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Prone   Listen
adjective
Prone  adj.  
1.
Bending forward; inclined; not erect. "Towards him they bend With awful reverence prone."
2.
Prostrate; flat; esp., lying with the face down; opposed to supine. "Which, as the wind, Blew where it listed, laying all things prone."
3.
Headlong; running downward or headlong. "Down thither prone in flight."
4.
Sloping, with reference to a line or surface; declivous; inclined; not level. "Since the floods demand, For their descent, a prone and sinking land."
5.
Inclined; propense; disposed; applied to the mind or affections, usually in an ill sense. Followed by to. "Prone to mischief." "Poets are nearly all prone to melancholy."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prone" Quotes from Famous Books



... some slight attention to the color of the younger brother, and even more to a slightly coquettish glance from the pretty Mrs. McGee. Whether or not—as has been ingeniously alleged by some moralists—the light and trifling of either sex are prone to recognize each other by some mysterious instinct, is not a necessary consideration of this chronicle; enough that ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... King James. Faith! but I ken'd I was clean beguiled when I heard the Duke was there; and when they strapped the horse-girth ower my arms, I might hae judged what was biding me; for I ken'd your kinsman, being, wi' pardon, a slippery loon himself, is prone to employ those of his ain kidney—I wish he mayna hae been at the bottom o' the ploy himsell—I thought the chield Morris looked devilish queer when I determined he should remain a wad, or hostage, for my safe back-coming. But I am come back, nae ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... Regin's tale of his brothers, and of the gold called "Andvari's Hoard," and that tale is severely brief and plain. The account in the poem is expanded greatly, and the conception of Regin materially altered. In the saga he was not the discontented youngest son of his father, prone to talk of his woes and to lament his lot. In the poem he does this in so eloquent a fashion that almost we are persuaded to sympathize with him. Certainly his lines were hard, to have outlived his great deeds, and to hear his many inventions ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby

... thin and sallow. He lies prone on the floor, staring at me with dead, sightless eyes. He whispers from muted lips "Delilah!" and the sound of it is in my ears day and night; ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark

... the man's harness and buckled it around his own naked chest. The electrogun had been uninjured, and hooked to the belt was also the riot club, a truly appalling thing at close quarters. Quirl carried the body down, laid it prone in the corner he had occupied, snapped on the waistlock, and threw a ragged old blanket over the hairy legs. In the forthcoming disturbance, if anyone looked in, he would think the inert form a sleeping prisoner, and that the guard ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl

... this title had long since disappeared, in the destruction of Jerusalem; and tradition, prone to assign to well-known authors of illustrious deeds many good feats accomplished by those who remain nameless, had ascribed the compilation of this early masterpiece of judicial wisdom to Godfrey de Bouillon. It had been sacredly kept in the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and guarded ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... instant they, too, were prone on the floor, with Harry and me on top of them. They did not succumb without a struggle, and the one I had chosen proved nearly ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout

... the secret of his casket and would reveal it to him. Then the final separation took place. Cary and Batoche left the house together. The next morning the former had joined his companions on their retreat, while the latter lay prone on the wet grass, at the foot of the Montmorenci Falls—dead. The lion-like heart was broken. It could not survive the ruin ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... yet they affect, at all times, an amusing omniscience. To "know it all" is a phrase beloved as sarcasm by their nimble vernacular, and though this (like "Come off!" and "Look here, what are you giving us?") is a form of speech incessantly on their lips, one is prone sometimes to reflect how amazing is the meagreness of real knowledge which their "knowing it all" piteously represents. They are sometimes keen sportsmen, but a good many scamps, dolts, and cads are that. Their acquaintance with contemporary literature could be summed up by ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... indications which drew forth at first the commendation, and as his powers unfolded, the warm regard of his master; under whose paternal care the improvement of his health kept pace with that of his intellect, and the grateful pupil never forgot his obligations: a truly noble mind is prone to exaggerate kindnesses received, and never detracts from their value; it is only the low and the narrow-minded who underrate the benefits they have been blessed with at any ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... by the dull sounds of the falling dirt, they had completed their task when the nearer approach of voices and of stumbling footfalls within the tunnel warned them to desist. Bob and Frank on one side of the slight opening, Captain Folsom and Tom Barnum on the other, they threw themselves prone on the ground. The bricks had been divided into two piles, one by the side of ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... and talked, arguing this way and that, much drawn toward one another. At last in the solemn background of a wall of whispering pines that shut them away from the stark gray rows of barracks, Cameron took out his fountain pen and with his foot on a prone log, opened the little book on his knee and wrote his name and the date. Then he put it in his breast pocket with the solemn feeling that he had taken some kind of a great step toward what his soul had been ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... thus waste and wander? Why dost thou pass thy years unwed, following arms, thirsting for throats? Nor does my beauty draw thy vows. Carried away by excess of frenzy, thou art little prone to love. Steeped in blood and slaughter, thou judgest wars better than the bed, nor refreshest thy soul with incitements. Thy fierceness finds no leisure; dalliance is far from thee, and savagery fostered. Nor is thy hand ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... despised would not be denied. Tortured with conflicting emotions, unsatisfied love, fear and uncertainty, utterly unnerved, she gave herself up at last to the feelings she could no longer restrain. Prone on the wide bed, her face buried in the pillows, her hands clutching convulsively at the silken coverings, she wept until she had no more tears, until the anguished, sobs died away into silence and she ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... was in a small hole covered by a flat stone. Two shells were under the left arm. No head was found. The shoulders were on the east, humeri pointed downwards, forearms prone; the legs were bent, the knees up and south of the backbone. The last three burials were close to the large ...
— El Kab • J.E. Quibell

