"Prone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon him as the visible source of steaks and bones; and partly because the graceless beast insults everybody else, harming as many as he dares. The dog is an encampment of fleas, and a reservoir of sinful smells. He is prone to bad manners as the sparks fly upward. He has no discrimination; his loyalty is given to the person that feeds him, be the same a blackguard or a murderer's mother. He fights for his master without regard to the justice of the quarrel—wherein he is no better than ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... strong misgivings. But it is best not to appear too secure.—Ah, Sir Ralph," he added, coming forward, "I was right, you see, in my caution. I am a man of peace, and strive to prevent quarrels and bloodshed. Quarrel if you please—and unfortunately men are prone to anger—but always settle your disputes in a court of law; always in a court of law, Sir Ralph. That is the only arena where a sensible man should ever fight. Take good advice, fee your counsel well, and the chances ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... horror which has afforded a theme to the pens of several distinguished writers, and the details of which are as well known on the spot at present, as if years had not elapsed since its occurrence. And this, too, in a country prone above all others, from the migratory habits of its population, to cast aside all tradition, and to lose within a very few years the memory of the greatest and most illustrious events upon the very ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... scowl at the little girl, and it was as if he scowled at all womanhood in her. Then he gave a fling away, and ran like a wild thing across the field of golden-rod and queen's-lace. Maria, watching, saw him throw himself down prone in the midst of the wild-flowers, and she understood that he was crying because the teacher was going to marry her father. She went on, walking like a little old woman, and she had a feeling as if she had found a road in the world that led ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 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 tears falling fast the while. So ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... Andover. His studies completed, he was licensed to preach; and not long after, without any consideration of what the future of this world might have in store for him, he committed the error which so many grave and serious men are prone to commit,—that is to say, he married hastily, after only two or three months of solemn courtship, a charming girl of nineteen, whose only idea of meeting the difficulties of this life was to love her dear Benjamin with her whole heart, and to keep ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... lit up faintly the grey sheet of water where the river was embayed. In the distance along the course of the slow-flowing Liffey slender masts flecked the sky and, more distant still, the dim fabric of the city lay prone in haze. Like a scene on some vague arras, old as man's weariness, the image of the seventh city of christendom was visible to him across the timeless air, no older nor more weary nor less patient of subjection than in ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now—eager for amusement; prone to excursion trains, art museums, periodical literature and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage; he only read one newspaper, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... the attacking force. The contests are complicated by personal and local influences. The discussions turn upon the incidents of current legislation. There are always grievances to be urged against the Government of the day. After a great victory, all parties, and particularly the Liberals, are prone to a slackening of effort and organisation; after a great defeat all parties, and especially the Tories, are spurred to ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... to the regular monthly function of their sex, are prone to treat with indifference a slight discharge of blood occurring during pregnancy. Indeed, it is widely believed that menstruation frequently continues after conception. In point of fact, however, it is very unusual in early pregnancy, and becomes entirely impossible after the fourth ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... "'Prone in the caverns of the vasty deep I lay, And slept not, though I seemed to sleep. The day Pierced not with sullen eyes of pallid scorn The dark, Unplumbed abyss, where, girt with red limbs torn. The shark Sported, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... issues: many 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 ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... nevermore will marvel, sirs, when one Of humblest parentage is prone to sin, Since those reputed men of noble strain Stoop to such phrase of prating frowardness. Come, tell it o'er again,—said you ye brought My brother bound to aid you with his power? Sailed he not forth of his own sovereign ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... too stimulating or too irritating a diet. In any case, where the use of old oats as a staple diet is departed from, and where the quantity and manner of using the substitute is left to the discretion of careless or unskilled attendants, trouble is likely to ensue. The food more prone, perhaps, than any other to bring about an attack is wheat improperly prepared—that is, uncooked or unground. So much so is this the case that one full meal of this provender to an animal unused to it is sufficient to lead to a train of ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... conforming, nevertheless, to the circumstances and to the leading idea. Our mysteries are simply pantomimes calculated to show the veneration offered to the gods, which veneration sustains and cheers the soul of man, who is prone to anxious contemplation of inevitable death and the life to come. The actors receive the dresses from the cloister and they play according to general indications, which leave them much liberty of individual action. ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... tightened. He worked his hand under his prone body, feeling for the hilt of his knife. With that he could speedily remove himself from the status of Throg prisoner, and he would do it gladly if there was no hope of escape. Had there been only one charge left in that blaster? Shann could make half a dozen guesses ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... continual a fear that I may at last fall some way or other so as to dishonour the Gospel that I have often desired that my name may be buried in oblivion; and indeed I have reason for those fears, for I am so prone to sin that I wonder every night that I have been preserved from foul crimes through the day, and when I escape a temptation I esteem it to be a miracle of grace which has preserved me. I never was so fully persuaded as I am now that no ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... together make up public spirit and public opinions. I see the insolent Tory, the blind Reformer, the coward Whig! If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago. The theory is plain enough; but they are prone to mischief, 'to every good work reprobate.' I have seen all that had been done by the mighty yearnings of the spirit and intellect of men, 'of whom the world was not worthy,' and that promised a proud opening ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... her whole hand. Bubbles formed upon it,—all sizes of them—standing out like dewdrops upon leaves. The bubbles cooled. And tempted her thirst. With a deep breath, she bent forward until her red mouth touched the shimmering surface. Thus, lying prone, with arms spread wide, she ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... banqueted; the Gods In Jove's abode, meantime, assembled all, 'Midst whom the Sire of heav'n and earth began. For he recall'd to mind AEgisthus slain By Agamemnon's celebrated son Orestes, and retracing in his thought That dread event, the Immortals thus address'd. 40 Alas! how prone are human-kind to blame The Pow'rs of Heav'n! From us, they say, proceed The ills which they endure, yet more than Fate Herself inflicts, by their own crimes incur. So now AEgisthus, by no force constrained Of Destiny, Atrides' wedded ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... impassive earth returned dully to its former resting-place. Dusk came on, but Rankin did not look about him until the mound was neatly rounded; then he turned to where he had left the little boy so bravely erect. But the small figure was not standing now; instead, it was prone on the ground amid the ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... not seem to have moved the first spectators, to whom all that damning sequence of events, one precipitated on the heels of another, came fresh as they occurred day by day. As for Buchanan, he would be less prone to doubt than any. He knew something of the Court of France and of the atmosphere in which Mary had received her training. He was acquainted with many a royal scandal, and had much experience of a world in which vice was ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... nations were continually laboring one another's destruction and extirpation. Others impute it to the introduction by the Europeans, of the vice of drunkenness, and to the known effect of spirituous liquors in the excesses of their use, to which they are but too prone, in striking at the powers of generation, as well as at the principles of health and life. Not improbably too, numbers impatient of the encroachments of the Europeans on their country, and dreading the ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... 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 too much ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... we shall be no more. This hall where we so often meet Will soon be trod by other's feet, And where our voices now resound, Will other speakers soon be found. And thus like wave pursuing wave, Between the cradle and the grave The human tide is prone to run, The sire succeeded by the son. May we so spend life's fleeting day, That when it shall have passed away, We all may meet on that blessed shore, Where friends shall meet to ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Pembroke, colouring with that prompt indignation which she was prone to feel when any thing was said that seemed derogatory to her friends, "that's possible, Sir James; and yet you find Miss Caroline Percy does draw in this very superior style—yes, and it is the perfection of her accomplishments, that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... painful. Slight ailments concurred with other troubles and vexations to depress his spirits; and besides these outward matters, he seems to have had a sense of not coming up to his ideal. His standard was pitched higher than that of most men: his nature was prone to introspection, and his constitutional inertness rendered it so difficult for him to live up to his own views, that he was continually dissatisfied with himself; and this, in spite of his sweet unselfish temper, gave his manner at home an irritability, and ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... we be so prone and ready to continue in sin, let us cast down ourselves with Mary Magdalene; and the more we bow down with her toward Christ's feet, the more we shall be afraid to rise again in sin; and the more we know and submit ourselves, the more we shall be forgiven; and the less we know and submit ourselves, ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... Poker, Clanging. I am the Poker the straight and the strong, Prone in the fire grate, Black at the nether end, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... caprice? The wise of all ages had despised it. In that respect, Horace and Machiavelli were of the same mind," etc. "But," said the duke, with emphatic kindness "perhaps your very misfortune here may serve you elsewhere. The female heart is prone to pity, and ever eager to comfort. Besides, if I am recalled to Italy, you will have leisure to come with us, and see the land where, of all others, ambition can be most readily forgotten, even" added the Italian with a sigh—"even ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by his own ugliness," Mary Cobley would tell them, "that he never would rise to the thought of axing a female to take him; though I tell the man that the better sort of woman ain't prone to pick a husband, like a bird picks ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... line of approach. This feeling I could not assuage by sharing it with Agnes. No motive could be strong enough for persuading me to communicate so gloomy a thought with one who, considering her extreme healthiness, was but too remarkably prone to pensive, if not to sorrowful, contemplations. And thus the obligation which I felt to silence and reserve, strengthened the morbid impression I had received; whilst the remarkable incident I have adverted to served powerfully to rivet the superstitious chain which ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... unfeigned affection; there are others whom we admire rather than love. By some we are won with our will, by others conquered against our desire. It has been your peculiar fortune to capture the hearts of a whole people—a people not usually prone to praise, but devoted with a personal and patriotic loyalty to you and to your reputation. In you every Scot who IS a Scot sees, admires, and compliments Himself, his ideal self—independent, fond of whisky, fonder of the lassies; ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... incredulous eyes, and clutched it close to him like a thing of comfort. He had lost his way amongst the sandhills of Obak on the evening of the second day, and had wandered vainly, with his small store of dates and water exhausted, until he had stumbled and lay prone, parched and famished and enfeebled, with the bitter knowledge that Abou Fatma and the Wells were somewhere within a mile of the spot on which he lay. But even at that moment of exhaustion the knife had been a ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... disappointment. I