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More "Propensity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... propensity to theft; common in women in easy circumstances. Dipsomania, or Oinomania, an insatiable desire for drink. Morphinomania, a craving for morphine or its preparations. Erotomania, or amorous madness. When occurring in women this is also called Nymphomania, and in men Satyriasis. It consists ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... every department of taste, the earliest object of art is, the display of the power of the artist; and it is in the last period of its improvements alone, that this miserable propensity is overcome. It is hence that the imitation of Nature is not what is at first attempted; that the forms which she presents are uniformly neglected, and the merit of the artist is thought to consist in such artificial designs as bear the most unequivocal marks of his individual dexterity. The forms ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... person (esp. a low-level bureaucrat or service-business employee) exhibiting most of the following characteristics: (a) naive trust in the wisdom of the parent organization or 'the system'; (b) a blind-faith propensity to believe obvious nonsense emitted by authority figures (or computers!); (c) a rule-governed mentality, one unwilling or unable to look beyond the 'letter of the law' in exceptional situations; (d) a paralyzing fear of official reprimand or worse if Procedures ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... marriage covenant; and, interspersing their utterances with the most horrid blasphemies against God and his Son, and everything that is lovely, and good, and pure, they give the freest license to every propensity to sin, and to every carnal and fleshly lust. Tell us not that these things, openly taught under the garb of religion, and backed up by supernatural sights and sounds, are anything less ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith
... became 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 were worth all the ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... go on board the steamer, he had heard much of Laughing Anne's story, and had even had an interview, on the path, with Bamtz himself. She ran back to the hut to fetch him, and he came out lounging, with his hands in his pockets, with the detached, casual manner under which he concealed his propensity to cringe. Ya-a-as-as. He thought he would settle here permanently—with her. This with a nod at Laughing Anne, who stood by, a haggard, tragically anxious figure, her black hair ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... loved the melodramatic, and was never so happy, said Blake, as when bathed in tears. Detractors of this estimable woman, indeed, were wont to complain that she was too easily content with these pearly but insufficient aids to lavatory process; and her propensity for adhering for weeks at a time to an ancient black silk, which had seen service all over the Western frontier, gave sombre color to the statement. The few ladies of the —th who had come to Russell for the summer were hardly ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... truth of the youngster's story. She merely wondered why, for the first time in his life, Lad should absent himself at dinnertime from his time-honored place on the dining-room floor, at the Master's left. And, amusedly, she recalled what her husband had said of the stately dog's new propensity for mischief. Perhaps Lad was exploring the friendly home-woods in ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in them, latent, any propensity toward viciousness—any unawakened desire for that which has been my failing—hard work from dawn till dark is the antidote. An exhausted child is ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... am!' she cried, 'that this thing has happened. But you are very fortunate that it has occurred in my house, rather than in somebody else's, for I know what measures to take to cure you of the propensity to crime which you have so clearly shown. I shall, of course, have to send you away immediately; for I could never again trust you in my home, for although it is only a trifle that you have stolen,—yes, deliberately stolen,—yet anyone who takes only a pin that belongs ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... spheres, and thou wilt not find a corpuscle destitute of that natural attractability. The very point of the first thread in this apparently tangled skein is no other than such a principle of attraction, and all principles beside are void of a real basis: from such a propensity arises every motion perceived in heavenly or in terrestrial bodies; it is a disposition to be attracted which taught hard steel to rush from its place and rivet itself on the magnet; it is the same disposition which impels the light straw to attach itself firmly on amber; it is ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... 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 you've grown! God have mercy on you!' my old nurse used to ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... have known, few, if any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt,—sometimes a misfortune,—as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it,—but oftenest of all ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... gratification, whilst nothing so effectually represses it as a determined exercise of the mental faculties upon other objects and the expenditure of nervous energy in other channels. Some works which have issued from the medical press contain much that is calculated to excite, rather than to repress, the propensity; and the advice sometimes given by practitioners to their patients is immoral as well ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... somehow greedily gobble down all stories in which the characters of our friends are chopped up, and believe wrong of them without inquiry. In a late serial work written by this hand, I remember making some pathetic remarks about our propensity to believe ill of our neighbors—and I remember the remarks, not because they were valuable, or novel, or ingenious, but because, within three days after they had appeared in print, the moralist who wrote them, walking home with a friend, heard a story about another friend, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of his letters: "It is a dangerous thing for a man with a very strong memory to read very much. I could give you three or four quotations this moment in support of that proposition; but I will bring the vicious propensity under subjection, if I can." Thus we see his mind doing instantly and involuntarily what other minds do with infinite pains, bringing together all things that have a likeness or a ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... we could undergo them twenty times for such a sight. We came into the harbour last night, and landed as soon as we could collect our wits, and mother collect us; Madame has been at Gibraltar before, and so ought to have had the use of hers, but knowing her propensity to lose her way, we made Hargrave look after her, while we three elder girls each took a little child. Both the mothers looked after our things. The boys and Jenny were left behind. So we landed just before gun fire, passing through the long rows of houses, which ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... to a writer, of water drinking, if I can persuade myself that I have any wit, and find I have inclination, I intend to write; though, as yet, I have another impediment: for I have not provided myself with a scheme. Ten to one but I shall have a propensity to write against vice, and who can tell how far that may offend? But an author should consult his genius, rather than his interest, if ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... in his cradle he squeals a challenge; his latest groan is a sound of defiance. Pike and pistol are manifest in his well-developed bump of combativeness; his name is FIGHT, there can be no mistake about it. From highest to lowest—in the peer and the bog-trotter, the inherent propensity breaks forth, more or less modified by station ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... must be admitted that to bestow intellectual culture upon the pupils, without giving them religious instruction, is to draw forth and add to the powers of the mind, without giving it any helm to guide it; in other words, it is to increase the capacity, without diminishing the propensity, to do evil. ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... Squire relaxed so 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 ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... evenings at the Estaminet. He was a gross, corpulent fellow, raised from a full-blooded Gascon breed, and sired by a comic actor of some reputation in his way. He was remarkable for nothing but his good-humor, his love of cards, and a strong propensity to test the quality of his own liquors by comparing them with those sold at ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... Sandwich are several villages of free blacks, probably the major portion of them having been assisted in their escape by the Abolitionists. They are not very good neighbours from their propensity to thieving, which either is innate, or, as Miss Martineau would have it, is the effect of slavery. I shall not dispute that point; but it is certain that they are most inveterately hostile to the Americans, and will fight to the last, from the dread of being again subjected to their ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... and perfume of the field-berry. It rarely fails to give us fruit in May, and my children, with the unerring taste of connoisseurs, follow it up until the last berry is picked. It would run all over the garden unchecked; and this propensity must be severely curbed to render a bed productive. Keeping earliness and high flavor in view, I would next recommend the Black Defiance. It is not remarkably productive on many soils, but the fruit is so delicious that it well deserves a place. The Duchess ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... him not to talk before he left—he feared Drake's propensity for speech. But he was the only man in Lost Valley whom ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... owing to this effeminate propensity, that all manly exercises, all useful knowledge, and that noble emulation which inspires virtue, and keeps alive respect for the public good, are here unknown. Those amusements which serve in other countries to relax the labours of the industrious, and to keep alive the vigour ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... ever more 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 ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... became an infernal ball. It became endowed with a fiendish propensity to run up a player's leg and all about him, as if trying to hide in his pocket. Grace's efforts to find it were heartbreaking to watch. Every time it bounded out to center field, which was of frequent occurrence, Tom would fall on it and hug it as if he were ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... is, having a silly side to it as well as a mean side, there were not a few who pretended to be indignant on no better authority than a general propensity to believe every evil report; and a good many others who found it simply funny to call Heyst the Spider—behind his back, of course. He was as serenely unconscious of this as of his several other nicknames. ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... a strong propensity which dances through every atom, and attracts the minutest particle to some peculiar object; search this universe from its base to its summit, from fire to air, from water to earth (the four elements!), from all below the moon to all above the celestial spheres, and thou ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... interest of a something that belongs to our common nature. In short, Sterne seizes happily on those points, in which every man is more or less a humourist. And, indeed, to be a little more subtle, the propensity to notice these things does itself constitute the humourist, and the superadded power of so presenting them to men in general gives us the man of humour. Hence the difference of the man of humour, the effect of whose portraits does not depend on the felt presence of himself, as a humourist, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... the shortest cut to everything, getting what he could out of his land in the quickest possible way with no reference to the ultimate improvement of the farm itself. If he ever managed to get a little money, he was likely to spend it at once and to become as impecunious as before. Such a propensity did not make for progress, for poverty begets slovenliness in all ages and among all ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... afterwards re- purchased the great house with the consent of the duke from the fortunate holder, as he did not like it to be dismembered from the family. We believe this circumstance had a most salutary effect in preventing any return of a propensity for play. ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... India of studying the effect on character 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 ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... loves his queen, and is too much governed by her. She is capricious like her brother, and governed by him; devoted to pleasure and expense; and not remarkable for any other vices or virtues. Unhappily the King shows a propensity for the pleasures of the table. That for drink has increased lately, or, at least, it has become ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... poetical, warlike, and religious enthusiasm which created chivalry and the crusades. We should probably discover, in the wandering lives of the knights and crusaders, the reflected influence of the roving habits of the German hunters, of that propensity to remove, and that superabundance of population, which ever exist where social order is not sufficiently well regulated for man to feel satisfied with his condition and locality; and before laborious industry has taught ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... animal's skin in a state of nature is generally of a lighter brown than that of those in captivity; a distinction which arises, in all probability, not so much from the wild animal's propensity to cover itself with mud and dust, as from the superior care which is taken in repeatedly bathing the tame ones, and in rubbing their skins with a soft stone, a lump of burnt clay, or the coarse husk of a coco-nut. This kind ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... that every liberal institution suitable to Englishmen, with their long training in self-government and instinctive reverence for law, must needs be extended to Irishmen, with their long training in anarchy and instinctive propensity to lawlessness. He prevailed, however, in the house of commons, where a hostile amendment was decisively rejected, and the bill, having passed rapidly through committee, was read a third time by ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... resource; a resource against which neither modesty nor equity plead; a resource which, on the contrary, has every moral propensity, every divine obligation, in its favour: this resource ...
— Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy (1793) • Frances Burney
... mention of the word Puritan. There are some people who have no other notion of a Puritan than that of a close-cropped, saturnine personage, having a nasal twang, who is forevermore indulging an insane propensity to sing psalms, quote Scripture, or burn witches. These are the people who can never see into the profound deep of a great truth, but are quite ready to laugh at its travesty or caricature. And what high ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a wellconstructed Union, none deserves to be more 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, ...
— The Federalist Papers
... myself, whether, upon the whole, I ever derived any real pleasure from these moods of the mind. The imaginary positions I loved most, were generally of the painful kind: the greater the sufferings of the personages concerned in my various plots of combined circumstances, the more was my propensity gratified. From this morbid state of excitement, I was, of course, often precipitated, by the mere decay of the cerebral energy that fed it; and when I was forced again to contemplate and mix with the common affairs of life, I felt the contrast ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... fault with this great lever—will; However deeply bedded in propensity; However firmly set, I tell thee firmer yet Is that great power that ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... sufficiency of the evidence—that is, of the correctness of the induction—is a part of the induction itself; unless we ought to say that it is a part of every thing we do, to satisfy ourselves that it has been done rightly. We conclude from known instances to unknown by the impulse of the generalizing propensity; and (until after a considerable amount of practice and mental discipline) the question of the sufficiency of the evidence is only raised by a retrospective act, turning back upon our own footsteps, and examining ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... was excellent; Horatio was most attentive to Miss Teresa, and every one felt in high spirits, except Mr. Malderton, who, knowing the propensity of his brother-in-law, Mr. Barton, endured that sort of agony which the newspapers inform us is experienced by the surrounding neighbourhood when a pot-boy hangs himself in a hay-loft, and which is 'much easier ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... inherited the father's strength, his happy cheerfulness, his quick-to-anger and quicker-to-repent propensity, but the mother's gentleness also dwelt in them. Laughing, merry, they sang their way through the days, protesting vehemently when things went contrary to their desires, but laughing the next moment in the ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... needed to do that, yet sometimes he saw, or fancied he saw, 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 now, as he watched the others hiking off through the twilight, and heard their ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... under a sort of fascination of terror and rage, would not move. Flinging all thoughts of her dependence on David—of the money she had come to ask—of her leave-taking on the morrow—to the winds, Louie revenged herself amply for her week's unnatural self-control, and gave full rein to a mad propensity which had been gradually roused and spurred to ungovernable force by the trivial incidents of the afternoon. She made mock of Lucy's personal vanity; she sneered at her attempts to ape her betters, shrilly declaring that no one would ever take her for anything ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... joke, and a guffaw follows. The laugh goes round and then the peanuts are cracked and munched faster than ever; one hand being employed in fortifying the inner man with this nutriment of universal use, while the other enforces the views of the orator. This laughing propensity of the sable crowd is a great cause of disorder. They laugh as hens cackle—one ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... return to pure and eternal natures; but that the impure soul, in consequence of being imbued with terrene affections, will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye.* For while a propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a certain vehicle to herself; either of an aerial nature, or composed from the spirit and vapours of her terrestrial body, or which is recently collected from surrounding air; ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... am well aware that the man who for a quarter of a century industriously collects snuffboxes has a supreme contempt for the man who collects both snuffboxes and clocks. And in this does the specialist reveal that his normal propensity to collect has degenerated. That is to say, it has refined itself into an abnormality, and from the innocent desire to collect, has shifted off into a selfish wish ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... a conscious reflective search after pleasure, or of egoism. Power brings no enjoyment to the man by nature devoid of ambition, and he who is naturally ambitious does not desire fame because it affords him pleasure, but conversely, fame affords him pleasure because he desires it. The natural propensity which terminates directly on the object, without knowledge or foresight of the pleasurable results, comes first, and egoistic reflection directed toward the hoped-for enjoyment can develop only after this has been satisfied. The case is the same with benevolence as with ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... aroused great interest among the non-Mormons in all the counties around Nauvoo, and increased the growing enmity against Smith's flock which was already aroused by their political course and their alleged propensity to steal. ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... 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 without his pipe. During the short space of time that Corporal Trim was at the inn ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... landed the sailor in the press-room was his propensity to indulge in "swank." Two jolly tars, who were fully protected and consequently believed themselves immune from the press, once bought a four-wheeled post-chaise and hired a painter in Long Acre to ornament it with anchors, masts, cannon and a variety ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... trying the conspirators. The court itself 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 in the folds of her gown. Payne, the would-be assassin of Seward, ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... is taught to fly from hand to hand of its keeper. When pitted against an antagonist, such is the obstinate courage of this little creature that it will sink from exhaustion rather than release its hold. This propensity, and the ordinary character of its notes, render it impossible that the Bulbul of India can be identical with the Bulbul of Iran, the "Bird of a Thousand Songs,"[2] of which poets say that its delicate passion for ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Cincinnati by one o'clock next morning, when we landed in the dark and went back to our old hotel. As we made our way on foot over the broken pavement, Anne measured her length upon the ground, but didn't hurt herself. I say nothing of Kate's troubles—but you recollect her propensity? She falls into, or out of, every coach or boat we enter; scrapes the skin off her legs; brings great sores and swellings on her feet; chips large fragments out of her ankle-bones; and makes herself blue with bruises. She really has, however, since we got over the first trial of being ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... it. You had set your affections on Arthur; and thinking he had thrown himself away, you do not resist the common propensity to hate ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... resorted to in "playing off," as the boys called it; that 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 fifteen years my senior, and looking ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... 