... day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court has been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and beginning to hear of what has happened, comes ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... unaware that the Italian, with yet another knife, was close behind him. At a bound Hilary arrested the lifted blade and hurled its wielder aside, who in the next breath seemed to spring past him head first, fell prone across the prostrate Gibbs, turned face upward, and slid on and away—lassoed. Both bull-drivers clattered off up ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... playing a very steady man, do not strive to beat him at his own game. He is better at it than you in many cases, so go in and hit to win. On the other hand, if you find that your opponent is wild and prone to miss, play safe and reap the full crop of his errors. It saves you trouble ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... course, quite possible that the nature of the conditions attending the deposition of the uranium ores, many of which are comparatively recent, are responsible for the difficulties observed. The thorium and uranium ores are, again, specially prone to alteration. ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... dark ground of the paintings, and the lurid gleams from the chimney only enabled me to see visages staring at me from the gathering darkness. All this was dismal in the extreme, and somewhat appalling; perhaps it was the state of my conscience that rendered me peculiarly sensitive, and prone to fearful imaginings. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... brought a good price. A Methodist minister in Hannibal sold a negro child at the same time to another minister who took it to his home farther South. As the steamboat moved away from the landing the child's mother stood at the water's edge, shrieking her anguish. We are prone to consider these things harshly now, when slavery has been dead for nearly half a century, but it was a sacred institution then, and to sell a child from its mother was little more than to sell to-day a calf from its lowing dam. One ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... a flight of convenient stairs to be built, wide enough to admit the passage of two of his fattest Privy Councillors walking abreast, and leading down to this particular grotto through a cleft in the rock. Nobody knew what happened there under his superintendence. Mankind being ever prone to believe the worst of every great man, all kinds of stupid and even wicked things were said, though not during his lifetime. People vowed that he carried on the old traditions, the tortures and human sacrifices, and even improved upon them in his blithe Renaissance manner. They ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... [Footnote: The statue was not as large as the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. The height of the latter is 151 feet.] After standing little more than half a century, it was overthrown by an earthquake. For nine hundred years the Colossus then lay, like a Homeric god, prone upon the ground. Finally, the Arabs, having overrun this part of the Orient (A.D. 672), appropriated the statue, and thriftily sold it to a Jewish merchant. It is said that it required a train of nine hundred camels to bear ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... 'nor charged God foolishly.' In all this—what a great deal will the Holy Ghost make of that which seems but little when it flows from an upright heart! and it indeed may well be so accounted of all that know what is in man, and what he is prone unto. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... body, these Hellenes who have made so light of orderly array and conjoint action with ourselves, as though they must needs achieve in the company of barbarians all they could with ourselves, have paid the penalty and been taught a lesson, so that another time they will be less prone to leave our ranks. But you must be prepared to show these friendly barbarians that you are of a better sort, and prove to the enemy that battle with the undisciplined is one thing, but with ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon

... of Uniformity required Papists to assist All business has been transacted with open doors And thus this gentle and heroic spirit took its flight Are wont to hang their piety on the bell-rope Arminianism As lieve see the Spanish as the Calvinistic inquisition As logical as men in their cups are prone to be Baiting his hook a little to his appetite Beacons in the upward path of mankind Been already crimination and recrimination more than enough Bungling diplomatists and credulous dotards Canker of a long peace Casting ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... is prone to take a cruise to a certain rural district in the south of England, where he finds congenial company in two very tall, erect, moustached, dignified gentlemen, who have a tendency to keep step as they walk, ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne

... little band of adventurers a full hour to accomplish the passage across the plain; and when at length they arrived within about fifty yards of the camp, Jack caused the signal to be passed along the line for all hands to lie prone in the grass, while he went forward alone to satisfy himself that everything was still as he had left it. Then, as he had done some two hours previously, Jack crawled right into the heart of the camp and gazed carefully about him. Everything was still perfectly quiet, save that from certain ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... many prone men on the field as he had expected to find. To his bulging eyes which watched the first charge, men seemed to be falling everywhere, but as a matter of fact this was ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... and conscientious, he had not struck Malling as a man of strong intellect, though he was a cultivated and well-educated man. Though not governed by his own passions,—when one looked at him one had been inclined to doubt whether he had any,—he had seemed prone to be governed by those about him, at any rate in little matters of every day. His charm had consisted in his transparent goodness, and in an almost gay kindliness which had seemed to float round him like an atmosphere. To look into his face ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens

... Sir Charles Napier was alone for some moments in the midst of his enemies, who stalked round him with raised shields and scowling eyes; but, from some superstitious feeling possibly, to which the Beloochees are very prone, not one attempted his destruction, which they might easily have accomplished. When the soldiers of the 22nd saw him emerge unharmed from his perilous position, they gave vent to their feelings in a loud and hearty cheer, heard ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... Dave Cowan could perform ably upon the instrument while it retained its health he was at a loss when it developed ailments; and to these it was prone, being a machine of temperament and airs, inclined to lose spirit, to sulk, even irritably to refuse all response to Dave's fingering of the keyboard. Dave was sincerely startled when his son one day skillfully restored tone to the thing after it had disconcertingly rebelled. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... drew his horseman's cloak Down o'er his face, and sate by his dead son. As those black granite pillars, once high-rear'd 860 By Jemshid in Persepolis, deg. to bear deg.861 His house, now 'mid their broken flights of steps Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain side— So in the sand ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... unduly emphasising the specifically vocational, or "practical" side of education. The man of affairs knows little or nothing of young minds and their limitations, of the conditions under which teaching is done, or of the educational values of the various studies in a school curriculum. He is prone to choose subjects chiefly or solely because of their immediate practical utility. Thus in his view the chief reason for learning a modern language is that business communications will thereby be facilitated. One could wish that he ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... As fast as one attempted to climb to his feet he was thumped back again by the club that continually whizzed through the air, and if a boy tried to stay the storm by remaining prone, the instructor thumped him none the less viciously. Indeed, matters had got to that point that he enjoyed the fun and was loath to let up, as he felt obliged to do, when the howling rebels slunk to their ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... to any tribe or clan, and taking particular care to choose men who fought coolly, unexcitedly, and didn't froth at the mouth when in action; men who were slow to charge wildly into the enemy's guns—but slower still to retreat when the going was hot. El Hassan was prone to neither hero nor ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... She was splendidly religious—as religion was then understood. She was made so by her whole environment. From the beginning she had been a seafaring power, and seafaring men, from their constant wrestle with dangers ill understood, are prone to seek and find supernatural forces. Nor was this all. Later, when she had become rich, powerful, luxurious, licentious, and refractory to the priesthood, her most powerful citizens felt a need of atoning for their many sins by splendid religious foundations. So her people came ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... land! shall see that man hath yet a soul,—and dare be free! A little while, along thy saddening plains, The starless night of Desolation reigns; Truth shall restore the light by Nature given, And, like Prometheus, bring the fire of Heaven! Prone to the dust Oppression shall be hurled, Her name, her nature, withered from the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... Not ordinarily prone to the social life, Joe was able to find interest in this due to its newness. The citizen of the West-world, when exiled by duty to a foreign land, evidently did his utmost to take his native soil ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... and mild, genial acceptance of types that before did not come, and could not by any effort of will be brought, within range or made to adhere consistently with what was already accepted and workable. He was less the egotist now and more the realist. He was not so prone to the high lights in which all seems overwrought, exaggerated; concerned really with effects of a more subdued order, if still the theme was a wee out of ordinary nature. Enough is left to prove that Stevenson's life-long devotion to his art ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... glories which its bold flights discovered. Thanks to it—all thanks to it—I did not become a nympholept. I did not haunt Parliament Hill o' nights. I did not spy upon the darkling motions of Mrs. Ventris. Desire, appetite, sex were not involved at all in this affair; nor yet was love. I was very prone to love, but I did not love Mrs. Ventris. In whatsoever fairy being I had seen there had been nothing which held physical attraction for me. There could be no allure when there was no lure. So far as I could tell, not one of these creatures—except Quidnunc, and ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... electrical excitement; and consequently those seasons were sickly over the whole country. Now, there is another cause which renders the months of August, September, and October, deficient in electrical energy, and consequently more prone to be sickly. If, therefore, the two causes unite their influence, the autumnal months will be more sickly at those times. This last cause, however, only affects the northern latitudes in autumn, and consequently, ceteris paribus, the autumnal months should not be so proverbially sickly in ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... fly their formidable shot at you, what odds is it they don't all whistle over your head? Thus, too, though we may want the artillery of missive wit to make reprisals, we may at least in security bid them kiss the tails we have turned to them. Who knows but, by this our supine, or rather prone serenity, their disappointed valour may become their own vexation? Or let us yet, at worst, but solidly stand our ground, like so many defensive stone-posts, and we may defy the proudest Jehu of them all to drive over us. Thus, gentlemen, you see that Insensibility is ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... man is so prone to boast, when yet there is no ground of boasting in him, nor yet in what he doeth, how would he have boasted, had he been permitted by the God of heaven to have done something, though that something ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... with a slight smile on his face. One or two mournful whistles produced no apparent result. So Binks decided it was time for desperate measures. He stood up; and, with his head on one side, he contemplated his hated adversary, prone on the carpet. Then he gave a short sharp bark—just as a ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... wrapt in delicious repose, Most harmoniously playing a tune with his nose, In a dream there appeared the adorable Venus, Who said, "To be sure there's no likeness between us; Yet to show a celestial to kindness so prone is, Your looks shall soon rival the handsome Adonis." Liston woke in a fright, and cried, "Heaven preserve me! If my face you improve, zounds! madam, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... shape within his mind that it must lead to madness or to death, or perhaps to both. Yet, though he felt this, he was powerless to make head against his infatuation; and for hours at a time he would lie prone and motionless in futile contemplation of the helplessness that had unnerved him. Why not perish in some deed of fierce vengeance worthy of his past? Thoughts like this chased one another through his soul, like thunder-clouds over a mountain's brow, while he lay there, fettered by ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson

... took the loaded gun, and, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the spot, stretched myself prone on the deck, with the barrel of the weapon resting upon the rail of the schooner's very low bulwark. Sighting the piece carefully, I brought it to bear immediately on the spot where I thought I had seen the face, and then waited patiently for its reappearance. But minute after minute ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... images of what might be called the personalities of the four States that continued from the beginning to the end parts of the effective Confederate system—Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. We are prone to forget that the Confederacy was practically divided into separate units as early as the capture of New Orleans by Farragut, but a great history of the time would have a special and thrilling story of the conduct of the detached western unit, the isolated ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... Longitude and latitude might be assigned, at the most, if even those are not substantially defeated by the Miltonic "pushing askance" of the poles with regard to the equinoctial. But, finally, we remark, that whereas human nature has ever been prone to the superstition of local consecrations and personal idolatries, by means of memorial relics, apparently it is the usage of God to hallow such remembrances by removing, abolishing, and confounding all traces of their punctual identities. That raises ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... LARGE PROPORTION OF MOISTURE OR FLUIDS contained in the tissues of all young animals, the flesh of lamb and veal is much more prone, in close, damp weather, to become tainted and spoil than the flesh of the more mature, drier, and closer-textured beef and mutton. Among epicures, the most delicious sorts of lamb are those of the South-Down breed, known by their black feet; and of these, those which have been exclusively ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... himself, the pages arranging his golden mantle around him in shining, picturesque folds,—while Theos, withdrawing slightly into the background, stood leaning against a piece of tapestry on which the dead figure of a man was depicted lying prone on the sward with a great wound in his heart, and a bird of prey hovering above him expectant of its grim repast. Kneeling on one knee close to Sah-luma, the harp- bearer put the harp in tune, and swept his fingers lightly over the strings,—then came a pause. A clear, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... looked at her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life as it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to it, or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... he liked to feel the coming breeze lifting his hair. After a while, I saw that the father took hold of the daughter's hand, and so, they holding each other, went along towards home. We had to cross a lane. In it were two little children, one lying prone on the grass in a passion of crying, the other standing stock still, with its finger in its mouth, the large tears slowly rolling down its cheeks for sympathy. The cause of their distress was evident; there was a broken brown ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... tie up to an old sycamore tree on the bank and remain motionless all night, the boat tied up. The grumblings of passengers and the disapproval of the captain availed naught, nor did the captain often venture upon either criticism or suggestion to the lordly pilot, who was prone to resent such invasion of his dignity in ways that made trouble. Indeed, during the flush times on the Mississippi, the pilots were a body of men possessing painfully acquired knowledge and skill, and so organized as ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... is to do injustice to that form of government. Aristocracy is the government of the best. Its standard qualification for accession to power is merit, ascertained by popular election recurring at short intervals of time. If even that government is prone to degenerate into tyranny, what must be the character of that form of polity in which the standard qualification for access to power is wealth in the possession of slaves? It is doubly tainted with the infection of riches and of slavery. There is no name in the language of national jurisprudence ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... passing before my mind concerned a generation long, long ago mouldered to dust. Leaping from bed, I stood in the middle of the room clasping my temples with all my might between my hands to keep them from bursting. Then I fell prone on the couch, and, burying my face in the pillow, lay with out motion. The reaction which was inevitable, from the mental elation, the fever of the intellect that had been the first effect of my tremendous experience, had arrived. The emotional crisis which had awaited ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... straightening his face, asked with quiet concern, "How's your father?" Edwin shook his head. "Pretty bad," he answered. "Is he?" murmured the other sadly. And Edwin suddenly saw his father again behind the blind, irrevocably prone. ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... feeding, by the bloating operations of malt liquors, and by the rheumy influence of a damp, foggy, vaporous climate. One old fellow was an exception to this, for instead of acquiring that expansion and sponginess to which old people are prone in this country, from the long course of internal and external soakage they experience, he had grown dry and stiff in the process of years. The skin of his face had so shrunk away that he could not close eyes or mouth—the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... So-and-so had saved the child of Mrs. So-and-so, and that in a certain family all had moved from the house in which they were living, and thereby saved the little ones. And the doctors, with a serious air, confirmed this, sustaining my wife in her opinions. She was not prone to fear, but the doctor dropped some word, like corruption of the blood, scarlatina, or else—heaven help us—diphtheria, and ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... conversation could be to any extent confidential. In its present state, the longer the range the more lung power was demanded; and probably had not this been the condition, people would have shouted anyway, simply from instinct. Even with our own delicately adjusted instruments we are prone to forget and commit this folly. But in the early days one was forced to uplift his voice at the telephone and if he had no voice to uplift woe betide his telephoning. And apropos of this matter, I recall reading that once, when Mr. Bell was to ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett

... shooting, and I can assure you that I would let 'em get just as close as you want them, and not feel any concern about their getting the best of anybody, and you would have a chance to use the bow well in this case; but I am more prone to think they will beat it off with a lot of your perfectly good arrows than ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... the more necessary because, I believe, the teaching profession is unduly prone to pessimism. One might think at first glance that the contrary would be true. We are surrounded on every side by youth. Youth is the material with which we constantly deal. Youth is buoyant, hopeful, exuberant; and yet, with this material constantly surrounding us, we frequently find the task ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... harangue betrayed the schoolmaster, who was prone to make Gaffer Wiswall's chimney-side a temporary refuge from the broils and disturbances of his own, where his spouse, by way of enticing him to remain, generally contrived either to rate him soundly or to sulk ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... love thee with mine eyes, For they in thee a thousand errors note; But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise, Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote. Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted; Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone, Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited To any sensual feast with thee alone: But my five wits nor my five senses can Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee, Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... times the first day. He and his men showed signs of the strain they put upon their bodies; they were a gaunt, lean-jawed, wild-eyed lot. There was little frolic left in them when night came; they were short-spoken, prone to grow fierce over trifles. But there was not a sullen or discontented man among them. They took what came; they had known times of stress before; they could look forward to a day to come of boisterous relaxation and money to be spent in town. Though the subject ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... genius, and MacDonald had talent enough for his profession to enable him to perceive that there was no humiliation in seeking the assistance of one who already stood alone in Europe, both in his gifts and in his experience. Holmes was not prone to friendship, but he was tolerant of the big Scotchman, and smiled at the ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle

... of a dunghill about them," says Eudore, with a sigh of conviction. He is prone on the ground, with his mouth half-open and the air of a martyr. With one fading eye he follows the movements of Pepin, who prowls to ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... goal of the squatter's journey! How her information could have been obtained, or whence derived, was a mystery; and, though loth to regard it as oracular, I could not divest myself of a certain degree of conviction that her words were true. The mind, ever prone to give assent to information conveyed by hints and innuendos, too often magnifies this gipsy knowledge; and dwells not upon the means by which it may have been acquired. For this reason gave I weight to the warnings of the brown-skinned sibyl—though uttered only to taunt, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... a very talented architect. I even think he's a genius. He was left an orphan when a mere boy, and after his parents' death his relatives supported him for some time; but as he was always of an independent nature, sharp in his talk and prone to make unpleasant remarks, and as he showed them no gratitude, they dropped him. He continued to study, nevertheless, supporting himself by giving lessons, and so made his way through college. He often went hungry, my poor husband. Now he is art architect and draws ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev

... sentimental idea," Hector McKaye replied. "I rather like old Brent and his girl for that. We Americans are too prone to take our flag and what it stands ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... wholly perplexed, Susannah beheld the days of the new year lengthening. Then she fell into the weakness, to which humanity is prone, of hoping eagerly for some external circumstance that should lighten the inner darkness. A bit of stray news one day came to her with the shock of an apparent fulfilment of her vague expectation. Finney was passing through that part of the country preaching. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... rose I stood aghast, seeing the boy on my left crouching down with a small waddy in his hand and the great black savage prone on his face just ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn

... equally confined by instinct and reason to the care of providing against the mischief which threatens him, he is withheld by natural compassion from doing any injury to others, so far from being ever so little prone even to return that which he has received. For according to the axiom of the wise Locke, Where there is no property, ...
— A Discourse Upon The Origin And The Foundation Of - The Inequality Among Mankind • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... could assist him in the shaping of his resolves or in the correction of his conclusions. Brought up in a narrow sect, self-centred, moody, he needed continually that wholesome twist to another point of the compass which intercourse with equals gives. He was continually prone to subjection under the rigorous domination of a single thought, from which he deduced inference after inference, ending in absurdity, which would have been dissipated in an instant by discussion. We complain of people because they are not original, but we do not ask what their originality, ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford

... subsided. A belated sense of professional duty returned to Glossop and myself. We descended the stairs and began to do our best, in our respective styles, to produce order. It was not an easy task. Small boys are always prone to make a noise, even without provocation. When they get a genuine excuse like the incursion of men in white masks, who prod assistant-masters in the small of the back with Browning pistols, they tend to eclipse themselves. I doubt whether we should ever have quieted them, had it not ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... minutely inquisitive, circumstantially exact, which perceived the bearings of things, and explored their intricacies, noted how the mortar was tempered in the walls and if any struck a woman or beat a horse, but was as little prone to transfigure these or other things with the glamour of mysterious suggestion as the eye of Peter Bell himself. He lacked the stranger and subtler sensibilities of eye and ear, to which Nature poetry of the nineteenth century owes so much. His senses were efficient ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... have made! actually made!" she almost screamed. "She would be out at service today but for me! The shameful, impertinent, ungrateful wretch!" She ordered Thomas to drive her straight back home, and, quivering with indignation, went to her son's room. He was dressed, but lying prone upon his bed; his mother's complaining irritated his mood beyond his endurance. He rose up in a passion; his white haggard face showed how deeply sorrow and remorse had ploughed into ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... or miles in extent. And even then, many visits are needed, for there are movements to this symphony—the allegro of the gale, the scherzo of the easy morning breeze, the deep adagio of a rain-storm, and the andante of warm days and summer breezes, when you may repose prone upon a soft carpet of pine needles, every sense made alert, yet soothed, by ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland

... is as follows: "When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred." I once knew a man to square his conduct by this rule, with a most gratifying result. Jacob Scolliver, a man prone to bad temper, one day started across the fields to visit his father, whom he generously permitted to till a small corner of the old homestead. He found the old gentleman behind the barn, bending over a barrel that was canted ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile

... reader's judgment. When the European sees in the individual American, or in a dozen individual Americans, certain peculiarities, inelegancies, and sometimes even impertinences—call them what you will,—he is too prone to think that these are the essentials of the American character. The essentials of the American character are the essentials of the English character—with elbow-room. "While the outlook of the New Yorker is wider than ours," says Mr. Archer, "his standpoint is the same." In that ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... he appeared delighted at the idea of leaving; for he was fond of change, and required exciting scenes to keep him out of mischief, which he was prone to, in defiance of the vigilant eye that Murden kept on him; and I had but little doubt, as I stood and watched their forms disappear amidst a labyrinth of tents and crazy huts, that the long-limbed wretch would have murdered him, and rejoined a gang of bushrangers, had it ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... began to keep exact accounts of Time, have been prone to raise their Antiquities; and this humour has been promoted, by the Contentions between Nations about their Originals. Herodotus [3] tells us, that the Priests of Egypt reckoned from the Reign of Menes to that ...
— The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended • Isaac Newton

... boy approached; with his girlish complexion, his flowery blue eyes, his perfect mouth, he stood before his mother like a large cherub. And suddenly he blew his ocarina in a dreadful manner. Mrs. Larne launched a box at his ears, and receiving the wind of it he fell prone. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... was quite different to that of an ordinary cat, and altogether less elegant. The expression of the face, too, was neither savage nor majestic nor intelligent, but rather dull and stupid. It was fond of assuming all sorts of queer attitudes." Brehm describes one as lying prone on a thick branch placed in its cage, with all four legs hanging down straight, two on each side of the branch—certainly a remarkable position for an animal to assume of its ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... assuming, in presence of contemporaries of stronger stomach, fine pose of disapproval; yet in my heart knowing myself a young hypocrite, disguising physical cowardice in the robes of moral courage: a self-deception to which human nature is prone. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... It is a well-known fact that the fumes of dynamite and other giant powders will often produce severe headaches, and even illness. Tom's explosive contained a certain percentage of dynamite, and he knew its ill effects. Stretched prone, or crouching on the ground, there was little danger, as the fumes, being lighter than air, rose. The yellow haze soon drifted away, and ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton

... 40 Testing the prone-posture method by suitable apparatus, Professor Schaffer has found it capable of introducing more air per minute into the lungs than any of the other methods of artificial respiration, and more even than is introduced ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.

