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Wont to   /woʊnt tu/   Listen
Wont to

adjective
1.
In the habit.  Synonym: used to.  "You'll get used to the idea" , "...was wont to complain that this is a cold world"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wont to" Quotes from Famous Books



... their toil. A valentine or two and the portrait of a gamekeeper and his dog hung beside the carding machine; for Sally Groves had retired and a younger woman was in her place. She, too, fed the Card by hand, but not so perfectly as Sally was wont to do. ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various

... it was formerly a matter of freedom to use either one or both forms in the Eucharist, nevertheless, when the heresy arose which taught that both forms were necessary, the Holy Church, which is directed by the Holy Ghost, forbade both forms to laymen. For thus the Church is sometimes wont to extinguish heresies by contrary institutions; as when some arose who maintained that the Eucharist is properly celebrated only when unleavened bread is used, the Church for a while commanded that it be administered ...
— The Confutatio Pontificia • Anonymous

... Hippodrome with Flossie Walker, the little clerk, who lived in his boarding-house and never had any fun to speak of. Saturday night, supper with—well, with Miss Poppy Grace of the Jubilee Variety Theatre. He had a sudden vision of Poppy as he was wont to meet her in delightful intimacy, instantaneously followed by her image that flaunted on the posters out there in the Strand, Poppy as she appeared behind the foot-lights, in red silk skirts and black silk stockings, skimming, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... Barras delivers her to the coming man. They are wedded, and from that date the stage widens, the wars in Italy break out, and the young general begins to whirl his sword at Mantua, Arcole, and Rivoli—from which he was wont to date his military birth, saying on that occasion, "Make my life begin at Rivoli;" and finally at Montebello and Venice, where, in the late spring of 1797, he is joined by Josephine. There from the French capital they seemed to stand ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... 1869 was never quite strong. Spite of this, with the exception of brief holidays, he performed all his duties till Sept. 28, 1870, when, at his family tea-table as he stood to say grace;—it was his wont to say grace before meat and to stand in doing so,—he was stricken, had to sit, then be helped to his bed. He never rose, though languishing a number of days. He died at nine in the morning, Oct. 12, 1870. Ave, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... Urania was smiling at her sweetly, more sweetly than it was her wont to smile at ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... deception. I am acquainted with so much of thy movements as to render it impossible that thou should'st lead me far astray. Thou art not wont to visit thy cousin; but as thou entered the canals ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... was wont to say that he distrusted the trail recommended by Gomez from the moment his ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall

... place, because of their ignorance of Castilian. All that redounds to the hurt of the honest administration of the towns, and even the prestige of the government, since the said directorcillos are wont to ascribe to the superior orders their own ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... so admirably controlled itself, was again thrown into commotion. "There was nothing to do," was said on all sides, "but to ransack every nook and corner. Remarkable instances of such disappearances of brides had been known. Evil spirits were wont to lurk about such nights and to inflict mankind with all sorts of sorceries." Strange as this explanation may seem, there were many who believed it at this very moment, and, most of all, Selde Klattaner herself. But it was only for a moment, for she ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... that some such motives influenced Gaston de Nueil at unawares, or perhaps it was curiosity, or a craving for some interest in his life, or, in a word, that crowd of inexplicable impulses which, for want of a better name, we are wont to call "fatality," that drew him to ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... looked so cheerful, so "good"—a word she had often used, and he had smiled at—meaning those times when, beneath her influence, the bitterness melted from him. Such times there were—else she could never have learned to love him as she did. Then, as now, his eyes were wont to lighten, and his lips to smile, and there came an almost angelic beauty ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... its officers and itself. Still it held its ground until it had burned almost twenty rounds, and until the Confederate line was within fifty yards in its face, and had quite outflanked it. Then the raking volleys of such a front as Jackson was wont to present, and, more than all, the fire of Buschbeck's brigade in its immediate rear, broke it; and it melted away, leaving only a platoon's strength around the colors, to continue for a brief space the struggle behind the Buschbeck line, ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... middle shelf lay some ten thousand francs in gold, methodically arranged in little piles. Gavard, who had prudently deposited the bulk of his fortune in the hands of a notary, had kept this sum by him for the purposes of the coming outbreak. He had been wont to say with great solemnity that his contribution to the revolution was quite ready. The fact was that he had sold out certain stock, and every night took an intense delight in contemplating those ten thousand ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... and Addison. At Don Saltero's, by the river at Chelsea, Mr. Salter exhibited his collection of curiosities and delighted himself, and no one else, by playing the fiddle. At the "Smyrna" Prior and Swift were wont to receive their acquaintances. From the "St. James's," the last house but one on the south-west corner of St. James's Street, the Tatler dated its foreign and domestic news, and conferred fame on its waiter, Mr. Kidney, "who has long conversed with ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... While on some points we hold Robinson to have been altogether wrong; on others—and these not trivial, but important points—we hold that he is nearly as much in advance of the present age as he was of his own, because he adheres more closely than even religious men are ordinarily wont to do, to the spirit and genius of those older Scriptures which have yet to liberate a world from all but ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... a smile, that he had proved his horse and his weapons with the heir of Scotland, as cavaliers are wont to do with each other when they meet in the desert; and modestly added that, though the combat was not entirely decisive, he had not, on his part, much reason to pride himself on the event. The Scot, on the other hand, disclaimed the attributed superiority, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... freedom with which he once roved the steppes, lance in hand, on his shaggy little steed; and the Kalmuck also when he thinks of his hut half buried in the sands on the shore of the Caspian, whence he was wont to sally forth with his falcon on his fist, and letting it fly at the heron, followed himself almost as swiftly ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie

... landed in Ireland quite cast down. For when ever he came back into Whitehaven the Morholt had been wont to take joy in the sight of his clan upon the shore, of the Queen his sister, and of his niece Iseult the Fair. Tenderly had they cherished him of old, and had he taken some wound, they healed him, for they were ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier

... to the realm of statesmanship, but in the sanctum of his own home he would often pour forth his disgust with, and his fear of, such methods, to the tall, clear-eyed, clear-brained and beautiful woman from whom John and Frank Earl were wont to seek advice in their perplexities. And from her he always received valuable suggestions, a keener insight into the motives of men, a broader, more humane view-point, and withal a firmness to set himself, in part, where the law of ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... not, I tell you, William," cried the headstrong youth, squaring his shoulders as he was wont to do before a fight. "I tell you that you and I are no traitors to our name, and who meddles with our coz, Will of Thrieve, hath ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... how Brenton really would be taking it," he said, rather more insistently than it was his wont to speak. "The poor beggar has had bad times lately with his Ego; always has had, in fact. He has an enormous conscience, linked with an insatiate desire to put the whole universe under a blowpipe, and then weigh up the residue. ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... of ancient Greece in Phocis, at the foot of Parnassus, where Apollo had a temple, and whence he was wont to issue his oracles by the mouth of his priestess the Pythia, who when receiving the oracle used to sit on a tripod over an opening in the ground through which an intoxicating vapour exhaled, deemed the breath of the god, and that proved the vehicle of her inspiration; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... come off Jimmy's boots. In a drawer of the table she found his pen and a scrap of blotting paper he had used, and thrust them hurriedly into her dress. Then, during a final look round, she kissed in turn each article of furniture he had been wont to use, heedless of the tears that were dropping on them, coming last of all to his own chair, where she knelt down and buried her face in the seat. She was still there when she heard his step on the stairs; but she jumped up hastily ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... I finish my sentence, Mother, before you correct me," and the girl climbed on the railing of the front porch where the ladies of the Bucknor family were wont to spend the summer mornings. Clinging to one of the great fluted columns she tiptoed, trying to peer through the cloud of limestone dust that enveloped ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... there ony more. That ye wyll declare ageyn hym openly. Nay in dede they sayd we kepe none in store / we haue sayd Inough to punysshe hym fore If ye in this mater be not parcyall Remembre your name was wont to ...
— The Assemble of Goddes • Anonymous

... occasioned by the fear that the time might never come when I could tell you that I love you, you would pardon such a hasty declaration of my feelings toward you. You were but a child when first we met," he continued, placing his hand upon her head as he had then been wont to do, "but how closely your young being had woven itself with mine my subsequent weary life will prove. Were you ever sundered from the object you had learned to prize most on earth, Jennie?" said he, as the drooping lashes were lifted, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... lucrative office of paymaster of the forces, which he had used during the last six years as a means of amassing a great fortune. As paymaster he had large sums of public money in his hands to meet calls at fixed periods. Holders of the office were wont to employ such sums for their own benefit. Pitt would not do so, and left the office a poor man. Fox had no such scruples. During the war the government often obtained ready money by issuing bills at 20 per cent discount. Fox bought these bills with the public ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... of your youth, and you remain true to her gage, there is none among all the youths of the court whom I would so gladly see at her feet. Remember," she said, as Walter was about to speak, "her hand will not be at my disposal, but at that of the king. His majesty is wont to bestow the hands of his wards upon those who most distinguish themselves in the field. You have already attracted his royal attention and commendation. Under Sir Walter Manny you will be sure of opportunities of distinguishing yourself, and the king may well be glad some day at once ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty

... complain as much of the frequency of my letters now, as you were wont to do of their rarity. I think this is the fourth within as many moons. I feel anxious to hear from you, even more than usual, because your last indicated that you were unwell. At present, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The Carnival—that is, the latter part ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... then undoubtedly become, the first power in the world, it would none the less be a figure for the "time of scorn to point his slow unmoving finger at." To the eulogists of Alexander the Great, Seneca was wont to say, "Yes, but he murdered Callisthenes," and to the eulogists of victorious Germany, if indeed it shall prove victorious, the wise and just of all future ages will say, ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... any less than fun, and to one of them it was much more. Gyda, whose little black eyes watched them all keenly, found it a pleasant sight; for the smile on her old lips was as sweet as May. Though indeed Gyda's smile was quite wont to be that. She sat where Rollo placed her and suffered him to attend to her wants; but she said never a word ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... I am much indebted to it in more ways than one. But I am afraid I have followed the way of the world, which is very much wont to neglect original friends and benefactors. I frequently find myself, at present, turning up my nose at Irish when I hear it in the street; yet I have still a kind of regard for it, the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... old friends. Eventually he dined at a restaurant and betook himself to the station to catch the night train to Calais. It was all one to Jake whether he travelled by night or by day, so wholly accustomed was he to adapt himself to circumstances. Maud was wont to say with a smile that the luxuries of decent living were utterly thrown away upon him. He was a man who scarcely noticed physical discomfort. He could ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... existence as a nation, and cost not a penny extra, for which reason the control of the fleet must always remain unconditionally in the hands of the responsible government of the United Kingdom.[4] Sir Charles, too, was wont to stress the strategic importance of the Canadian Pacific Railway as Canada's contribution to the defence of the Empire. His arguments had much force, but they were obviously the product of a time of transition, {149} uneasy answers to the promptings ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton

... which Andrea compelled us to put forth, we did not again come up with Mesdemoiselles de Canaples, who in truth must have travelled with greater speed than ladies are wont to. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini

... go on; there was no other way, at least none that an animal of his calibre could think of. At the close of each day's diary, the same dismal silence followed. When at last he finished his tale and sprung the indelicate surprise which is wont to fetch a crash of laughter, not a ripple of sound resulted. It was as if the tale had been told to dead men. After what seemed a long, long time, somebody sighed, somebody else stirred in his seat; presently, the men ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... began. The cards were dealt, and the betting went on. The padre forgot breviary and beads in his excitement, and as his little pointings were swept away, he forgot, too, the sacred ejaculations he was wont to lard his discourse with, and he became positively profane. The captain won largely in the beginning, and jeered his compadre with great zest and enjoyment; but that one-eyed, rapacious old Spanish rascal was not in the least disturbed, and bided his time. ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... Mr. Gladstone was wont to amuse himself with speculations as to the future dimensions of London; what had been its growth within his memory; what causes might arise to cheek its increase. After listening to his remarks on the subject one day at dinner, I observed ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... unfolding to us any of the deep persistent longings of his spirit; he is telling us of a thought that shadowed his soul for an hour. Let us look into this mood of his. It is not his in any unique or even peculiar sense. In moods, as in manners, history is wont to repeat itself. The writer of this poem has voiced one of the great common experiences of humanity. But let us be quite clear as to what that experience really is. Let us not be misled by the music and the seeming unworldliness ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... of wandering beggars, or "old stragglers," as we were wont to call them, was an event of no ordinary interest in the generally monotonous quietude of our farm-life. Many of them were well known; they had their periodical revolutions and transits; we could calculate ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... oftener than usual: gone to the house of the spoiler. Nor did she come home, as she had been wont to do, with radiant eyes, and a soft, sweet smile coming and going, and many a pleasant piece of news to tell off on her nimble fingers. She returned with tear-stained eyelids and a downcast air, and was often altogether silent as to the result of the ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... sheath, and set to work therewith, and of a sooth, had not God Himself so willed it both had died there; so mighty were their strokes that by right no man should escape alive. Had it been midnight, and dark as night is wont to be, yet had ye seen the grass and the flowers by the light of the sparks that flew so thick from helmet and sword and fell upon the earth. The smith that wrought their weapons I say he wrought them not amiss, he merited a ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston

... say your litany over again,' she sneered; 'I will sit me down and listen.' And in her chair at the table, with her face averted, she dug with little stabs into the covering rug the stiletto with which she was wont to mend her pens. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford

... Goz et-Hannn ("Moaning Sand-heap"). They declare that when the Hajj-caravan passes, or rather used to pass, by that way, before the early sixteenth century, when Sultn Selim laid out his maritime high-road, a Naubah ("orchestra") was wont to sound within its bowels. This tale, which, by-the-by, is told of two other places in Midian, may have been suggested by the Jebel el-Nks ("Bell Mountain") in Sinai-land; but as the Arabs perform visitation and sacrifice to the "Moaning-heap," the superstition probably dates ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... the bitter sorrow of never more seeing the bonny wife he had left behind him, for a fever had carried her off in her prime; so that Jeanie, her bairn, was left to the sole care of her grandfather, who loved her tenderly, as the old are wont to love the young. ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... The pupils were to be taught Fencing, so that they might be excellent swordsmen, with "exact use of their weapon, to guard, and to strike safely with edge or point." They were also to be "practised in all the locks and gripes of Wrestling, wherein Englishmen were wont to excel, as need may often be in fight to tug or grapple, and to close." So much for their gymnastics individually. But the main thing was to be their military drill collectively. There was to be no mistake ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... seemed to be troubling Miss Roberta. At intervals she had found comfort in these denizens of the outer world, and, free from the stern eye of Sister Ginevra, had been wont to chat with one and another. They never stayed long enough for her to know them well, and now this lady—the fifth within two years—had refused to ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... the stimulus of the bracing early morning air. A new inspiration seemed to fire him, altogether dissimilar to the glow which he was wont to feel when plunging into a dangerous phase of a professional case. He slowly drew from his pocket the typed note-paper which had nestled in such enviable intimacy with that courageous heart. The faint fragrance of her exquisite flesh clung ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... her the best bits of myrtle for the wreath she was twisting. But when she saw me, she straightway laid the wreath beside her on the bench, folded her little hands, and said the morning prayer, as she was ever wont to do, which humility pleased the young lord right well, and he begged her that in future she would ever do the like with him, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... sick of my own; I have had a glut of that all these weary eight months; tell me about them all! How are they all? how are the boys?" (with a playful smile of recollection at what used to be my one subject, the one theme on which I was wont to wax illimitably diffuse). But now, at the magic name no pleasant garrulity overcomes me; only the remembrance of my worries; of all those troubles that I mean now to transfer from my own to Roger's broad shoulders, swoop down ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... of humour originated in the market-place, where professed wags of a low class were wont to congregate, and amuse themselves by chaffing and insulting passers-by. Such men are mentioned centuries afterwards by St. Paul as "lewd fellows of the baser sort,"—an expression which would be more properly rendered "men of the market-place." ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... possessed by that particular mania, and his reputation gained by it. His rhyming jests, his quatrains, couplets, acrostics, epigrams, and songs, which were sometimes rather risky, though they had a certain coarsely witty quality, were often quoted. He was wont to sing the mysteries of digestion: the Muse of the Loire districts is fain to blow her trumpet like ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... with the commander," that he demanded the rights of a British citizen, and wished to settle in a country house far from the sea, where he would submit to the surveillance of a commissioner over his actions and correspondence. St. Helena would kill him in three months, for he was wont to ride twenty leagues a day; he preferred death to St. Helena. Maitland's conduct had been a deliberate snare. To deprive him (Napoleon) of his liberty would be an eternal disgrace to England; for in coming ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... said, "My mind, that was wont to be so clear, is darkened. Pray to your God, you who are of His people that He may send light upon it, so that I can think once more while there is yet time. Now we wander in the forest of despair, but never yet was there a forest so thick that it cannot be passed. Pray then that I may ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard

... Th' advantage, and, descending, tread us down Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf? Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!" They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. Nor did they not perceive the evil plight In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel; Yet to their General's voice they soon obeyed Innumerable. ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... show. I look Into the green light shed By leaves above my head, And feel its inmost worth forsook My being, when she died. This heart, now hot and dried, Halts, as the parched course where a brook Mid flowers was wont to flow, Because her life is now No more than ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner

... first time in many long years, John McIntyre took into his hands the Word of God—the Book he had been wont to read every evening, so long ago, in the light of his happy ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith

... two or three had appeared from behind the rocks of the hills, and the heart of Wee Willie Winkie sank within him, for just in this manner were the Goblins wont to steal out and vex Curdie's soul. Thus had they played in Curdie's garden—he had seen the picture—and thus had they frightened the Princess's nurse. He heard them talking to each other, and recognised with joy the bastard Pushto that he had picked up from one of his father's ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling

... more impatient of your absence than he was after your first departure. He is sensible, I believe, that our solitary meals want the light which your gay humour was wont to throw over them, and feels melancholy as men do when the light of the sun is no longer upon the landscape. If it is thus with him, thou mayst imagine it is much more so with me, and canst conceive how heartily I wish that thy frolic were ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... wiselier go, went. To Wanless that had been a week of strain; the air was charged with trouble. One could not have pointed to anything—it was beyond the range of weathercock or glass; but everybody felt it. Sanchia, graver than she was wont to be, pushed herself sharply from duty to duty, and avoided sympathy by a dry manner. Or she was obtuse, affecting a foolish interest in trivialities. She never went into the garden, and saw nothing of young Glyde. Mrs. Benson, glooming thunder from her brows, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett

... up with the reigns of mythical personages, and at the end of these 691,000 years, the deluge renewed the face of the earth. The Egyptians, also, were liberal with millions of years, and in the face of the brief and limited chronology of the Greeks (another kind of imagination) were wont to exclaim, "You, O Greeks, you are only children!" But the Hindoos have done better than all that. They have invented enormous units to serve as basis and content for their numerical fancies: the Koti, equivalent to ten millions; the Kalpa (or ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... thing was your surname of More, which comes so near the word Moriae (folly) as you are far from the thing. And that you are so, all the world will clear you. In the next place, I conceived this exercise of wit would not be least approved by you; inasmuch as you are wont to be delighted with such kind of mirth, that is to say, neither unlearned, if I am not mistaken, nor altogether insipid, and in the whole course of your life have played the part of a Democritus. And though such is the excellence ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... sweet girl friends had ever thus challenged Mr. Browning. They had been wont to cluster over him with a joyous awe that deepened proportionally with their misunderstanding. Molly paused to consider this novelty of view about the soldier. "He was a Frenchman, you know," she said, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... their so insolently boasting of their victory, and as to their being astonished that they had so long committed their outrages with impunity, [both these things] tended to the same point; for the immortal gods are wont to allow those persons whom they wish to punish for their guilt sometimes a greater prosperity and longer impunity, in order that they may suffer the more severely from a reverse of circumstances. Although these things are so, yet, if hostages were to be given him by them in order that he may be ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar

... "my poor brother Will and I were wont to play there when we herded the cattle on the hill. It was climbing yon ash tree that stands out above that he got the fall that was the death of him at last. I've never gone nigh the place with mine own good will since that day—nor knew the children had ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... joke perpetrated by Madaline, in her suspicion of a possible goat farm being tucked away in the mountains, thence Maid Mary and the pompous Reda were wont to lug the roots; at the same time she felt unequal to a better guess at the puzzle, for it was now conspicuously clear that roots, all kinds of roots, were being gathered continuously by the little girl and her ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... things, so far, had all turned out as he expected. His voice was loudest, and his oratory more decidedly effective than ever. The prospect before him was also of so seductive a character, that he yielded more than was his wont to the influences of the bottle-god: who stood little iron-hooped keg, perched upon a shelf ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... Multitude of Accidents relating to the humane Body, which will scarcely be clearly & satisfactorily made out by them that confine themselves to deduce things from Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, and the other Notions peculiar to the Chymists, without taking much more Notice than they are wont to do, of the Motions and Figures, of the small Parts of Matter, and the other more Catholick and Fruitful affections of Bodies. Wherefore it will not perhaps be now unseasonable to let our Carneades warne Men, not to subscribe to the grand Doctrine of the Chymists touching their three Hypostatical ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... for the feasting which went on during father's birthday, nurse was wont to see that all the useful unpleasant nursery bottles were well filled. She sent them to the chemist a week before, and when they were returned, put them ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... Protestants, with a single exception, while fifteen hundred persons were dying in the city of the cholera. The active piety of the church seemed to be quickened by their trials; and thirty, out of one hundred and one members, were wont to go out two by two, by appointment, to spend Sabbath evenings in religious conversation at different houses. The result was that their place of worship became over-crowded, and a new building was prepared ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... fragrant spring morning following the discovery of the execrated Voltaire, the little Jose, tightly clutching his father's hand, threaded the narrow Sierpes and crossed the Prado de San Sebastian, once the Quemador, where the Holy Inquisition was wont to purge heresy from human souls with fire. The father shuddered, and his stern face grew dark, as he thought of the revolting scenes once enacted in that place in the name of Christ; and he inwardly voiced a prayer of gratitude that the Holy Office had ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... clouded its most intellectual expression. Disease and death were stamped upon the grandsire and the boy as they sat side by side with averted eyes, each as if in the bitterness of his own heart refusing to comfort or be comforted. The two who had been wont to regard each other so fondly and so proudly, now seemed averse to hold communion together, while their appearance and style of dress, the black cap of the one and the black bandages of the other, denoted a sympathy in suffering if in nothing ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... and sawing and planing of woods, the sowing and reaping and distribution of foods. They make a priestcraft and a ritual of artful language, and are ignorant of their own heresy. But since they deal in words, they have a fearful advantage and use it for their own glorification, as priests are wont to do. ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes

... since. Lest you should be unwilling, or perhaps fearful for my health, I would say that the Prof. has kindly offered me his horse to use every morning or as much as I please. A ride on horseback is exceeding good exercise. Especially when a horse is as hard to ride as the Prof's is wont to be. Do you recollect a sorrel steed you sold to Mr. Dan Stowell? Prof's horse's movements are just about as convenient as that one's were. My objection to boarding at a public boarding house, is, that no regard is paid to the rules of politeness ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... toiling through the lanes after Willie and his papa. The lanes were muddy, they had gone a long way, and she was very tired. She had made up her mind that the mushrooms were toadstools. It is true that they had come from a meadow in the neighbourhood where excellent mushrooms were wont to grow, but all the same, she was fully persuaded that these particular ones were toadstools, "just such as my poor sister's little boy nearly ...
— What the Blackbird said - A story in four chirps • Mrs. Frederick Locker

... for cover nevertheless. And Dave had acquiesced in that policy. He had little stomach for it, but no other course seemed possible. Conward, he knew, had no scruples. Bert Morrison had been caught in his snare, and now this other and dearer friend had proved a ready victim. As Conward was wont to say, business is business. And he had acquiesced. His ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... stopped at the Messagerie. I heard with joy a voice demanding if this were Madame Besshare. I replied, not without some scruples of conscience, 'Oui, Monsieur, c'est moi,' though the name did not sound exactly like the one to which I had been wont to respond. In half an hour we were at home in ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... steered, the ship moved on; 335 Yet never a breeze up blew; The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, Where they were wont to do; They raised their limbs like lifeless tools— We ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... so loud at this late peaceful hour? That voice was wont to come in gentle whispers, And fill my ears with the soft breath of love. Thou hourly image of my thoughts, ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... this season, year by year, The singer who lies songless here Was wont to woo a less austere, Less deep repose, Where Rotha ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... same time we have been discovering that vast numbers of our farming population live in a poverty more abject than that of many of the farmers of Europe whom we are wont to call peasants; that the prices of our products of agriculture are too often dependent on speculation by non-farming groups; and that foreign nations, eager to become self-sustaining or ready to put virgin land under the plough are no longer buying our surpluses of cotton ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... courts, and although several sly attempts were made to bring the young people to a proper understanding of their case, they aroused nothing more than scornful laughter on the part of the belligerents, as the venerable Baron Dangloss was wont to call them, not without pride ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... guiding a yard-stick carefully about my desk with a view to having a fence built around it, bearing an inscription which would inform admiring tourists that here was the desk at which the brilliant author had been wont to sit when grinding out heart-throb stories for the humble Post. He took an impish delight in my struggles with my hero and heroine, and his inquiries after the health of both were of such a nature as to make any earnest writer person rise in wrath and slay him. I had seen little of ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber

... eleven was Charterhouse, or as my schoolfellow Thackeray was wont to style it, Slaughterhouse, no doubt from the cruel tyranny of another educational D.D., the Rev. Dr. Russell. For this man and the school he so despotically drilled into passive servility and pedantic scholarship, I have less than no reverence, for he worked so upon an over-sensitive nature ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... them were but two; either we shot them, or hunted them with greyhounds. We were never able to ensnare them. Those sportsmen who relied on the gun seldom met with success, unless they slept near covers, into which the kangaroos were wont to retire at night, and watched with great caution and vigilance when the game, in the morning, sallied forth to feed. They were, however, sometimes stolen in upon in the day-time and that fascination of the eye, which ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... in which I lay was wondrous soft and downy; and the cold gave me deep sleep, so that I awoke at a late hour to find the sun streaming through my rock window, and the negro telling me, as he was wont to do in the ship, that my bath was ready. The bath-room lay away a few paces from my chamber; but the water that flowed from the silver taps was icily cold; and I shivered after my plunge, though the beauty and luxury of ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... outbuildings—servants' offices, stables, barns, and coach houses, one of these last containing as a solitary recluse a high-hung yellow chariot, lined with yellow morocco, in which the Archdeacon had been wont to travel before the battle of Waterloo, and in which his grandchildren were never weary of swinging themselves. If the parsonage and its appurtenances can in any sense be called modern, they represented ideas and conditions which ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... Hall, arm-in-arm with his wife, and at the head of his household. The second service was (as is commonly the case, in rural districts) more numerously attended than the first one; and it was our Parson's wont to devote to this service his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... was quiet, But within it storm and riot, Such as on his Viking cruises Raud the Strong was wont to ride. ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... the honour- and-glory kind of old Tories, who if they meant anything at all by it meant that a Tory war would be a good occasion for damping down democracy; we have changed all that, and now it is quite another kind of politician that is wont to urge us on to "patriotism" as 'tis called. The leaders of the Progressive Liberals, as they would call themselves, long-headed persons who know well enough that social movements are going on, who are not blind to the fact that the world will move with their help or without it; these have ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... a Budget designed to raise a revenue of seventy or eighty millions, Mr. GLADSTONE was wont to speak for four or five hours. Mr. McKENNA, confronted with the task of raising over five hundred millions, polished off the job in exactly seventy-five minutes. Mr. GLADSTONE used to consider it necessary to prepare ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various

... father; beyond lay the old road leading to Governor Stuyvesant's Bowerie, with Sandy Hill at the upper end. In 1664, Heere Stras was changed to Broadway. At the King's Arms and Burr's Coffee-House, near the Battery, the traitor Arnold was wont to lounge, and in the neighborhood dwelt the Earl of Stirling's mother. At the corner of Rector Street was the old Lutheran church frequented by the Palatine refugees. Beyond or within the Park stood the old Brewery, Pottery, Bridewell, and Poor-house; relics of an Indian ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... could be brought up for use without the necessity of shifting the saloon table and dragging everything through the saloon itself. The hatchway giving access to the lazarette was enclosed by a partition which formed quite a roomy little apartment, wherein the steward was wont to unpack the barrels and cases containing the cabin stores; the work being thus done in such complete seclusion that it could not possibly prove a source of annoyance to any one, however fastidious. This arrangement also enabled the steward to enter ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... book De Iside et Osiride, "But the better and diviner nature consists of three,—that which exists within the Intellect only, and Matter, and that which proceeds from these, which the Greeks call Kosmos; of which three, Plato is wont to call the Intelligible, the 'Idea, Exemplar, and Father'; Matter, 'the Mother, the Nurse, and the place and receptacle of generation'; and the issue of these two, 'the Offspring and Genesis,'" the KOSMOS, "a word signifying equally ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... us," said Guly, turning toward the merchant. There came no answer, and the boy went up, and laid his hand upon the old man's shoulder. He was sitting bolt upright in his chair, with his stony eyes fixed upon vacancy, as he was so often wont to sit. Guly lifted one of the bony hands in his, but it dropped heavily, lifelessly, back upon the desk. Mr. Delancey was dead! The fearful lightning had borne him across life's river, without ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

... dame!" said the Bourgeois, smiling, as he leaned back in his chair. "But Pierre is a Frenchman, and would prefer commanding a brigade in the army of the Marshal de Saxe to being over the host of King Solomom. But," continued he, gravely, "I am strangely happy to-day, Deborah,"—he was wont to call her Deborah when very earnest,—"and I will not anticipate any mischief to mar my happiness. Pshaw! It is only the reaction of over-excited feelings. I am weak in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... it empty, but she was informed that Nefert had gone earlier than was her wont to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... was no longer the melancholy shade that was wont to pass along the Rue du Tourniquet; he was not the "Black Gentleman," but rather a confiding young man ready to take life as it came, like the two hard-working women who, on the morrow, might lack bread; he seemed alive to all the joys of youth, his smile was ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... said abbot hath hurt and dismayed his tenants by putting them from their leases, and by enclosing their commons from them, and selling and utter wasting of the woods that were wont to relieve and succour them. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... returned. By that time, however, Tonio was sleeping soundly beside the piebalds in shelter of a tumble-down wall, with the monkey curled closely in against his dusky breast. Joe and Moll were stupid, tired, and decidedly out of sorts, as people are wont to be after a surfeit of enjoyment and a scant supply of sleep. Bruno growled as usual at being disturbed, and clanked his chain as if in remonstrance; from behind the wall the uneasy fidgeting of the hungry horses could be plainly heard; while Tonio's noisy snoring rose and fell upon the ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... coat that seems to shine Duller now, black braided tress, That a softer hand than mine Far away was wont to twine, That in meadows far from ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... or in still higher favors, if you do it for His sake; but pay He will, and that most liberally: "I will repay," says the Lord. The rule of charity for physicians is that they should willingly render to the poor for the love of God those professional services which they are wont to render to the rich for pecuniary compensation. While thus treating a poor patient they should be as careful and diligent as they would be for temporal reward; what is done for God should not be done in a ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens

... sad smile. Charles was, however, greatly improved. He had left behind him the loutish, unformed boy, and had become a handsome, courteous, well-mannered gentleman. The very sight of him handing Madame de Bellaise in and out of her coach was a wonder in itself when Anne recollected how he had been wont to hide himself in the shrubbery to prevent being called upon for such services, and how uncouthly in the last extremity he ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... prevent him from still holding it, and from subscribing his name alone to laws which he alone would dictate? These fears agitated all minds. The people in vain looked throughout the kingdom for those pillars of the nobility, at the feet of whom they had been wont to find shelter in political storms. They now only saw their recent tombs. Parliament was dumb; and men felt that nothing could be opposed to the monstrous growth of the Cardinal's usurping power. No one was entirely deceived by the affected sufferings of the minister. ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... appearance, but venerable and holy in its associations. In that old-fashioned church have been settled three successive ministers of the gospel. In those high-backed, square pews were other generations wont to sit. Those pastors and their flocks now sleep in the grave. Their sons occupy their places in the sanctuary, and another herald of the cross proclaims to them the word of life. It was in this pleasant place, which ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos

... sun blinks on the tarn, An' on the primrose brae, Where we, in days o' innocence, Waur wont to daff an' play; An' I amang the mossy springs Wade for the hinny blooms— To thee the rush tiara wove, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... Balzac says, judges only by results; and those who were themselves only practical in some specialty, or had made fortunes for themselves out of the gratuity of nature, were wont to look upon Wasson as a visionary and unpractical person. To those who acted only from motives of self-interest he was a perpetual puzzle. Neither was he ignorant of this unfavorable opinion, for he could see through people almost as if they were glass, and he endured it ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... before the King makes use of them about his Person, are grown too big, and so escape. But those that are employed in the Palace, enjoy this favour, That all such Taxes, Customs, or other Duties belonging to the King, which their Fathers were wont to pay, are released, until such time as they are discharged from the King's Employment; which is always either by Execution, or by being given to somebody for perpetual Bondmen. During the time of ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox

... row of tall brick mansions and gazed patiently down the alley, listening for her lover's step. She was undoubtedly as pretty a girl as could be found in Warwick; so pretty, in fact, that when she applied for a position as maid, experienced housekeepers were wont to balance her attractions against the probity of their men-folk. Not infrequently they decided that the former might weigh heavier in the scale, and reserved the place for one less favoured. She was tall and slender, ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... case.' At the same time he significantly touched his pocket and then his palm, signifying that money had been paid by his adversary to the court, or some member of it. 'Ah!' said I, 'are you sure—very sure?' 'Very sure—I know it; and you will see I shall lose this suit.' He was not wont to speak so positively, without the best evidence of any fact. 'Well, Mac,' said I, jestingly, 'if that is the game, who can play it better than you can—you have a larger stake than any of them, and of course better ability?' Well, sir, he did lose one of the plainest cases I ever presented ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... fullest extent, in the jealousy which at that time, far more than now, prevailed between the Middle States and New England. He was strongly attached to the Episcopal Church, and he had, or fancied he had, a keen dislike to the Puritans and their manners and creeds. To these "religionists," as he was wont to call them, he attributed a great deal that was ungraceful in American life, and a good deal that was disgraceful. But the Puritan element is an irrepressible and undying one in English character. It ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... ensnared. This, pre-eminently, is the forming, fixing period, the spring season of disposition and habit; and it is during this season, more than any other, that the character assumes its permanent shape and color, and the young are wont to take their course for time and ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... Cowley's "Essays" was in all his life. As he tells us in his Essay "On Myself," even when he was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holidays and playing with his fellows, he was wont to steal from them and walk into the fields, either alone with a book or with some one companion, if he could find any of the same temper. He wrote verse when very young, and says, "I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... 429 he served at the siege of Potidaea; at Delium in 424; and at Amphipolis in 422. Thus to do the hoplite, carrying a great weight of arms, at forty-seven, he needed to have some constitution; and indeed he had;—furthermore, he played the part with distinguished bravery—though wont to fall at times into inconvenient fits of abstraction. Beyond all this, for the outside of the man, we may say that he was of fascinating, extreme and satyr-like ugliness and enormous sense of humor; that he was a perpetual joke to the comic poets, and to himself; ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... cold in there too; their breath hung like white powder on the air; and crystals of ice glittered on the polished floor. Who would dream of heating a room where the joy of life was burning? and a thousand candles? Here carelessness was wont to give of its abundance, so that the lofty room lay in a cloud and the musicians ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... portraits of so many men of worth which I have placed in this work, whereof a great part have been furnished by the help and co-operation of your Excellency, if they are sometimes not very true to life, and if they all have not that character and resemblance which the vivacity of colours is wont to give them, that is not because the drawing and the lineaments have not been taken from the life and are not characteristic and natural; not to mention that a great part of them have been sent me by the friends that I have in various places, and they have not all been drawn ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari

... well he remembered the calm, detached, critical but uncurious gaze with which the dwellers of the modern Athens were wont to regard ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... spot. Here was no less a place than the cave of Polyphemus, where Homer, at least, may have stood, if Ulysses didn't. And here is the identical stone with which the giant was wont to block up the entrance ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... danced divinely, which gift must not be counted as a parlour-trick; she was slow in her movements and quiet in her manner until she talked of horses or anybody she loved; then her great eyes would flash and her laugh ring out, also she would gesticulate as her mother had been wont to do, until the climate, maybe, of a northern country had served to repress the ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... the berth, or he would make it the worse for them, to wit, that he would have them beaten. So Thorleif when he heard this shouted to his men to slip their cables, and this they did according to his word; then did Skopti lie-to in the berth he was wont to have, nearest the Earl's ship. Now Skopti was called Tidings Skopti, & this had come about seeing that it had been agreed that when they were together he was to make known to the Earl all the tidings, or if it so happened that the Earl had heard them first then it was he that would tell the tidings ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson

... sad, and all the nobles as well as his father were distressed at his sudden loss; and a cessation of arms having been ordered, the youth, so noble and beloved, was mourned after the fashion of his nation. He was carried out in the arms he was wont to wear, and placed on a spacious and lofty pile; around him ten couches were dressed, bearing effigies of dead men, so carefully laid out, that they resembled corpses already buried; and for seven days all the men in the companies and battalions celebrated ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... Tyrker was an enthusiastic trapper of white, or arctic foxes. These creatures being very numerous in that part of Greenland, he was wont to go out at all hours, late and early, to visit his traps. Hence it happened that, on the night in question, Tyrker found himself in company with two captured arctic foxes at, the extremity of the ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... waly up the bank, And waly waly down the brae, And waly waly yon burn side, Where I and my love were wont to gae." ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... rational judgment, as a stranger to all extreme passion or sectarian prejudice, and not in the least disposed, either as Catholic or philosopher, to engage in obscure and endless quarrels with the Church. "I seek not to quibble with religion," he was wont to say; "it has enough to do to defend itself and us from impiety." The opposition of M. Royer-Collard to the Concordat of 1817 was the dissent of a politician and enlightened moralist, who foresaw the mischief which the public discussion, and adoption or rejection of this bill, would inflict ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... these ancient ships were light compared with ours, is proved by the fact that when the Greeks landed to commence the siege of Troy they drew up their ships on the shore. We are also told that ancient mariners, when they came to a long narrow promontory of land, were sometimes wont to land, draw their ships bodily across the narrowest part of the isthmus, and launch them on ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... an island before Salamis, Small, with scant harbour, which dance-loving Pan Is wont to tread, haunting the salt sea-beaches. There Xerxes placed his chiefs, that when the foes Chased from their ships should seek the sheltering isle, They might with ease destroy the host of Hellas, Saving their own friends from the briny straits. Ill had he learned what was to hap; for when God gave ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... over his grave." Meanwhile the dirt kept falling—it appeared to me a little faster, when the old drunk, seeing himself about to be buried alive, crawled upon his feet, shaking himself very much as a wet dog is wont to shake himself. This action was greeted with peals of laughter and shouts from the mourners. Such was the funeral of "Bob-up-the-creek." Shocked and disgusted I turned and walked down the hill to town, to ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson

... priceless hour of the day had always been precisely this one, the first waking hour, when his mind, in the enjoyment of a sort of clairvoyant limpidity, had been wont to challenge its stiffest problems, wrestle with them, and whether triumphant or not, despatch him to his office avid for the day's work and strides ahead of where he had left it ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... difficult to obtain. Only a visitor from a remote planet could fully realize the significance of the bewildering phenomena that meet one's gaze here every day without exciting wonder.... The sprightly people who form the rind of the politico-social world ... are wont to launch winged words and coin witty epigrams when characterizing what they irreverently term the efforts of the Peace Conference to square the circle; they contrast the noble intentions of the delegates with the grim realities of the workaday ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... the desolating struggle that exhausted their resources for a hundred years. "All Christendom is sore decayed and feeblished, whereby the Empire of Constantinople leeseth, and is like to lese," for lack of the "Knights and Squires who were wont to adventure themselves," but who adventure ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... though they were wont to sit up the last in the family, were all of them fast asleep at the same hours that their daughters are busy at crimp and basset. Modern statesmen are concerting schemes, and engaged in the depth of politics, at the ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele

... me on a summer evening, when I was whiling away my leisure hours with the end of a cutty pipe and indulging in such bland imaginations as the Nicotian weed is wont to produce, more especially in the case of the studious persons, devoted musis severioribus. I was naturally loth to leave my misty sanctuary; and endeavoured to silence the clamour of Mrs. Cleishbotham's tongue, which has something in it peculiarly shrill and penetrating. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... away, the jay missed his dances and frolics. He flew into her empty room, perched on the back of the rocking-chair, where he had been wont to stand and pull her hair, and began a peculiar cry. Again and again he repeated it, louder and louder each time, till it ended in a squawk, impatient and angry, as much as to say, "Why don't you ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... of Persia, Khurreem Khan, was not ashamed to admit, with a crown on his head, that he had once been a thief, and was wont to recount of himself what in these days we should call a case of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... that the rearing of this child incurred, it was a trifle inconsistent that Maumee Nina should have opposed the friendly advances of gallants from the town. She was not of a class that is wont to consider the etiquette of such attentions, nor would she have refused to give her daughter in marriage to any Cuban. It was that her feeling toward the Spaniards was deepening into hate, and it rejoiced her to learn that a revolution was really intended. By her native ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... says an ancient author "preache deadly doctrine to their winter audience, such poor sea-faring men as are forcyd thether by tempest, onelie in one thing they are to be commended, they keepe residence better than the rest of the canons of that see (St. David's) are wont to do." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 542, Saturday, April 14, 1832 • Various

... first taste for the theatre. He went to the play regularly and soon set up for a critic. It was his one dissipation, however. A more moral young fellow never existed; he read his Bible and went to church as regularly as ever, and to the day of his death was wont to declare that he owed all that was good in his character to his ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... son of that great Duke Lorenzo, He was the Prince of Parma, and the Duke Of all the fair domains of Lombardy Down to the gates of Florence; nay, Florence even Was wont to pay him tribute - ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde

... Pliny to make a whole chapter of one only line, which is less than the argument alone of most of the rest in his huge volume: but the weightiness of the matter does worthily excuse him, who is not wont to spare his words, or his reader. Glandiferi maxime generis omnes, quibus honos apud Romanos perpetuus. "Mast-bearing-trees were principally those which the Romans held in chiefest repute," lib. 16. cap. 3. ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn

... of living gauze no more unfurl; Wrecked is the ship of pearl! And every chambered cell, Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, Before thee lies revealed— Its irised ceiling ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... but deep enough, You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme; And you, too, find without a rebuff The response your soul seeks many a time ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... thousand times: And how abhorred my Imagination is now, my Gorge rises at it. Here hung those Lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your Gibes now, your Gambols, your Songs, your Flashes of Merriment, that were wont to set the Table on a Roar: No one now to mock your own Jeerings: quite Chop-fallen. Now get you to my Lady's Chamber, and tell her, Let her paint an Inch thick, to this Favour she must come. Make her laugh ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... though I did not so readily lubricate the stories I was told in that basement to-day of St. Peter, Paul and Luke having tenanted this basement, Paul having lived and preached here for the first two years of his residence in Rome; and when they showed me the altar at which St. Paul was wont to minister, I stopped short and didn't try to believe any more. But this soil is thickly sown with marvels and ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... yesterday occupied by the terrible queen and her corrupt entourage, Omar and I sat together discussing the events of those fateful hours since midnight. We had eaten from the gold dishes in which the Naya's food had been served; we had quenched our thirst from the jewel-encrusted goblets that she was wont to raise to her thin blue lips. By Omar's side I thus tasted, for the first time, ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... voyage ever made across the Atlantic,[A]—only ten days and sixteen hours from Boston to Liverpool. The weather and all circumstances were propitious; and, if some of us were weak of head enough to suffer from the smell and jar of the machinery, or other ills by which the sea is wont to avenge itself on the arrogance of its vanquishers, we found no pity. The stewardess observed that she thought "any one tempted God Almighty who complained on a voyage where they did not even have to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... who used to be always correcting him, never spoke to him now on the subject of his frequent absences, and the whole household was surprised to see Gania, in spite of his depression, on quite friendly terms with his brother. This was something new, for Gania had been wont to look upon Colia as a kind of errand-boy, treating him with contempt, threatening to "pull his ears," and in general driving him almost wild with irritation. It seemed now that Gania really needed his brother, and the latter, for his part, felt as if he could forgive ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... brought it; and he fashioned a crocodile of wax, seven fingers long: and he enchanted it, and said, 'When the page comes and bathes in my lake, seize on him.' And he gave it to the steward, and said to him, 'When the page shall go down into the lake to bathe, as he is daily wont to do, then throw in this crocodile behind him.' And the steward went forth bearing ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie

... of thy people, and I will gladly give into their hands whatsoever amongst these treasures shall seem like to please thee." The envoys of Clovis came, and, as they were examining in detail the treasures of Sigebert, Cloderic said to them, "This is the coffer wherein my father was wont to pile up his gold pieces." "Plunge," said they, "thy hand right to the bottom that none escape thee." Cloderic bent forward, and one of the envoys lifted his battle-axe and cleft his skull. Clovis went to Cologne and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... of somas and junks (which are large vessels) generally come from Great China to Manila, laden with merchandise. Every year thirty or even forty ships are wont to come, and although they do not come together, in the form of a trading and war fleet, still they do come in groups with the monsoon and settled weather, which is generally at the new moon in March. They ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... inconvenience; but it proceedeth not necessarily from the subjection to a strangers government, but from the unskilfulnesse of the Governours, ignorant of the true rules of Politiques. And therefore the Romans when they had subdued many Nations, to make their Government digestible, were wont to take away that grievance, as much as they thought necessary, by giving sometimes to whole Nations, and sometimes to Principall men of every Nation they conquered, not onely the Privileges, but also the Name of Romans; and took many of them into the Senate, and Offices of charge, even in the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... now been completed, and the boys were in full possession. It contained, among other things, a score and more of lockers, where the one who paid a small fee could keep his "fighting togs," as Thad Stevens was wont to term his baseball clothes, or it might be the scanty raiment he wore when exercising on the athletic field, running, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson

... my boy! Old Bacchus sends last greeting; Freya's farewell receive thou, o'er thy bowl. Fast in her praise thy thin blood flows, repeating Its old-time force, as it was wont to roll. Sing, read, forget; nay, think and weep while thinking. Art thou for drinking Another bottle? ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... the council. Not a fault marred the beauty of this fair face; not the shadow of a wrinkle ruffled the polish of the brow; even the lovely mouth itself was free from those lines by which thought and care are wont to mark the passage of man through life. One thing, however, was wanting to this beautiful mask. It was devoid of expression. Those delicate features were immobile and stony, No trace of emotion stirred the compressed ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach

... with success and attention night after night, and for several years, she had wearied of the rle, and put it aside voluntarily whenever opportunity offered. She had been wont to be verry fashionable and striking in her dress and general appearance, but now Hal noticed vaguely ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... house changes hands in Rajputana there pass with it, as well as the rats and cobras and the mongoose, those beggars who were wont to plague the former owner. That is a custom so based on ancient logic that the English, who appreciate conservatism, have not even tried ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... who were thy dear disciples and who were much regarded by thee, also, O Partha, the Vrishnis have been destroyed. Those two who were regarded as Atirathas amongst the foremost of the Vrishnis, and referring to whom in course of conversation thou wert wont to indulge in pride, and who, O chief of Kurus race, were ever dear to Krishna himselfalas, those two, O Dhananjaya, have been the chief causes of the destruction of the Vrishnis! I do not censure the son of Sini or the son of Hridika, O Arjuna. I do not censure Akrura or the son of Rukmini. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... it was from their usual little camp-fire gatherings! At such times they were wont to loll about while reciting the many incidents of the day just gone, and planning fresh exploits for the morrow. Even last night they had thus sat and planned the expedition that had ended in adding a ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby

... white head-cloth or fez. The costume is national, and has not been altered to that of the Montenegrin proper, because it is considered warmer. The first time that Prince Nicolas visited his new subjects a man said to him in that characteristically familiar way in which the Prince's subjects are wont to address him:— ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... is that man, great and fierce, who bears an axe aloft? Did I not know him dead I should say it was the Black One, my brother, as he was in the days of the smiting of Zwide: so was his head set on his shoulders and so he was wont to look round, like ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard

... matters Nora Rowley had been properly brought up, having been made to understand by the best and most cautious of mothers, that in that matter of falling in love it was absolutely necessary that bread and cheese should be considered. "Romance is a very pretty thing," Lady Rowley had been wont to say to her daughters, "and I don't think life would be worth having without a little of it. I should be very sorry to think that either of my girls would marry a man only because he had money. But you can't even be romantic without something to eat and drink." Nora thoroughly ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Wont to" :   accustomed, used to



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