have always had a very high opinion of the intellectual values of the leading divines of both the Anglican and Catholic communions. The self-styled Intelligentsia of Great Britain is all too prone to sneer at their equipment; but I do not see how any impartial person can deny that Father Bernard Vaughn is in mental energy, vigour of expression, richness of thought and variety of information fully the equal of such an ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... fight, in the pungent half-gloom, colliding or falling prone as the vessel pitched, eyes fixed straight ahead, following the powerful silver lines of water which ribbed the dark and splashed against the steaming steel; white-yellow smoke spirals writhed about their heads like some grotesque saraband; coatless, shirtless, their streaked, ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... cases pass to the average case through insensible degrees. We are all probably, as a species, a little too prone to intolerance, and if we do in all sincerity mean to end war in the world we must prepare ourselves for considerable exercises in restraint when strange people look, behave, believe, and live in a manner different from our ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... knight of Vagabondia was curiously attractive, though not what you would call handsome. The features were too pronounced, the lips too prone to twist into satirical grimaces. His dark hair grew rather low on his wide forehead; it always looked straight and damp. The nose was long and pointed. When he whistled— which was almost incessantly—the tip of it appeared to protrude at least half an inch farther ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... the matter, whether it be of God. Unhappily we are so weak that we find it easier to believe and speak evil of others, rather than good. But they that are perfect, do not give ready heed to every news-bearer, for they know man's weakness that it is prone to ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... glaring eies, and to bidde vs a farewell (comming right against the Hinde) he sent forth a horrible voyce, roaring or bellowing as doeth a lion, which spectacle wee all beheld so farre as we were able to discerne the same, as men prone to wonder at euery strange thing, as this doubtlesse was, to see a lion in the Ocean sea, or fish in shape of a lion. What opinion others had thereof, and chiefly the Generall himselfe, I forbeare to deliuer: But he tooke it for Bonum Omen ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... were waiting. They reached in and jerked the two engineers from the seat and half carried them to the rear of the massive crane carrier. The operator had already leaped from his cab and was lying prone, face down on ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... bit of it, Aunt. Church of England. But I can see what has happened. You have been allowing old Bones to cloud your judgment. I never knew a fellow so prone to jump to idiotic conclusions. No doubt he heard that I had come in search of Indians and, without a single inquiry, decided that I had ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... aerial space, and mounts the winged gales; O'er earth and ocean wide prepared to soar, Her dreaded arm a beamy javelin bore, Ponderous and vast: which, when her fury burns, Proud tyrants humbles, and whole hosts o'erturns. From high Olympus prone her flight she bends, And in the realms of Ithaca descends, Her lineaments divine, the grave disguise Of Mentes' form conceal'd from human eyes (Mentes, the monarch of the Taphian land); A glittering ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... prone to that hungry longing for letters which you have so often expressed to me, yet I was getting heart-sick for some intelligence from some of my dear ones beyond the seas. My own people have not written ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... between Africa and remainder of Eastern Hemisphere; controls Suez Canal, a sea link between Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea; size, and juxtaposition to Israel, establish its major role in Middle Eastern geopolitics; dependence on upstream neighbors; dominance of Nile basin issues; prone ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... mind is prone to positivism and kindred forms of materialistic philosophy, and we must expect the derivative theory to be taken up in that interest. We have no predilection for that school, but the contrary. If we had, we might have looked complacently upon ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Storrs, he is prone to take the other side of the Square when he sees me on my accustomed bench. In repose his face is as grim as ever, but I have seen him smile at a child. Probably the weight of our collective sins upon his conscience is less irksome, now that he has a crime of his own ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that great musician, the father of the symphony and of all modern music, has been neglected. We are too prone to forget that concerts are, in a sense, museums in which the older schools of music should be represented. Music is something besides a source of sensuous pleasure and keen emotion, and this resource, precious as it is, ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... soul's repose. Sandro stood alone, facing the shining altar, but looking fixedly at Simonetta on her couch. He was white and dry—parched lips and eyes that ached and smarted. Was this the end? Was it possible, my God! that the transparent, unearthly thing lying there so prone and pale was dead? Had such loveliness aught to do with life or death? Ah! sweet lady, dear heart, how tired she was, how deadly tired! From where he stood he could see with intolerable anguish the somber rings around her eyes and the violet shadows on the lids, her folded hands and the straight, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... of thought or feeling that he cannot undertake any human activity, nor unite the demands of the two worlds. He knows that what ought to be cannot be in the world he has returned to, so that his life is perplexed; but in this incessant perplexity he falls back on prone submission to the heavenly will. The time will come when death will restore his being to equilibrium; but now he is out of harmony, for the soul knows more than the body and the body ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... and displaying on his dark, coarse countenance, the characteristics of good sense and energy, the Duke was a bitter and vindictive foe[33]—characteristics of his age, and of a nation undoubtedly prone to wreak a singular and remorseless revenge on all who offend the hereditary pride, or militate against the prejudices of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... flatter. My heart is dreadful weak, and prone to the vanities of this world. It makes me abhor myself in dust and sackcloth fer you to say such things ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... remorseful again. Abuse a man dead and gone, and one, too, who had been good to