... quickly and looked for the man who had left the shelter of the bridge with him. He lay prone on ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake

... opposite side to the question. Some young men, not all certainly but a good many, are in great danger of a rather exaggerated estimate of their own attractions and importance. There are some junior Clergymen who are, if I do not mistake, prone to think that most young ladies whom they meet are fascinated by them, or are at least in imminent peril. Such delusions meet sometimes with not very gentle corrections. But it is better to be forearmed against ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... moonlight streaming through curtainless open windows, seemed to Max like a mausoleum. He could see the still, flat forms, uncovered and prone on their narrow beds, like carven figures of soldiers on tombs. He alone was alive among a company of statues. The men could not be human to sleep so soon and so soundly after ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... soonest followed, vices entertained, if they be profane, irreligious, lascivious, riotous, epicures, factious, covetous, ambitious, illiterate, so will the commons most part be, idle, unthrifts, prone to lust, drunkards, and therefore poor and needy ([Greek: hae penia stasin empoiei kai kakourgian], for poverty begets sedition and villainy) upon all occasions ready to mutiny and rebel, discontent still, complaining, murmuring, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... miscreants. And Enid waited fearfully the long while he was gone, and her heart rejoiced when she saw him returning. But soon her joy was turned to sorrow, for his armour was all dented and covered with blood and his face ghastly; and even as he reached her side, he fell from his horse, prone on the ground. Then Enid strove to loosen his armour, and having found the wound, she staunched it as best she might and bound it with her veil. And taking his head on her lap, she chafed his hands and tried with her own body to shield him from the sun, her ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... to custom, and so prone To reverence what is ancient, and can plead A course of long observance for its use, That even servitude, the worst of ills, Because delivered down from sire to son, Is kept and guarded ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the night a storm swept down the mountain pass with sudden fury, uprooting trees a century old, and rending mighty rocks with sword thrusts of its lightning. And when it passed Aldebaran lay prone upon the earth borne down by rocks and fallen trees. Lay as if dead until two passing goat-herds found him and bore him down in pity ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston

... astir And day has set in the great woods, We seek, among her garden roods, With bells and cries in vain: the while Lamps, plate, and the decanter smile On the forgotten board. But she, Deaf, blind, and prone on face and knee, Forgets time, family, and feast, And digs ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson

... robber and impostor. Yet the sultan persevered in a decent reverence for the doctrine and discipline of the Koran: [2] his private indiscretion must have been sacred from the vulgar ear; and we should suspect the credulity of strangers and sectaries, so prone to believe that a mind which is hardened against truth must be armed with superior contempt for absurdity and error. Under the tuition of the most skilful masters, Mahomet advanced with an early and rapid progress in the paths of knowledge; and besides his native tongue ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... already a child, and Margaret was childless, and I find myself prone to insist upon that, as if it was a justification. But, indeed, when we became lovers there was small thought of Eugenics between us. Ours was a mutual and not a philoprogenitive passion. Old Nature ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... my thoughts, cropping their wings, drilling them into correct discipline, and forcing them to settle to some useful work: they are idle, and keep taking the train down to London, or making a foray over the Border—especially are they prone to perpetrate that last excursion; and who, indeed, that has once seen Edinburgh, with its couchant crag-lion, but must see it again in dreams, waking or sleeping? My dear sir, do riot think I blaspheme, when I tell you that your great London, as compared to Dun-Edin, 'mine own romantic town,' ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... wandered far and found itself in barren and difficult and almost impassable ground, it was bewildered and despondent, and felt itself lost and like to perish in the wilderness. And while his folk lay prone, he had arisen and mounted the encircling ridge. And with a joyous cry, and the flaunting of a banner, he called them to the way they had to traverse, and told them the road ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... evading the eyesight and discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its invisibility. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... all disturbed, the colonel did not interrupt them for a while. But when the lady at length rose, holding Phil by the hand, the colonel, fearing that the boy, who was a child of strong impulses, prone to sudden friendships, might be proving troublesome, left his seat on the flat-topped tomb of his Revolutionary ancestor and hastened ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... professional class, and, if he kills at all, elevates his pastime to the rank of sport by the refining element of skill and the excitement of uncertainty and personal risk. But civilized man is still only too prone to prey upon his fellows, though hardly in the brutal manner of his ancestors. He preys upon inferior intelligence, upon weakness of character, upon the greed and upon the gambling instinct of mankind. In ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... any one can govern with a state of siege, so strong Powers dealing with weak ones are prone to think that any kind of diplomacy will do. The British Government, confident in its strength, seems to have overlooked not only the need for taking up a sound legal position, but the importance of retaining the ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... body and legs outside. The cliff above the opening was nearly perpendicular, and had been much split and shaken by the frosts since an avalanche had deprived it of its crown of snow; but of his danger he was heedless or unconscious. One morning while lying prone, repeating for the fiftieth time his daily counting of the old coins, a portion of the rock detached itself slowly, and falling on his waist, pinned him to the earth, without however crushing or greatly injuring him. He uttered ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... grape-stone, or from the minutest seeds of other fruits and roots; shoots, plants, twigs, quicksets, layers, do not these produce the effect of delighting any one even to admiration? The vine, indeed, which by nature is prone to fall, and is borne down to the ground, unless it be propt, in order to raise itself up, embraces with its tendrils, as it were with hands, whatever it meets with, which, as it creeps with manifold ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... parents usually pay no attention to what they eat. But there are others who become ill if they are improperly fed. Children who are often feverish and take all the diseases peculiar to the young, are maltreated. They are not properly fed. Those who are prone to convulsions must be fed with great care, or there is danger of their becoming epileptics. Firmness in such cases generally means the difference between health and disease or ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... modifications in his methods which are not within the practical politics of the stage; and, indeed, these remarks are pushed purposely too far in order to draw attention to the fact that the actors are prone to consider their own "reading" of a part without reference to the audience, and even, in some cases, to the author. In other words, they are misled by the delusive term "create," so often applied to acting as well as to millinery. The word is inappropriate to the rapidly evanescent. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... back from him, he crept out of his chair and fell prone at her feet. Afterward his hands stretched forward toward her, clutching, and then ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... voice ceased. There fell a silence, followed by a wild, half-strangled cry. She had a glimpse of a prone figure in a corner struggling upwards, and then Curtis was before her—Curtis haggard and agitated as she had never seen him—pushing her back out of the dim place into the ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... fallacy, I had not, now, been here to bear thy keen reproach; Forsook thee in misfortune? at thy side I closer fought as peril thickened round, Watched o'er thee fallen: the light of heaven denied, But proved my love more fervent and profound. Prone as thou wert, had I been mortal-born, And owned as many lives as leaves there be, From all Hyrcania by his tempest torn I had lost, one by one, and given the last for thee. Oh! had thy plighted pact of faith been kept, Still unaccomplished were the curse of sin; ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... the abbot to-morrow, for thou mayst guess that we cannot and dare not delay our departure for the convent a minute after the eastern sky is ruddy; and, with other infirmities, young men often are prone to laziness and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... however, he spoke, the wild cheer of the hands spurring him up and giving an impulse to the slow current of his thoughts and words— the Dane not being prone, like Captain Snaggs, to talking for the mere pleasure of hearing his ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Thy hand! For one remaining Cause be merciful! Doom not Thy creature Man to utter destruction!—but still remember that Thou wast born even as he! As helpless, as wronged, as tempted, as betrayed, as suffering, as prone to pain and death! Thou hast lived his life and endured his sorrows, though in the perfect glory of Thy Godhead Thou hast not sinned! Have patience yet, oh Thou great Splendour of all worlds! Have patience yet, Thou outraged and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... sets all the crags alight Above the baffled tempest: tree and tree Stir themselves from the stupor of the night, And every strangled branch resumes its right To breathe, shakes loose dark's clinging dregs, waves free In dripping glory. Prone the runnels plunge, While earth, distent with moisture like a sponge, Smokes up, and leaves each plant its gem to see, Each grass-blade's ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... heart. His understanding was keen, sceptical, inexhaustibly fertile in distinctions and objections; his taste refined; his sense of the ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and forgiving, but fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to enthusiastic admiration. Such a man could not long be constant to any band of political allies. He must not, however, be confounded with the vulgar crowd of renegades. For though, like them, he passed from side ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... been blind, and his intimacy with Hugh Redmond had given him plenty of opportunity to judge truly of his friend's defects. He knew Hugh was manly and generous, but he was also weak and impulsive, hot-tempered and prone to restlessness; and he marveled sadly how Margaret's calm, grand nature should center its affections and hopes on such an unstable character ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... At thy altar A thousand hearts lie prone, In this drear life of shadows They yearn for thee alone. All hoping to recover From life's distress and smart, If thou, oh holy Mother, Wilt take them to ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... is too sure of its own fangs to feel afraid of a few mutinous sheep; but the lamb Clerambault no longer calculated the danger; he simply put his head down and butted. Generous and weak natures are prone to pass without transition from one extreme to another; so from an intensely gregarious feeling Clerambault had jumped at one bound to the extreme of individual isolation. Because he knew it so well, he could see nothing around him but the plague ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... sleet; Till, nearing a den where inebriate men, With Bacchanal oath and yell, And curse and jeer, spent the midnight drear, She reeled in the gloom and fell; For a prostrate form, in the pitiless storm And inky darkness, lay Helpless and prone on the ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... them in the long run. But this is only a manifestation of human nature as we find it in every field. We always note a deficiency in the man whose life is lived for the present, for immediate enjoyment: in him we see the typical pleasure-seeker, peculiarly prone to temptation, to break the rules of life, to indulge himself at the expense of others or of his own future. He is characteristically the weakling, the wrongdoer. And we contrast him with the man of character, who stands superior to an immediate environment, ...
— Creating Capital - Money-making as an aim in business • Frederick L. Lipman

