waring in the habit of helping himself to the property of his brother officers? Yes, whenever he felt like it, for they never objected. The legal official thought such spirit of camaraderie in the light artillery must make life at the barracks something almost poetic, to which ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King

... Adam,[446] vide Inheritance, who retired last year from an official situation at the age of eighty-four, although subject to fits of giddiness, and although carefully watched by his accomplished daughter, is still in the habit of walking by himself if he can by possibility make an escape. The other day, in one of these excursions, he fell against a lamp-post, cut himself much, bled a good deal, and was carried home by two gentlemen. What said old Rugged-and-Tough? Why, that his fall against the post was ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... by Mr Dolls that evening when his little parent sat profoundly meditating over her work, and when he imagined himself found out, as often as she changed her attitude, or turned her eyes towards him, there is no adequate name. Moreover it was her habit to shake her head at that wretched old boy whenever she caught his eye as he shivered and shook. What are popularly called 'the trembles' being in full force upon him that evening, and likewise what are popularly called 'the horrors,' he had a very bad time of it; which was not ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... shrugged his shoulders, as was his habit whenever he received any insolence from the members of the "Brotherhood," and, turning on his heel, walked back to his work, secretly exulting in the complete success ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... Some feared that the final consummation of their artificial condition, which had so long been anticipated by a secret political instinct, was at length arrived, and began to bethink them of the savest means of providing for their own security. Some listened in admiration, for habit had so far mastered dulness, as to have created a species of identity between the state and far more durable things, and they believed that St. Mark had gained a victory, in that decline, which was never exactly ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... stands an old forge or smithy where Washington's officers were in the habit of having their horses shod when in the neighborhood. The place also boasts a "Washington Spring," but its chiefest natural glory is a great walnut tree which tradition says was, away back in the Indian days, a Council Tree of the Weckquaskecks. In one of the Draper cottages once lived Admiral Farragut, ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine

... labour of the pursuit rewards itself; we are led only through fragrance and flowers. Rymer, without taking a nearer, takes a rougher way; every step is to be made through thorns and brambles; and truth, if we meet her, appears repulsive by her mien, and ungraceful by her habit. Dryden's criticism has the majesty of a queen; Rymer's has the ferocity of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... oleographs, a church calendar pinned upon the wall, and a battered map of the neighbourhood, back to the table at which he had been seated. He selected a cigarette and lit it. Presently he began to talk to himself, a habit which had grown upon him during the latter years of a life whose secret had entailed a certain ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a wave of bitterest disappointment passed over Wilbur as he saw his $30,000 dwindling to nothing. Then the instincts of habit reasserted themselves. The taxpayer in him was stronger than the freebooter, after all. He felt that it was his duty to see to it that the girl had her rights. Kitchell must be made aware of the situation—must be told that Moran, the daughter, the Captain's heir, was on board the schooner; ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... the end. At nightfall they reached an inn, which they entered, and the servant gave the landlord the raven to dress for their supper. Now, as it happened, this inn was a regular resort of a band of murderers, and the old witch too was in the habit ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various