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 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Amanda, betaking herself by the force of inborn propensity and habit, even when hopeless of success in concealment, to the falsehood she carried with her like an atmosphere; 'I know not what your lordship means. Of what sort is ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... which his friend's memory was recalled, with an additional allusion to her long and secret love for him, affected Lord Elmwood much—he was moved, but ashamed of being so, and as soon as possible conquered the propensity to forgive. Yet, for a short interval, he did not know whether to go out of the room, or to remain in it; whether to speak, or to be silent. At length he turned towards her, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... so aged would be disposed to talk much. The Onondago had ever been a silent man; dignity and gravity of character uniting with prudence to render him so. But Jaaf was constitutionally garrulous, though length of days had necessarily much diminished the propensity. At that moment a fit of thoughtful and melancholy silence came over my uncle, too, and all four of us continued brooding on our own reflections for two or three minutes after I had ceased to play. Presently the even, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... or sauntering in any quiet place about the town, you will hear this game in progress in a score of wine- shops at once; and looking over any vineyard walk, or turning almost any corner, will come upon a knot of players in full cry. It is observable that most men have a propensity to throw out some particular number oftener than another; and the vigilance with which two sharp-eyed players will mutually endeavour to detect this weakness, and adapt their game to it, is very curious and entertaining. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... seemed to have a natural propensity to retain any form of portable property. One of her arms was so placed that, tug and stretch as he would, Leander could not get the cloak from her shoulders, and his efforts only broke one of the oxidized silver fastenings, and tore part of the ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... resided; and as she knew some time must elapse before any profit could be expected, she managed with the utmost frugality. The Dr. mean time acted the part of a tutor to miss, in Arithmetic, Latin, and Mathematics, to which she discovered the strongest propensity. All things being properly disposed for the grand operation, the vitriol furnace was set to work, which requiring the most intense heat for several days, unhappily set fire to the house; the stairs were ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... which were the leading characters of Edward Hyde. Yet it was by these that I was punished. My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. I was conscious, even when I took the draught, of a more unbridled, a more furious propensity to ill. It must have been this, I suppose, that stirred in my soul that tempest of impatience with which I listened to the civilities of my unhappy victim; I declare, at least, before God, no man morally sane ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... possesses opposite qualities and properties. The children of the vicious are by nature more vicious than the children of the virtuous. Hence, we see that men by ordinary generation, transmit their own peculiar vices to their offspring. Every innate principle, passion and propensity of soul, body and mind, is transmitted from parent to child. This view of the subject need strike us with no surprise, if we would reflect, that men beget the souls, as well as the bodies of their children. I read in Genesis, that God breathed into Adam's nostrils ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... in the sonnet above quoted had become, in 1641, "an inward prompting which grows 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 perhaps leave something so written to after times, as they should not willingly let ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Dr. Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College, wrote: "Slave labour is undoubtedly the dearest kind of labour; it is all forced, and forced too from a class of human beings who have the least propensity to voluntary labour even when it is to benefit themselves alone." The cost of rearing a slave to the age of self support, he reckoned, including insurance, at forty dollars a year for fifteen years. The usual work of a slave field ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... 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 ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... before long by the sound of loud growlings, which made Uncle Mark and several of the party start to their feet, with guns ready to receive the bear from whom they expected an attack. Recollecting Jacques' propensity to practical joking, I lay quiet; and I heard my uncle come back soon afterwards, growling almost as much as the supposed bear, and observing that the brute had got off, though it must have been close to the ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... himself up to drinking without being miserable one-half his days and mad the other; besides, I like to enjoy my life at all sides and ends, which cannot be done by one that suffers himself to be the slave of a single propensity—and, moreover, drinking spoils one's good looks,' he concluded, with a most conceited smile that ought to have provoked me ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... mental and bodily inferiority, she regarded with indulgence; they were foils capable of being turned to good account as set-offs for her own endowments. To violence, injustice, tyranny, she succumbed—they were her natural masters; she had no propensity to hate, no impulse to resist them; the indignation their behests awake in some hearts was unknown in hers. From all this it resulted that the false and selfish called her wise, the vulgar and debased termed her charitable, the insolent and unjust ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... editorials had unsparingly 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
... Pariahs of India, whence these gipsies without doubt originally came," says Freycinet, "they are noted like their ancestors for every vicious practice and criminal propensity. Most of them, possessing immense wealth, make a great display in dress and in horses, especially at their weddings, which are celebrated with much expense; and they find their chief pleasure either in riotous debauchery or in sheer idleness. Knaves and liars, they cheat as much ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... it flees from me. It is all that I can do to keep Greek and Latin out of all my letters. Wise sayings of Euripides are even now at my fingers' ends. If I did not maintain a constant struggle against this propensity, my correspondence would resemble the notes to the 'Pursuits of Literature.' It is a dangerous thing for a man with a very strong memory to read very much. I could give you three or four quotations this moment in support of that proposition; but I will bring the vicious propensity under subjection, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... to which the Indians, as well as the whites, are much addicted. Such is their fondness for spirit of any kind that they are rarely known to be sober, when they have it in their power to be otherwise. Neither a sense of honor or of shame has been able to overcome their propensity for its use; and when drunk, the ties of race, of friendship and of kindred are too weak, to bind ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... life remains apparently calm and equal; the inward storm is calmed; he rejoices in his application to work and his cheerful temper. However, from time to time, he makes great complaints to himself of his propensity to love dainty food, which he does not always find it possible to conquer. Then, in his self-contempt, he calls himself "fig-stomach" or "cake-stomach." But amid all this the religious and political exaltation ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of his Divine Legation to the Free-thinkers (vol. I. p. ii), says:—'Nothing, I believe, strikes the serious observer with more surprize, in this age of novelties, than that strange propensity to infidelity, so visible in men of almost every condition: amongst whom the advocates of Deism are received with all the applauses due to the inventers of the arts of life, or the deliverers of oppressed and injured nations.' See ante, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... breeze playing among the tree-tops. My boyish fancy clothed all nature around me with ideal charms, and peopled it with the fairy beings I had read of in poetry and fable. Here it was I gave full scope to my incipient habit of day dreaming, and to a certain propensity, to weave up and tint sober realities with my own whims and imaginings, which has sometimes made life a little too much like an Arabian tale to me, and this "working-day world" rather like a ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... idea of anything but virtue in the Atherly blood; he had heard that the upper class of Europeans were fond of field sports and of hunting; it was odd that his sister should inherit this propensity and not he. He regarded her more kindly for this evidence of race. "You think of getting married?" he said more gently, yet with a certain brotherly doubt that any man could like her enough, even with her money. "Is there any one here ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... Poor Katy! Her propensity to fall violently in love with new people was always getting her into scrapes. Ever since she began to walk and talk, "Katy's intimate friends" had been one of ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... unattended lady was walking up the avenue from my front gate to the door, through the garden grounds, the animal approached from behind, in the gentlest manner possible, and placed his fore feet on her shoulders. This happened more than once. Its propensity to eat plum leaves at last banished it from the garden. It was then allowed to visit distant parts of the island, and, at length, some vicious person broke one of its legs, from its propensity to browse on the young leaves ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... 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
