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Propensity   Listen
noun
Propensity  n.  (pl. propensities)  The quality or state of being propense; natural inclination; disposition to do good or evil; bias; bent; tendency. "A propensity to utter blasphemy."
Synonyms: Disposition; bias; inclination; proclivity; proneness; bent; tendency.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Propensity" Quotes from Famous Books



... much upon the amount of such knowledge possessed by the housekeeper who has the privilege of initiating them. Untidiness is almost equally universal among the same classes, and, being a natural propensity, is extremely difficult of eradication. It may be stated, however, that given an average 'greenhorn,' Irish or German, the notable and tidy housewife will make of her a very fair servant, as well instructed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... reiterated, have had the effect of fastening the odium upon the race of a peculiar propensity for this foul crime. The Negro is thus forced to a defense of his good name, and this chapter will be devoted to the history of some of the cases where assault upon white women by Negroes is charged. He is not the aggressor in this fight, but the situation demands that ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... women, and when the owner is not using it, he thrusts it in the back of his neck with the handle protruding. Sedan chairs are rushing hither and thither, borne upon men's shoulders, transporting both natives and Europeans on business errands. Here, as in southern Italy, one observes a propensity to eat, sleep, live, and die in the streets, exhibited by the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... child,' she says, 'I used to amuse myself and my brothers with inventing stories such as I had read. Having, I suppose, a naturally restless mind and busy imagination, this soon became the chief pleasure of my life. Unfortunately, my brothers were always fond of encouraging this propensity, and I found in Taylor, my maid, a still greater tempter. I had not known there was any harm in it, until Miss Shore, a Calvinistic governess, finding it out, lectured me severely and told me it was wicked. From that time forth, I considered that to invent a story of any kind was a sin. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock

... distinguished one drest exactly like the others, occupied like them, and differing in no one thing but in the form of her head. "For what reason is this woman here," asked Gall, "for her head announces no propensity to theft?" The answer was, "She is the inspectress of this room." One prisoner had the organs of benevolence and of religion as strongly developed as those of theft and cunning; and his boast was, that he never had committed an ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various

... ecclesiastical history, looked upon as one of the brightest ornaments of this nation. Originally, his name was Winfred, or Winfrith, and he was born at Kirton, in Devonshire, then part of the West-Saxon kingdom. When he was only about six years of age, he began to discover a propensity to reflection, and seemed solicitous to gain information on religious subjects. Wolfrad, the abbot, finding that he possessed a bright genius, as well as a strong inclination to study, had him removed to Nutscelle, a seminary of learning in the diocese of Winchester, where he would have a much greater ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... turrets, with fine old windows, and with a beautiful tone of faded red brick and rusty stone. It is a charming encounter for a provincial by- street; one of those accidents in the hope of which the traveller with a propensity for sketching (whether on a little paper block or on the tablets of his brain) decides to turn a corner at a venture. A brawny gen- darme, in his shirt-sleeves, was polishing his boots in the court; an ancient, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... freed ourselves from tyrants and parasites; we must prevent their return. We are men, and experience has abundantly taught us that every man is fond of power, and wishes to enjoy it at the expense of others. It is necessary, then, to guard against a propensity which is the source of discord; we must establish certain rules of duty and of right. But the knowledge of our rights, and the estimation of our duties, are so abstract and difficult as to require all the time and all the faculties of a man. Occupied ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... the forlorn seriousness of adversity, have both been considered as dispositions favourable to love, while satirical writers have attributed the propensity to the relaxing effect of idleness, what chance then had Maria of escaping, when pity, sorrow, and solitude all conspired to soften her mind, and nourish romantic wishes, and, from a natural progress, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... have acted a father's part, not only by scores of such unthrifty old children as himself, but by a progeny of far loftier pretensions. It may be well for persons who are conscious of any radical weakness in their character, any besetting sin, any unlawful propensity, any unhallowed impulse, which (while surrounded with the manifold restraints that protect a man from that treacherous and lifelong enemy, his lower self, in the circle of society where he is at home) they may have succeeded in keeping under the lock and key of strictest propriety,—it ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the desire for stimulants is a natural propensity implanted in man's nature, as is manifest from the universal tendency to such indulgences in every nation. From this, it is inferred that it is an innocent desire, which ought to be gratified to ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... meeting an interesting person for the first time, one frequently endeavours to trace a resemblance with some previous acquaintance or friend. I have a similar propensity when I visit interesting cities; but I had difficulty in calling to mind any place to which I could liken Copenhagen. Between Sweden and Denmark generally, there are more points of difference than of resemblance. Sweden is the land of rocks, and Denmark of forest. Oehlenschlaegel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... march, close to the spot from which they set out in the morning, and that this cruel accident will occur for days in succession. The escape of Captain O'Brien from his French prison at Verdun, detailed with such spirit in his lively autobiography, offers remarkable instances of this propensity of the forlorn wanderer in a strange land. A corresponding incident is recorded in the narrative of the "Escape of a young French Officer from the depot near Peterborough during the Napoleon European war." He found himself ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill

... not know enough to be afraid of a pistol, and could not understand my murderous threats. He merely squatted down upon his heels on the snow, puffed his cheeks out with smoke, and stared at me in stupid amazement, as if I were some singular species of wild animal, which exhibited a strange propensity to jabber and gesticulate in the most ridiculous manner without any apparent cause. Then, whenever he wanted to ice his sledge-runners, which was as often as three times an hour, he coolly capsized the pavoska, propped it up with ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... advice and consolation. When his son left him he turned to his newspaper, and tried to read it—in vain. His mind was too ill at ease to admit of political matters. He was greatly grieved by this new misfortune as to Gerald, and by Lord Silverbridge's propensity to racing. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... had ever since his youth developed a peculiar kind of mean and silly propensity. Having moreover from tender infancy grown up side by side with Tai-Y, their hearts and their feelings were in perfect harmony. More, he had recently come to know to a great extent what was what, and had also filled his head ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... striking instance however of their propensity for clutching occurred when Burnett, by my order, shot a crow, in hopes that its sudden death might scare them; but instead of any terror being exhibited at the report or effect of the gun the bird had not reached the ground when the chief was at the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... was listening with silence and gravity to the reading of the testimony taken on the day previous. General Wallace produced on the spectators an impression a little different from the other members, by exhibiting an artistic propensity, which subsequently took a different direction in "Ben Hur." The most impressive sight was that of the conspirators, all heavily manacled; even Mrs. Surratt, who kept her irons partly concealed ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... the town again; still, we spent half a day in a most delightful manner, making a tour of the "rows" and the odd corners with quaint buildings. The tourist, fortified with his red-backed Baedecker, is a common sight to Chester people, and his "dollar-distributing" propensity, as described by the English writer I have quoted, is not unknown even to the smallest fry of the town. Few things during our trip amused me more than the antics of a brown, bare-foot, dirt-begrimed little mite not more than two or ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy

... them, when tired of or displeased with their locality, to transport them elsewhere. I was told that a street of stone huts, constructed for their use, is almost abandoned, by reason of the immobility of such residences. I consider this locomotive propensity a favourable trait in their character. Behind the barracks we stopped at a hut on the rising ground whereon the barracks ought to have been placed, and assuredly I never saw a more contented scene. There was a young negro, and, I believe, his wife, together with an old woman, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... notorious as the most reckless gambling-field in the country. Card-playing was the recreation the diggers most indulged in here, if we except a decided penchant for Chow-baiting. Done found that already the gambling propensity had impressed itself on the lead, and the luckiest man on Simpson's was a short, fat, complacent Yankee, who refused to handle pick or shovel because, as he said to Done, it might spoil his hand. Jim did not doubt that hands so slick in the manipulation of cards ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson

... abound in woods of any description, we are sure to be greeted by the loud voice of the Blue Jay, one of the most conspicuous tenants of the forest. He has a beautiful outward appearance, under which he conceals an unamiable temper and a propensity to mischief. Indeed, there is no other bird in our forest that is arrayed in equal splendor. His neck of fine purple, his pale azure crest and head with silky plumes, his black crescent-shaped collar, his wings and tail-feathers of bright blue with stripes of white and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... travel. So we see these English tourists, who undoubtedly were Messrs. Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney, have spoiled the roads of travelling between Ghat and Fezzan, as Englishmen have spoiled the routes of the Continent of Europe. This is the propensity of John Bull, to buy up everything and everybody abroad[29]. The Touarick added, "A deal of money is required, because there are many banditti." He meant not exactly robbers, but beggars, who, whilst begging, give you ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... try it," returned George, rather disgusted at the negro's propensity for big story telling. He arose and passed within, where the ample table was laid. Yet he could not eat the plain, sweet food which Rosalind's own hands had prepared. The dreadful sense of danger was too real a guest for any rest ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis

... demand for their services. To this mode of life the man was compelled to resort; and taking the chair every night, at some low theatrical house, at once put him in possession of a few more shillings weekly, and enabled him to gratify his old propensity. Even this resource shortly failed him; his irregularities were too great to admit of his earning the wretched pittance he might thus have procured, and he was actually reduced to a state bordering on starvation, only procuring a trifle occasionally by ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... so drowsy from the excessive cold that he was only glad of the pretext for remaining still, and yielding to the uncontrollable propensity. But Mr. Holt pulled him on his feet and commanded him to gather brushwood and sticks, while he went about himself picking birch-bark off the dead and living trees. This he spread under the brush and ignited with his tinder-box. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... possessing the slightest propensity either to extravagance in herself or to the encouragement of extravagance in others, the Princesse de Lamballe was a model of prudence, and upon those subjects, as indeed upon all others, the Queen could not have had a more discreet counsellor. She eminently contributed to the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Italian men of letters had reinforced those of his English friends; and he was now more than ever inclined to follow that "inward prompting which now grew daily upon me that by labour and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might {47} perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes as they should not willingly let it die." So, as his extant notes show, he was weighing a large number of subjects for the great poem, slowly settling on a Biblical ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... seldom out of call, Sir Charles swelled like a turkey-cock, and loftily consented to indulge Bella Bruce's strange propensity. From that hour she was never ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... with which a drunkard's habits cling to him through life? He may repent—he may reform—he may look with actual abhorrence upon his past profligacy; but amid all this reformation and compunction, who can tell the moment in which the base and ruinous propensity may not recur, triumphing over resolution, remorse, shame, everything, and prostrating its victim once more in all that is destructive and revolting ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... fault with this great lever—will; However deeply bedded in propensity; However firmly set, I tell thee firmer yet Is that great power that comes from ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen

... related to me her dream which was exactly the same as Margaret's in every particular; and as I had never observed in either of these ladies any propensity to superstition, I was struck with the singular coincidence of their dreams, and I felt convinced that they would soon be realized. The belief that future events are sometimes revealed to us during sleep, is one that is widely diffused among the nations of the earth. ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre

... but only new, and perhaps troublesome independent members of the confederation. The warlike proceedings of the Americans in Mexico was purely exceptional, having been carried on principally by volunteers, under the influence of the migratory propensity which prompts individual Americans to possess themselves of unoccupied land, and stimulated, if by any public motive, not by that of national aggrandizement, but by the purely sectional purpose of extending slavery. There are few signs in the proceedings of Americans, ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... childrenwe are sisters children, and you may use me like one of your horses; ride me or drive me, Duke, I am wholly yours. But in my humble opinion, this young companion of Leather- Stocking requires looking after. He has a very dangerous propensity for turkey. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... This propensity to assign an exaggerated importance to personal affairs develops egoism, the avowed enemy of poise. An egoist necessarily assumes that the rest of the world attributes to his acts the importance ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke

... Prendergast understood past bitterness and present warmth, and, gratified to find that at least there was no galling at their mutual relations, responded with a smile and a caress that led Lucilla to continue—'As for the word that dismayed you, I only meant to acknowledge an unlucky propensity to be excited about any nonsense, in which any man kind is mixed up. If Sarah would take to it, I could more easily abstain, but you see her coquetries are with nobody more recent than ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... another man to do it in; but not, I venture to say in spite of Goethe, through innate inadequacy to his task and unconquerable weakness of the will; not, I venture to think in spite of Hugo, through immedicable scepticism of the spirit and irremediable propensity to nebulous intellectual refinement. One practical point in the action of the play precludes us from accepting so ready a solution of the riddle as is suggested either by the simple theory of half-heartedness or by the simple hypothesis of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... pleasing trait in their character, and is due in some degree to the quiet deliberation of their manners, and their love of repose rather than of action. The young are obedient to the wishes of their elders, and seem to feel none of that propensity to mischief which European boys exhibit. How long would tame squirrels continue to inhabit trees in the vicinity of an English village, even if close to the church? They would soon be pelted and driven away, or snared and confined in a whirling cage. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... a matter of course, everybody at the chateau was ignorant of the interview which had taken place between La Valliere and the king. Montalais, perhaps, with her usual chattering propensity, might have been disposed to talk about it; but Montalais on this occasion was held in check by Malicorne, who had placed upon her lips the padlock of mutual interest. As for Louis XIV., his happiness was so ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... though they had all that sublime energy which so often distinguished the projects of Superstition, were so far from being influenced by any superstitious propensity, that perhaps they cannot appear to more advantage than by being brought into comparison, or contrast, not with the sluggish piety of sequestered Monks, but with the bold and splendid feats of the most active and enterprising Fanaticism. Allow me, therefore, to recall ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley

... N. 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[obs3], idiosyncrasy; cast, vein, grain; humor, mood; drift &c. (direction) 278; conduciveness, conducement[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... to say, but that, having been lately in a versifying mood, I have set to rhyme your story of the cook and the lottery ticket; and herein I have avoided that malicious propensity of our numerous tellers of stories, whose only pleasure, as it appears to me, lies in the plunging the heroes and heroines of their tales into inextricable troubles and difficulties, and in continuing them in a state of perplexity ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... side. The Flemings were disappointed at the scanty numbers of the English men-at-arms, and stared with wonder and contempt at the bare-legged Welsh archers and lancemen, with their uncouth garb, strange habits of eating and fighting, and propensity to pillage and disorder, though they recognised their hardihood and the effectiveness of their missiles.[1] The same disorderly spirit that had marred the Rioms campaign still prevailed among the English engaged on foreign service. No sooner were the troops landed at Sluys on August 28, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... applies to the Appetites and Affections applies to Benevolence; it is a distinct motive or urgency, and should have its scope like every other propensity, in ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... settled they made money, sending most of it home. Their society seemed to be a loose theo-socialism, and their religion an absurd potpourri of most of the major monotheisms of the Federation period, plus doctrinal and ritualistic innovations of their own. Aside from their propensity for sharp trading, their bigoted refusal to regard anybody not of their creed as more than half human, and the maze of dietary and other taboos in which they hid from social contact with others, ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... the Darrah family tree?" finished David quizzically. His eyes danced with delighted amusement across her puffs at the major as he added, "Must have been silversmiths dangling on most of his ancestral branches, judging from his propensity for making dollars; a million or two, stocks, bonds, any kind of ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... excitements of criminal detail; nor can there be conceived a more perverse or futile misapprehension than that which represents John Webster as one whose instinct led him by some obscure and oblique propensity to darken the darkness of southern crime or vice by an infusion of northern seriousness, of introspective cynicism and reflective intensity in wrong-doing, into the easy levity and infantile simplicity of spontaneous wickedness which ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... Mohammed[201] and their companions and many Christian saints are incrusted with a heavy jewelry of anecdotes which are meant to be honorific, but are simply abgeschmackt and silly, and form a touching expression of man's misguided propensity to praise. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... his enormous achievements. He rose at five. By breakfast-time he had, as he used to say, broken the neck of the day's work. Writing to a youth who had obtained a situation and asked him for advice, he gave this counsel: "Beware of stumbling over a propensity which easily besets you from not having your time fully employed—I mean what the women call dawdling. Do instantly whatever is to be done, and take the hours of recreation after ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... score off his tyrannising wife and the fortunate, amiable Percy. Nigel's jealousy of Percy—and not of Percy only, but in a less degree of most men Bertha knew—was not very far behind his wife's jealousy of him. A morbid propensity that causes great suffering in domestic life is often curiously infectious to the very person for whom it creates most suffering. Nigel sometimes found himself positively imitating Mary in many little ways; watching, and listening and ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... was no want of those of a different stamp; and as we had yet some venereal complaints on board, I took all possible care to prevent the disorder being communicated to them. On most occasions they shewed a strong propensity to pilfering; in which they were full as expert as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... Mandingoes, in particular, are a very gentle race, cheerful in their dispositions, inquisitive, credulous, simple, and fond of flattery. Perhaps the most prominent defect in their character, was that insurmountable propensity, which the reader must have observed to prevail in all classes, of them, to steal from me the few effects I was possessed of. For this part of their conduct, no complete justification can be offered, because theft is a crime in their own estimation; and it ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... hatred against Walter, had an especial reason to keep Eden as far as they could under subjection, in addition to their general propensity to bully and domineer. They did not care to torment him when Walter was present, because with him, in spite of their hostility, they felt it wise to maintain an armed neutrality. But whenever Walter was absent, they felt themselves safe. None of the other boys in their ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... proves?' said Tom, with an arch subsmile lighting on his eyes and mouth; and as a glow awoke on her pale cheek, he added, 'and won't you believe, too, that my propensity to "contemptuous irony" was all from my instinctive fear of what you could do ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... hunting grounds vast tracts of land, which, by the application of industry and art, would yield sustenance to millions of men. But whether, on the other hand, the encroaching spirit of the inhabitants of the United States, that restless, rambling propensity which has driven their settlers southwards into Mexico, and westward to the Pacific, should be indulged to the extent of exterminating and dispossessing the original owners of the territory before the new occupants have real need of it, is a question admitting ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... 28 male, explained by propensity to inversion, 29 many cases of have syphilitic fathers, 93 preference for, in women determined by change of leading erogenous zone, 81 determined by repression of puberty, 81 psychoanalysis in, 26 of, enlightens the ego-libido, ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... consciousness. I was still asleep, but I began to dream; a nightmare started into shape amid the blackness of my horizon, a nightmare compounded of a strange fancy which in other days had haunted my morbid imagination whenever with my propensity for dwelling upon hideous thoughts I ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... she had the misfortune to be left-handed, and a child flogged left-handedly had better be left unflogged. The world revolves from right to left. It will not do to whip a baby from left to right. If each blow in the proper direction drives an evil propensity out, it follows that every thump in an opposite one knocks its quota of wickedness in. I was often present at Toby's chastisements, and, even by the way in which he kicked, I could perceive that he was getting worse and worse every day. At last I saw, through ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... smouldering ferocity, which might have flashed fire in an instant (as the born gentleman seemed to think, for he had a wary eye upon him); and the easy yielding of all to a good-natured, careless, predominant propensity to sit down on the ground again: formed a very ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... ankle. She asked him to put his hand higher, and repeated 'Higher, higher,' till he touched the pudenda, and finally, at her request, put his finger into the vestibule. This girl was very handsome and amiable, and a favorite of the boy's mother. No one suspected this propensity." Again, a correspondent (a man of science) tells me of a friend who lately, when dining out, met a girl, the daughter of a country vicar; he was not specially attracted to her and paid her no special attention. "A few days afterward he was astonished to receive a call from her one ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... adequate substitute for them. No one need fear that the supply of mystery will ever give out; but a great deal depends on our taste in mystery; that certainly needs refining. What disturbs the so-called rationalist in the mystic's attitude is his propensity to see mysteries where there are none and to fail to see those that we cannot possibly escape. In declaring that one is not a mystic, one makes no claim to be able to explain everything, nor does he maintain that all things are ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson

... hit upon the way (but I could not make out by what means) of speaking a much purer English language than that which is in general spoken on the parent soil. This astonished me much; but it is really the case. Amongst his many good qualities he has one unenviable and, I may add, a bad propensity: he is immoderately fond of smoking. He may say that he learned it from his nurse, with whom it was once much in vogue. In Dutch William's time (he was a man of bad taste) the English gentleman could not do ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton

... selfishness, truckling, blustering, and duplicity, with no object but self, his own ease, and the gratification of his own fancies and prejudices."[97] "A more despicable scene," continues Mr. Greville, "cannot be exhibited than that which the interior of our Court presents—every base, low, and unmanly propensity, with selfishness, avarice, and a life of petty intrigue and mystery."[98] George the Fourth as king and regent was recklessly extravagant, but his expenditure was always upon self or the gratification of self. A hundred examples of his selfish nature might be given, but cui bono? ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... This propensity to anger diminished in some degree both the popularity and merit of Gustavus; yet he rarely permitted his anger to rage beyond a harsh expression, and with generous instinct he knew how to open the door of reconciliation, not only by frankly confessing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... shattered remnants of the First, the nobles of the Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged by the examples of its predecessor. The First Empire had conquered most of the known universe by political intrigue and sheer military strength; it had fallen because that same propensity for political intrigue had gained over every other strength of the Empire, and the various branches and sectors of the First Empire had begun to use ...
— Despoilers of the Golden Empire • Gordon Randall Garrett

... it to him? But at this point she recognised a fact recognised by thousands of women with exasperation, sometimes with despair—that men would often hate in their wives the thing that draws them to women not their wives. The Pimpernel Schleys of the world know this masculine propensity of seeking different things—opposites, even—in the wife and the woman beyond the edge of the hearthstone, a propensity perhaps more tragic to wives than any other that exists in husbands. And having recognised this fact, Lady Holme knew that it would ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... non-selective bridging party lines, which at first seems amusing rather than serious, but which nevertheless is often a vexatious trouble, is that due to the propensity of some people to "listen in" on the line on hearing calls intended for other than their own stations. People whose ethical standards would not permit them to listen at, or peep through, a keyhole, often engage in ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... himself not a little on the distinction. Pride in skepticism is a peculiar distinction of young men. It takes years and maturity to make the discovery that the power of faith is nobler than the power of doubt; and that there is a celestial wisdom in the ingenuous propensity to trust, which belongs to honest and noble natures. Elderly skeptics generally regard their unbelief ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... gourds. I did as much by as powerful people at nineteen years old, and I know little as yet, in three-and-thirty, which should prevent me from making all your ribs gridirons for your hearts, if such were my propensity: but it is not; therefore let me hear none of your provocations. If any thing occurs so very gross as to require my notice, I shall hear of it from my legal friends. For the rest, I merely request to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... the present one any objection be raised on the score of its truth, it can only be that its author was an Arab, as lying is a very common propensity with those of that nation; though, as they are such enemies of ours, it is conceivable that there were omissions rather than additions made in the course of it. And this is my own opinion; for, where he could and should give ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... married her, and become the possessor of her plump Money-Bags, full of Moidores, pilar Dollars, and pieces of Eight. Happily I was not permitted so to disparage my lineage, and put a coffee-coloured blot on my escutcheon. No, my Lilias is no Mulotter Quartercaste. 'Twas my roving propensity that made me set but little store by the sugar-eyes and Molasses-speech which Madam Soapsuds was not loth to bestow on me, a tall and likely Lad. I valued her sweetness just as though it had been so much cane-trash. With much impatience I had waited for the coming back of my friendly skipper, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... that firmness with which he behaved in these last moments of his life might probably be owing to natural courage, of which certainly Barton had a very large share. But the remains of virtue and religion, to which the man had always a propensity, notwithstanding that he gave way to passions which brought him to all the sorrows he knew, yet the return he made, when in the shadow of death, to piety and devotion, enabled him to suffer with great calmness, on Friday the 12th of May, 1721, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... From her coiffure an obstinate lock of hair would always stick out either in the front or at the back; even her most gorgeous costumes always looked tumbled and creased; and if nothing else went wrong, there would be invariably a pair of trodden-down shoes with which she could indulge in her old propensity. Curiosity and tattle were the ingredients of her conversation, in which she generally introduced such extraordinary expressions that when she began to scatter them in a mixed party, the guests (that ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... wild boy in his youth, with a strong propensity for drink—hereditary, unfortunately—which he was not so well able to satisfy on his father's croft, in Banffshire; so, to gain more liberty, he ran off and enlisted. When scarcely more than twenty he took up with a girl he met in one of the provincial towns in ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... here, similar to those at Pellew's Group, they were doubtless the same Asiatic nation, if not the same individuals, of whom so many traces had been seen all the way from the head of the gulph. The propensity shown by the natives to steal, especially our axes, so contrary to all I have known and heard of their countrymen, is not only a proof that they had been previously visited by people possessing iron implements, but from their audacity it would appear, ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... meddling propensity common to all who have a gossiping disposition, or from the love of justice, which ought to make part of a prince's character, James was very fond of enquiring personally into the causes celebres which occurred ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... singular beggar-woman who was generally to be seen on the steps of the Franciscan Church, chuckling to herself and laughing, and soliciting alms from the worshippers; he himself, urged by some inward inexplicable propensity, had often thrown her a hard-earned penny, which he had not had to spare. "Leave me, leave me in peace, you insane old woman," he said; "but you are right, it is hunger more than my wound which has made me weak and miserable; for three ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... Garden; a practice which had been discontinued since 1588. All the counties of England, in emulation of the capital, were fond of showing a well-ordered and well-appointed militia. It appeared, that the natural propensity of men towards military shows and exercises will go far, with a little attention in the sovereign, towards exciting and supporting this spirit in any nation. The very boys, at this time, in mimicry of their elders, enlisted themselves voluntarily into companies, elected officers, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... reign during 1706-1710, and in the following reign, as leader of the Whigs, exercised unbounded influence over George I.; narrowly escaped, chiefly through Walpole's help, being found guilty of accepting heavy bribes from the South Sea Company; lost office, and was displaying his father's propensity to underhand scheming by intriguing with the Tories and the Pretender's party when death cut short his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal ...
— The Federalist Papers

... in India is in high estimation with the pious Hindoos, who resort to it from the most remote parts of the empire. The town is surrounded by groves of trees, which are the residence of innumerable apes, whose propensity to mischief is increased by the religious respect paid to them in honour of a divinity of the Hindoo mythology, who is represented as possessing the body of an ape. In consequence of this superstition, such numbers of these animals ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst

... condemned for years. His extreme protectionism repelled not only the Democrats but the tariff reformers who had played an important part in the organization of the Liberal Republican party. Conservatives of both parties distrusted him as a man with a dangerous propensity to advocate "isms," a theoretical politician more objectionable than the practical man of machine politics, and far more likely to disturb the existing state of affairs and to overturn the business of the country ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... from their rites and institutes, as well as from the names, which they bequeathed to places, ample memorials, by which they may be clearly traced out. It may seem strange, that in the first ages there should have been such an universal defection from the truth; and above all things such a propensity to this particular mode of worship, this mysterious attachment to the serpent. What is scarce credible, it obtained among Christians; and one of the most early heresies in the church was of this sort, introduced by a sect, called by [531]Epiphanius Ophitae, by [532]Clemens of Alexandria Ophiani. ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... disinterested motives in our constitution; but Appetite is not in any sense one of these. We may have instincts answering to the traditional phrase used in defining instinct, "a blind propensity" to act, without aiming at anything in particular, and without any expectation of pleasure or benefit. Such instincts would conform to Butler's notion of appetite: they would be entirely out of the course of self-love or self-seeking of any sort. Whether the nest-building ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... sufficient knowledge in the Latin tongue, and discovered a great propensity to learning, he was sent to the university of Paris, the most celebrated of all Europe, and to which the gentlemen of Spain, Italy, and Germany, resorted for ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... those who have read so far through my work will credit me with enough decency, tact, savoir faire, what you will, to prevent me from making a song for my own glory out of the words of other people. No! The true motive of my selection lies in quite a different trait. I have always had a propensity to justify my action. Not to defend. To justify. Not to insist that I was right but simply to explain that there was no perverse intention, no secret scorn for the natural sensibilities of mankind at ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad

... department." The Company have a steamboat and several sailing vessels, for the purpose chiefly of trading with the natives along the coast. The primary object, however, is not so much the trade, as to keep brother Jonathan in check, (whose propensity for encroaching has of late been "pretty much" exhibited,) and to deter him from forming any establishments on the coasts; there being a just apprehension that if once a footing were obtained on the coast, an equal eagerness might be manifested ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean

... to old maids. As those delightful creatures now-a-days, not content with being grey aspire to be actually blue; we cannot help recommending to them a kind of study, for which their propensity to cutting up renders them peculiarly adapted; we mean Anatomy. And since it is on the foulest and most odious points of character that they chiefly delight to dwell, we more especially suggest to them the ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh

... time, she said Though my husband so neglects me, I know that he is very fond of women in general, and ready to be captivated by any one, especially respectable woman who will give him a little encouragement. Acting on this propensity, I think, with your help, that something may be done. There is a young lady, a neighbour, the daughter of a very rich man, in great favour with the Rajah; she is a friend of mine, and is very like me. As my husband hardly knows her by sight, and scarcely ever sees me, it might be possible ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... This early propensity for asking questions grew on him till at twenty-three years of age he was a prodigy in this respect. So when we had Governor Wiseman we also had Fred Quizzle, the former to discourse, the latter to start him and ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... are many individuals," he pursued after a pause, "of which we cannot imagine a blending of the successive persons to be possible. There, for instance, are cases where there exist radical and bitter oppositions and differences of character, and propensity between the youth and the manhood of the individual. In the case of such ill-assorted personalities a divorce ex vinculo individui may be the only remedy; and, possibly, the parties to it may be sent back to earth, to take their chances of ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... behalf, that of course she won't fall in love. We know that she will, sooner or later; and probably as much sooner as opportunity may offer. That is our experience of the genus girl in the general; and we quite approve of her for her readiness to do so. It is, indeed, her nature; and the propensity has been planted in her for wise purposes. But as to this or that special sample of the genus girl, in reference to this or that special sample of the genus young man, we always feel ourselves ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope

... expedition. I repaired to this house, from whence my servant had seen that gentleman issue, but before the nature of my business could be disclosed, that rigid dame assailed me with a tremendous storm of abuse, when my valet, in his zeal to serve me, or rather indulging in a propensity to retaliate, retorted the lady's freedom of tongue with rather ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio

... to decide who may have been the governor or governors of the French nation, and the leaders of their armies, for several years past. Certain it is, that when men are indulging their inclination for the marvellous, they always show a strong propensity to accumulate upon one individual (real or imaginary) the exploits of many; besides multiplying and exaggerating these exploits a thousandfold. Thus, the expounders of the ancient mythology tell us there were several ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately

... my benefactor, Paramon Semyonitch,' Punin commonly added (he never spoke of Baburin except in this way), 'I should have sunk into the miry abysses of poverty and vice.' Punin was fond of high-sounding expressions, and had a great propensity, if not for lying, for romancing and exaggeration; he admired everything, fell into ecstasies over everything.... And I, in imitation of him, began to exaggerate and be ecstatic, too. 'What a crazy fellow ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... 1: It is not time, but a man's propensity to anger, or his pertinacity in anger, that is the chief point of consideration in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... falling back on his loaf and milk, with the pleasantest composure, and Bella stealing her arm a little closer about him, and at the same time sticking up his hair with an irresistible propensity to play with him founded on the habit of her whole life, had prepared herself to say: 'Pa dear, don't be cast down, but I must tell you something disagreeable!' when he interrupted her in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... coach-house which was being built, and with flaming cheeks and panting bosom struggled for breath. Pista, the cartwright, profited by the moment to approach, and with gay cries and gestures invite her to dance again. Pista was a handsome fellow, but had the unfortunate propensity of drinking on Sundays, and this time was evidently intoxicated. The vinous suitor was not to Panna's taste, besides, she was already tired, and she did not answer his first speech. But as he did not desist, but seized her arm to drag her up and ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... Peshawur, retired to Shikarpoor, which the Ameers of Sinde ceded to him; where, in place of conducting himself with prudence, he was so addicted to low intrigue with those about him, that his enemies availed themselves of this propensity to effect his ruin, and drove him from Shikarpoor, when, crossing the Indus, he fled through the desert by Juydalmeer, and returned to Loodiana. "The fitness," says Lieut. Burnes, "of Shah Shooja-ool-Moolk for the station of a sovereign seems ever to have ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth

... Fanny's propensity to novel-writing had for a time been kept down. It now rose up stronger than ever. The heroes and heroines of the tales which had perished in the flames were still present to the eye of her mind. One favorite ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... development of the canine teeth in the adult would seem to indicate a carnivorous propensity; but in no state save that of domestication do they manifest it. At first they reject flesh, but easily acquire a fondness for it. The canines are early developed, and evidently designed to act the important part of weapons of defence. When in contact with man almost the first effort ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... of education when divorced from religion. The effect on a few has been that the cultivation of their mental gifts in secular study has helped them to understand and assimilate Christian truth. Others, with a natural propensity for evil, have had their capacities for mischief quickened by the varied knowledge which they acquired. But with the vast majority of Indians, and more especially Hindus, English secular education does not alter their character, and except for the assumption ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... spouse, and seemed to consider it almost a religious duty that the latest of the Saint Legers should be so trained as to worthily sustain the traditions of his race. Not, it must be understood, that my father preserved the faintest trace of that unscrupulous, buccaneering propensity that was only too probably a strongly marked characteristic of the earlier Saint Legers; far from it; but it had evidently never occurred to him that it was even remotely possible that I should ever adopt any other profession than that of the sea, and, knowing from experience how indispensable ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... the South Sea islands are still cannibals, and most of them, even where this abominable propensity does not prevail, are of so artful and treacherous a character, that none should venture among them without the greatest precaution. Their friendliness arises from fear, and soon vanishes when they think themselves the strongest, and are not exposed to vengeance. I would not ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... giving her before she asks. 'In my epistle to Janet Wadham I spoke of moneys and estates being in thy hands. 'Tis a lie that will bring to thy mind more vividly than aught else my personality—suppressio veri; but if thou findest a like propensity in my babe, thou wilt deal gently but firmly with her for its correction. I give into thy keeping more than house, lands or titles. I would direct clemency toward my beloved servant; she has proven most faithful. My wife truly loved ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... is, avoiding duty on the plea of sickness or any other excuse that would serve. He was not a bad man, by any means, but a good-hearted old fellow. He had re-enlisted, along with the rest of us, when the regiment "veteranized." But his propensity for shirking duty, especially anything severe or unpleasant, seemed inveterate and incurable. He made me lots of trouble, for some time, after I became first sergeant. I was only a boy, and he was a man of mature age, about ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... Christopher's which had lately been sold; and King George was thankful to get rid of a daughter whose haughtiness gave him trouble. In person, too, the princess royal was not very ornamental to the Court. She was ill-made, with a propensity to grow fat; her complexion, otherwise very fine, was marked with the small-pox; she had, however, a lively, clean look—one of her chief beauties—and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... soon known all over the continent to Abyssinia. The great deal of work I have had to do in attending to the sick has proved beneficial to me, for they make me speak the language perpetually, and if I were inclined to be lazy in learning it, they would prevent me indulging the propensity. And they are excellent patients, too, besides. There is no wincing; everything prescribed is done instanter. Their only failing is that they become tired of a long course. But in any operation, even the women sit unmoved. I have ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... rather than deceive her husband." Merolla, indeed, enlarges on the constancy of women, whether white or black, when lawfully married to their mates; and praises them for living together in all manner of love and amity. "Hence may be learned what a propensity the women have to chastity in these parts, many of whom meet together on the first day of Lent, and oblige themselves, under pain of severe penance, to a strict continence till Easter." In case of adultery the husband could divorce ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... friend, are you forgotten, when my soul seeks communion with our common Father; and when I strive most earnestly to overcome some evil propensity, or to make some generous sacrifice, the thought of you gives me strength not ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... vintage of my life, was cut off by the failure of my sight and my want of a fitting coadjutor. For the sustained zeal and unconquerable patience demanded from those who would tread the unbeaten paths of knowledge are still less reconcilable with the wandering, vagrant propensity of the feminine mind than with the feeble ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) na"ive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization or 'the system'; (b) a propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!); blind faith; (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look beyond the 'letter of the law' in exceptional situations; and (d) no interest in fixing that which is broken; ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... Night Lizards and Guanas. The former are inhabitants of warm climates, and from the ease with which they can adapt themselves to any positions, they may be troublesome visitors; they can run with ease about the walls and ceilings of rooms, like flies; and their propensity is to roam abroad in the darkness of the night. Their broad, ugly heads, and repulsive general appearance, have won for them the character of poisonous reptiles, but the truth is they are harmless. The Crested Lizards which the ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... frequented the monasteries for such rude knowledge as then yielded a scanty return for intense toil. His countenance was handsome, and would have been rather gay than thoughtful in its expression, but for that vague and abstracted dreaminess of eye which so usually denotes a propensity to revery and contemplation, and betrays that the past or the future is more congenial to the mind than the enjoyment and action of the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... Harry, who find it easy to be good-natured, and who are soft by nature, as cats are—not from their heart, but through instinctive propensity to softness. When it suits them, they scratch, even though they have been ever so soft before. Count Pateroff is a cat. You, Harry, I think are a dog." She perhaps expected that he would promise to her that he would be her dog—a dog in constancy ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... vessel was declared ready for sea, he abstained from his usual indulgence, that he might be enabled to take charge of the property committed to his care, and find his way to his destined port. It was a point on which his interest overcame, for a time, his darling propensity: and his rigid adherence to sobriety, when afloat, was so well ascertained, that his character as a trustworthy seaman was not injured by his continual intemperance when in harbour. Latterly, however, since Newton ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... de Carranza mentions (Documentos ineditos, vol. XI, p. 279) Castro's muddle-headed knack of misunderstanding what was said to him, and his propensity to argue points, imagining that his opponents had said the very reverse of what they had said. As to Castro's lack of expository power, Luis de Leon states, 'tiene falta de lengua' (Documentos ineditos, ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly

... of Him who blamed St. Peter for his recourse to the sword. The very essence of Christianity is cast to the winds when Knox utters his laughter over the murders or misfortunes of his opponents, yielding, as Dr. M'Crie says, "to the strong propensity which he felt to indulge his vein of humour." Other good men rejoiced in the murder of an ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... favorite manana por la manano. In this instance the words express the state of development and habits of thought—one the lazy improvidence of the Eskimo, and the other the "to-morrow" of the Spaniard, who has indulged that propensity so far that his nation has ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse

... not without a severe struggle that I overcame a besetting propensity to confine myself to sedentary pursuits. The desire of retaliation soon became extinct. My pledge to my friend and sympathizer, that in two years I would cry quittance to my foe, would occasionally act as a spur in the side of my intent; but my two best aids in supplying me with the motive power ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... wit, however, is never at a loss for contrivances, while swayed by the influences of love or benevolence. Both, in this instance, may have aided invention. Plunkett had three strong claims in his favour: he was a handsome man—a soldier—and an Irishman. The general propensity of the Quakers, in favor of the Royal cause, exempted the sect in a great measure from suspicion, in so great a degree indeed, that the barriers of the city were generally entrusted to the care of their members, as the best judges of the characters of those persons who might be allowed to ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson

... differentiated from rabies by the persistence of muscular cramps, especially of the face and abdomen, which cause these muscles to become set and as hard as wood. In tetanus there is also an absence of a depraved appetite or of a willful propensity to hurt other animals or to damage the surroundings. The cow remains quiet and the general muscular contraction gives her a rigid appearance. There is an absence of paralysis which marks the advanced stage of rabies. The form of ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... such disparate characters? The woman's strength and determination contrasted with the man's weakness and vacillation; her reasoning imperturbation, prudent foresight, and love of order and activity, with his excessive irritability and sensitiveness, wanton carelessness, and unconquerable propensity to idleness and every kind of irregularity. While George Sand sat at her writing-table engaged on some work which was to bring her money and fame, Musset trifled away his time among the female singers ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... A propensity to aspiration is a conspicuous feature in the Gaelic tongue[10]. The aspirating of a consonant has been {11} usually marked, in the Irish dialect, by a dot over the letter aspirated; in the Scottish dialect by writing h after it. All the consonants have their sounds changed by being aspirated, ...
— Elements of Gaelic Grammar • Alexander Stewart

... crinoline is that, like the moon, they may move in a circle. Our greatest men, likewise, are susceptible to Luna's blandishments. In proof of this we may produce a story told by Mark Lemon, at one time the able editor of Punch. By the way, an irrepressible propensity to play upon words has reminded some one that punch is always improved by the essence of lemon. But this we leave to the bibulous, and go on with the story. Lord Brougham, speaking of the salary attached to a new judgeship, said it was all moonshine. Lord Lyndhurst, in his dry and waggish ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... involved—a gross error redolent of mischief—I cannot pretend to expose within the limits assigned me at present; and with the philosophical it needs no exposure. It may be sufficient here to say that it forms one of an infinite series of mistakes which arise in the path or Reason through her propensity for seeking ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Bach's fugues; and to get rid of him I whistle it again and tell him it is one of Chopin's impromptus. What his madness is I can never be quite sure, for he is very close, but have heard that he is fond of roasting cats alive; and that the mere sight of a cat is enough to rouse his terrible propensity, and drive all wholesome, innocent, harmless, natural ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al

... manifest. They saw the grouse, Franklin's fowl so well beloved by tenderfeet because of their propensity to sit still under fire and give an unsteady marksman a second shot. Fool hens, the woodsman called them, and the motley and mark of their weak mentality were a red badge near the eye. The fat birds perched on the tree limbs over the trail, relying on their mottled plumage, blending perfectly ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... little things which made him feel that in important matters he was left out of account. Roy would slap him on the shoulder and tousle his hair, but he would ask Tom's advice—and take it. Perhaps Roy had allowed his propensity for banter and jollying to run too far in his treatment of Pee-wee. At all events, the younger boy had found himself a bit chagrined at times that their discussions had not been wholly three-handed. And ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... such a tone, that they are afterwards too fond of similar useless baubles."[3] This species of delight is soon over, and is succeeded by a desire to triumph in the ignorance, the credulity, or the cowardice, of their companions. Hence that propensity to play tricks, which is often injudiciously encouraged by the smiles of parents, who are apt to mistake it for a proof of wit and vivacity. They forget, that "gentle dulness ever loved a joke;" and that even wit and vivacity, if they become troublesome and mischievous, will be feared, and shunned. ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... agriculturists. Great rocks rose here and there, but in their fissures rose stately trees, under whose umbrage nestled the villages of the people. We found the various village elders greedy for cloth, but the presence of the younger son of Nzogera's men restrained their propensity for extortion. Goats and sheep were remarkably cheap, and in good condition; and, consequently, to celebrate our arrival near the Malagarazi, a flock of eight goats was slaughtered, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... other arguments, but they were not of the least weight with the impatient Horatio. He was obstinate in his entreaties, which he even with tears enforced, and Dorilaus, considering so strong a propensity as something supernatural, at last consented.—Never was joy more sincere and fervent than what this grant occasioned, and he told his benefactor that he doubted not but that hereafter he should hear such an account of ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... theory of Materialism, or even of Phrenology, were it assumed on the one side and admitted on the other, contribute to the establishment or verification of that law? Suppose it to be conceded that every mental faculty or propensity has a distinct cerebral organ, or, more generally, that the brain may be divided into three parts, representing, respectively, the animal propensities, the more elevated sentiments, and the intellectual faculties; could it be rationally inferred from this concession that human nature ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... clapped into some rustic prison-house, the doors of which he burst in the night and was no more heard of in that quarter. When I knew him, his life had fallen in quieter places, and he had no cares beyond the dulness of his dogs and the inroads of pedestrians from town. But for a man of his propensity to wrath these were enough; he knew neither rest nor peace, except by snatches; in the gray of the summer morning, and already from far up the hill, he would wake the "toun" with the sound of his shoutings; and in the lambing time, his cries were not yet silenced late ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson

... far that he allowed Josiah and Sarah to meet in his presence. And finally there was a frank three-cornered understanding. And that was that, when Josiah could show that he had ten thousand pounds in his own name, the marriage would take place. This propensity on the part of parents to live their children's lives is very common. Few be the parents and very great are they who can give liberty and realize that their children are only loaned to them. I fear we parents are prone to be perverse ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... there is a languor in his verses, which seems to indicate that he was not born with a poetical genius. That he was a lover of the muses, there is not the lead doubt, as we find him patronizing the poets so warmly; but there is some difference between a propensity to poetry, and a power of excelling in it. His lordship has writ but few things, and those not of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... speedily as possible each of the confederates assembled all his friends, relations, adherents, and retainers. Great banquets were held, which lasted whole days—irresistible temptations for a sensual, luxurious people, in whom the deepest wretchedness could not stifle the propensity for voluptuous living. Whoever repaired to these banquets—and every one was welcome—was plied with officious assurances of friendship, and, when heated with wine, carried away by the example of numbers, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... With an unfailing propensity to lay hold of to whomsoever he spake, Mr. Lester Goldmark placed his white-gloved hand upon the white-gloved arm ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... a claim for him, and he must come out and attend to it. He must get rid of that propensity for tumbling down, though, for when we get fairly started here, I don't think we shall have time to pick ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... operation of the heathen taboo. Now Goneril brooked no chiding. So, at favorable times, he, in a wary manner, and not indelicately, would venture in private interviews gently to make distant allusions to this questionable propensity. She divined him. But, in her cold loveless way, said it was witless to be telling one's dreams, especially foolish ones; but if the unfortunate man liked connubially to rejoice his soul with such chimeras, much connubial joy might they give him. All this was sad—a touching ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... to the same family as the civets. The Egyptian ichneumon, known also as Pharaoh's cat, was held sacred among the ancient Egyptians because of its propensity for destroying crocodiles' eggs, but unfortunately for Addison's illustration, it is now proved that the degenerate ichneumon does actually 'find his account' in feeding upon the eggs which he breaks, whether they be those of crocodiles or merely ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... duty-labour operated on me like the mace of a bad billiard-player, which gives an impulse to the ball indeed, but sends it off at a tangent different from the course designed by the player. Now, if I expend such eccentric movements on this journal, it will be turning this wretched propensity to some tolerable account. If I had thus employed the hours and half-hours which I have whiled away in putting off something that must needs be done at last, "My Conscience!" I should have had a journal ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... there, or so cheap as in Pall-Mall; but I do say that he may rest assured that Messieurs Debure would never, knowingly, sell him an imperfect book. Of the Debure, there are two brothers: of whom the elder hath a most gallant propensity to portrait-collecting—and is even rich in portraits relating to our history. Of course the chief strength lies in French history; and I should think that Monsieur Debure l'aine shewed me almost as many portraits of Louis XIV. as there are editions of the various works of Cicero in the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... naturally cruel, although they differ much in the propensity to annoy and reduce animals and each other under their individual control; the passive submit at once, but the energetic will not; it is then that the active assailant learns an important lesson, which can only ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin

... one propensity which sometimes had inwardly disturbed her without causing any outward show or manifestation on her part. At a very early age—perhaps it was when she traversed the ocean of waving grass—she remembered that she had ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... utilitarian vessel he is making. In the words of Santayana, "What had to be done was, by imaginative races, done imaginatively; what had to be spoken or made was spoken or made fitly, lovingly, beautifully.... The ceaseless experimentation and fermentation of ideas, in breeding what it had a propensity to breed, came sometimes on figments ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... there are also amateurs, who, beneath the cover of a well-established reputation, make small acquisitions slyly and unsuspectedly. They are very honest people they say, who with little scruple indulge their propensity for a rare book, a miniature, a cameo, a mosaic, a manuscript, a print, a medal, or a jewel that pleases them; they are called Chipeurs. If the Chipeur be rich, no heed is paid to him, he is too much above such a larceny to impute it to him as a crime; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 389, September 12, 1829 • Various

... you little fool?' said his master. 'Are you afraid of old Tom Hardesty? If you are, you needn't be; nobody need be afraid of such an old coward as I am—darned if they need!' And feeling that he was growing melancholy, he determined to subdue the propensity, and to that end commenced cutting the complicated figure entitled a pigeon-wing. This exhilarating sport soon restored the grocer's good humor, and he laughed heartily and made such a racket altogether, that the boy gradually ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... all will act as a decoy to their own species, when in captivity themselves; and, in all compulsory service, which may be considered a species of captivity, man proves that he is imbued with the same propensity. Seamen that have been pressed themselves into the navy, are invariably the most active in pressing others; and both soldiers and sailors have a secret pleasure in recapturing a deserter, even at the very time when they are watching ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... intervals, much assists us. In poetry, the rhymes, the cadence, the alliteration, the peculiar structure of the poet's lines, aids us. All these are mechanical helps to the memory. Repetition seems much more agreeable to some people than to others; but it may be doubted whether a facility and propensity to repetition be favourable to rational memory. Whilst we repeat, we exclude all thought from the mind; we form a habit of saying certain sounds in a certain order; but if this habit be afterwards broken by any trifling external circumstances, we lose all our labour. ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... points for the differentiation of the pathological lie have been added to those offered by Delbruck, Risch, Koppen, and Vogt. The pathological liar lies, not according to a plan, but the impulse seizes him suddenly. This propensity grows stronger. Under strict supervision it comes to only an abortive attack, similar to what happens in cases of dipsomania, or of tendency to rove in which the repressed outbreak expresses itself in tormenting psychical and physical unrest. ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... "represented an attack on over- interference, vested interests, superstition, and tyranny of every form. It showed a marked propensity to ignore history, and to judge everything by its immediate reasonableness. It pictured a society free from all laws and coercion, freed from all clerical influence and ruled by benevolence, a society in which all men had equal ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... any length of time, it permanently deforms the nails. Dipping the finger-ends in some bitter tincture will generally prevent children from putting them into their mouth; but if this fails, as it sometimes will, each finger-end ought to be encased in a stall until the propensity is eradicated. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... question is complicated by the number of opportunities and a variety of considerations. Here, then, this principle of ours comes in helpfully. The young man has to seek, not a road to wealth, but an opportunity of service; not money, but honest work. If he has some strong propensity, some calling of nature, some over-weening interest in any special field of industry, inquiry, or art, he will do right to obey the impulse; and that for two reasons: the first external, because there he will render the best services; the second personal, because a demand ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... he was, stopped him short of a greater greatness; because, quick and imposing as he was in acting the part of a civil ruler, he was in reality a soldier and nothing else, and by the excess of the soldier's propensity (aggrandizement by force), he over-toppled himself, and fell to pieces. Soldiership appears to have narrowed or hardened the public spirit of every man who has spent the chief part of his life in it, who has died ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... and this opposition of wishes, though it will not be as sour as lemon, yet 'twill not be as sweet as sugar." And again: "If the snows will suffer me, I propose to spend two or three months at Barege or Bagneres; but my dear wife is against all schemes of additional expense, which wicked propensity (though not of despotic power) yet I cannot suffer—though, by-the-bye, laudable enough. But she may talk; I will go my own way, and she will acquiesce without a word of debate on the subject. Who can say so much in praise of his wife? Few, I trow." The tone of contemptuous ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill

... nourishment, Magdalen thought it kinder to let Agatha carry her off to bed, and then she confessed, what really gave a certain hope, that the pair had been in the habit of murmuring against "sister" so much that, considering poor Vera's propensity to strong language, it was quite possible that Hubert might think her cruelly oppressed, and for a freak carry her off to his mother to ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... his hat, and walked briskly away in the direction of The Tyee Lumber Company's office, quite oblivious of the fact that his interview with Nan Brent had been observed by a person to whom the gods had given at birth a more than average propensity of intrigue, romance, and general cussedness—Mr. Daniel J. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... astronomer by accident. He was taken from school on account of his illness, when Sacrobosco's book De Sphaera having been lent to him, he was so pleased with it that he immediately began a course of astronomic studies. Pennant's first propensity to natural history was the pleasure he received from an accidental perusal of Willoughby's work on birds. The same accident of finding, on the table of his professor, Reaumur's History of Insects, which he read more than he attended to the lecture, and, having been refused the loan, gave such an ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... acquaintance, they are the most costly. "It is horrid to think that we should go out among our friends for the mere sake of eating and drinking," Mrs. Proudie would say to the clergymen's wives from Barsetshire. "It shows such a sensual propensity." ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope



Words linked to "Propensity" :   disposition, tendency, aptness, inclination



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