... rare instances when he did so, he naturally felt an indolent comfort, and made no scruple of putting the feeling into words—highly suitable for being taken cum grano salis. Nothing was more alien from his nature or habit than ‘tall talk’ of any kind about his aims, aspirations, or performances. It was into his work—not into his utterances about his work—that he infused the higher and deeper elements of his spirit. ‘The Bower Maiden’ was finished early in February, and sold to Mr. Graham for ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... the park and entered the little gate of Colonel Askerton's garden, as though it were his habit to go to the cottage when he was at Belton. There had been various matters on which the two men had been brought into contact concerning the old squire's death and the tenancy of the cottage, so that they had become almost ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... romance. Some time in the last century there lived at Corrivarlich a noted sheep-stealer named Alastair Bane. Little is known of his boyhood. He was supposed to have been brought to the district by Highlanders who were in the habit of bringing to Crieff cartloads of split pine from Rannoch Forest, which they sold to riddle-makers to make riddle rims. During one of those visits the child is supposed to have been left. He was called ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... possesses itself of human life in different ways. Slowly, and certainly, the old primeval fire, the commonest, fatalest, divinest force of life, was making its way into Kendal's nature. But it was making its way against antagonistic forces of habit, tradition, self-restraint,—it found a hundred other interests in possession;—it had a strange impersonality and timidity of nature to fight with. Kendal had been accustomed to live in other men's lives. Was he only just ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... a sense of his superior excellence, or that he brings Milton to memory notwithstanding his inferiority. His moral poems are not quite out of books like Jonson's, nor yet do the sentiments so wholly grow up out of his own natural habit and grandeur of thought, as in Milton. The sentiments have been attracted to him by a natural affinity of his intellect, and so combined;-but Jonson has taken them by individual and successive acts ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... Scotland, Italy, Algeria, Finland, Spain, Belgium and France. While work on the exterior was in progress, the building was covered in by a wooden shell, rendered transparent by thousands of small panes of glass. In 1867 a swarm of men, supplied with hammers and axes, stripped the house of its habit, and showed in all its splendor the great structure. No picture can do justice to the rich colors of the edifice or to the harmonious tone resulting from the skilful use of many diverse materials. The effect of the frontage is completed by the cupola of the auditorium, topped with a ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... keep a quiet heart at seventy miles an hour, but not if he is running the train. Nor is the habit of contemplation a useful quality in the stoker of a foundry furnace; it will not be found to recommend him to the approbation of his superiors. For a profession adapted solely to the pursuit of happiness ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... part, I can only say,' cried Lord Colambre, 'that I am not in the habit of being reproached with saying one thing and ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... spring, when I hope and trust we shall return to England.... The book of Harriet Martineau's which you bade me read is delightful. I have not quite finished it yet, for I have scarcely any time at all for reading; for want of the habit of thinking and reading on such subjects I find the political economy a little stiff now and then, though the clearness and simplicity with which it is treated in this story are admirable. I did not know that ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... strange child, with a strange habit of expressing her thoughts aloud, and as she heard the beauties of Collingwood described in Kitty Maynard's most glowing terms, she suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, JOLLY don't I wish I could live there, only I'd be afraid of that boy who haunts the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... first thing I did was to go quite out of my knowledge, and go by another name. This I did effectually, for I went into the Mint too, took lodgings in a very private place, dressed up in the habit of a widow, and called myself ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... 3. As his habit was delicate, and had been lately rendered more feeble by ill health, particularly by a disorder of the stomach and bowels, I carefully avoided all those remedies which are usually ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man— 90 This was my sole resource, my only plan: Till that which suits a part infects the whole, And now is almost grown the habit of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... as we, young or old, have taken to the habit of asking the book for what it is in our power to learn from personal observation, we dismiss our organs of perception and comprehension from their righteous charge, and cover the emptiness of our own minds with the patchwork of others." ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... with the wicked will be accused of following their ways, though their principles may have made no impression upon him; just as if a person were in the habit of frequenting a tavern, he would not be supposed to go there for prayer, but ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston

... distinctly than his countryman who does not; and, upon the same principle, a nation of readers, like the Americans, will pronounce more deliberately and clearly than a people so large a proportion of whom are unable to read, as in England. From our universal habit of reading, there results not only a greater distinctness of articulation, but a strong tendency to assimilate the spoken to the written language. Thus, Americans incline to give to every syllable of a written word a distinct enunciation; and the popular habit is to say dic-tion-ar-y, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... to the stable and harnessed the horse to the little carriage. Jonas was not there, and I had fallen out of the habit of calling him. I drove slowly through the yard and out of the gate. No one called to me or asked where I was going. How different this was from the old times! Then, some one would not have failed to know where I was going, and, in all probability, she would have gone with me. But now I drove ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton

... reconciliation, and acknowledge that she had hitherto mistaken her rights, but would do so no more. Then the ancient bonds of brotherhood would again have been knit together as firmly as in old times. The habit of loyalty, which had grown as strong as instinct, was not utterly overcome. The perils shared, the victories won, in the old French War, when the soldiers of the colonies fought side by side with their comrades from beyond the sea, were unforgotten yet. England was still that beloved country which ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... last resort, she gave the little screamer some pop-corn. Why not? It refused to be comforted with other devices. How should she know that it was unable to chew, and was in the habit of swallowing buttons, beads, ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May

... ever did. I felt, in doing it, as one feels who has nerved himself to enter fire. And when the thing was done, the ease of it surprised me. There followed no catastrophe such as I expected. Before my glance, grown suddenly so very bold, her own eyes drooped and fell away as was her habit. She spoke thereafter without looking at me, in that cold, emotionless voice that was peculiar to her always, the voice of one in whom the founts of all that is sweet and tolerant and tender in life ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... Regulus, then. We boys have a habit of speaking of our teachers in this way. I know it is a bad one, but we all fall into it. All our college professors have a metaphorical name, with the venerable epithet attached to it, which ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... of escaping superfluous uneasiness, is to free our minds from the habit of comparing our condition with that of others on whom the blessings of life are more bountifully bestowed, or with imaginary states of delight and security, perhaps unattainable by mortals. Few ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... represented upon the sculptures, though occasionally possessing some marked peculiarities of form or habit, have not yet been identified with any known species. [PLATE XXIX., Fig. 2.] They are commonly represented as haunting the fir-woods, and often as perched upon the trees. One appears, in a sculpture of Sargon's. in the act of climbing the stein of a tree, like the nut-hatch ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... to talk as fast as she could, as was her habit, her words tumbling over one another in her effort and excitement. "Wasn't it splendid that you two found Jetty? I wish we had gone that way, but then maybe we wouldn't have found him after all. I think it is real nice of Alcinda to ask Reliance when she ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard

... our cattle and fowls. To accustom them to come to this shelter of themselves, we took care to fill their racks with the food they liked best, mingled with salt; and this we proposed to renew at intervals, till the habit of coming to their houses was fixed. We all laboured ardently, but the work proceeded slowly, from our inexperience; and the provisions we had brought were nearly exhausted. I did not wish to return to Falcon's Nest till I had completed my new establishment, and therefore ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss

... light and pleasant Farina is one of the most excellent, nourishing, and restorative remedies, and supersedes, in many cases, all kinds of medicines. It is particularly useful in confined habit of body, as also diarrhoea, bowel complaints, affections of the kidneys and bladder, such as stone or gravel; inflammatory irritation and cramp of the urethra, cramp of the kidneys and bladder, strictures, and hemorrhoids. This really invaluable remedy is employed with ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 194, July 16, 1853 • Various

... is said of it is that he 'went into another place.' Probably Luke did not know where he went. It would be prudent at the time to conceal it, and the habit of concealment may have survived the need for it. But two points suggest themselves in regard to the Apostle's flight. There may be a better use for an Apostle than to kill him, and Christ's boldest witnesses are sometimes bound to save themselves by fleeing into another city. To ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... sweep of her hand with a brush kept a brief sleeve falling back from the thinness of her arm. How delicately methodical she was—an indispensable quality in the repeated trying contacts, the lost privacy, of marriage. So much depended upon the very elusiveness which the security of possession, habit, destroyed. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... one bad habit when planted indoors. This is the tendency to unfold its blossom too soon. So the beautiful hyacinth blossom appears dwarfed and stunted close down near the ground. To avoid this condition do not take the bulb from the dark until the leaves are about an inch to two inches above the earth ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw

... in the distance, doors were being continually opened and shut, and little winds blew down the dismal passages. They were suddenly in a study lined with books and a stout rubicund gentleman with a gold watch chain and a habit (as Peter at once discovered) of whistling through his teeth was writing at ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... justified his rapid rise to the high places in his profession. In the hunting-field, he was noted as one of the most daring and most accomplished riders in our county. He had always delighted in riding young and high-spirited horses; and the habit remained with him after he had quitted the active duties of his profession in later life. From first to last he had met with no accident worth remembering, until the unlucky morning when he went out ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... from his mother a natural love for neatness, he had already formed the habit of hanging his clothing upon the bedpost, and, turning softly in the bed, he could see from where he was lying, a sight that made him tremble with excitement. Elmer's hand was already in the pocket containing the treasured stones, and Edwin could ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum

... distance of the Attic shore, and was surging here to the very necks of the plunging horses, a moment since enjoying so pleasantly with him the caress of the morning air, but now, wholly forgetful of their old affectionate habit of obedience, dragging their leader headlong over the rough pavements. [186] Evening and the dawn might seem to have met on that hapless day through which they drew him home entangled in the trappings of the chariot that had been his ruin, till he lay at length, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... in bewilderment, and having nothing better to do with his hands, thrust them into his pockets, as he was in the habit of doing. Here he found something which turned out to be the whistle given to him by the old woman. He remembered what she had said about the virtues of the whistle, but was rather doubtful whether its powers would extend to a hundred hares, each of which had gone in a different ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various