... 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 ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... finding themselves thus placed, can govern themselves by a just philosophy, and, instead of carrying on a life-battle, can modify their own tastes and requirements, turn their eyes from traits which do not suit them to those which do, resolving, at all events, however reasonable be the taste or propensity which they sacrifice, to give up all rather than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... Paula swallow some 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
... 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 ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... 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 ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... sermons and various devotions wholly filled the Sabbath. Queer people, meditated the Hollanders. But they soon found that it was safe to trust the Bible readers. Though they were peculiar about Sunday, they were surprisingly certain to keep their promises, and for all their propensity to pray without ceasing they made most faithful workmen. Superintendents sought them for laborers, merchants willingly gave them credit; and with the passing years they became settled and quietly prosperous. The Bibles were not neglected, the daily prayers ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... maids of honor. Besides, as 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 securely fastened on her pretty lips the golden padlock of mutual interest. As for Louis XIV., his happiness was ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... My propensity to moralize used formerly [And our formerlies you know, brother, are not of any long duration.] to tease and half put you out of temper. Indulge me once more in hoping it will not do so at present; for I believe I am more prone to this habit ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... bite is always the biggest fish. There is something very charming—something of which the cynic knows nothing at all—about this propensity of ours to attribute superlative qualities to the unrealized. It is a species of philosophic chivalry. It is a courtesy that we extend to the unknown. We do not know whether the joys that never visited us were ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... about Emily, spite of all unreason, such was the family opinion of Fred's propensity to fall in love, that Albinia's first suspicion lighted upon him, but as her eye fell on the pink envelope the handwriting concerned her ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... opposite tendency; but he still persisted that it was an improper book. I must here observe that it was with the utmost difficulty I obtained an opportunity of explaining myself, on account of the propensity which he possesses of breaking in upon the discourse of the person who is addressing him; and at last, in self-defence, I was myself obliged to infringe the rules of conversation, and to hold on without paying any attention to his remarks—not that ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... bend the people to their theories of subjection. The bulk of mankind, on their part, are not excessively curious concerning any theories whilst they are really happy; and one sure symptom of an ill-conducted state is the propensity of the people ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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
... so much afraid of as your propensity to combat. You must resist that delight of yours—whacking stray heads and ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... all of them were fresh from civil life. They wore their uniforms uneasily, as a farmer's boy wears his Sunday suit. Those who carried sabers experienced much inconvenience when walking, on account of the propensity of those weapons to get between their legs. In citizen's dress, at my side, sat an officer of the old army, who looked upon these newly-made warriors with much contempt, mingled with an admiration of their earnestness. After an ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... of Gongorism lasted long in Spain, which, with its innate propensity to bombast, was more fertile soil for it than other nations. Innumerable poetasters of the early eighteenth century enjoyed fame in their day and some possessed talent; but the obscure and trivial style of the age from which they could not free themselves deprived them of any chance of ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... meetings of the inspectors of this prison, a working man of Philadelphia presented himself before the Board, and earnestly requested to be placed in solitary confinement. On being asked what motive could possibly prompt him to make this strange demand, he answered that he had an irresistible propensity to get drunk; that he was constantly indulging it, to his great misery and ruin; that he had no power of resistance; that he wished to be put beyond the reach of temptation; and that he could think of no better ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... this time Sand's life remains apparently calm and equal; the inward storm is calmed; he rejoices in his application to work and his cheerful temper. However, from time to time, he makes great complaints to himself of his propensity to love dainty food, which he does not always find it possible to conquer. Then, in his self-contempt, he calls himself "fig-stomach" or "cake-stomach." But amid all this the religious and political exaltation ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... belonged to this association, but his propensity was rather to mingle with the gay and thoughtless. On one occasion we find him implicated in an affair that came nigh producing his expulsion. A report was brought to college that a scholar was in the hands of the bailiffs. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... had often heard; but the interest I took in her led me to question her about her husband and family. She answered me by repeating a name which I have now forgotten, and told me she had no children. I was seized with a strong propensity to learn whether the attractions of Gooreedeeana were sufficiently powerful to secure her from the brutal violence with which the women are treated, and as I found my question either ill understood or reluctantly ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... propitious first impression, and as she was inclined to be censorious I considered it diplomatic to point out his detractions, knowing that the combative propensity of the young lady would then seek ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... and to suggest to students in ethnology, the Query, how it comes to pass that John Bull has a peculiar propensity to call things by his own name, his ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... I have known, few, if any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt,—sometimes a misfortune,—as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it,—but oftenest ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... despise human nature as it develops itself in history and theology, and she had not known enough people to love it in its personal development. She had a general idea that all men were liars, and that she must be on her guard against their propensity to cheat and annoy a lonely and helpless woman; for, to tell the truth, in her good father's over-anxiety to defend her from the snares of evil men after his death, his teachings had given her opinion this bias, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... a word as Snob, I will engage, in this wicked and vulgar world. And, O stars and garters! how she would start if she heard that she—she, as solemn as Minerva—she, as chaste as Diana (without that heathen goddess's unladylike propensity for field-sports)—that she ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... addressed them in such Greek as he could command, which, we may well believe, was not exactly such as Cineas would have spoken. An exquisite sense of the ridiculous belonged to the Greek character; and closely connected with this faculty was a strong propensity to flippancy and impertinence. When Posthumius placed an accent wrong, his hearers burst into a laugh. When he remonstrated, they hooted him, and called him barbarian; and at length hissed him off ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... apathetic, he was supposed to be melancholy or hypochondriacal. If he were elated and restless, ready for all sorts of undertakings and projects, his condition was attributed to a great flow of spirits. If, while talking very sensibly on many subjects and doing many proper things, he manifested a propensity to wanton mischief, why, then he was possessed with a devil and consigned to chains and straw,—unless he had committed some senseless act of crime, in which case he received from the law the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... qualities. The redeeming virtue of the father palpably present in the son becomes his curse, through a faint diminution of the strength of the check which caused that virtue to be the father's salvation. The propensity, too, which is a man's evil genius, and leads him to madness and utter ruin, gives vivid reality to all his words and thoughts, and becomes all his strength, if by divine assistance it can just be subdued and prevented from rising in victorious insurrection. But this is ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... for the scholars. We entered the halls of study, which were long narrow verandahs, and found several white-bearded and sagacious-looking Moollahs reading out portions of the Kor[a]n to their attentive scholars, with a grave countenance and a loud nasal twang, exciting a propensity to laughter which I with difficulty repressed. I do not think the reasoning of the college is very deep, or that the talents of its senior wrangler need be very first-rate, and am inclined to suspect ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... stipend—into the pockets of his gambling companions. Again he returned home as full of grief as before. The Indian soon heard of what had happened, for he loved the padre very much; so he brought him another bag of silver. The padre's propensity was incurable, and he lost that as he had done the first. The Indian's generosity was not yet worn out, and he brought him a third bag full of ore. When the padre saw it, he could scarcely ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... am sorry to say there was too much reason for this conjecture, the lad having from his earliest years discovered a propensity to many vices, and especially to one, which hath as a direct tendency as any other to that fate which we have just now observed to have been prophetically denounced against him. He had been already ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... question was instantly put, when a perfect war of noes voted down Mr. Pullman's amendment. Another hearty chorus of ayes consummated the iniquity. In all such affairs, the visitor notices a kind of 'ungovernable propensity to vote for spending money, and a prompt disgust at any obstacle raised or objection made. The bull-necked Councilman of uncertain grammar evidently felt that Mr. Pullman's modest interference on behalf of the tax-payer was ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... as distinct and different as their sex. And therein lay its charm, for it merely translated itself in his mind that she had very pretty eyes, which he had never noticed before, without any aggressive intellectual quality. And with this, alas! came the man's propensity to reason. It meant of course but ONE thing; he saw it all now! If HE, in his preoccupation and coolness, had noticed her eyes, so also had the younger and emotional Chris. The young fellow was in love with her! It was that which had stimulated his recovery, and she was wondering if he, ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... taste for personal luxury he resembled the entire tribe of contemporary courtiers. It was a sumptuous age everywhere. England, which had suddenly begun to be able to gratify a love of splendour, seemed in haste to make up for lost time. Elizabeth encouraged the propensity at her Court. Her statesmen, warriors, and favourites enriched themselves with sinecures, confiscations, and shares in trading and buccaneering adventures. They spent as rapidly. They were all extravagant, and mortgaged the future. ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... corporeal. Thus, daily and hourly, her superior acquirements, her enlightened understanding, yielded to the intemperance of her ruling infatuation, and every power of reflection seemed absorbed in the unfeminine propensity. ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... glimpses of their charms, to wish very earnestly for a removal of those impediments, that obstruct their more frequent presence. This not being attainable in a lawful way of customary intercourse, the natural propensity of men to overcome difficulties of this kind, incites them to leave no expedient untried to gain admittance to what perhaps was at first only the object of their admiration, but which, by their being ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... wealth for Moral Dramatists. In this dramatic version the Author has tried to infuse something of the old Greek sense of an overruling destiny, without detriment to prevailing ideas of moral responsibility. Those who have the misfortune to be born with a propensity for illicit jam, may learn from our Drama the terrible results of failing to overcome it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... above the sea. We were astonished at this rise, but ought not to have been so really, since we had already estimated this ridge at 500 feet when we first saw it from the end of the bay. But however it may be, most of us have a strong propensity for setting up theories and inventing something new. What others have seen does not interest us, and on this occasion we took the opportunity — I say we, because I was one of them — of propounding a new ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... maid came with a lantern to light me home. I could not but reflect with myself, as I was going out, upon the talkative humour of old men, and the little figure which that part of life makes in one who cannot employ this natural propensity in discourses which would make him venerable. I must own, it makes me very melancholy in company, when I hear a young man begin a story; and have often observed, that one of a quarter of an hour long in a man of five-and-twenty, gathers circumstances every ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... of them (so far as causes can be assigned for its existence) being mainly an emanation not from the practical life of the period, but from the previous state of belief and thought. The weakness of the speculative propensity in mankind generally has not, therefore, prevented the progress of speculation from governing that of society at large; it has only, and too often, prevented progress altogether, where the intellectual progression has come to an early stand for ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... lines laid down by Hill, but there is a significant difference, attributable perhaps to the weakening of orthodox theology and the spreading influence of the Shaftesburian school of ethical theorists. In the older theology, man's progressive loss of grace correspondingly releases his natural propensity for evil, and working in these concepts neither Hill nor Lillo hesitated to show his hero descending to murder. Moore, influenced perhaps by the ethical sentiments of the day, compromised his theological concepts and permitted his hero no really evil act (excluding of course his suicide), and stressed ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... effect on character 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 ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... in vocal talent, but all have a delightful way of crooning over, and, as it were, rehearsing their song in an undertone, which makes their nearness always unobtrusive. Though there is the most trustworthy witness to the imitative propensity of this bird, I have only once, during an intimacy of more than forty years, heard him indulge it. In that case, the imitation was by no means so close as to deceive, but a free reproduction of the notes of some other birds, especially of the oriole, as a kind of variation in his own song. The ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... The propensity to matrimony, always a distinguishing characteristic of the Rookwoods, largely displayed itself in Sir Reginald. Another dame followed—equally rich, younger, and far more beautiful than her immediate predecessor. She was a prodigious flirt, and soon set her husband at defiance. Sir Reginald did ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... on this unreasonable propensity of judging by names, in his humorous account of the elder Mr. Shandy's system of Christian names. And Wilkes has expressed, in Boswell's Life of Johnson, all the influence of baptismal names, even in matters of poetry! He said, "The last city poet was Elkanah Settle. There is ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... of unrivalled wit, humor, and mirth. But his genius was shackled by the artificial conventions of the theatre, which did not allow him time or space to fully develop a character. A grand comic creation like Falstaff was impossible. He introduces a single propensity of mankind, exhibits it in all its relations to society, shows it to us on every side; but it remains only a trait of character, although we see it in half a dozen different lights. Tartuffe is the one exception; in him, hypocrisy hides covetousness and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... acrimony and all the little tyrannies of domestic life, when they know that their victim is without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational basis, each would be assured that habitual ill-temper would terminate in separation, and would check this vicious and dangerous propensity." ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... interest in effecting the restoration of the guilty officer, or even to procure for him, the hopeless station he now actually occupied; but he had sternly refused to be a party in placing any man in authority, who was the victim of a propensity that not only disgraced himself, but which, in the peculiar position of a sailor, equally jeoparded the honour of the country, and risked the lives of all around him. He was aware that the last application had been successful, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... by maintaining that in certain vessels which are susceptible of an internal pruriency, and thence produce laughter, the blood is set in commotion, in consequence of an alteration in the vital spirits, whereby involuntary fits of intoxicating joy, and a propensity to dance, are occasioned. To this notion he was, no doubt, led from having observed a milder form of St. Vitus' dance, not uncommon in his time, which was accompanied by involuntary laughter, and which bore a resemblance to the hysterical laughter of the moderns, except that it was characterized ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... he was as faultless as in Marianne's; and Elinor saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity, in which he strongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, of saying too much what he thought on every occasion, without attention to persons or circumstances. In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other people, in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment of undivided ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... is) a harvest of gratification. This distinction may serve to assist our judgment in estimating the ungodliness of certain characters. The rambling voluptuary who is carried along by every impulse, and all whose powers of mental discipline are so enfeebled that he has become the slave of every propensity, lives in the perpetual harvest of criminal gratification. A daughter whose sole delight is in her rapid transitions from one scene of expensive brilliancy to another, who dissipates every care and fills every hour among the frivolities ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... 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
... several villages of free blacks, probably the major portion of them having been assisted in their escape by the Abolitionists. They are not very good neighbours from their propensity to thieving, which either is innate, or, as Miss Martineau would have it, is the effect of slavery. I shall not dispute that point; but it is certain that they are most inveterately hostile to the Americans, and will ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... a good specimen of the mischievous, high-spirited and roystering youngster, who would go to any pains and run any risk for the sake of the fun it afforded. This propensity was carried to such an extent that the youth earned the name of being a "bad boy," and there is no use of pretending he did not deserve the reputation. He gave his parents and neighbors a good deal of anxiety, and ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... productive of another danger more dreadful; for at such times many become a prey to the sharks which are very numerous in these seas. I was informed likewise that they were sometimes attacked by a fish which by their description I imagine to be the barracoota, as they attribute to it the same propensity. ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... one, two, or two and a-half years, from a sentence of seven, ten years, or life. He deprecated those lengthened punishments, which deprive men of the years of youth, and strengthen and ripen every evil propensity into fatal maturity. ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... eager perusal of works of fiction. I regard this fact as an indication of a want of her nature. Not, therefore, to eradicate but to control, and direct, and restrain, this propensity, would I make an endeavor. In the words of the afflicted Lady Russell, used on the anniversary of her husband's execution, I would say, "I do not contend with nature, but keep her as innocent as I can." Select only such writings ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adapted to make a man completely happy; I say, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propensity to rambling, which I gave an account of in my first setting out into the world to have been so predominant in my thoughts, should be worn out, the volatile part be fully evacuated, or at least condensed, and I might at sixty-one years of age have been a little inclined ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... zeal to their propensity to mischief and violence, though it is not the cause, but their ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... that the energizing of such a propensity under ordinary circumstances is quite another thing from the origination of a positive variety by the evolution of the same character. In the variety the activity has become independent of outer influences or dependent ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... converse. She loved the melodramatic, and was never so happy, said Blake, as when bathed in tears. Detractors of this estimable woman, indeed, were wont to complain that she was too easily content with these pearly but insufficient aids to lavatory process; and her propensity for adhering for weeks at a time to an ancient black silk, which had seen service all over the Western frontier, gave sombre color to the statement. The few ladies of the —th who had come to Russell for the summer were hardly settled ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... views. Without any explanation as to the reason from his own pen, we are led to suppose that his studies on the invertebrates, his perception of the gradations in the animal scale from monad to man, together with his inherent propensity to inquire into the origin of things, also his studies on fossils, as well as the broadening nature of his zooelogical investigations and his meditations during the closing years of the eighteenth century, must gradually have led to ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... 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, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... productions to be immortal, as every band of youthful poets does, and dreamt of a future of poetic glory for Steyn by which it would vie with Mantua. Their environment of clownish, narrow-minded conventional divines—for as such they saw them—neither acknowledged nor encouraged them. Erasmus's strong propensity to fancy himself menaced and injured tinged this position with the martyrdom of oppressed talent. To Cornelius he complains in fine Horatian measure of the contempt in which poetry was held; his fellow-monk ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... chronicled. The hairdresser hears a confused buzz of admiration, and even attempts to join in it, but thinks it, at last, time to go. He goes, and narrowly escapes making the acquaintance of Mr Jardine, from his extraordinary propensity to brush all the lamp-posts he encounters with the shoulder of his coat; and gets home, to the great comfort of his wife and daughter, who have gone cozily off to sleep, in the assurance that their distinguished relative is safely locked up in the police-office. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... part of the chapter, St. Paul had been arguing against the foolish predilection which the Galatians had taken up for forms and formalisms and ceremonial observances, and strongly exhorting them to abandon this pernicious and unchristian propensity. And now, in the paragraph quoted, he takes up new ground, and appeals to them by the memory of their old affection for him, to listen to his arguments and entreaties, and to be of one mind with him. The general meaning of what ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... tasks. At any rate he did his very best, and never ceased in his efforts to load his hosts with every pleasure. To prove his zeal he would have stayed with these people for ever, in spite of the natural propensity of his kind for waywardness. But his mischievous fellow-sprites fell to plotting. They induced the chief of their band to remove him to another field of labour. This the chief promised and, either by caprice or by policy, ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... dethroned by his consort. It was to be expected. That princess has much good sense, and the same friendly relations towards us as the deceased. She has no religion, but acts the devotee. The chancellor Bestuchef is her greatest favorite, and, as he has a strong propensity to guinees I flatter myself that I shall be able to retain the friendship of the court. The poor emperor wanted to imitate Peter I., but he had not the capacity ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... Dogs in their habits and instincts. It is a physiological peculiarity which leads the Greyhound to chase its prey by sight,—that enables the Beagle to track it by the scent,—that impels the Terrier to its rat-hunting propensity,—and that leads the Retriever to its habit of retrieving. These habits and instincts are all the results of physiological differences and peculiarities, which have been developed from a common stock, at least there ...
— The Conditions Of Existence As Affecting The Perpetuation Of Living Beings • Thomas H. Huxley
... No day passes that I do not, in the course of my walk, put up a number of the land birds, and startle from among the gigantic sedges the long-necked water-fowl by dozens. It arouses the killing propensity in me most dreadfully, and I really entertain serious thoughts of learning to use a gun, for the mere pleasure of destroying these pretty birds as they whirr from their secret coverts close beside my path. How strong an instinct of animal humanity ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... parliament not being strong enough to compel the perusal of those little pieces, if he had not known that the people of England were ignorant of the treasures contained in them: and if he had not, moreover, shared the too common propensity of human nature to exult over a supposed fall into the mire of a genius whom he had been compelled to regard with admiration, as an inmate of the celestial regions—'there sitting where he durst ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... 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
... 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 ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... secured by a string, is taught to fly from hand to hand of its keeper. When pitted against an antagonist, such is the obstinate courage of this little creature that it will sink from exhaustion rather than release its hold. This propensity, and the ordinary character of its notes, render it impossible that the Bulbul of India can be identical with the Bulbul of Iran, the "Bird of a Thousand Songs,"[2] of which poets say that its delicate passion for the rose gives a plaintive ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... 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 be learned in society, and which to him, is of great importance. The difficulty ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... occasions fevers and other acute disorders, and sometimes ends in sudden death. Resentment also preys upon the mind, and occasions the most obstinate disorders, which gradually waste the constitution. Those who value health therefore, will guard against indulging this malignant propensity, and endeavour to preserve ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... children often resemble their grandfathers or grandmothers more than their immediate parents, and that this propensity is termed atavism, this does not seem quite correct even etymologically, for atavus in Latin did not mean father or grandfather, but at first great-great-great-grandfather, and then only ancestors; and what should be made ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... in with the others, and works, plays and sings under the wise and loving care of his "other mother," the teacher. He is living, not simply preparing to live. All life should be joyous, spontaneous, natural. The Rousseau Idea, which was modified and refined by Froebel, is the utilization of the propensity to play. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... high authority say about Shakespeare? He had "a deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy familiarity with "some of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence." And again: "Whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down good law." Of Henry IV., Part 2, he says: "If Lord Eldon could be supposed to have written the play, I do not see how he could be chargeable with having forgotten any of his law while writing it." ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... displayed early in life, leading her out to solitary musing among her native mountains, causing her to form innumerous combinations from common objects, giving strength to her perceptions, and swiftness to their arrangement. Love had come, as the rod of the master-prophet, to swallow up every minor propensity. Love had doubled all her excellencies, and placed a diadem on her genius. Was she to cease to love? Take the colours and odour from the rose, change the sweet nutriment of mother's milk to gall and poison; as easily might you wean Perdita ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... hero is a sneaking piece of imbecility; and if he had married Flora, she would have set him up upon the chimney-piece, as Count Borowlaski's wife used to do with him. I am a bad hand at depicting a hero properly so called, and have an unfortunate propensity for the dubious characters of borderers, buccaneers, Highland robbers, and all others of a Robin-Hood description. I do not know why it should be, as I am myself, like Hamlet, indifferent honest; but I suppose the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... a range of swallows' nests plastered against the face of the cliff. The people of the place fondly hold that Zaccheus, who climbed up a sycamore tree to see Our Lord pass by, came into Quercy, and having a natural propensity for climbing, scrambled up the face of the precipice to a hole he perceived in it, and there spent the remainder of his days, and changed his name to Amator. No trace of such an identification occurs before 1427, when Pope Martin V. affirmed it ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... the worst of his works—of which it is enough to say at present that it succeeds neither in being moral nor in amusing. It shows, however, a truly amazing fertility in a specially feminine art. We have all suffered from the propensity of some female minds (the causes of which we will not attempt to analyse) for pouring forth indefinite floods of correspondence. We know the heartless fashion in which some ladies, even in these days of penny postage, will fill a sheet of note-paper and ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... a young wolf was put to school, to endeavour, by instruction, to correct his natural propensity to voracity. His master, in order to teach him to read, transcribed, in large characters, some letters of the alphabet, and attempted to make him understand these signs. But instead of reading K L S, as it was written, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... is an art, and an art worth your Learning: the question wil rather be, whether you be capable of learning it? For he that learns it, must not onely bring an enquiring, searching, and discerning wit; but he must bring also that patience you talk of, and a love and propensity to the art itself: but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but the Art will (both for the pleasure and profit of it) prove like to Vertue, a reward to ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... herself administer to the sick with a full heart and a generous hand. But she had a natural aversion to indolence, and would not give a penny to any she esteemed so, lest it should tend to increase this unmeritorious propensity. She was herself exceedingly industrious, and took great delight in making her family comfortable, and, in fact, supplying the wants of every living thing about her, even to the cat and the dog. "She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She riseth also ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... from the earnest of after-life and that it has been evolved through differentiation and integration of the primary tissue of experience, as a preparation through which certain essential modes of skill may be acquired—those animals in which the preparatory play-propensity was not inherited in due force and requisite amount being subsequently eliminated in the struggle for existence. In any case there is little question that Prof. Groos is right in basing the play-propensity on instinctive foundations. ("The Play of Animals" page ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... answer'd, 'No! But search the stream below: It must nave borne her in its flow.' 