"Inbred" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attempt to form an adequate conception of Winthrop's character. Its vivid pages shine throughout with the author's brave and tender spirit. "Cecil Dreeme" was an embodiment of his thoughts, observations, and imaginations; "John Brent" shows us the inbred poetry and romance of the man in the grander form of action. The scene is placed in the wild Western plains of America, among men entirely free from the restraints of conventional life; and the book has a buoyancy and brisk vitality, a dashing, daring, and jubilant vigor, such as we are not accustomed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... I have disgraced myself by believing would never have found their way to my credulity, if they had not first declared you to have ruined your husband by your debts. I own that I have never been able to divest myself of my inbred dislike and distrust of people who contract debts which they are not able to pay. The light manner in which the world is apt to view the relative positions of debtor and creditor is abhorrent to me. ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... the other for prostrating himself in a shower of rain to kiss the judges' feet and rising up with a countenance bedaubed with mud! Facts like these, and they are innumerable, compel us to believe that the reverence for justice as a sacred thing, so inbred in Christian civilization, was foreign to the people of Rome. It is a gloomy spectacle to see a mighty nation deliberately giving the rein to passion and excitement heedless of the miscarriage of justice. The celebrated law, re-enacted by Gracchus, "That no citizen should be condemned ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... resist attempts of this kind. "Blackwood," however, was outdone in this rowdy style of reviewing by "Fraser's Magazine." From that periodical we learn that Cooper was "a passable scribbler of passable novels," a "bilious braggart," a "liar," a "full jackass," "a man of consummate and inbred vulgarity," "a bore of the first magnitude in society," who went about fishing for (p. 175) introductions. "But this," it concluded, speaking of his England, "was his last kick, and we shall not disturb his dying moments." Two years later the magazine seemed to think he had some power of kicking ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... true. By "our little friend" Newman meant Holy Joe. The squareheads idolized him. For one thing, his being a parson gave him, from the beginning, standing with them. They were decent, simple villagers, with an inbred respect for the cloth. But more important, was the service he had rendered their dead shipmate. They were not the men to forget a thing like that, or fail to be impressed by the fine courage Holy Joe had exhibited when he faced ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... long way the most town-ridden country in the world; our towns by a long way the smokiest and worst built, with the most inbred town populations. We have practically come to an end of our country-stock reserves. Unless we are prepared to say: "This is a desirable state of things; let the inbreeding of town stocks go on—we shall evolve in time a new type immune to town life; a little ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... lies principally in the care which England has exercised to secure the welfare of the annexed population, and to do nothing likely to keep them in remembrance of the subordinate position into which they had been reduced. England never crushes those whom it subdues. Its inbred talent for colonisation has invariably led it along the right path in regard to its colonial development. Even in cases where Britain made the weight of its rule rather heavy for the people whom it had conquered, there still developed among them a desire to remain federated to the British ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... face and gesture,' that they were only recognized, 'even by their near relations,' 'by wearing some several coloured riband or the like ... yet somewhat more strange was that their minds and affections were as one: for what the one loved the other desired: ... yea, such a confederation of inbred power and of sympathy was in their natures, that if Nicholas were sick or grieved, Andrew felt the like pain, though far distant and ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... May sadly; then looking earnestly at her, "Ethel, my dear, I am afraid of its being with you as—as it has been with me;" he spoke very low, and drew her close to him. "I grew up, thinking my inbred heedlessness a sort of grace, so to say, rather manly—the reverse of finikin. I was spoiled as a boy, and my Maggie carried on the spoiling, by never letting me feel its effects. By the time I had sense enough to regret this as a fault, ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... in height, and robust of form, weighing not less than 250 pounds. His face was round and bronzed by the exposure of over three hundred ocean passages. His closely cropped beard and hair were iron gray, and his mild blue eyes and shapely hands told of inbred qualities. That he was possessed of rare traits of character, it was easy to discover. Loyalty to the great trusts confided to him, was noticeable in his every movement. "Safety of ship, passengers, and cargo," were words often repeated, whether ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... can no more eliminate it from his work than we can remove the quality of imagination from Shakespeare's or those of art and intellect from Ben Jonson's. Other men are as foul or fouler; but in none is foulness so inbred and so ingrained, from none is it so inseparable. Few have had so much genius, and in none else has genius been so ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Maxwell's inbred obstinacy. He would not hold his tongue, but insisted on explaining his sensations to his comrades as they busied themselves taking off his dress—a rather violent operation at all times, and ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... English, on the other hand, their public spirit, the connection of large classes with national affairs, and their habit of compromise, had predisposed the leading minds towards cautious views in philosophy and in politics; and at the century's end their inbred distrust of abstract propositions as a basis for social reconstruction received startling confirmation from the tremendous ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... and exultant Mr. Savage his exasperating situation is his excuse. For, with the inbred and lethal instinct of a Theolog he was put upon the trail of a brother Theolog to bring in his scalp. To return without some scalp would be a disgrace. But on coming up with his reverend brother Bellamy, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... influence which a belief in the survival of the human soul after death exercises on the life and conduct of the Central Melanesian savage. To him the belief is no mere abstract theological dogma or speculative tenet, the occasional theme of edifying homilies and pious meditation; it is an inbred, unquestioning, omnipresent conviction which affects his thoughts and actions daily and at every turn; it guides his fortunes as an individual and controls his behaviour as a member of a community, by inculcating a respect for the rights of others and enforcing a submission to the public authorities. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... seemed to hear Catherine's accusing tones, and the fanatical strain inbred in him answered like a boat to its helm. There must be no more compromise, no longer any evasion of the issues of right and wrong. He had sinned, and both he and the woman for whose sake he had defied his own creed, and that of his fathers before him, must ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... hardship, however great. Even this humble submissiveness did not satisfy our tyrant, and at last his cruelty took a more active shape. One of the long Yankee farmers from Vermont, Abner Cushing by name, with the ingenuity which seems inbred in his 'cute countrymen, must needs try his hand at making a villainous decoction which he called "beer," the principal ingredients in which were potatoes and molasses. Now potatoes formed no part of our dietary, so Abner set his wits to work to steal sufficient for his purpose, and succeeded ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... or not, whether they will persevere in faith or not, and according to his observation of their doings, so he applies his own will to carve out their reward or portion of life or death. These are even the thoughts which are inbred in your breasts by nature. That which the learned call Arminianism is nothing else but the carnal reason of men's hearts, which is enmity to God. It is that very disputation which Paul in this chapter exclaims against, "Who art ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... gospel of moral sublimity. Here is our threefold criterion, by which every nation must stand or fall. The Anglo-Saxon is what he is through unceasing industry, perpetual aspiration, and moral strength. The Central African is what he is through inbred sluggishness, total lack of purpose, and almost total absence ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... and special peculiarities of different breeds with what appears to be a concomitant loss in their intelligence. We often hear it remarked by those who are familiar with dogs that the ordinary mongrels are more intelligent and more susceptible of high training than the carefully inbred varieties, which are more highly prized because they conform to some thoroughly artificial standard of form or coloring. This is what we should expect from all we know concerning the breeding. Where for generations the dog-fancier has selected for reproduction ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... physiological basis of the dancing character is uncertain and the origin of this curious variation in behavior still more obscure. "Mouse fanciers have assured me," he continues, "that something like it may appear in strains inbred from the normal type, though I cannot find an indubitable case. Such an occurrence may be nothing but the appearance of a rare recessive form. Certainly it is not a necessary consequence of inbreeding, witness von Guaita's long series of inbred albinos." (von ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... ticket and the five dollars that the law requires shall be given to a freed felon. He took them without a word and, still without a word, stepped out of the gate that swung open for him and into a light, spitty snowstorm. With the inbred instinct of the hillsman he swung about and headed for the little, light-blue station at the head of the crooked street. He went slowly, coughing often as the cold air struck into his wasted lungs, and sometimes staggering ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... amorous Monk had full opportunity to observe the voluptuous contours and admirable symmetry of her person. She threw off her last garment, and advancing to the Bath prepared for her, She put her foot into the water. It struck cold, and She drew it back again. Though unconscious of being observed, an inbred sense of modesty induced her to veil her charms; and She stood hesitating upon the brink, in the attitude of the Venus de Medicis. At this moment a tame Linnet flew towards her, nestled its head between her breasts, and nibbled them in wanton ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... said. "You are accustomed to the manners of your peers; you were bred in that land where hospitality, courtesy, and deference are shown to equals; where dignity and graciousness are expected from the elders; where duty and humility are inbred in the young. So is it with us—except where you are going. The great patroon families, with their vast estates, their patents, their feudal systems, have stood supreme here for years. Theirs is the power of life and death ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... soldiers who did not show this same consideration and solicitude for the stranger. And they do it so unostentatiously and naturally that they challenge the admiration of all, especially of Colonials such as we, who were, I fear, very apt to forget the little niceties of manner which are inbred in the native Briton. While we afterward became the best of friends there was never any danger of our becoming "alike." We secretly admired their perfect and unalterable observance of all orders even though we were, at ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... brought together by mutual invective nor harmonised by the brute destruction and disappearance of either party. But when one or both parties have actually disappeared, and the combat has ceased for lack of combatants, natures not hostile to one another can fill the vacant place. In proportion to their inbred unanimity these will cultivate a similar ideal and rejoice ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... their old habits when the year had expired and the subsidy ceased. On my second visit they had returned to their mountain homes, and I could see no possible inducement for them to do otherwise. The only attraction for them during the year was the fostering of their inbred indolence; and it ought to have been evident that as soon as they had to depend on their own resources they would adopt their own way of living—free of taxes, military service, and social restraint—as being more congenial ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... thing, were to spend it in converting the middle-class to ordinary living and to the tradition of the race. Indeed, if I had power for some thirty years I would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig; and those that would not should be ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... was coming and stretched out their hands to strive to protect that which they loved best from the stroke of the warring gods. In the case of Seti and Merapi this was their son, now a beautiful little lad who could run and prattle, one too of a strange health and vigour for a child of the inbred race of the Ramessids. Never for a minute was this boy allowed to be out of the sight of one or other of his parents; indeed I saw little of Seti in those days and all our learned studies came to nothing, because he was ever concerned with Merapi in playing ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... the smiles meant on the false faces of those women-friends of mine who had met me in the park. An ordinary man, in Michael's place, would have mentioned my own encouragement of him as a sufficient excuse. He, with the inbred delicacy and reticence of a gentleman, had taken all the blame on himself. Indignant and ashamed, I advanced to the breakfast-room, bent on instantly justifying him. Drawing aside the curtain, I was startled by a sound as of a person ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... did not actually make a nation of freemen of them he set them on the high road to freedom, he gave them a measure of their power when united and disciplined, and he taught them how to resist and combat the arrogance, the greed and the inbred cruelty of landlordism. He struck at England through its most vulnerable point—through its Irish garrison, with its cohorts of unscrupulous mercenaries and hangers-on. He struck at it in the very citadel of its own vaunted liberties—in the Parliament whose prestige was its ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... to the senate these matters and [-32-] most of the highly important affairs that concern the commonwealth. Public interests you must administer publicly. It is also an inbred trait of human nature for individuals to delight in marks of esteem from a superior, which seem to raise one to equality with him, and to approve everything which the superior has determined after consulting them, as if it were their own proposal, ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... flesh is not subdued to his spirit. If he be wrong, the greatest blessing which can happen to him is, that he should find himself in the wrong. If he have been deceiving himself, the greatest blessing is, that God should anoint his eyes that he may see—see himself as he is; see his own inbred corruption; see the sin which doth so easily beset him, whatever it may be. Whatever anguish of mind it may cost him, it is a light price to pay for the inestimable treasure which true repentance and amendment brings; the fine gold of solid self-knowledge, tried in the fire of bitter ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... I'm not so sure that what you've been trying to do is any good, though. Come!