... didn't know and he did," said Mr. Tredgold, apologetically. "I talk too much. I'd no business to let out about old Brown, but I forgot for the moment—sailors are always prone ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... number of subscribers and visited them once a month to collect the installments. In order to insure regular payments it was necessary to keep up enthusiasm, which was prone to wane, and Charles consequently became an active and continual preacher of the propaganda of hatred. Whatever may have been his private sentiments at the outset, this constant harping on one string must eventually have had a powerful ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... literary!" so saucy Margot had declared to his face. She blushed at the remembrance of the words, blushed afresh, as, one after another, a dozen memories rushed through her brain. That afternoon by the tarn, for example, when she had summoned courage to confess her scheme, and he had lain prone on the grass, helpless ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... framed in at the top with the Gothic arch. In outdoor scenes the frank disregard of the probable adds the charm of audacity. Side by side with a scene of carnage, a field of blood with victims lying prone, is inserted an island of flowers whereon youths and dogs are pleasantly sporting; and adjoining that may be another section cunningly introduced where a martyred woman is enveloped in flames which spring from ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... but his best work is done when he is dealing with a concrete situation. Unusual or involved applications of principles disturb him. So long as his work is couched in terms of the concrete, he can succeed, but if that is replaced by the x, y, z elements, he is prone to fail. There is another type of child—the one who has the executive ability, the child of action. True, he thinks, too, but his forte is in control of people and of things. He is the one who manages the athletic team, runs the school paper, takes ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... with hydrochloric acid they are both liberated, and remain for the greater part (all the niobic) in the insoluble residue with the tungstic acid. On removing the latter with dilute ammonia they remain as a white insoluble precipitate, very prone to run through the filter on washing. They may be dissolved in hydrofluoric acid either at once or after fusion with bisulphate of potash, and extraction with cold water. To the solution in hydrofluoric acid gradually add a boiling solution of acid potassium ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer

... true self, but within it smiles the young man whom we knew; the ashes of many perishable things have fallen upon our youthful fire, but beneath them lurk the seeds of inextinguishable flame. So powerful is this instinctive faith, that men of simple modes of character are prone to antedate its consummation. And thus it happened with poor Grandsir Dolliver, who often awoke from an old man's fitful sleep with a sense that his senile predicament was but a dream of the past night; and hobbling hastily across the cold floor to the looking-glass, he would be grievously ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in Juliana's ears while she pursued the task of comforting the broken spirit that now lay prone on the bed, and now impetuously paced the room. Rose had come thinking the moment Juliana's name was mentioned, that here was the one to fortify her faith in Evan: one who, because she loved, could not doubt him. She moaned in a terror of distrust, loathing her cousin: not asking herself why ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... a well deserved it was none the less a most drastic punishment, and when it was over Big Jan lay still. He would lie prone for many a day, and he would carry marks of it ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler

... timidity, Loveday was prone to those flashes of temper to which the weak in defence and the strong in feeling seem peculiarly exposed. She snatched the shielding apron back from the lap of the buxom Cherry, stamping her foot ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse

... battle. She stood there that all men might see her, that Maritza might escape, and then she saw Ellerey with the sweat and grime of the conflict upon him. For an instant their eyes met, her lips whispered his name, and then she threw up her arms, and with a low cry fell prone upon ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... books and no newspapers, had cultivated the art of story-telling for their own entertainment and that the soldiers returning from the Civil War had developed it further. Having made this note of his thesis I hasten to run away from it. Let others, prone to interminable debate, tear it to pieces if they must. This kind of social intercourse, with its intimate talk, the references to famous public characters, as though they were only human beings after all, the anecdotal interchange, was wholly novel to Sylvia. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... frowning mountain ridge. Fear still possessed his soul, and he believed that he had escaped death as if by a miracle. He was so frightened that he did not realise how tired and hungry he was until he had done a considerable distance, stumbling at every step, and at times falling prone upon the ground. His bruises he hardly felt until he had almost reached the foot of the long slope down which he was speeding. Then a great weakness came upon him, and his body trembled. Then he knew that he was very hungry and ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody

... emboldened then to slap his face, whereupon he turned and gave them both the beating of their lives—bloodying their noses and bruising their lips with hard blows against their front teeth, and finally leaving them, mauled and prone, in the dirt. Moreover, in the onlookers a sense of the everlasting fitness of things had triumphed over race prejudice and allowed them—two freeborn, sovereign whites—to be licked by ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... rejoiced (in our vanity) to pick out every quaint peculiarity and absurdity and monstrosity of a supposed topsyturvydom, and failed entirely to see the real picture of a great and eminently sensible people; so in the case of primitive men we have been, and even still are, far too prone to catalogue their cruelties and obscenities and idiotic superstitions, and to miss the sane and balanced setting ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... is still brisk, the light bad, and at intervals one or another of us suddenly steps on a slippery patch and falls prone. These are the only real incidents of the march—for the rest it passes with a steady tramp and slight variation of formation. The weaker ponies drop a bit but not far, so that they are soon up in line again ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... of the firing grew louder, and there was a tramping of men in the wood. The two lay very quiet, for they knew that the British soldier is desperately prone to fire at anything that moves or calls. Then Learoyd appeared, his tunic ripped across the breast by a bullet, looking ashamed of himself. He flung down on ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling

... way of Brooke Burgess to say anything in favour of Mr. Gibson to Dorothy Stanbury. There did come to be very quickly a sort of intimacy between her and her aunt's favourite; but she was one not prone to talk about her own affairs. And as to such an affair as this,—a question as to whether she should or should not give herself in marriage to her suitor,—she, who could not speak of it even to her own sister without a blush, who felt confused ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... people are landless and forced to live on and cultivate flood-prone land; water-borne diseases prevalent in surface water; water pollution, especially of fishing areas, results from the use of commercial pesticides; ground water contaminated by naturally occurring arsenic; intermittent water shortages ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... he continues, as well as the dwellers in the valley itself, are interested in this; for here, as in some desert or peaceful wilderness, the noble families of Italy and neighbouring provinces have been ever prone to harbour in times of ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... would say the very reverse, that he would declare his wish to marry the West Indian cousin. Clary could not conceive but that he might have her should he so wish. Young ladies, when they are in love, are prone to regard their lovers as being prizes so valuable as to be ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... was not too soon, Locksley," said Will, gravely. "This fellow's hand was upon the rope, and another moment might have seen you gallows-fruit upon this tree." He paused to bend over a forester lying prone near them, with his face buried in the grass. Robin saw that the man's body was transfixed by ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... He displayed a lively, but not a vigorous intellect, and his literary attainments were inconsiderable. Of his own character as a man of letters, he had evidently formed a high estimate. He was prone to satire, but did not unduly indulge in it. He was especially impatient of indifferent versification; and, among his friends, rather discouraged than commended poetical composition. Though long unsettled himself, he was loud in his ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... gait, a professional neckcloth, and habits of mind as professional as their externals. They are scholarly men and read Bacon, and know well enough what the "idols of the tribe" are. Of course they have their false gods, as all men that follow one exclusive calling are prone to do.—The clergy have played the part of the flywheel in our modern civilization. They have never suffered it to stop. They have often carried on its movement, when other moving powers failed, by the momentum stored in their vast body. Sometimes, too, they have kept it back by their ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... was resolved for some reason—either because old Falieri felt in what an uncomfortable position he would appear in the eyes of the people as the betrothed of a maiden of nineteen, or because it occurred to him as a sort of presentiment that the Venetians, who were so prone to mockery, ought not to be so directly challenged to indulge in it, or because he deemed it better to say nothing at all about the critical period of betrothal—at any rate, it was resolved, with Bodoeri's consent, that the marriage should be ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... consider how many false reports must fly about: in such multitudes imagine how many disappointed men there must be; how many chatterboxes; how many feeble and credulous (whereof I mark some specimens in my congregation); how many mean, rancorous, prone to believe ill of their betters, eager to find fault; and then, my brethren, fancy how the words of my text must have been read and received in Pall Mall! (I perceive several of the congregation looking most uncomfortable. One old boy with a dyed moustache ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... it, has not the deep orbit of the more narrow, sharp-featured face of the American type. The eye of the German standing out more prominently, and, in consequence, less protected, is thereby more prone to grow into a near-sighted eye. One of the significant results of hard study was recently brought to my notice by looking over the statistics on the schools of Munich in 1889. In those schools 2,327 children suffered from defective sight, 996 ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various



Words linked to "Prone" :   error-prone, inclined, ketoacidosis-prone diabetes, accident-prone



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