him in many ways when he, the professor, was younger than he is now, and had just quarrelled with a father who was only too prone to quarrel with anyone who gave him the chance, seems but a poor thing. The professor's quarrel with his father had been caused by the young man's refusal to accept a Government appointment—obtained with some difficulty—for the very insufficient and, as it seemed ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... versed in low jest and scurvy anecdote—could play at pushpins, and drink at every point in the game; and, strange to say, though always drinking, was never drunk. Nor, though thus accomplished, and thus prone to these accomplishments, did he ever neglect those duties which he assumed to perform. No indulgence led him away from his post, and, on the other hand, no post compelled or constrained him into gravity. He was a careless, reckless blade, indifferent alike, it would seem, to sun ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... characteristic, but if carried to an excess it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so. The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron, oil, gas, and the like, does not reproduce itself, and therefore is certain to be exhausted ultimately; and wastefulness in dealing with it to-day ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... slight waste of time, since the said flesh showed the least possible inclination of revolt. The earlier diaries contain pathetic exaggerations of the slightest indiscretion. Innocent and virtuous persons have ever been prone to such little manias of self-accusation! Later, the flesh did assert itself, though in a hardly licentious manner. Oxford fogs and damp, along with plain living and high thinking, acting upon a constitution naturally far from robust, produced ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to explain. From spiritual monism it is a short step to materialistic monism. For the monist, all is on one level of being. He may by constant effort keep that level high. But gravity will act. We are more prone to degrade God to our level, than to rise to His. The same truth can be put in abstracto. Unless the relation between God and the world be preserved as a true relation, the higher term will sooner or later fall to the level of the ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce
... his bed with a critical admission of the truth, and from any angle it appeared foolish. How had it all happened? He was not prone to be easy of heart. He had known the light, fleeting loves of boyhood, and could laugh at them; but they had been different to this. And it had come on him at a time when everything was at stake, and when his undivided thoughts and attention should have been centered on the Croix d'Or. He reviewed ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... and violent in controversy, irritating in manners, indiscreet, and lacking flexibility in the management of men. The messages which he wrote as President were dignified and judicious, and his addresses were not lacking in power, but he was prone to indulge in unseemly repartee with his hearers when speaking on the stump. He exchanged epithets with bystanders who were all too ready to spur him on with their "Give it to 'em, Andy!" and "Bully for you, Andy!" giving the presidency the "ill-savor of a corner grocery" and filling his ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... discourses, while the best of his freedmen pressed him to the choice through motives of fidelity and affection, and the worst through envy and malignity, emotions to which he was of himself sufficiently prone. Thus Agricola, as well by his own virtues as the vices of others, was urged ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... fly. Usually, however, the best sport is obtained by trailing some spinning-bait, such as an artificial or natural sand-eel, behind a boat. Sometimes, and especially for pollack, the bait must be kept near the bottom and heavy weights on the line are necessary; the coal-fish are more prone to come to the surface for feeding. The larger grey mullet (Mugil capito) is a great favourite with many anglers, as it is extremely difficult to hook, and when hooked fights strongly. Fishing for mullet is more akin to fresh-water fishing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... old but true saying, that "troubles come soon enough without meeting them half way." But I think my friend Mrs. Talbot had never chanced to hear this saying, old as it is; for she was extremely prone at all times to look only upon the dark side, and this habit was a source of much trouble to herself as well as her family. Mr. Talbot might properly have been called a well-to-do farmer. They were surrounded by an intelligent and interesting family; and a stranger, in taking a passing ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... more, and we'd have to take you over to the hospital," commented Smythe, as he looked at me, while I lay prone on my back, resting, under shelter of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... during the first half of the last century, as follows: "It may be stated as a general fact that any state of body which is conceived to be approaching, and which is expected with certain confidence and certainty of occurrence, will be very prone to ensue, as the mere result of the idea, if it do not lie beyond the bounds of possibility." This is a fair statement of the law from the stand-point of consciousness, but does not include all of the vast ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... in youth the generous and susceptible are prone to exchange their tears for smiles, as some powerful motive for the reaction may prompt, the invalid had already, and for the moment, lost sight of the painful past in the pleasurable present, so that his actual excitement was strongly ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... of hers to imply a weighty opinion by suddenly breaking off, a form of speech known to the grammarians by a name which would have astonished Mrs. Clover. Few women of her class are prone to this kind of emphasis. Her friendly manner had a quietness, a reserve in its cordiality, which suited well with the frank, pleasant features of a matron ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... 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