—I read you like large print. You've set out to live the life of a rich country squire—and it hasn't come off. It couldn't come off! I never believed it would. You haven't the taste for it inbred in your bones. You haven't the thousand little habits and interests that they take in with their mother's milk, and that make such a life possible. When you look at a hedge, you don't think of it as something to worry live animals out of. When you see one of your labourers, you don't care who his ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... course of centuries, it became an inbred tradition with the Japanese that they must seize Korea. Hideyoshi, the famous Japanese Regent, made a tremendous effort in 1582. Three hundred thousand troops swept over Korea, capturing city after city, and driving ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... his guide through a little door in a wall, and then promenaded a scullery and a kitchen, along which he passed with eyes rigidly fixed in advance, an inbred horror of prying forbidding him to gaze around apartments that formed the back side of the household tapestry. Entering the hall, he was about to be shown to his room, when from the inner lobby of the front entrance, whither ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... generation to generation without writing, or (unless it were casually) without the least communicating them to any other Nation or Tribe (for to do so, they account a profanation): yet this fish, that does by a natural inbred Balsome, not only cure himselfe if he be wounded, but others also, loves not to live in clear streams paved with gravel, but in standing waters, where mud and the worst of weeds abound, and therefore it is, I think, that this Tench is by so many accounted better for Medicines ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... trips with the Bird Woman to their leases. They all knew her father, her position, and the luxuries of her home. Whatever course she had chosen with them they scarcely would have resented it, but the Angel never had been known to choose a course. Her spirit of friendliness was inborn and inbred. She loved everyone, so she sympathized with everyone. Her generosity was only limited by what was ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Christianity. And the latter is still infected with the "bribe-and-threat doctrine:" I once immensely scandalised a Consular Chaplain by quoting the noble belief of the ancients, and it was some days before he could recover mental equanimity. The degradation is now inbred. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... to be the inbred spirit of mankind. Everywhere this proud, self-assertive, self-sufficient, self-confident, self-aggressive spirit is found, in varying degree. It is coupled sometimes with laughable ignorance; sometimes with real learning and wisdom and culture. It is ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... he would have wept for shame But had he your fiendish cunning, he might have done the same. But the hated Saxon balked you and the desperate fighting Frank Hurled back our super devils and took us on the flank. Your inbred tainted offspring lost his chances at Verdun Where curtained steel just saved the world from ...
— Rhymes of a Roughneck • Pat O'Cotter
... a quick appreciation of character; and, where they take a dislike, are, I have no doubt, mighty troublesome customers; they are, however, naturally courteous, and capable of genuine and inbred kindness, as a little anecdote of my present trip will ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... for the choice any way of life: the first is inbred taste in the chooser; the second some high utility in ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a foe to Troy inbred, Next yoked the horses to the car; a thousand men he led, Fierce folk for Turnus: they that hoe the vine-fair Massic soil; And they that from their lofty hills adown unto the broil Aruncan fathers sent, ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... or to be told? Can then such inbred malice live in man, To joy in ill, and from another's woes To draw his own delight?—Ah, is't then so? —Yes, such there are, the meanest of mankind, Who, from a sneaking bashfulness, at first Dare not refuse; but ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... husband's desire to "do the right thing," and retrieve his name. She had a confused, dreamy notion that, if the creditors were all paid, her plate and linen ought to come back to her; but she had an inbred perception that while people owed money they were unable to pay, they couldn't rightly call anything their own. She murmured a little that Mr. Tulliver so peremptorily refused to receive anything in repayment from Mr. and Mrs. Moss; but to all his requirements ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... from too much dreaminess, Meryl's quiet dignity had a softening effect upon Diana's too great exuberance of spirits and occasional boyish lack of refinement, which was more the result of a boisterous capacity for enjoyment than inbred. ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... to make some form of restitution. But it shouldn't involve Kardon. Actually the Lani were never in a position to develop that world. They'd probably have remained on Flora indefinitely. The old court records showed no tendency for their culture to expand. They were an inbred group, a static, balanced society in harmony with their environment. In nearly thirty-five hundred years their numbers increased only to a few thousand. Actually there is a good possibility that the race would ultimately have died out if Old Alexander hadn't enslaved them and instituted a controlled ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... confederacy is responsible for the fate of vast territories, with their increasing population, and of numerous Indian tribes. Among the component states, there is the greatest variety of customs, institutions, and religions. Then we have the deeper inbred differences of language and ancestry among us, our population being made up of the lineage of all nations. Our industrial pursuits, also, are various; and, with a great natural diversity of soil and climate, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... looked up suddenly. The inbred honesty of the man rose in protest against the housekeeper's last words. His mind seemed to steady itself, for the moment, under the shock that had ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... Prodigious motion felt and rueful throes. At last this odious offspring whom thou seest, Thine own begotten, breaking violent way, Tore through my entrails, that, with fear and pain Distorted, all my nether shape thus grew Transformed: but he my inbred enemy Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart, Made to destroy. I fled, and cried out Death! Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed From all her caves, and back resounded Death! I fled; but he pursued (though more, it seems, Inflamed ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... that I did not mean to be far behind any Border Fenwick when it came to making bows. Nor, as it happened, was I when all was done. This confidence was partly owing to full feeding on fine porridge and braxy, but more to that inbred belief of Galloway in itself which the ill-affected and envious ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... courts and of all authorities in all places under all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice is done. Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you will, it is the same death eternally—inborn, inbred, engendered in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that only—spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... trial and tribulation that we have to encounter here below. It will distil a desire and a loftiness of aim in life, that we may at last reach the rest that remains for the people of God. The struggle with inbred sin will be more easily overcome, and every lust and evil passion will be completely conquered by keeping the eye steadily fixed on ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... small dogs were subsequently introduced into the breed, which had now been somewhat inbred. These were largely imported from the other side, and were similar in type to Hooper's Judge. One of the most noted was the Jack Reede dog. He was an evenly marked, reddish brindle and white, rather rough in coat, ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... unfamiliar to them, and also were embittered by the natural temper of the man. For while Seoses was a man quite impossible to bribe, and a most exact respecter of justice, he was afflicted with a degree of arrogance not to be compared with that of any other. This quality, indeed, seems to be inbred in the Persian officials, but in Seoses even they thought that the malady had developed to an altogether extraordinary degree. So his accusers said all those things which have been indicated above, ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... boots that flanked the wall pair by pair and repeating for his friend's simple ear the verses and cadences of others which were the veils of his own longing and dejection, the rude Firbolg mind of his listener had drawn his mind towards it and flung it back again, drawing it by a quiet inbred courtesy of attention or by a quaint turn of old English speech or by the force of its delight in rude bodily skill—for Davin had sat at the feet of Michael Cusack, the Gael—repelling swiftly and suddenly by a grossness of intelligence or by a ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... him what his Christian name was. No! These two young women were very unlike her; they seemed really quite the equals of his family and friends in England,—perhaps more attractive,—and yet, yes, it was this very attractiveness that alarmed his inbred social conservatism regarding women. With a man it was very different; that alert, active, intelligent husband, instinct with the throbbing life of his saw-mill, creator and worker in one, challenged his unqualified trust ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... American accent, perhaps as pleasing to a Parisian ear as the hiss of Piedmont or the gutturals of Switzerland. Moreover, the minister had been brought up, himself, in the most scrupulous refinement of manner; his mother was a widow, the last of an "old family," and her dainty, delicate observances were inbred, as it were, in her only son. This sort of elegance is perhaps the most delicate test of training and descent, and all these things Lucinda was taught from the grateful recollection of a son who never forgot his mother, through all the solitary labors and studies of a long life. So it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... physical unit is the family and the circle of friends. Friends get important quickly, since the family breaks up when children are still relatively young. Something in the genes, I suppose—we all enjoy being alone. I suppose you might call it an inbred survival trait." ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... Tyrannical Axiom; Let my Friends perish, so my Enemies fall along with them. [Footnote: Me mortuo terra misceatur incendio. Pereant amici dum una inimici intercidant.] But in gentle Dispositions, there is a certain inbred Love of their Country, which they can no more divest themselves of, than of Humanity it self. Such a Love as Homer describes in Ulysses, who preferred Ithaca, tho' no better than a Bird's Nest fix'd to a craggy Rock in the Sea, to all the Delights of ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... minutes, then return to the first room with his keys in his hand, and sharply turn the locks and turn them again. This fidgety anxiety about his keys and his cupboards might be the result of the inbred restlessness of his disposition, aggravated in a naturally active man by the aimless indolence of a life in retirement—a life drifting backward and forward among trifles, with no regular employment to steady it at any given hour of ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... in that most of its members were better than their circumstances. One could recognize the Man family anywhere by their bad qualities being traceable to definite causes, while for the good in them there was no explanation at all: it was inbred. ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... man, in fact, was ever less inclined to take anything at second-hand. The root of all originality was in him, in the shape of an extreme natural vividness of perception, imagination, and feeling. An instinctive and inbred unwillingness to accept the accepted and conform to the conventional was of the essence of his character, whether in life or art, and was a source to him both of strength and weakness. He would not follow a general rule—least of all if it was a prudential rule—of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Holy Spirit took Peter and his words and through the instrumentality of Peter and his words convicted his hearers. The Holy Spirit is the only One who can convince men of sin. The natural heart is "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked," and there is nothing in which the inbred deceitfulness of our hearts comes out more clearly than in our estimations of ourselves. We are all of us sharp-sighted enough to the faults of others but we are all blind by nature to our own faults. Our blindness to our own shortcomings is oftentimes little short of ludicrous. ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... child at his best is but the relics and ruins of his first father; at the same time, in him the relics are more abundant and the ruins more easy to trace out. And little Honest was such a well-born child. For, Stupidity and all, there was a real inborn and inbred integrity, uprightness, straightforwardness, and nobleness about this little and not over-clever man-child. And, on the principle of "to him that hath shall be given," there was something like a special providence that hedged this boy about from the beginning. ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... represented by a delicious languor in her eyes, and an utter inability to devote herself to anything which took the shape of a serious occupation. As she sat at the cabin breakfast-table that morning, in her quaintly-made sailing dress of old-fashioned nankeen—her inbred childishness of manner contrasting delightfully with the blooming maturity of her form—the man must have been trebly armed indeed in the modern philosophy who could have denied that the first of a woman's rights is the right of being beautiful; and the foremost ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... irreconcilable, and with perfect frankness they have shown their contempt for each other. About the kindest criticism that the socialist makes of the anarchist is that he is a child, while the anarchist is convinced that the socialist is a Philistine and an inbred conservative who, should he ever get power, would immediately hang the anarchists.[J] They are traditional enemies, who seem utterly incapable of understanding each other. Intellectually, they fail to grasp the meaning of each other's philosophy. It is but rare that a socialist, no matter ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... children of the "adulteress" are successful men and women, aids in the progress of the world; those of the blood royal, in double or single doses, a menace to public morality. This much for your royal inbred custom. ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... racial exclusion or segregation. Professed loyalty to military tradition was all too often a cloak for prejudice, and prejudice, of course, was prevalent in all the services just as it was in American society. At the same time traditionalism simply reflected the natural inclination of any large, inbred bureaucracy to preserve the privileges and order of an earlier time. Basically, the military traditionalists—that is, most senior officials and commanders of the armed forces and their allies in Congress—took the position that black servicemen ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... when he held her hand, stroked it affectionately. He often laughed at the child's manifold follies, but her prettiness and the naivete which sweetened her inbred artificiality had won his liking. Much as it would have astonished Paula had she known it, his feeling was for the ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... deeply as I recall it. He might well have thought only of himself in that time of suspense; but he thought of me too, and the precautions he took against being seen to pay me money were expressive of his inbred delicacy. Reader do not say the incident is trivial. These little things ...