... herself to believe—but I am inclined to doubt whether she was right in so believing—that the first time she became aware of this strange nocturnal habit of Mr. Sleuth's happened to be during the night which preceded the day on which she had observed a very curious circumstance. This very curious circumstance was the complete disappearance of one of Mr. Sleuth's three ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... about that," Burton replied. "You must get out of the habit. It's quite easy. I expect very soon you will find all desire to use strong language has ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... which he waited the Norman assault. Marshy ground covered the English right. In front, at the most exposed position, stood the "huscarls," or body-guard, of Harold, men clad in mail and armed with great battle-axes, their habit being to interlock their shields like a wall. In their midst stood the standard of Harold,—with the figure of a warrior worked in gold and gems,—and beside it the Golden Dragon of Wessex, a banner of ancient fame. Back of them were crowded the half-armed ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... neighbouring Dunkirk had long been a nest of pirates, whence small, fast-sailing vessels issued, daily and nightly, to prey indiscriminately upon the commerce of all nations. These corsairs neither gave nor took quarter, and were in the habit, after they had plundered their prizes, of setting them adrift, with the sailors nailed to the deck or chained to the rigging; while the officers were held for ransom. In case the vessels themselves were wanted, the crews were indiscriminately ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... The tomb of the latter is over against that of Michael Angelo, being the first large tomb on the left-hand wall as you enter the church. It has the usual heavy sarcophagus, surmounted by a bust of Galileo, in the habit of his time, and is, of course, duly provided with mourners in the shape of Science or Astronomy, or some such cold-hearted people. I wish every sculptor might be at once imprisoned for life who shall hereafter chisel an allegoric figure; and as for those who have sculptured ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... travel with, as it contained three Jews; but necessity has no law. After agreeing to travel with them, I thought if I had any money, the dogs would cut my throat, wherefore I made away with all my money, and attired myself in a Turkish habit, and set off along with these dogs without ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... quiet drawing of the silent circle about him. It was all so entirely foreign to anything that Tarzan ever before had seen lions do that it irritated him so that presently, having finished his repast, he fell to making insulting remarks to first one and then another of the lions, after the habit he had learned from the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... and to convert him to the faith of Christ. Declan however had two uterine brothers, sons of Aongus, scil.: Colman and Eoghan. The grace of the Holy Ghost inspiring him Colman went to Ailbe of Emly and received baptism and the religious habit at the latter's hands, and he remained for a space sedulously studying science until he became a saintly and perfect man. Eochaid however remained as he was (at home)—expecting the kingdom of Munster on his father's death, and he besought ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous

... the ground of important duties, the mayor of the eleventh arrondissement, who was in the habit of taking the lead in the conversation wherever he went, said, having swallowed ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... much safer on the Continent with a wife than without one: and though the two ladies were harder to deal with in themselves, they were obliged to stand by the decision of their lords. Above all, he made way by his sincere habit of taking for granted whatever he wished, and by his magnanimous oblivion of remonstrance and denial; so that every day one party or the other found that assumed, as fixed in his favour, which had the day before been most ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... His habit of ending a tense moment by making an irrelevant query no longer even startled her. Obediently, she fumbled for an answer. "Not much. Just that he thought all the different kinds of life on earth today evolved from a few blobs of protoplasm that sprouted wings or grew fur or developed teeth, depending ...
— The Sound of Silence • Barbara Constant

... surprise, or comprehend how an Emperor should know so much as a boatman. Napoleon persisted in the speedy departure of his troops. Several times he ordered me to go and hasten the embarkation: he was in the habit of employing those about him for every thing that came into his head. His genius knowing no bounds, he imagined, that we poor mortals ought equally to know every thing, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible contortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit —strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish? —Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... nicest ladies I ever knew was a little Irish sewing woman who made buttonholes. It was one summer when I went South, more years ago than I care to count; and Winnie—her name was Winnie—came to the house to renovate my riding habit for me." ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman

... better habit to contract than keeping bees. What a quieting, pastoral turn it gives to life! You can keep them in the city—on the roof or in the attic—just as you can actually live in the city, if you have to; but bees, even more ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp

... ask my maid for my work," she said, sharply. Even the man was taken by surprise: it was her habit to speak to the servants with a gentleness and consideration which had long since won all their hearts. "Do you hear me?" she asked, impatiently. The servant bowed, and went out on his errand. She turned to Horace with flashing eyes ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... be her best preparation for the week. Her hard-worked husband was sleeping soundly, and she would not waken him, but a feeling of unusual sadness and loneliness oppressed her as she made her way through the silent house. She had depended so much on her big strong boy, had grown into the habit of consulting him on many matters, in which, by helping her, he could save his father trouble. That was all over now. She must learn to do without Miles' aid! And then suddenly from behind the dining-room door a big figure ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... to take care of his own matters, as he is well able to do, allow me to observe, that it is curious how habit becomes a second nature, and how the breaking in upon the ways we have been long and long accustomed to, through the days of the years that are past, is as the cutting asunder of the joints and marrow. This I found bitterly, even though I had the prospect before me of spending ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... successfully cultivated a distaste for what he called "details." His specialty was the making of suggestions in editorial council, in cheery expectation that they would be carried out by his associates— an expectation so rarely realized that Mr. Wilson's visage had almost a habit of hurt wonder. "Details" continued to absorb the activity of the Sunday "Searchlight" office, and Maxwell, the assistant editor, attended to them all, murmuring bitterly against his chief ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... found her down at the shore side with little Hilda Paterson. She had been going out on the bay to paddle about in a small boat that Tom was in the habit of using. He saw the two girls taking the oars, and straightway he ordered them ashore, striking Thora on the cheek, himself ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton

... "A habit which universitie men and clergiemen weare over their gownes. L. Epitogium, ab [Greek: epi] ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various

... permanent fame, they seem to have been either indifferent or resigned with regard to immediate reputation. Through all the works of Chaucer there reigns a cheerfulness, a manly hilarity which makes it almost impossible to doubt a correspondent habit of feeling in the author himself. Shakespeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial in his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative greatness, we have abundant proof in his Sonnets, which could scarcely have been known to ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... Carthusians, &c. Their vigils and fasts, their ceremonies at Christmas, Shrovetide, Candlemas, Palm Sunday, Blaise, St. Martin, St. Nicholas' day; their adorations, exorcisms, &c., will think all those Grecian, Pagan, Mahometan superstitions, gods, idols, and ceremonies, the name, time and place, habit only altered, to have degenerated into Christians. Whilst they prefer traditions before Scriptures; those Evangelical Councils, poverty, obedience, vows, alms, fasting, supererogations, before God's Commandments; their own ordinances ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... That we are beaten, is no novelty for a warrior; to-day luck is theirs, to-morrow it falls to us. Allah gives fortune; but a man creates his own glory, not by fortune, but by firmness. Take courage, my friend Ammalat.... You are wounded and weak; I am strong from habit, and not fatigued by flight. Mount! and we may yet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and of Matthew Paris, no Layamon, no Pearl—not to speak of the mass of invaluable State-papers gathered by Cotton, and the Reformation documents and letters stored up by Parker. One touch of blame rests on Sir Robert Cotton. He had a vicious habit of breaking up MSS. and binding together sections from different volumes. This disguises the provenance of the books, and by consequence obscures the history of ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James

... expeditions to Spain, Italy, and even into Russia. In England, under the name of Danes, we find them forcing Alfred the Great to recognize them as the masters of northern England (878). The Norse pirates were often called vikings, from their habit of leaving their long boats in the vik, i.e., bay or inlet. A goodly number of the Northmen settled in Iceland, and our knowledge of their civilization and customs comes chiefly from the Icelandic sagas, or tales. Some of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... moment he had no words with which to adequately reply, and he merely shook his head. Instantly the other flew into one of his savage paroxysms by which it was so much his habit to carry ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... My habit has been to note in pencil the suggestions of critics, and to examine the substance of their differences; for critics must differ from the author, to ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... returned to Germany a convinced and violent opponent of the party of strict observance, who had sent him to Rome as their representative. During his stay in the city there is good reason for believing that on his own behalf he sought for permission to lay aside his monastic habit and to devote himself for ten years to study in Italy, but his request was refused on the ground that it was not supported by the authority of his superiors. This petition was probably the foundation for the rumours that were circulated in Germany by his opponents ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... I sought Mrs. Austin, leading Mabel by the hand. I had been kissing her, almost wildly, every foot of the way up-stairs, and she gazed on me, I could not help perceiving, with a sort of fond surprise, for it was not my habit to lavish such passionate caresses, even ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... e'er thy hospitable roof Ulysses graced, confirm by faithful proof; Delineate to my view my warlike lord, His form, his habit, and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... place, for it insisted on a luxurious privacy; and would have been quite upset by the mere thought that any other club was even dining in the same building. On the occasion of their annual dinner the Fishermen were in the habit of exposing all their treasures, as if they were in a private house, especially the celebrated set of fish knives and forks which were, as it were, the insignia of the society, each being exquisitely wrought in silver in the form of a fish, and each loaded at the hilt with one large ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... now I must finish my quaint task. It pleases me to be kissing fools. I think it is becoming a habit of mine. Come to this garden bench, where he and I sat together, and I will kiss you upon the mouth, as I kissed him. Does it hurt you for me to say that? Good. (They sit down.) You are the only one in the kingdom who understands me. Lift up your head. (She kisses him. He lifts his head ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell

... dawn. "They looked as though they had been knocking about drunk in gutters for a week," he described graphically; and then he muttered something about the sunrise being of a kind that foretells a calm day. You know that sailor habit of referring to the weather in every connection. And on my side his few mumbled words were enough to make me see the lower limb of the sun clearing the line of the horizon, the tremble of a vast ripple running over all the visible expanse of the sea, as if the waters had ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... shocked by a variety of impulsions, oppose him to prudence, to foresight, to the exercise of his reason. On the other hand, if the conformation of his organs, as it happens with those of a phlegmatic temperament, of a dull habit, does not permit him to move, except with feebleness, in a sluggish manner, his experience is slow, frequently unprofitable. The tortoise and the butterfly are alike incapable of preventing their destruction. The stupid ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach

... is imperative that we should fix unalterably our guiding principles before we are plunged unprepared into the fight, it is even more urgent we should clear the mind to the truth now, for we have fallen into the dangerous habit of deferring important questions on the plea that the time is not ripe. In a word, we lack moral strength; and so, that virtue that is to safeguard us in time of war is the great virtue that will redeem us in time of servility. It need not be further ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... new-comers. As they approached, the villager did not observe them. Instead, he looked at the near horizon lifted on the shoulder of the hills and meditated on the signs of the weather. It was Emmaus' habit to find strangers ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller

... God, not to kill, not to steal, etc. Let no one think that it is all the same whether he pray or not, as vulgar people do, who grope in such delusion and ask Why should I pray? Who knows whether God heeds or will hear my prayer? If I do not pray, some one else will. And thus they fall into the habit of never praying, and frame a pretext, as though we taught that there is no duty or need of prayer, because we reject false ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther

... itself to a man which he knows to be dishonest and unjust, but to which he inclines, it is only necessary for him to think that it ought not to be done because it is opposed to the Divine precepts. If a man accustoms himself to think so, and from so doing establishes a habit of so thinking, he is gradually conjoined to heaven. So far as he is conjoined to heaven the higher regions of his mind are opened; and so far as these are opened he sees whatever is dishonest and unjust; and so far as he sees these evils they ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg

... a low whine. He knew full well that something distressed his master, but he hadn't yet ascertained what it was. As something had to be done, Dick put the buffalo robe on his steed, and mounting said, as he was in the habit of doing each morning, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... governorship of the Breuci as reward for this, was captured by the other Bato, and perished. The Breucan had been a little suspicious of his subject tribes and went around to each of the garrisons to demand hostages: the other, learning of this habit, lay in wait for him, conquered him in battle, and shut him up within the fortifications. Later his defeated rival was given up by those in the place, and he took him and led him before the army, whereupon the man was condemned to death and sentence executed without delay. After this event numbers ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio

... to you; but it is death to us.' It is in vain to try to find a meaning in every one of his particularities, which, I suppose, are mere habits, contracted by chance; of which every man has some that are more or less remarkable. His speaking to himself, or rather repeating, is a common habit with studious men accustomed to deep thinking; and, in consequence of their being thus rapt, they will even laugh by themselves, if the subject which they are musing on is a merry one. Dr. Johnson is often uttering pious ejaculations, when he appears ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... being equal," says the chief correspondent for one of the big mail-order houses, "the surest sale is the item that the farmer patron feels he must have. Even after making money enough to be classed well-to-do, the farmer persists in his acquired mental habit—he tests every 'offer' put up to him by his need for it—or rather whether he can get along without it. This predisposition on the part of the audience to which the letter is addressed is to be ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous

... power and opportunity for one to do and conduct as he will, or according to his choice, is all that is meant by it, without taking into the meaning of the word anything of the cause of that choice, or at all considering how the person came to have such a volition, or internal habit and bias; whether it was determined by some internal antecedent volition, or whether it happened without a cause; whether it were necessarily connected with something foregoing, or not connected. Let the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... himself, notwithstanding the great advantage which he derived from a habit of patient thinking, indulged bold and excentric thoughts, of which his Queries at the end of his book of Optics are a sufficient evidence. And a quick conception of distant analogies, which is the great key to unlock the secret of nature, is by no means incompatible ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley

... practice, and its advancement is hindered by submission to dictatorial decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use of a table-book. Some initiation is, however, necessary; of all skill, part is infused by precept, and part is obtained by habit; I have, therefore, shown so much as may enable the candidate of criticism ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... you were in the habit of flirting with Brown, you would have left off, could your own heart have felt one half of one pang mine did. Brown is a good sort of man—he did not know he was doing me to death by inches. I feel the effect of every one of those hours in my side now; and for that ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters

... of man. He is, and always has been, a sheath of varied and even incompatible possibilities, a palimpsest of inherited dispositions. It was the habit of many writers in the early twentieth century to speak of competition and the narrow, private life of trade and saving and suspicious isolation as though such things were in some exceptional way ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... the long tables in hall were more and more deserted; even the Archbishop himself seemed silent and cast down. Anthony used to watch him from his window going up and down the little walled garden that looked upon the river, with his hands clasped behind him and his black habit gathered up in them, and his chin on his breast. He would be longer than ever too in chapel after the morning prayer, and the company would wait and wonder in the anteroom till his Grace came in and gave the signal for dinner. And at last ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson

... of ony pressin' danger to be facit, that I might know how jeopardy sorts wi' my stomach. I became man-grown as a halflin' boy, or e'er you were born yet—a starvelin' boy, workin' for bare bread; and hard beset I was for't. So my thoughts turned all money-wise, till it became fixture and habit with me; and I took nae time for pleasures. But when I heard of your fight yestreen, and how you begawked him that we are to mention no more, and of your skirmishes and by-falls with these gentry of your own land, my silly auld blood leapit in my briskit. And when ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... made up, he had not to wait long for an opportunity. He was now quite recovered from his hurts, and accustomed to walk in the neighbourhood of the kraal. About two hundred yards from Umgona's huts rose a spring, and thither it was Nanea's habit to resort in the evening to bring back drinking-water for the use of her father's household. The path between this spring and the kraal ran through a patch of bush, where on a certain afternoon towards sundown Hadden took his seat under a tree, having first seen Nanea go down to the little ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard

... he had won three places in the high jump, in regularly scheduled meets; his comrades had been jeering at his athletic fiascos for nearly four years, and even had Hicks suddenly blossomed out as a star athlete, they would not have abandoned their joyous habit. Still, those football 'Varsity players to whom good Butch had read Hicks, Sr.'s, letters, and explained the sunny youth's persistence, despite his ridiculous failures, though they kept on hailing ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... English, and a few in other tongues, were scratched on the walls or written on dirty scraps of paper and nailed up. Half in jest and half in earnest, these curious notices said all manner of things. For the wretched people who had been plundered or otherwise ill used had already fallen into the habit of asking from the soldiery for some scrap of writing which would prove that they had contributed their quota, and might, therefore, be exempted from further looting. Scrawled in soldiers' hands were such things as, "Defense absolue de piller; nous autres avons tout pris"; ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... late into the long nights of winter. Single women, after a certain or uncertain age, were given a brevet title of "Mistress." Mistress Gainor Wynne lost or won with the coolness of an old gambler, and this habit, perhaps more than aught beside, troubled my father. Sincere and consistent in his views, I can hardly think that my father was, after all, unable to resist the worldly advantages which my aunt declared should be mine. It was, in fact, difficult to ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... gracious," said Douban—but what he would have farther said was cut off by a violent fit of coughing, the consequence of his age, of his feeble habit, of the damps of the dungeon, and the rugged exercise of descending the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... de Granada. He even carried his zeal for his newly-adopted creed so far as to become a Franciscan friar. By degrees his affected piety grew cool and the friar's garb became irksome. Taking occasion of the sailing of some Venetian galleys from Almeria, he threw off his religious habit, embarked on board of one of them, and crossed to Africa, where he landed in the dress of a ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... crying was annoying to me and the other people in the shop. The people living in the neighborhood have, together with myself, suspected that the girls were bought and sold to go to California." Another neighbor deposed to knowing the third defendant as "in the habit last year of taking young girls of various ages, from 10 to 20, about the Colony for sale. I knew this defendant wanted to sell the girls, as she asked me if I knew any woman who wanted to buy them. She comes from ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... alphabet in my mind before touching the transmitting key, though I knew no code-words, and there, big enough to be seen, was the ABC dial, and who was to answer my message I did not ask myself: for habit was still strong upon me, and my mind refused to reason from what I saw to what I did not see; but the moment I touched the key, and peered greedily at the galvanometer-needle at my right, I saw that it did not move, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... neck, a very long beak, very strong legs, large feet, long wings, and so on. The second one is the Pouter, a very large bird, with very long legs and beak. It is called the Pouter because it is in the habit of causing its gullet to swell up by inflating it with air. I should tell you that all pigeons have a tendency to do this at times, but in the Pouter it is carried to an enormous extent. The birds appear ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley

... VIII century; an inscription in the porch of the present Cathedral records the very interesting mediaeval account of its re-building and re-consecration nearly a hundred years later. It was, so runs the tale, the habit of a devout woman to pray in the church every night; and after the Cathedral had been finished by the generous aid of Charlemagne, she happened there at midnight, and witnessed the descent of Christ in wondrous, shining light. There at the High Altar, surrounded ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose

... of the English people are, however, confirmed tea drinkers, and it is extremely doubtful if this national habit, ingrained through centuries of use of "the cup that cheers" at breakfast and at tea time in the afternoon ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... worthy matter for more than one blessed Idyl—(the more so, as on such occasions, I am generally arrayed in a morning gown, though I am sorry to say, not a calamanco one, with great flowers;) this melancholy pleasure was already grown here in Halle to a sweet, pedantic habit. Since I began my hermit's life here, I have been printing; and so long as I remain here, I shall keep on printing. In all probability, I shall die with ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Nelson went below to the cabin. It was his habit, when an engagement was expected, to have all the bulkheads[139] upon the fighting decks taken down, and those of his own apartments doubtless had been removed at least as soon as the enemy's sailing was ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... hand and a pleasant parting word the man passed on. That he had mistaken me for my brother was plain enough. That was an error to which I was accustomed and which it was not my habit to rectify unless the matter seemed important. But how had I known that this man's name was Margovan? It certainly is not a name that one would apply to a man at random, with a probability that ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... joined me on the piazza, where I was walking up and down enjoying the balmy air and the beauty of the foliage. "As we have no conventions," said he, "on hand, what do you say to a ride on horseback this morning?" I readily accepted the suggestion, ordered the horses, put on my habit, and away we went. The roads were fine and we took a long ride. As we were returning home we stopped often to admire the scenery and, perchance, each other. When walking slowly through a beautiful grove, he laid ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... he had promised to himself, and finally sank back in a kind of Windsor chair, dropping off to sleep the next instant, and, by force of habit, waking just at the time he had ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... thou shalt presently be made Turk!" Then called he for his men and commanded them to make him Turk; and they did so, and circumcised him, and would have had him speak the words that thereunto belonged; but he answered them stoutly that he would not, and although they had put on him the habit of a Turk, yet said he, "A Christian I was born, and so I will remain, though you force me ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt

... world urged by the bloody needs of the world wants, fevered today by a fabulous vision of gain and needing only hands, hands, hands! Fear of loss and greed of gain in the hearts of the giants; the clustered cunning of the modern workman, skilled as artificer and skilled in the rhythm of the habit of work, tasting the world's good and panting for more; fear of poverty and hate of "scabs" in the hearts of the workers; the dumb yearning in the hearts of the oppressed; the echo of laughter heard at the foot of the Pyramids; ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... did or did not their office, shewed more of the quilted marseilles and stuff beneath, than the precision of the toilet required: both of which, from their contact with the water of the bog, merited the epithet of "Slappersallagh," bestowed on their wearers by Terence O'Brien. Their habit-shirts, chitterlings, and cravats, though trimmed with Trawlee lace, seemed by their colour to evince that yellow starch, put out of fashion by the ruff of the murderous Mrs. Turner in England, was still to be had in Ireland. Their large, broad silver watches, pendant from their girdle by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various

... letter been?" demanded the Old Man, with some excitement. James G. Whitmore, cattleman, would have been greatly surprised had he known that his cowboys were in the habit of calling him the Old Man behind his back. James G. Whitmore did not consider himself old, though he was constrained to admit, after several hours in the saddle, that rheumatism had searched him out—because of his ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... and before he reached his town Ivanoushka, according to his habit, pitched his tent with a diamond top, and laid him down for rest. The brothers came along—gloomy they were, fearing the Tsar's anger. Lo! they heard neighing; the earth trembled—it was the golden-maned ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various

... his acts and words, that I even envied Helen Mar the privilege of calling herself his wife, and then dying to lay her head in the same grave with him. I resolved to give up all the common-place of life, and cling unto the spiritual—to purify myself from every earth-born wish and habit, and live but in the hope of meeting with a second Wallace. I persevered in this resolution for a whole week; and then meeting with some equally delightful hero of an opposite nature, I changed from grave to gay. My mood during these periods of fascination was as variable as the ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman

... constituted for the regions of romance; and that his opinion on the affairs of Ireland, England, France, or Europe was worthless. A week or two before the same paper held him up as the very Achilles of freedom, and the hope of Ireland—for it was the habit of both the parties claiming nationality in Ireland, to hope for liberty from the courage and efforts of others rather than from their own. The reply of Lamartine caused as much despondency in Ireland among the seditious, as it inspired confidence among the loyal, and among all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... could be checked, Tom stepped to the opening, and with the rapidity born of habit lifted himself out, and then holding on by the sill, lowered his legs ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn



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