... an acceptable guest in many social circles. 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 ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to walk for aye, With eyes to earthward prone, O'er trampled weeds and miry clay, And sand and flinty stone; Never the glorious view to greet Of hill and dale, and sky; To see that Nature's charms are sweet, Or feel ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... in his arms, he leaped from the quaking staircase, falling awkwardly, prone beneath the burden of the other's helpless body, as ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the altar profaned, the gates burnt, and shrubs growing in the courts, as in a forest or as on one of the mountains, and the priests' chambers pulled down, they tore their garments and made great lamentation, and putting ashes upon their heads, they fell prone upon the ground. Then they blew a signal on the trumpets and cried to Heaven. And Judas appointed certain men to fight against those who were in the citadel, until he should have cleansed the sanctuary. And he chose priests who were ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... by the lad for his playmates to act attracted the notice of the king, who engaged teachers to instruct him thoroughly in the ancient literature of India and Persia. But he seems to have boldly opened a way for himself, instead of following (as modern Orientals, timid or servile, are so prone to do) the well-worn path of the old Hindoo writers. In his tragedy (which I saw acted) of Manda-thi-Nung, "The First Mother," there are passages of noble thought and true passion, expressed with a power ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... I know how prone men are, especially old men, in telling the story of their lives, to over-estimate the value and the consequence of the things in which they have taken a part. But I think I am not extravagant in claiming that the overthrow of this dangerous delusion was of great value ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... the black-fellow gave a whoop of astonishment as he topped a little ridge and came into view of the Master, lying prone upon the ground, with Finn sitting erect beside his head. One of the riders pulled out a revolver when he caught sight of Finn's ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... the simple heart still loved to dwell upon the marvellous, he was placed amid all the marvels of the sea. In the dark, out of the howl of wind and din of waves, he would hear strange shrieks piercing the air. By him would float huge forms, dim and mysterious, from which fancy was prone to build strange phantoms. Ships might come and ships might go; the sea must ever hold sway over the sailor man, a mistress ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... ways; Many a soul they have filled with woe; Up at Vassar they're prone to stays, And no girl there can have a beau; All those beautiful blooms must throw Their sweetness away where no man may dwell; Rules can be cheated, sometimes, though: I have been there,—but ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... the peccant miller displayed his broad thumbs, and looked so dolorous and apprehensive, sprawling out his large ungainly proportions, that Eleanor, though not prone to the indulgence of mirth, was mightily moved thereto by the cowardly and dismal ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... his position, every action would be scanned—not always, possibly, in a friendly spirit; that his goings out and his comings in would be watched; and that in every society, however little disposed to be censorious, there would always be found some prone, where an opening afforded, to exaggerate and even invent stories against him, and to put an uncharitable construction on the most innocent acts. He therefore, from the first, laid down strict, not to say severe rules for his guidance. He imposed ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous
... the house with swift footsteps and plunged into the adjacent wood. There under a spreading oak he flung himself prone upon the earth, and buried his face in his hands. A seething turmoil of thoughts swept his mind. The past rose before him like a panorama. All his married life rushed back upon him, and every memory was ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... a living swarm they come From the chambers beyond that misty veil; Some hover in air awhile, and some Rush prone from the sky like summer hail. All, dropping swiftly, or settling slow, Meet, and are still in the depths below; Flake after flake Dissolved in the dark and ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... handle and flung a door open there was a sudden glare of light. At the same moment she uttered a shrill scream, and retreated backward. She had caught a glimpse of some horrible thing—she hardly knew what. It was the body of the man Kirski lying prone upon the uncarpeted floor, his hands clinched. There was a dark pool of blood ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... BIPLANE.—The first power flights were made, 1903, on a converted glider fitted with 16 h.p. motor. The prone position of the pilot will be noted. By 1907 the machine had become reasonably practical with 40 h.p. motor. On this the first real flying in the world was done. In 1910 the miniature racing Wright was produced; also the type with a rear elevator in ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... He and his pilot-house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank through the ragged cavern where the hurricane deck and the boiler deck had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scalding and deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose his head: long familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all emergencies. He held his coat-lappels to his nose with one hand, to keep out the steam, and scrabbled around with ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... was inclined to imitate himself. It is, I think, that the human brain is prone to move in circles. In the case of Thackeray, as our critic points out, in later days he used his rambling style, and, as was to be expected, he rather lost himself. 'He did not merely get into a parenthesis, he never ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... and Santa Cruz, the Newport of California. At the former place there was an incident, which, although of a personal nature, we mention as illustrative of the magnanimous character of the Californian, prone to err, but ever ready to confess a wrong. We entered the office of the County Clerk and offered him a book. Without removing his feet from the counter, upon which they were elevated at an angle of forty-five degrees, he threw down a dollar and bade ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... color; her hands holding a silver triptych remained firm. The deadly bullets were in the air and might alight on the house; yet her mind was too steadfast, her soul too high, her faith too exalted for alarm; and if the Count had been prone to love her for her graces of person, now he was prompted to adore her for ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... possibilities. Could Lightmark have lied to him? Had not his sudden acquiescence in the painter's rendering of the thing implied a lack of courage—been one of those undue indolences, to which he was so prone, rather than any real testimony of his esteem? Would not a more rigorous inquiry, a little patient investigation into so curious a coincidence, have been the more seemly part, as much for his friend's sake as for Eve's, so that this haunting, intolerable doubt might have been for ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... her rooms found a fainting woman prone upon the floor, and to her credit be it written, she tended the Duchess gently. When her Highness recovered