— Reminiscences of Charles Bradlaugh • George W. Foote
... of Burma, by name Badonsachen, whose very countenance reflected the inbred ferocity of his nature, and under whose reign more victims perished by the executioner than by the common enemy, conceived the notion that he was something more than mortal, and that this high distinction ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... task is longer; Earth the strong by heaven the stronger. Still is call'd to rise and brighten, But, alas! how weak the soul; While its inbred phantoms frighten, While the past ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... had dishonoured the Guard, brought the first blot of treachery upon its long and unblemished traditions. Hereditary instincts inbred and powerful were arrayed against him in the hearts of six of his judges; in the seventh, Count Sagan, he had to encounter the ill-blood of a profoundly vindictive nature whose purposes he had crossed and baffled, and who harboured towards him ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... for his sake who must reward us at the last. I have tried if I could reach that great resolution of his, to be honest without a thought of heaven or hell; and, indeed I found, upon a natural inclination, and inbred loyalty unto virtue, that I could serve her without a livery, yet not in that resolved and venerable way, but that the frailty of my nature, upon an easy temptation, might be induced to forget her. The life, therefore, and spirit of all our actions is the resurrection, and ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... with some enjoyment to himself. It is no slander to say that we in America have not yet found out the secret of this. Perhaps we shall not until our energies are spent and we are in a state of decay. At present we put as much energy into our pleasure as into our work, for it is inbred in us that laziness is a sin. This is the Puritan idea, and it must be said for it that in our experience virtue and idleness are not commonly companions. But this does not go to the bottom of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Miguel Abenali was one of the sons, and though his conversion had at first been mere compliance with his father's will and the family interests, he had become sufficiently convinced of Christian truth not to take part with his own people in the final struggle. Still, however, the inbred abhorrence of idolatry had influenced his manner of worship, and when, after half a life-time, Granada had fallen, and the Inquisition had begun to take cognisance of new Christians from among the Moors as well as the Jews, there were not lacking spies to report the absence of all ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... bred and reared in the trammels of domestication and for many successive generations have bowed to the will of man. The natural fury of the Atlantic walrus, when attacked, is much more interesting as a psychologic study than is the inbred rage of the bull-dog; and the remarkable defensive tactics of the musk-ox far surpass in interest the vagaries of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... misfortune that some of our most powerful journals have been for many years past very unfavorable exponents of English feeling on all subjects connected with slavery: some, probably, from the influences, more or less direct, of West Indian opinions and interests: others from inbred Toryism, which, even when compelled by reason to hold opinions favorable to liberty, is always adverse to it in feeling; which likes the spectacle of irresponsible power exercised by one person over others; which has no moral ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... five minutes. I humbly ask your pardon. Set it down to the loyalty of an old family lawyer. Now, I am going to tell you the truth and take you into our confidence, for I know we are safe with you. The Kennedys are—always have been—just a wee bit queer. Old inbred stock, you know. They will produce somebody like poor Mr. Quentin, who was as sane as you or me, but as a rule in every generation there is one member of the family—or more—who is just a little bit—-" and he tapped his forehead. "Nothing ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... in silence. She well knew the girl's self-contained nature, always shrinking, except in moments of violent emotion, from the outward betrayal of its trials and its sufferings to others. The true depth of feeling which is marked by this inbred modesty is most frequently found in men. The few women who possess it are without the communicative consolations of the feminine heart. They are the noblest—-and but too often the unhappiest of ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... With all this inbred vulgar air, he was a dog of great moral excellence—affectionate, faithful, honest up to his light, with an odd humor as peculiar and as strong as his tail. My father, in his reserved way, was very fond of him, and there must ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... resembling his famous son—for he was the father of Hawthorne—that a passing sailor once recognized the latter by the likeness. What else he transmitted to his son, in addition to physique, by way of temperament and inbred capacity and inclination, was to suffer more than a sea-change; but he is recalled as a stern man on deck, of few words, showing doubtless the early aging of those days under the influence of active responsibility, danger, and the ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... was abundantly grateful. All the Scot in him asserted itself in a fierce reticence, an inbred sense of privacy where a man's deepest feelings were concerned: and now, as he stood battling with his impatience to be gone, he was suffering acute discomfiture from the demonstrative leave-taking in progress between Maurice and his sister. For their sakes, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... thirty, I, personally, believe it would have made no difference. There were probably also other things under and around their sturdy paws—things very much worse and less innocent than any water—things they must have, dimly, at any rate, if not acutely, been aware of in an inbred sort of way; but they made no ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... is inbred and shaped into more and more exaggerated forms, it weakens and loses the ability to forage. Kale retains the most wild aggressiveness, Chinese cabbage perhaps the least. Here, in approximately correct ...
— Gardening Without Irrigation: or without much, anyway • Steve Solomon
... it is not easy to find salient traits in the art of M. Saint-Saens. We are apt to think mainly of the distinguished beauty of his harmonies, until we remember his subtle counterpoint, or in turn the brilliancy of his orchestration. The one trait that he has above his contemporaries is an inbred refinement and restraint,—a thorough-going workmanship. If he does not share a certain overwrought emotionalism that is much affected nowadays, there is here no limitation—rather a distinction. Aside from ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... have large recourse to "big names," not because of inbred snobbishness on the part of the editors but because the "big name," besides carrying advertising value, is more likely than a little one to stand for material with a "big" theme, handled by a writer of experience. A surer touch in ...
