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Proclivity   Listen
noun
Proclivity  n.  
1.
Inclination; propensity; proneness; tendency. "A proclivity to steal."
2.
Readiness; facility; aptitude. "He had such a dexterous proclivity as his teachers were fain to restrain his forwardness."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Proclivity" Quotes from Famous Books



... true, as it turned out. By natural proclivity Laura had from the first entered heart and soul into military romance as exhibited in the plots and characters of those living exponents of it who came under her notice. From her earliest young womanhood civilians, however promising, had no chance of ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... She did not doubt that this was the fugitive, the "wolf's head," and should she turn to flee, he could stop her progress with a pistol-ball, for doubtless he would fancy her alert to disclose the discovery and share in the reward. Perhaps feminine curiosity aided fear; perhaps only her proclivity to find an employ in the management of others influenced her decision; though trembling in every fibre, she crossed the interval of water, and made her way up the slope. But when she reached the fateful tree it was she who spoke first. He cast ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... the fire-guard in the absence of our nurses, we obtained some cinders, with which we repaired to our post at the window, thus illustrating that natural proclivity of children to places of danger which is the bane of parents and guardians. Here we fastened up little fragments of cinder in pieces of writing-paper, and having secured them tidily with string, we dropped ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... plans to capture grizzlies we took into consideration the proclivity of this beast to attack. We knew his speed was tremendous. He is able to catch a horse or a dog on the run. Therefore, it is useless for a man to try to run away from him. There is no such thing as being able to climb a ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... the style of the Spectator, a model he assiduously cultivated in his own extensive writings afterwards. He was not assisted in his studies, and all he ever knew of mathematics he taught himself. Being addicted to literature by natural proclivity he inserted his own articles in his brother's newspaper, and these being very favorably commented upon by the local public, or at least noticed and talked about, his authorship of them was discovered, and this led to a ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... proclivity for such fanciful trash.' He cleared his throat for the utterance. He put out his hand and Helen hastily slipped her own into it. Silently they returned to their own camp site, the girl carrying in her free hand the wand tipped with the bluebird feather. Several times they ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... offer. In fact, Flemild was fairly well satisfied with the turn matters had taken. She knew she must be either wife or nun—there was no third course open for a woman in England at that day—and she certainly had no proclivity for the cloister. Derette, on the other hand, had expressed herself in terms of great contempt for matrimony, and of decided intention to adopt single life, in the only form in which it was then possible. It was therefore arranged by Romund, and obediently ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... latter is catching the fish, the former may seize on the fact, that in this word, Scuppaug, is to be found the origin of the two separate names by which Argyrops, the silver-eyed, is miscalled in local vernacular. True to the national proclivity for clipping names, the fishermen of Rhode Island appeal to him by the first syllable only of his Indian one,—for in the waters thereabout he is talked of by the familiar abbreviation, Scup. But to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... Douglass passed through every gradation of rank comprised in our national make-up, and bears upon his person and upon his soul every thing that is American. And he has not only full sympathy with every thing American; his proclivity or bent, to active toil and visible progress, are in the strictly national direction, delighting to ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... feature of Friedrich; and discloses the inborn proclivity he had to retirement, to study and reflection, as the chosen element of human life. Why he fell upon so ambitious a title for his Royal Cottage? "No-Bother" was not practically a thing he, of all men, could consider ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... writers drew along with them a large body, who would fain be slaveholders themselves. We must never lose sight of the fact that though the majority perhaps are on the side of freedom, large numbers of Englishmen are not slaveholders only because the law forbids the practice. In this proclivity we see a great part of the reason of the frantic sympathy of thousands with the rebels in the great Black war in America. It is true that we do sympathize with brave men, though we may not approve of the objects for which they fight. We admired Stonewall Jackson as a modern ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... scientifically treated. Man is always finding his fowls drowned in the cellar and going the wrong way to put things right. Generally speaking, it must be confessed that he is too fond of rushing off to the landlord. In his Travels in Russia, Theophile Gautier has a striking word concerning this perilous proclivity. 'Whatever is of real use to man,' he says, 'was invented from the beginning of the world, and all the people who have come along since have worn their brains out to find something new, but have made no improvements. Change is far from being progress; it is not yet proved that steamers ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... a little plateau, perched as it were on a rocky proclivity, jutting from the mountain side, exposed to the setting sun, on which stood a ruined castle where the shepherds were wont to seek shelter when the mistral overtook them. A flat space, some hundred and fifty feet long, and sixty wide, which might once have been the castle platform, was now to ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... discovered after about a week of feverish questing (for apart from the ordinary dangers of discovery to which my protegee was subject, her proclivity for adventures at the most unseasonable times greatly enhanced the danger which I apprehended). Judge, then, of my satisfaction when I succeeded in obtaining the lease of a small villa—indeed I might almost term it a bungalow—in ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... this, and sends untold myriads to hell forever for no other sin than that of simply having been born children of humanity. Born totally depraved, hateful to God, helpless through an irresistible proclivity to sin and an ineradicable aversion to evangelical truth, and asked to save themselves, asked by a mockery like that of fettering men hand and foot, clothing them in leaden straitjackets, and then flinging them overboard, telling them not to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... should develop a proclivity For singing on the operatic stage, He will find that though his patients may apparently forgive it, he Will temporal'ly cease to be the rage, And the lawyer who depreciates his logical ability And covets a poetical ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... mood, nature; willingness, readiness, inclination; arrangement, disposal; propensity, inclination, proneness, proclivity, bias, bent. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... was one of those old-fashioned country places, a few miles outside of the town, such as our people of means used to have a few generations ago, before they had lost the landholding instinct of their English ancestors and gained the herding proclivity of modern life. The extensive yard and grounds were filled with shrubbery—lilacs, rose-bushes, and evergreens—and shaded by fine old trees, among which the birds were singing as Keith drove up the curving ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... feel that I am growing any older, and I don't see that you are, and so I totally forget that proclivity in other people. But what do you think now? Can we take this young woman with us to camp? Will she ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton

... with sufficient plainness in what the material connection is established between the acquired peculiarities of an organism, and the proclivity on the part of the germ in virtue of which it develops the special characteristics of ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler

... my book arrive I should be glad of your assistance in going through them. My tendency, I think, is to over-punctuate, and your proclivity would, I believe, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various

... prerogative of the regularly appointed priests to do: and wrathfully alleged that the public were more ready to confess to these travelling mendicants than to the proper authorities. It is possible that the cause may be traced to that human proclivity which inclines a man to confide rather in a stranger whom he may never meet again, than in one who can remind him of uncomfortable facts at inconvenient times: but also it is possible that the people recognised in the teaching of the Minorite Friars, largely ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt

... bent while young, and followed it in active life. But precocity is not common, and, except in rare cases, we must discover the bias in our natures, and not wait for the proclivity to make itself manifest. When found, it is worth more to us than a vein ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... all he can do is to follow slavishly the lead given him by Cervantes; his only humour lies in making Don Quixote take inns for castles and fancy himself some legendary or historical personage, and Sancho mistake words, invert proverbs, and display his gluttony; all through he shows a proclivity to coarseness and dirt, and he has contrived to introduce two tales filthier than anything by the sixteenth century novellieri and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... The proclivity of the Puritans for education is illustrated in the fact, that only five years after the foundation of Yale College one of this family, Daniel a grandson of Samuel, the emigrant from England, became a student there and was graduated in 1709, and that ...
— Log-book of Timothy Boardman • Samuel W Boardman

... of some three weeks of hard work we had cleared the hold, painted and overhauled the ship inside and out, and were ready to begin loading at daylight on a Monday morning. However great was Mr. Johnston's proclivity to get "wrought up," he had proved himself an excellent man of business by the way he had conducted our affairs ashore when once he put his hand to them; and we, too, had accomplished much, both in getting out the cargo and in putting the ship in repair. We had stripped her to ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes

... other sects with a political tinge. The proclivity of the Chinese to guilds, corporations and secret societies is well known and many of these latter have a religious basis. All such bodies are under the ban of the Government, for they have always been suspected with more or less justice of favouring ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot

... ever had a stronger proclivity towards parody than Thackeray; and we may, I think, confess that there is no form of literary drollery more dangerous. The parody will often mar the gem of which it coarsely reproduces the outward semblance. The word "damaged," used instead of "damask," has ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... country. The special feature of India is the numerical, social and intellectual strength of the priestly caste. It is true that in reading Sanskrit literature we must remember that most of it is the work of Brahmans and discount their proclivity to glorify the priesthood, but still it is clear that in India the sacerdotal families acquired a position without parallel elsewhere and influenced its whole social and political history. In most countries powerful priesthoods are closely connected with the Government under ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... craving, inclination, passion, relish, desire, liking, proclivity, thirst, disposition, longing, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... which we dwell here—of a body 'raised in incorruption,' 'clothed with immortality,' and so, as in many another phrase, declared to be exempt from decay, and therefore vigorous with unchanging youth. How that comes we cannot tell. Whether because that body of glory has no proclivity to mutation and decay, or whether the perpetual volition and power of God counteract such tendency and give, as the Book of Revelation says,' to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God'—matters ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... York, and not untouched by scandal. She was a handsome, headstrong girl, a rebellious and violent force in a provincial society. She was brutally sentimental and heavily romantic. Her free speech, her Continental ideas, and her proclivity for championing new causes, even when she did not know much about them, made her an object of suspicion. She was always going abroad to seek out intellectual affinities, and was one of the group of young women who followed ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather

... a natural proclivity for quoting the appropriate dirge when sorrow shows itself. The Book of Lamentations—Shakespeare's sadder lines—roll off their tongues majestically and seem to give them consolation—as it were to ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... of this obnoxious proclivity, and did what he could to divert him back to medicine again. But it was no use. Underneath his Galen and Hippocrates were secreted copies of Euclid and Archimedes, to be studied at every available opportunity. Old Vincenzo perceived the bent of genius to be too strong for ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... was a certain Didius Julianus [of senatorial rank but eccentric character], an insatiate money-getter and reckless spender, always anxious for a change in the government, who on account of the last named proclivity had been driven out by Commodus to his own city, Mediolanum. He, accordingly, on hearing of the death of Pertinax, hastily made his way to the camp, and standing near the gates of the fort made offers to the soldiers in regard to the ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio

... and were so excited about robbing the ousels of a single egg, that Gillian hoped that Fergus would not catch the infection and abandon minerals for eggs, which would be ever so much worse—-only a degree better than butterflies, towards which Wilfred showed a certain proclivity. ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge

... will be prepared to marry us. I warn you not to attempt to run away," he said, interpreting aright the startled glance she cast about her. "In yonder lane stands a trusty sentinel to see that you do not leave this house. You have been guarded thus since you entered this house; knowing your proclivity to escape impending difficulties, I have prepared accordingly. You can not escape your fate, my ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... meaning, that is to say, nothing more than a propensity towards sickness. But with regard to whatever is good, as some are more inclined to different good qualities than others, we may call this a facility or tendency: this tendency to evil is a proclivity or inclination to falling: but where anything is neither good nor bad, it ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... own home circle as manager, prepared the way no less directly than his occasional Readings, later on, at some expense to himself (in travelling and otherwise) for purely charitable purposes. His proclivity stagewards, in effect, the natural trending of his line of life, so to speak, in the histrionic or theatrical direction, was, in another way, indicated at a yet earlier date, and not one jot less pointedly. It was so, we mean, at the ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... arise, in men and animals alike, through the instinct of sexual jealousy which is probably bound up with the primary instinct of self-preservation. Those people who profess belief in the inherent superiority of a particular race naturally look upon the tendency towards race-blending as a perverse proclivity, while those who think that all men are potentially equal regard it as a wholesome instinct provided by nature to counteract the feebleness and infertility which cause the dying-out of the race that ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... the point 'What is God?'" and constructing his answer frankly from his own nature. It was quite in Browning's way to take a humorous delight in imagining grotesque parallels to ideas and processes in which he profoundly believed; a proclivity aided by the curious subtle relation between his grotesquerie and his seriousness, which makes Pacchiarotto, for instance, closely similar in effect to parts of Christmas-Eve. Browning is one of three or four sons of ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... tendency; aptness, aptitude; proneness, proclivity, bent, turn, tone, bias, set, leaning to, predisposition, inclination, propensity, susceptibility; conatus [Lat.], nisus [Lat.]; liability &c 177; quality, nature, temperament; idiocrasy^, idiosyncrasy; cast, vein, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... regiment was moved to Halltown, encamped on the Miller farm, and threw out pickets. I was on first detail there. I learned how to get a fair sleep on top of a "herring-bone" rail fence. My proclivity for "prying into things" manifested itself there. An attack was expected, so our regiment slept on arms, anxiously waiting; it became tedious. I asked permission to reconnoitre alone, and was permitted. In the dark I sneaked out about a mile, and listened; three or four cavalrymen ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith

... have been a man with a proclivity for Indian barter, that led him to seek a place with the "third expedition" at Cape Cod, thereby nearly accomplishing his death, which indeed occurred later, in Plymouth harbor, not long before the return of ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... the coroner, was one of those people who seized upon the war as a pretext for the exercise of their natural proclivity to interfere in other people's affairs. He took the opportunity that every inquest gave him to lecture the British public on their duties and responsibilities in war-time. The body on which he was sitting formed his text, the jury was his congregation, and the newspaper reporters ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... before had been silent begin to voice their reactionary feeling, while those who shortly before had been in the ascendant begin to take their turn of silent dissent. Thus the waves are accentuated, both in their rise and in their relapse, by the abdicating proclivity ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick

... Richard Gurney, a man of the same royalist proclivity as Garway, and on that account, perhaps, described by Clarendon as "a man of wisdom and courage," had been elected mayor in succession to Edmund Wright.(463) The last days of Wright's mayoralty were days of sickness and tumult in the city. Numbers of disbanded ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe

... Bean!" flared Pollyanna. "My Ladies' Aiders weren't old women—that is, not many of them, so very old," she corrected hastily, her usual proclivity for truth and literalness superseding ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter

... its structure—a strategic point, the bridge. Also, through the offices of my good friend the keeper, I was introduced to some of his "pals" in the waterguard. Because of my intimate knowledge of Robbie Burns, Walter Scott, "inside" history of Prince Charlie, and—ahem!—Scottish proclivity for a drop o' whisky, they accepted me ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... fun and mischief, there was also in his disposition as evident a proclivity to seriousness and earnestness. If it gave him delight to play off upon a stranger the joke of "bagging the game," he enjoyed with equal ardor the correct rendering of a difficult translation, or the ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee

... discovered, soon after coming to the village, into what a hornets' nest he had got,—every one tattling about and backbiting each other. His innocent and unsuspicious wife may have indulged a little in what is considered the amiable proclivity of her sex, and have let fall, in tea-table talk, what cavillers and mischief-makers were on hand to take up; and he may have found it both necessary and difficult to teach her caution and reserve. He saw, more perhaps than she did, the danger of getting involved ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... the verandah while a servant brought brandy-and-soda, and Nana Sahib, with a restless perversity akin to the torturing proclivity of a Hindu was quizzing the Frenchman about ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... scientific eye, your capacious digestive apparatus is a psycho-physical exhibit of the racial proclivity to overeat. Here, in this exhibit, the race's inordinate craving for food and drink, its gluttonous thought, have embodied themselves; and this exhibit, this apparatus, is accordingly not merely physical, but also psychical, for its sub-conscious outreach for "more and always more" ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... drifting in the pellucid gulf beneath the stars watched all through the night; it may be that he dozed. But if he gave way to so natural a proclivity, assuredly on the fourth night of the great flank march he was aroused, for that was the night of the battle in the air that decided the fate of Holland. The aeroplanes were fighting at last, and suddenly about him, above and below, with cries and uproar rushing ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... rebounded, lost their way, and arrived each at the wrong place. The soul of the princess was one of those, and she went far astray. She does not belong by rights to this world at all, but to some other planet, probably Mercury. Her proclivity to her true sphere destroys all the natural influence which this orb would otherwise possess over her corporeal frame. She cares for nothing here. There is no relation between her ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald

... made, there ensued one flash of instantaneous blaze, and the whole surface, no matter if it were a table-cover, a hanging, or the wall covering a room, was totally destroyed. Yet as one must have had or heard of such a disastrous experience to fear and avoid it, this proclivity alone would not have ended its popularity. It was probably the evanescent character of what was called its "art-colour" which ended the career of an estimable material, and if the manufacturers had known how to eliminate its faults and adapt its virtues, ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... affecting the interests of the Establishment. It was long ago said of him, that, had he been in political life, he would surely and easily have risen to the position of Premier. He has for years been charged with a marked proclivity to the doctrines of the Puseyites; and his adroitness in baffling all attempted investigation into the manner in which he has conducted the discipline of his diocese has perhaps contributed more than any other cause to fasten upon him the significant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks

... contains a very fair analysis of the elements of the vote in opposition to the prohibitory amendment, except that, perhaps, we ought to add the vote in opposition to a well-intended class of men who have no proclivity for liquor, and who, perhaps, could give no better reason for their vote but that they abhor innovations, and are content to do as their fathers ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... one woman, and one small child, made up the force of the "go-ahead" faction, and R., with his usual proclivity toward mischief, invited them to join our party. Fear of the Indians—for I can conceive of no other motive—must have induced him to court so burdensome an alliance. As may well be conceived, these repeated instances of high-handed ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... particular to a shade about clothes, and has a nice taste in hats. One wonders how he acquired it. His patriotic proclivity, his hostility to national costumes other than English, his preference for uncoloured complexions—this one may understand; but his aesthetic instinct is a problem for Weismann. As the interpreter of the conventions, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... where the proclivity to asceticism and self-torture is endemic, it was only natural that penance should in very truth seem easier and more satisfactory than this spiritual discipline. It won more respect and doubtless seemed more tangible and definite, more like what the world ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... believing—an excellent thing and wholesome, though it by no means covers the whole ground, or meets all difficulties. The logical consequence is a strong distaste for theology, and no very high opinion of the priesthood, wherein we may probably find the root of Thackeray's proclivity, already mentioned, toward unmerited sarcasm upon the clergy. In the Introduction to Pendennis is a letter written from Spa, in which he says, 'They have got a Sunday service here in an extinct gambling-house, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... was as concerned as I was for this particular divorce, as if he struggled with a lively desire to see me and Mary happily married after the shortest possible interval. And indeed he manifestly wasn't unsympathetic; he had the strongest proclivity for the romantic and picturesque, and it was largely the romantic picturesqueness of renunciation that he urged upon me. Philip for the most part maintained a resentful silence; he was a clenched anger against me, against Mary, against the flaming possibilities that threatened the sister ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells

... it; And for knowledge if any one burns, We keep an extremely small prophet, a prophet Who brings us unbounded returns: For he can prophesy With a wink OF his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ready in stacks, If he'll only ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... domesticated in the pay and patronage of that munificent patron of letters. Warburton thinks "it was from the ferocity of his temper, that Shakspeare chose for him the name which Rabelais gives to his pedant of Thubal Holoferne." Were the matter worth arguing, we should say, it was rather from the proclivity with which (according to Camden's rules) the abbreviated Latin name Johnes Florio or Floreo falls into Holofernes. Rabelais and anagrammatism may divide the slender glory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... now in a position to study the rabbit's skeleton. We strongly recommend the student to do this with the actual bones at hand— they may be cleared very easily in a well-boiled rabbit. This recommendation may appear superfluous to some readers, but, as a matter of fact, the marked proclivity of the average schoolmaster for mere book-work has put such a stamp on study, that, in nine cases out of ten, a student, unless he is expressly instructed to the contrary, will go to the tortuous, and possibly inexact, descriptions of a book for a knowledge of things ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... the Italian High Command to accompany us, I imagine, because of his ability to give intelligent answers to every conceivable sort of question, his tact, and his unfailing discretion. His chief weakness was his proclivity for road-burning, in which he was enthusiastically abetted by our Sicilian chauffeur, who, before attaining to the dignity of driving a staff-car, had spent an apprenticeship of two years in piloting ammunition-laden camions over the narrow and perilous roads ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... evil lies, as I think, in training. The female sex is prone to be inaccurate and careless of apparently trivial detail, because that is the general tendency of mankind. In men destined for a business or a profession, the proclivity is harshly discouraged at an early stage. In women, who usually are not destined for anything whatever, it enjoys a merry life, and often refuses to be improved out of existence when the sudden need arises. No one by taking thought, can deracinate ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... couplet-composing proclivity is one of the strangest features of the Yamato race as portrayed in the pages of the Records and the Chronicles. From the time when the fierce Kami, Susanoo, put his thoughts into verse as he sought for a place to celebrate his ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... proclivity of his imagination, Webster's power as a dramatist consists in confining the domain of his tragedy within definite limits, in excluding all variety of incident and character which could interfere with his main design of awaking terror and pity, and in the intensity with which he arrests, and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... addition, we consider to what he was exposed by his proclivity to, and aspirations for, political power, the expedients, schemes, contrivances, and appliances, in which he thereby became involved in the then state of things in the Colony, and the connection which leading Ministers, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... give added zest and energy. There is no possible ground of association on which societies are not formed, and the trivial, fictitious, or imaginary pretences on which men thus combine, meet, and act in concert, are manifest proofs of a social proclivity so strong as to create reasons for its indulgence where such reasons do not already exist. Even in science and in the most abstruse forms of erudition, men of learning seek mutual countenance and encouragement, and readily suspend their solitary research and study for the opportunity of intercommunication ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... gems of protest are to be found in the setting of this volume, it is but sportsmanlike to state at the start that admission was offered to none of notable puritanical proclivity. The prohibitionists and censors are not represented. They require, in a levititious literary escapade like this, no spokesman. Their viewpoint already is amply set forth. Moreover, likely they would not be amusing.... Also, the exponents of Nonsenseorship are victorious; and at least ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam

... contrary, this Mr. Lowell may be a very deserving person and a youth of parts (though I have seen verses of his which I could never rightly understand); and if he be such, he, I am certain, as well as I, would be free from any proclivity to appropriate to himself whatever of credit (or discredit) may honestly belong to another. I am confident, that, in penning these few lines, I am only forestalling a disclaimer from that young gentleman, whose silence hitherto, when rumour ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell

... that a gradually evolved tendency of mine not to go on when I am expected to was what first prompted my wife to dub me a philosopher. She fancies, dear soul, that she is a loser by this lately developed proclivity to seek refuge in silence on the occasions when she or the children sweep down upon me with some hair-lifting project which craves an immediate decision. But she is in error. It is true there are times when the sweet ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... little or no political proclivity, but were chiefly literary. Among them are Fraser's, begun in 1830, and the Dublin University, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... who, during the last seventy-five years, have written history in America, I have had contact, sometimes a mere glimpse, sometimes intimacy. Washington Irving and Prescott I never saw, though as to the latter I have just been making him responsible to some extent for my own little proclivity, Parkman, I only saw sitting with his handsome Grecian face relieved against a dignified background as he sat on the stage among the Corporation of Harvard University. Motley I have only seen as he stood with iron-grey curls over a ruddy, strenuous ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... withstand his argument. But with the self-combating proclivity of the supersensitive, an answer thereto arose in Clare's own mind, and he almost feared it. It was based on her exceptional physical nature; and she might have used it promisingly. She might have added besides: "On an Australian upland or Texan plain, who is to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy



Words linked to "Proclivity" :   leaning, tendency, disposition, propensity, inclination



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