from her swoon she requested Madame de Ruth to lead her ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... ungodliness; and that the latter has also a tendency to produce the former, since the habitual disregard of God in the practical conduct of life indicates a state of mind in which men are peculiarly exposed to the seductions of infidelity and prone to yield to them, especially in seasons of revolutionary excitement or of prevailing epidemic unbelief. It would be wrong to rank every ungodly man among professed or even conscious Atheists, for he may never have denied or even doubted the existence and government of God; yet it were equally ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... the monarch who sacrificed his life to save his people from subjection and the monarch who, after leading his army in two victorious campaigns and doubling the extent of his country, did not hesitate to sacrifice his crown to save his people from disaster. Henceforth, even in minds not prone to superstition, the two events were linked by the same date, the mourning for the one rekindled the memory of the other, and King Constantine acquired a new and imperishable title to the gratitude of the nation. If all ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... the Old Country; there, too, I incidentally gathered, he had himself been born, though it was a circumstance he seemed prone to forget. Whether he had run away, or his father had turned him out, I never fathomed; but about the age of twelve he was thrown upon his own resources. A travelling tin-type photographer picked him up, like a haw out of a hedgerow, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... example is France; to which we constantly return for illustration. France, with its keen intellect, saw the truth and saw the falsity, in those Protestant times; and, with its ardor of generous impulse, was prone enough to adopt the former. France was within a hair's-breadth of becoming actually Protestant. But France saw good to massacre Protestantism, and end it in the night of St. Bartholomew, 1572. The celestial Apparitor of Heaven's Chancery, so we may speak, the Genius of Fact ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... of the vast building were a multitude of half-clothed dusky forms, prone. Between them and the altar were more than an hundred horses, caparisoned with silver and carved leather, and gay anquera. They stood as if petrified. On them, huddled to the arching necks, in an attitude of prostrate devotion, were magnificent bunches ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... seemed to court martyrdom. They practised on our forbearance to the last degree; for they knew our extreme unwillingness to deal harshly with any of their sex. Personally, I rated the value of spies and informers very low, and my experience had made me much more prone to contempt than to fear of them. But examples had to be made occasionally; a few men were punished, a few women who belonged in the South were sent through the lines, and we reduced to its lowest practical terms ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... by maddened bulls, with blazing eyes and foaming nostrils, drove onward toward the south, like an unchained hurricane. Some of the terrified beasts ran against the trees, crushing horns and skull, and fell prone upon the plain to be trampled to jelly by the hundreds of thousands in rear. The tree upon which the girl had taken refuge received many a shock from a crazed bull; and it seemed to Annette from her perch in the branches, as if all the face of the plains was being hurled toward ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... sage, while, slyly stealing, The nymphs their fetters around him cast, And,—their laughing eyes, the while, concealing,— Led Freedom's Bard their slave at last. For the Poet's heart, still prone to loving, Was like that rack of the Druid race,[1] Which the gentlest touch at once set moving, But all earth's power ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Florence again for some weeks; meanwhile, Lumley Ferrers made his debut in parliament. Rigidly adhering to his plan of acting on a deliberate system, and not prone to overrate himself, Mr. Ferrers did not, like most promising new members, try the hazardous ordeal of a great first speech. Though bold, fluent, and ready, he was not eloquent; and he knew that on great ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to his hot passionate disposition and his quickness to take offence, and making mention of the change that had taken place in him since the days of his early friendship with Hippel—he was become hypochondriacal, dissatisfied with himself, ready to kick against destiny, and prone to assume a defiant attitude towards her and to blame her and call her to account for her treatment of him; then again he was melancholy and sad and sentimental, using in his letters expressions built up after Jean Paul's style, and indulging in gushing protestations of unalterable friendship. But ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Granville and its unpleasant associations. She did not attempt to analyze the feeling. Strange lands, and most of all the West, held alluring promise. She sat in her rocker, and could not help but dream of places where people were a little broader gauge, a little less prone to narrow, conventional judgments. Other people had done as she proposed doing—cut loose from their established environment, and made a fresh start in countries where none knew or cared whence they came or who they were. Why not she? One thing was certain: Granville, for all she had been born there, ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... only four times, and the liberty of the sestet tempers its despotism,—which I thought a pretty phrase. He pointed out the dangers inherent in a restricted rhyme, and cited the case of Browning, the great rhymster, who was prone to resort to any rhyme, and frequently ended in absurdity, finding it easier to make a new verse than to ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... discouragement. Especially is this true if the class is large and the teacher attempts to have all the class pasting at one time. In many phases of school work it is so much easier to control forty or fifty children if they all act in unison that we are prone to use the method too often and apply it to forms of work much better managed by groups. The process of teaching little folks to paste is greatly simplified by the use of the ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... that we are so slow to learn that no one can safely live without companionship and affection, that the individual who tries the hazardous experiment of going without at least one of them is prone to be swamped by a black mood from within. It is as if we had to build little islands of affection in the vast sea of impersonal forces lest we be overwhelmed by them. Yet we know that in every large city there are hundreds of men whose business it is to discover ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... spent, a class which had done so much towards shattering