— If You Don't Write Fiction • Charles Phelps Cushing
... his tea, his eyes gleaming with a strange light, lan kept silence also. Mrs. Macruadh cast a quick glance, now at the one, now at the other. She was in great anxiety, and could scarce restrain herself. She knew her boys full of inbred dignity and strong conscience, but was nevertheless doubtful how they would act. They could not feel as she felt, else would the hot blood of their race have at once boiled over! Had she searched herself she might have discovered a latent dread that they might be nearer ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... purge your soul until He is satisfied concerning its purity. Ask Him to kill all the things which displease Him, and destroy the last remains of inbred sin. Ask Him to restore the image of God in your soul, to come in and possess His temple. Ask God to fill you with the Holy Spirit, to let the Comforter take up His abode in you and abide with you forever. ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... to inbred modesty and refinement, adds a scrupulous attention to the rights and feelings of others, and applies the Golden Rule of doing as she would be done by, to all who are connected with her, both at ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... even the aid of a stick, and, holding out a thin, shaking hand, welcomed me with an air of breeding rarely to be met with in his station in society. But the chief part of this polish sprung from the inbred kindliness of his nature, which was manifest in the expression of his noble old countenance. Age is such a different thing in different natures! One man seems to grow more and more selfish as he grows ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... immediate profit resulting from increased value in the subjects, but in view of the ultimate results which may be anticipated; for, as we have seen when treating of the law of similarity, acquired habits may in time become so inbred as to ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... sympathy with struggle and strenuous action. Burne-Jones's men and women are dreamers too. It was this which, more than anything else, estranged him from the age into which he was born. But he had an inbred "revolt from fact" which would have estranged him from the actualities of any age. That criticism seems to be more justified which has found in him a lack of such victorious energy and mastery over his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... helpless, pusillanimous, and unweaponed creature in the world, the most unfit and unable to do that which all mortals most aspire to—either to be useful to his friends or to offend his enemies? Or, if it be to be thought a natural proneness, there is against that a much more potent inclination inbred, which about this time of a man's life solicits most—the desire of house and family of his own; to which nothing is esteemed more helpful than the early entering into credible employment, and nothing more hindering than this affected ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... him for Cambridge; but it was the return to this tender foster-mother that seemed such extreme bliss to Cicely. All was most unlike her reluctant return two years previously, when nothing but her inbred courtesy and natural sweetness of disposition had prevented her from being contemptuous of the country home. Now every stone, every leaf, seemed precious to her, and she showed herself, even as she ascended the steps to the hall, determined not to be the guest but ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... blank faces—a philosophy which has never compared together two infants of a few days old, and has never observed that those infants are not born with blank tempers for mothers and nurses to fill up at will? Are there, infinitely varying with each individual, inbred forces of Good and Evil in all of us, deep down below the reach of mortal encouragement and mortal repression—hidden Good and hidden Evil, both alike at the mercy of the liberating opportunity and the sufficient temptation? Within these earthly limits, is earthly Circumstance ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... he had promised to wed, nay even the woman he loved with all his being—a half-breed, a mulatto! His mind sickened with the horror of that thought. All the inbred contempt of the Southerner for the servile races surged up to overwhelm his passion, to make it seem more than impossible, revolting, that the mistress of his dreams should be a creature tainted by the blood ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... follow and embrace the dotings of the rude people: For the common sort of strangers, and the offskowring of mariners (here I do except them of better iudgement aswell mariners as others) hearing of this rare miracle of nature, by an inbred and naturall blockishnesse are earned to this imagination of the prison of soules: and that because they see no wood nor any such fewell layed vpon this fire as they haue in their owne chimneys at home. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... pleads for preservation, and that in respect to what I speak of myself as possessing I think I shall be ashamed, as of a cold impiety, to find any element altogether negligible. To which I may add perhaps that I struggle under the drawback, innate and inbred, of seeing the whole content of memory and affection in each enacted and recovered moment, as who should say, in the vivid image and the very scene; the light of the only terms in which life has treated me to experience. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... presumption, and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity. In England we have not yet been completely embowelled of our natural entrails; we still feel within us, and we cherish and cultivate, those inbred sentiments which are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true supporters of all liberal and manly morals. We have not been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Balls to welcome a girl with the stain Sheila Macklin bore upon her name. Tunis remembered clearly how scornfully Cap'n Ira had spoken of the possibility of their taking in a girl from the poor farm. Pride of family and of name is inbred in their ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... his family would think it madness. No doubt it was madness. Yet, as far as he could explain his impulse himself, it depended on certain fundamental facts in his own nature—it was in keeping with his deepest character. He had an inbred love of the difficult, the unconventional in life, of all that piqued and stimulated his own superabundant consciousness of resource and power. And he had a tenderness of feeling, a gift of chivalrous pity, only known to the few, which ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... still remain down-hearted, but this is not the case at Paris. The supposed fear of Germany is only political bluff. France fears no Germans. She fears nobody. Perhaps she ought to fear—for the far future. But she has always had a belief in herself and her way of doing things and an inbred contempt for other races as for barbarians, and it has only needed this colossal victory in a world-war to set her on her pedestal of ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... seemed sadly clear at last that this uncle must possess some innate badness of character and fondness for low company. We who from daily experience knew Miss Smedley like a book—were we not only too well aware that she had neither accomplishments nor charms, no characteristic, in fact, but an inbred viciousness of temper and disposition? True, she knew the dates of the English kings by heart; but how could that profit Uncle George, who, having passed into the army, had ascended beyond the need of useful information? Our bows and arrows, ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... released, the invalid, who had grown so dear to her, might have no further cause for alarm? It distressed her to hear his name mentioned by Gilberte; she could not endure the thought of enlisting in his favor an influence that was of so ambiguous a character. Her inbred scruples of a pure, honest woman made themselves felt, now it seemed to her that the rumors of a liaison with the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... inbred sins require Our flesh to see the dust! Yet as the Lord our Saviour rose, ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... zealously under their Government; though they neither forgot nor forgave its transgressions, in having first involved them in a war with a people then struggling for its own liberties under a twofold infliction—confounded by inbred faction, and beleagured by a cruel and imperious external foe. But these remembrances did not vent themselves in reproaches, nor hinder us from being reconciled to our Rulers, when a change or rather a revolution in circumstances had imposed new duties: and, in defiance of local and personal ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... a king covenanted with God should be much respected by his subjects. They should love him. There is an inbred affection in the hearts of the people to their king. In the 12th verse it is said, that "the people clapped their hands for joy, and said, God save the king." They had no sooner seen their native king installed in his kingdom, but they rejoiced exceedingly, and saluted him with ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... Correns. If the common garden plant called four o'clock (Mirabilis jalapa) with red flowers is crossed to one having white flowers, the offspring are pink (fig. 13). The hybrid, then, is intermediate in the color of its flowers between the two parents. If these hybrids are inbred the offspring are white, pink and red, in the proportion of 1:2:1. All of these had the same ancestry, yet they are of three different kinds. If we did not know their history it would be quite impossible to state what the ancestry ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan
... These inbred conceptions of the surpassing importance of rank influenced her whole life. She found it impossible to make friends with the daughters of a major or a captain, because their fathers were her father's social inferiors. Once a lieutenant asked her for a dance. To punish him for his impudence, ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... "Don Calixto dresses in black, very fastidiously, and the effect is smart, but smacks of the notary. No matter what pains he takes to appear graceful and easy in manner, he doesn't achieve the result; he has the inbred humility of one who has taken orders in a shop, either as a lad or as ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... his property behind. This caused many to remain and profess Christianity, only awaiting a time when their property could be turned into gold or jewels and be borne upon the person. This fondness for concrete wealth is a race instinct implanted in the Jewish mind by the inbred thought that possibly tomorrow ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... "Peveril of the Peak," "Quentin Durward," and others of Scott's novel; had appeared while Hawthorne was at Bowdoin; and the author of "Waverley" had become the autocrat of fiction. In addition to this, there is an inbred analogy between New England and Scotland. In the history and character of the people of each country are seen the influence of Calvin, and of a common-school system. Popular education was ingrafted upon the policy of ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... him from the privileged eminence of the pulpit, or in any way sanctioned by his religious teacher. It is nearly two hundred years since a Boston layman wrote these words: "I am not ignorant that the pious frauds of the ancient, and the inbred fire (I do not call it pride) of many of our modern divines, have precipitated them to propagate and maintain truth as well as falsehoods, in such an unfair manner as has given advantage to the enemy to suspect the whole doctrine these men have ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... parts of the earth's surface until he had covered the selected districts on the main portions of the globe. Then came race specialization, where a group remained a long time in the same environment and inbred in the same stock, developing specialized racial characters. These changes were very slow, and the wide difference to-day between the Asiatic, the African, and the European is indicative of the long period of years which brought them about. Certainly, six ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... Abner, Peleg, Meshech, and the rest, had been like Perez in the army, and yet the democratic impressions they had there received, now that they had returned home, served only to exasperate them against the pretensions of the superior class, without availing to eradicate their inbred instincts of servility in the presence of the very men they hated. Precisely this self-contemptuous recognition of his own servile feeling, operating on a morose temper, was the key to Hubbard's special bitterness toward the silk stockings. That Perez had none of this peasant's ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... which places art at the service of life. Always they had sought to preserve the finer lessons of the past; always they had struggled against the tyranny of mediocrity, the increasing cult of the second best. From this source, from the inherited instinct for selection, for elimination, from the inbred tendency toward order and suavity of living, Corinna had derived her clear-eyed acceptance of life, her nobility of mind, her loveliness and grace of body. She had been prepared and nurtured for beauty, only to bloom in an ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... aside. Certain inbred ideas are strangely tenacious of existence, and it happened to be his wife they were discussing. It would not be good form, de Puysange felt, for him to evince ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... surround youth. They are formidable, whether they take the shape of religion or politics or class—and a fixed form of religious belief is probably the most operative of them all. It is quite possible that but for subconscious training of the mind inbred through the generations neither man nor society would have been able to survive. None the less, now that man has attained the stage of social reason, prejudice is rather ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... nimble horses, well provisioned and provided with the best weapons extant, guided by very competent chiefs and European advisers—withal self-reliant and conscious of a superior aggressive and defensive capability for repeating their splendid ancestral records of prowess. Add to this inbred patriotism stimulated to an enthusiasm approaching fanaticism by a mind fashioned to the belief that their war is against an unjust usurper destined to be overthrown; it all sums up a long way towards balancing numerical inferiority and inexperience in the science ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... dear to the hearts of magazine illustrators. Faces, weak with sunken cheek lines, strong in creases of selfishness, darkened by the brush strokes of nocturnal excesses and seared, all of them with the brand mark of inbred rascality, identified them to Shirley as members of that shrewd class of sycophants who feast on the follies of the more amateurish ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... those innate principles of justice, piety, gratitude, equity, chastity? Or where is that universal consent that assures us there are such inbred rules? Murders in duels, when fashion has made them honourable, are committed without remorse of conscience: nay, in many places innocence in this case is the greatest ignominy. And if we look abroad to take ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... the last word off his tongue with difficult triumph. "Unscientificness," was evidently the club his Western education gave him, with which to combat the inbred superstition of centuries. But Martin saw ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... from those writers. Faulty and erring as we are, we always rise from Mr. Conrad's books purged and, for the moment, strengthened. Apparent in him are that manly and honourable virtue, that strict saline truth and scrupulous regard for life, that liberation from cant, which seem to be inbred in those who have suffered the exacting discipline of the hostile sea. Certainly Conrad cannot be called a writer who has neglected the tragic side of things. Yet in his "Notes on Life ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... of