my faith and lowering my estimate of her sex. Lavedan had married her and brought her into Languedoc, and here she spent her years lamenting the scenes of her youth, and prone, it would seem, to make them matter for conversation whenever a newcomer chanced to present ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... men, being prone into novelties—the realm of England would not only enter into their accustomed divisions, but also would owe or do small devotion unto the church: wherefore his Holiness was right well content and ready to adhibit all remedy ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... be very cheap For the chap Who is rich, to pay a heap For a nap On a sofa that is prone To a prominence of bone, Or a table ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... the more he measured with his eye the distance to the house the more convinced he became that it was beyond his power to accomplish. It would be ignominious, indeed, to have to give in half-way, and be discovered by his tormentor sitting prone upon the ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... resisted. And Sissy, with an old-fashioned nod of advice, motioned her aunt to let things be. She curled herself up on a corner of the bed, and—it being quite safe, no other Madigan being present but this unnatural one lying prone, half conscious, half dazed—she put her other hand over the one that held hers, and sat there ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... tell What street they sail'd from, by their sight and smell. They, as each torrent drives with rapid force, From Smithfield to St. Pulchre's shape their course, And in huge confluence join'd at Snowhill ridge, Fall from the conduit prone to Holborn bridge.[7] Sweeping from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drown'd puppies, stinking sprats, all drench'd in mud, Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... bent which in man is displayed by the sticking of straws in the hair. "Phyllomania" is the recognised term for this waywardness. One of the trees of this locality, the raroo (CAREYA AUSTRALIS), seems singularly prone to the infirmity, for without apparent cause it abandons habitual ways and clothes its trunk and branches with huge rosettes of small, slight, and ineffective leaves, evidence, probably, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... I had never given the subject of ways and means an instant's consideration, having remitted the matter to Providence with that implicit trust and cheerful hopefulness to which most enraptured swains are prone. I had only thought of loving Min and being loved by her:— engagement naturally following between us; and, that, was all I ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... exclaimed, "why was I ever an apostle? O Buddha! Buddha! how hard are the paths of saintliness! How prone to error are the well-meaning! How huge is the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... wi' pickled rod, Wad gie' ye mony a lash an' prod, But aye ye went the rantin' road, An prone tae err, You sair misca'd douce men o' ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... dinner and endeavoring not to spoil it. The boys were too hungry and too glad to eat to allow any interruption to interfere with their pleasure, but the girls were prone to whisper, and even to listen when a voice ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose
... hung loose suddenly jerked through his fingers and the mare fell crashing to her knees. She was down before he knew it, head forward, and then with a quivering subsidence, prone in a tangle of torn harness. He urged her up with a jerked rein, she made a struggling effort, but fell back, and a groan, singularly human in its pain, burst from her. The wagon behind pounded almost on them, the mules crowding against each other. Daddy John's ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... to the puzzle is to be found in the rightful understanding of the Fish-Fisher symbolism. Students of the Grail literature have been too prone to treat the question on the Christian basis alone, oblivious of the fact that Christianity did no more than take over, and adapt to its own use, a symbolism already endowed with a ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... element; for he had yet to see the girl who could disturb the normal serenity of his mind or fill his dreams with visions beautiful. Also, there was one thing about these girls that did not please him; they were prone to regard him as a sweet, amusing little boy whose dimples they might kiss with perfect composure (though of course they never did). They seemed to be forever taking the "Isn't he cunning!" attitude, and refused to regard him seriously, ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... only, although it is probable that many animals find substitutes for laughter. The proneness of man to laughter is modified by age, sex, training, mental state, health, and by many other factors. Healthy, happy children are especially prone to laughter, while disease, strong emotions, fatigue, and age diminish laughter. Women laugh more than do men. The healthy, happy maturing young woman perhaps laughs most, especially when she is slightly embarrassed. What causes laughter? Good news, high spirits, ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... way home from Sunday-school that Aladdin had enticed Margaret to the forbidden river. She was not sure that he knew how to row, for he was prone to exaggerate his prowess at this and that, and she went because of the fine defiance of it, and because Aladdin exercised an irresistible fascination. He it was who could whistle the most engagingly through his front teeth; and he it was, when sad dogs of boys of the world were met ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... travelled down into Kent. This time they were received by Lily, now a pretty, pale, half-developed girl of fifteen. In a few minutes her sister entered. Bella was charming; nervousness made her words few, and it could be seen that she was naturally thoughtful, earnest, prone to reverie; her beauty had still to ripen, and gave much promise for the years between twenty and thirty. Last of all appeared Mrs. Jacox, who blushed as she shook hands with Earwaker, and for a time was ill at ease; but ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... finding! Allow me to explain! I had reached a point in our discussion, where I was about to remark, that since Adam's time, the people of the world have been born, heirs to the dominancy of total depravity. With this heritage, we are as prone to sin, as are the sparks to fly upward. Under such circumstances, it would surely be the height of folly, to attempt to overcome this natural tendency toward evil, without the aid of the strong arm of the church, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... up by sunbeams from above. Here is Lord Byron connecting, in the portrait of some poor melodramatic hero possibly, some noble quality of courage or perseverance with scorn the most puerile and senseless. Prone enough is poor degraded human nature to find