thy own divine nature turned against thy conscious self: learn to smile content in that, and thou wilt out-satan Satan in the putridity of essential meanness, yea, self-satisfied in very virtue of thy shame, thou wilt count it the throned apotheosis of inbred honor. But seeming is not being—least of all self-seeming. Dishonor will yet be dishonor, if all the fools in creation should be in love with it, ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... sense,—thanks, awfully! Nor you, my dear Bruno, although my inbred politeness forbids my explaining ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... of an eye it flashed over her that for some purpose or other she had been trapped. Gabinius she knew barely by sight; but his reputation had come to her ears, and fame spoke nothing good of him. Yet even at the moment when she felt herself in the most imminent personal peril, the inbred dignity and composed hauteur of the Vestal did not desert her. At the selfsame instant that she said to herself, "Can I escape through the atrium before they can stop me?" recovering from her first surprise, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... undiminished activities, has become a means of revenue in "the keeping of boarders." Seven of the old Quaker homes, in the period of the Mixed Community, took on the aspect of small hotels. For this business the Quakers have a preparation in their history and traditions. They have an inbred genius for hospitality. They have also a thrift and capacity for "management" which have made their efforts successful. One is impressed in their houses by a union of abundance with economy, impossible ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... breathe. Adj. affected, characterized, formed, molded, cast; attempered[obs3], tempered; framed; predisposed; prone, inclined; having a bias &c. n.; tinctured with, imbued with, penetrated with, eaten up with. inborn, inbred, ingrained; deep-rooted, ineffaceable, inveterate; pathoscopic|!; congenital, dyed in the wool, implanted by nature, inherent, in the grain. affective [obs3][med. and general]. Adv. in one's heart &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... quite an extraordinary stud dog. His progeny were legion, and some very good terriers of to-day own him as progenitor in nearly every line. The best descendants of Alister were Kildee, Tiree, Whinstone, Prince Alexander, and Heather Prince. He was apparently too much inbred to, and though he produced or was responsible for several beautiful terriers, it is much to be doubted whether in a breed which is suffering from the ill-effects of too much inbreeding, he was not one ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... during the coming summer with instructions how to introduce them and how to re-queen the apiary. Mostly all bees in the state at present are hybrids, which are hard to manage. In many localities bees have been inbred for years, making the introduction of new blood a necessity. All queens sent out are bred from the leather colored Italian breeding queens of choicest stock obtainable. The price of queens will be fifty cents for one, and not more than three will be furnished to each beekeeper. Orders ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... her father had left her. Isabella liked farming, and loved her fertile acres and opulent orchards. She abhorred the sea and all that pertained to it, less from any dread of its dangers than from an inbred conviction that sailors were "low" in the social scale—a species of necessary vagabonds. In her eyes there was a taint of disgrace in such a calling. David must be transformed into a respectable, home-abiding tiller of ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... monarchs will undertake no enterprise requiring large expenditure until he is assured of the support of the keen-eyed, swarthy-visaged men who control the sinews of war. Generations of exclusion from agriculture and the mechanical arts and of devotion to commerce, have developed and inbred in the Jew ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... consideration to be urged at this point is that the concept "social forces" has a real content. It represents reality. There are social forces. They are the desires of persons. They range in energy from the vagrant whim that makes the individual a temporary discomfort to his group, to the inbred feelings that whole races share. It is with these subtle forces that social arrangements and the theories of social arrangements have ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the meaner faults of men; and pettiness, hypocrisy, selfishness and vanity, were stamped, to his piercing eyes, upon the faces of ninety out of every hundred with whom he came in contact. By the time he had reached twenty-five, his inbred pessimism was so deeply rooted within him, that mankind, always interesting and to be studied as a theme, was to be fenced with, and generally avoided as a living entity. He rose in his time, did Vladimir ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... too simple for many words. We were ambushed, and the Sergeant got a bad hurt, and would have lost his scalp, but for a sort of inbred turn I took to the weapon. We brought him off, however, and a handsomer head of hair, for his time of life, is not to be found in the rijiment than the Sergeant carries about with him ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... to the native inhabitants, began, as he was now growing old, to find his eyes fail, and awhile after became perfectly blind. Not that he had done anything himself which might occasion this defect, or was deprived of his sight by any outrage of fortune; it seems rather to have been some inbred and hereditary weakness that was founded in natural causes, which by length of time came to discover itself. For it is said, that several of his kindred and family were subject to the like gradual decay, and lost all use of their eyes, as he did, in their declining years. Athanis ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... Negro are of two kinds—the inborn and the inbred. As they reveal themselves to us, this distinction may not be seen, but it exists. Inborn qualities are ineradicable; they belong to the blood; they constitute individuality; they are independent, or nearly so, of time ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... this is granted with the restriction to one harlot in a day, and under a penalty in case of communication with more than one on the same day. Afterwards, when from examination it appears that that lust is so inbred that they cannot be withdrawn from it, they are conveyed to a certain place which is next above the hell assigned for them, and then they appear to themselves as if they fall into a swoon, and to others as if they fall down with the face upward; and also the ground beneath ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of the old heathens were their moral philosophers. These received the acts of an inbred law, in the Sinai of nature, and delivered them with many expositions to the multitude. These were the overseers of manners, correctors of vices, directors of lives, doctors of virtue, which yet taught their people the body of their natural divinity, not after one manner: while some spent themselves ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... Lady Janet's inbred sense of justice admitted not over willingly—the reasonableness as well as the humanity of the view expressed in those words. "There is some truth in that, Julian," she said, shifting her position uneasily in her chair, and ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... deep self-examination, and was severely exercised with fear and apprehension, whether I was myself a real partaker of those divine influences which I could so evidently discover in her. Sin appeared to me just then to be more than ever "exceeding sinful." Inward and inbred corruptions made me tremble. The danger of self-deception in so great a matter alarmed me. I was a teacher of others; but was I indeed spiritually ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... many things were without ground which he had received for truth, had yet work hard enough, as himself intimates, to get his conscience clear from all those roots and strings of inbred error. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