something grand in scorn; but, after this arbitrary combination of Lord Byron's, never again does the poor man think of scorn but it suggests to him moral greatness, nor think of greatness but it suggests ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... somewhere—and pulled the trigger. The smoke of the discharge obscured my view for a second or two, but a wild shout of triumph from those in the next room told me that my shot had been successful; and then, as the smoke drifted away, I saw the fellow lying prone on the ground, with his men standing staring at him, as though fascinated, yet seemingly afraid to approach and attempt to raise him. As I stood, still peering through the loophole at the scene, my empty piece was gently withdrawn from my hand by some ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... brought to bear upon the senses, they too often leave impressions which, by a law of our sinful nature, are capable of reciprocating so as to produce their corresponding effects. Hence humanity, unless upheld and strengthened by a superior power, is too often insufficient and prone ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... frequently guilty of abominable treachery, with the difference that the Christian Teuton betrayed his enemy only, which was counted unto him for righteousness, whereas the Slav was inclined to sell his own cause, only to be "let down" by the Teuton in the end. The Slavs were also prone to fight among themselves in their spare time; there has been no marked improvement on either side for the last ten centuries or so; however, the history of other nations and races tends to prove that neither Slav nor Teuton ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... Country yonder is an unchangeable necessity of your life and position: such miseries as this were begun and carried on in pure thoughtlessness, and a hundredth part of the energy that was spent in creating them would get rid of them: I do think if we were not all of us too prone to acquiesce in the base byword 'after me the deluge,' it would soon be something more than an idle dream to hope that your pleasant midland hills and fields might begin to become pleasant again in some way or other, even without depopulating them; or that those once lovely ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... men, Helicon. Here he stopped, and, parched with thirst, resolved to allay it in this limpid stream. Thrice with profane hands he essayed to raise the water to his lips, and thrice it slipped all through his fingers. Then he stopped prone on his breast, but, ere his mouth had kissed the liquid crystal, Apollo came, and in the channel held his shield betwixt the Modern and the fountain, so that he drew up nothing but mud. For, although no fountain on earth can compare with the clearness of Helicon, yet there lies at bottom ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... "The White Cockade" through the country. "King James was beaten, and all his well-wishers; my grief, my boy that went with them!" But I don't think the people had ever much opinion of the Stuarts; but in those days they were all prone to versify. But the famine did away with all that.' And then he also was scornful, and said: 'Sure King James ran all the way from the Boyne to Dublin, after the battle. There was a lady walking in the street at Dublin when he got there; and he told her the battle was lost; and she said: ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... lead. It seemed to the wearied engineer that there was nothing in this world to be desired but a good sound sleep; he fought against it desperately, but after a long struggle he suddenly succumbed; his head dropped, and he lay prone in the grass, apparently as lifeless, as the unfortunate a ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... incense The man by nature prone to insolence: Injurious minds just answers but provoke"— Then turning to Antinous, thus he spoke: "Thanks to thy care! whose absolute command Thus drives the stranger from our court and land. Heaven bless its owner with a better mind! From envy free, to ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... this front. We and other donor countries have begun to assist poor countries develop long-term strategies to improve their food production. The World Bank will invest up to $4 billion in the next few years in improving the grain storage and food-handling capacity of countries prone to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... bayonet exercises, and suffer myself to be persuaded into quaffing a mug of delicious, creamy stout at the canteen with a genial old sergeant, a bronzed veteran who has seen active service in several of the tough expeditions that England seems ever prone to undertake in various uncivilized quarters of the world; after which I wheel away over old Roman military roads, through Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire, reaching Fenny Stratford just in time to find shelter against the machinations of the "weather-clerk", ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... mentions 'his zeale and honourable care of those that love good letters,' and states that 'divers, who are nowe famous men, had bin through povertie longe since discouraged from their studies if they had not founde your honour so prone to bee their patron.' Little is known respecting Leicester's library, which must have been a large and fine one, for many handsomely bound volumes which once belonged to it are found both in public and private ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... serious quarrel they are prone to decide it with the stiletto, or, if they belong to the class which subscribes to the code, they meet on the field of honor with rapiers or pistols; Anglo-Saxons are accustomed to settle their disputes in a court of law or with their fists; but when Dyaks become ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... personalities, or troublesome intrusions. Under no circumstances whatever should it be used merely for amusement's sake, to produce an effect, or in order to show off one's own wit. It must never be employed by a gentleman against a lady, though ladies are prone to indulge in the use of this wordy weapon. Their acknowledged position should, in the eyes of a true gentleman, shield them from all shafts of satire. If they, on the other hand, choose to indulge in satire, it is the part of a gentleman to remonstrate gently, and if the invective ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... at the annual commencement, and had the happiness of seeing their beloved Edward receive his diploma as bachelor of arts; after hearing him deliver, with great applause, an oration on the beauties of the American character. College youths are very prone to treat on subjects that imply great experience of the world. But Edward Morland was full of kind feeling for everything and everybody; and his views of life had hitherto been tinted ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... "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 ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various |