'No,' said another; 'search above. In that direction She would have floated, by the love Of contradiction.' This joke was truly out of season;— I don't propose to weigh its reason. But whether such propensity The sex's fault may be, Or not, one thing is very sure, Its own propensities endure. Up to the end they'll have their will, And, if it ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Howard, 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 ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... poor Charles thought to make it all right by marrying Mrs. Brumby;—and she was very fond of him and the thing was all but done, in spite of her sons, who were in a rage as you may fancy. But Charley, sir, has such a propensity for humbug that he will tell lies when there is no earthly good in lying. He represented his chapel at twelve hundred a year, his private means as so-and-so; and when he came to book up with Briggs the lawyer, Mrs. Brumby's brother, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his career, Levanda was convinced that "no educated Jew could help being a cosmopolitan." But a little later his cosmopolitanism displayed a distinct propensity toward Russification. In his novel "A Hot Time" (1871-1872), Levanda renounces his former Polish sympathies, and, through the mouth of his hero Sarin, preaches the gospel of the approaching cultural fusion between the Jews and the Russians which is to mark a new epoch ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... sympathy for persons of the male sex, but she held them all her life in great abhorrence. Her temper was ungovernable; she was fond of blood, which she sucked from the living animal; and was something more than suspected of the cannibal propensity. On one occasion, she was seen to dive as naturally as an otter in a lake, catch a fish, and devour it on the spot. Yet this girl eventually acquired language; was even able to give some indistinct account of her early career in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... pleasant vicinity, though I. "And, may I ask sir," said I, in a very mild and soothing tone of voice, "may I ask the reason for this singular propensity of yours?" ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... well might a rabbit, that breeds six times a year, pretend to know any thing of the gestation of an elephant."] took the wrong, the pedantic, and the unstatesmanlike side of the question,—while in all these indications of the spirit of that profession, and of its propensity to tie down the giant Truth, with its small threads of technicality and precedent, we perceive the danger to be apprehended from the interference of such a spirit in politics, on the other side, arrayed against these petty tactics of the Forum, we see ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... devotes all his spare time to securing tobacco-pipes. And I am well aware that the man who for a quarter of a century industriously collects snuffboxes has a supreme contempt for the man who collects both snuffboxes and clocks. And in this does the specialist reveal that his normal propensity to collect has degenerated. That is to say, it has refined itself into an abnormality, and from the innocent desire to collect, has shifted off into a selfish wish ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... had, by some strong machinery, been got into bed in a corner, where they might have reposed snugly enough in the sleep of innocence, but for a constitutional propensity to keep awake, and also to scuffle in and out of bed. The immediate occasion of these predatory dashes at the waking world, was the construction of an oyster-shell wall in a corner, by two other youths of tender age; on which fortification ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... cunning and combativeness of the child. There is a vague feeling in his mind that he would like to see you confirm your suspicion without the aid of an open confession—and the result is a "lie." Indeed, any approach that arouses antagonisms is almost sure to bring out the propensity to dissimulate or even to deceive. In such cases the mother should learn how to approach the child without a challenge, instead of trying to teach ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... lived among the mountains and in caves—even using as food, when he found no other game, the serpents that he killed. Although somewhat advanced in years, he possessed incredible agility in running and leaping, the natural disposition and propensity of savage wild beasts. The neighboring villages held this man in so great fear that, whenever he entered one of them, all the people fled from him as from a wild beast, believing him to be a violent madman; and by such compulsion he took, without any resistance, all that he desired from the houses. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... grave tone and face, knowing all the while that there was no fear whatever for the people of Sark. Was there a propensity in me, not hitherto developed, to make the worst of ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... practical idolatry, not only without any efficient opposition, but almost without any decided remonstrance; and when at length an endeavor was made to root it out, the evil was found too deeply fixed to admit of removal.... It must be traced to the idolatrous tendency of the human heart, and its propensity to serve the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... son inherits is the natural faculties of the parent, but no more. Hence it follows that the son of a thief, on the supposition that thieving comes by habit and practice, does not by natural inheritance acquire the parent's criminal propensity. As far as his natural faculties are concerned he starts life free from the vicious habits of his parent, and should he in turn become a thief, as sometimes happens, it is not because he has inherited his father's thievish habits, but because he has himself acquired them. It is ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... degradation, mental and bodily inferiority, she regarded with indulgence; they were foils capable of being turned to good account as set-offs for her own endowments. To violence, injustice, tyranny, she succumbed—they were her natural masters; she had no propensity to hate, no impulse to resist them; the indignation their behests awake in some hearts was unknown in hers. From all this it resulted that the false and selfish called her wise, the vulgar and debased termed her charitable, the insolent and unjust dubbed her amiable, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... secondary. It is quite certain that the animals that store up food for the winter do not take any thought of the future. Nature takes thought for them and gives them their provident instinct. The jay, by his propensity to carry away and hide things, plants many of our oak and chestnut trees, but who dares say that he does this on purpose, any more than that the insects cross-fertilize the flowers on purpose? Sheep do not take thought of the wool upon their backs that ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... girl's 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 bound to take it as a matter of course that ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... would have howled; but this dog stiffened his tail with self-respect. He scraped away all the straw to make a clear area for his experiment, and then he stood up like a pillar, or a fine kangaroo, and made trial of his weight against the chain. Feeling something give, or show propensity toward giving, he said to himself that here was one more triumph for him over the presumptuous intellect of man. The chain might be strong enough to hold a ship, and the great leathern collar to secure a bull; but the fastening of chain to collar was unsound, by ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... 1: It is not time, but a man's propensity to anger, or his pertinacity in anger, that is the chief point of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... inform the company, that, when Nature gave me a propensity to their way of life, she had not left me altogether destitute of qualifications for it; though I could not deny that my talent was less respectable, and might be less profitable, than the meanest of theirs. My design, in short, was to imitate the storytellers of whom Oriental ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... good?' asked innocent Lady Macleod of Dunvegan Castle at her guest, Dr. Samuel Johnson. 'No, madam, no more than a wolf.' That is quite past all question with all those who either in natural morals or in revealed religion look to and know and characterise themselves. We have all an inborn propensity to dislike one another, and a very small provocation will suddenly blow that banked-up furnace into a flame. It is ever present with me, says self-examining Paul, and hence its so sudden and so destructive outbreaks. So the written or the printed name of our enemy, his image in our mind, ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... would suffer herself to be cut to pieces 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 the wife; he was generally satisfied by her begging his ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and carrying off the filth that was constantly poured into the sea therefrom—which, Peterkin suggested, was remarkably tidy of it to do. Poor Peterkin could never let slip an opportunity to joke, however inopportune it might be, which at first we found rather a disagreeable propensity, as it often interrupted the flow of very agreeable conversation—and, indeed, I cannot too strongly record my disapprobation of this tendency in general; but we became so used to it at last that we found it no interruption whatever. ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... is not merely an idealist: he is a practical idealist. This is shown by his self-restraint and practical wisdom in guiding events. One of the symptoms of "catching Esperanto" is a desire to introduce improvements. This morbid propensity to jejune amateur tinkering, a kind of measles of the mind (morbus linguificus[1]) attacks the immature in years or judgment. A riper acquaintance with the history and practical aims of international language purges ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... will after death return to pure and eternal natures; but that the impure soul, in consequence of being imbued with terrene affections, will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye.* For while a propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a certain vehicle to herself; either of an aerial nature, or composed from the spirit and vapours of her terrestrial body, or which is recently collected ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... there are tinkers and tinkers. Some of them, indeed, are stout and sturdy thieves, veritable birds of prey, whose rapacity is continually questing for plunder. But some of them have merely the magpies' and jackdaws' thievish propensity for picking up what lies temptingly in their way. And some few are so honest that they pass by as harmlessly as a wedge of high-flying wild duck. And I have heard it said that to places like Lisconnel their pickings and stealings have at worst never been so serious a matter as those ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... and appetite is now restored to its condition of purity, in which it was created before sin entered into the world, but yet we are human. Sanctification does not destroy our human nature, but simply brings it into easy control, with every propensity in harmony with the design of its Creator. But we are yet in this world and the creature—our physical ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... he certainly looks and acts the part," she murmured to herself as the wagon rattled away from the sidewalk, "but his propensity for turning up at the right time and the right place is rapidly becoming a matter of habit." A door beside the desk stood ajar, and above it, Patty read the words "WASH ROOM." Pushing it open she glanced into the interior which was dimly lighted by a murky oil lamp that ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... Nightingale and some of the nurses in the Crimean hospitals. The situation had been embittered by rumours of religious dissensions, while the Crimean nurses were Roman Catholics, many of those at Scutari were suspected of a regrettable propensity towards the tenets of Dr. Pusey. Miss Nightingale was by no means disturbed by these sectarian differences, but any suggestion that her supreme authority over all the nurses with the Army was, no doubt, enough ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... acknowledged misfortunes, has become a kind of instinctive process of our natures. The few exceptions which exist only go to prove the rule: in addition to these, almost every man has some ruling propensity to gratify, to advance which his ingenuity is ever on the alert, or some apprehended evil to avert, which calls all his prudence into activity. Yet how seldom is it exerted, in order to give a rational ground to ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... gesticulation, shrugs, and wise shakes of the head, are called into requisition, to effectually and unmistakably express their ideas. The usages of good society are regarded by them as a great restraint upon their besetting propensity to expatiate in phrases of grandiloquence, and to magnify objects of trivial importance. They are always sure to initiate topics which will afford scope for admiration; they delight to enlarge upon the unprecedented growth of cities, villages, and towns; upon ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... one thing is remarkable: they are all, with the exception of a small savour of Irishmen, foreigners. Scarcely one Englishman, not one Scot, will be found among the whole tribe; and this fact is as welcome to us as it is singular, because it speaks volumes in favour of the national propensity, of which we have reason to be proud, to be ever doing something, producing something, applying labour to its legitimate purpose, and not turning another man's handle to grind the wind. Yet there is, alas! a scattered and characteristic tribe of vagabond English music-grinders, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... 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 affectation out ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the men I've met here, and might like the women if they would let me. As yet, however, we do not seem to agree, thanks to an unfortunate propensity of mine for saying what happens to be uppermost in my mind at the moment; possibly for other good and equally sufficient reasons. You asked where I studied music? Mainly in New York ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... Dr. Darwin met with an accident of irretrievable injury to the human frame. His propensity to mechanics had unfortunately led him to construct a very singular carriage. It was a platform with a seat fixed upon a very high pair of wheels, and supported in the front upon the back of the horse, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... impossible. Woman's 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 ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice: but he that hopes to be a good angler, must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practiced it, then doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be, like virtue, a ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... when not interpreted materialistically, is an inextricable dream. Berkeley and his followers, when they look in this direction, towards nature and the rationale of experience and science, are looking away from their own system, and relying instead on the automatic propensity of human nature to routine, so that we spontaneously prepare for repeating our actions (not our experience) and even anticipate their occasions; a propensity further biased by the dominant rhythms of the psyche, so that ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... Hawthorne, after a little silence in which Gerald had been thinking with a very sickness of sympathy of Brenda and the sinister propensity of the Fates for bringing to nothing the most valiant dreams and hopes; and Mrs. Hawthorne had been thinking entirely of Gerald, whose own heart was so much more certainly revealed by what he said than could ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... father's strength, his happy cheerfulness, his quick-to-anger and quicker-to-repent propensity, but the mother's gentleness also dwelt in them. Laughing, merry, they sang their way through the days, protesting vehemently when things went contrary to their desires, but laughing the next moment in the irresponsible ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... stem is thrown out of the perpendicular, to which it is very liable from its great superincumbent weight compared with the hold of its root in the ground. The native planters, availing themselves of this propensity, often give this plant a considerable inclination, not only to increase the foliage, but to obtain new fruit-bearing stems, when the old ones become unproductive. It is also found desirable to limit the height of the plant by lopping off the top to increase the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... strong propensity which dances through every atom, and attracts the minutest particle to some peculiar object; search this universe from its base to its summit, from fire to air, from water to earth (the four elements!), ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... jealous, as a lad in his first friendship is quick to be. Were not Nat and I of one age? Then why should he be leaving thoughts we might share, to think of woman? I had chafed at Oxford against his precocious entanglements. Here on shipboard his propensity was past a joke; with no goose in sight to mistake for a swan, he must needs conjure up an imaginary princess for his devotion. What irritated most of all was his assuming, because I had not arrived at his folly, the right to treat ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... their way boisterously to the front. They are constantly trying to find an egress. But the parent and the pedagogue, in their blindness, can only see in this law of nature a wicked and perverse propensity that must be restrained at all hazards by a speedy application of the ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... scientific knowledge will never form an 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 explicable ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... if in many countries Buddhism has shown itself fluid and protean, it here manifests a stability which can hardly be paralleled except in Judaism. The Sinhalese, unlike the Hindus, had no native propensity to speculation. They were content to classify, summarize and expound the teaching of the Pitakas without restating it in the light of their own imagination. Whereas the most stable form of Christianity is the Church of Rome, which began by making considerable additions ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... encouraging his talents in this line, he sharply rebuked him, and wrote underneath the sketches, "Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." His father was anxious that he should become a physician, and therefore he looked with no favour upon his propensity for drawing. But for the irrepressible power of genius, his unwise father would have deprived the world of one ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... a beneficent change, and I have again and again made light of the wailings of persons who persist in chattering about the good old times. But I am talking now about the spirit of the gambler; and I cannot say that the human propensity to gamble has in any way died out. Its manifestations may in some respects be more decorous than they used to be; but the deep, masterful, subtle tendency is there, and its force is by no means diminished by the advance of a complicated civilisation. Often ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... give children's minds 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 ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... miles to the right, perched among the hills that form the southern boundary of the valley; being of the same color as the general surface about them, they are not easily distinguishable at a distance. There seems to be a decided propensity among the natives for choosing the hills as an habitation, even when their arable lands are miles away in the valley; the salubrity of the more elevated location may be the chief consideration, but a swiftly flowing mountain ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... has certainly 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 without his pipe. During the short space of time ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... from the Wakefield Play will discover in the north country author an even greater propensity to rhyme. ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... that he was ashamed to show himself at neighborhood gatherings. All the people about Gentryville feared Lincoln's caustic wit, and disliked him for it, although they were greatly impressed with his ability exhibited thereby. Lincoln recognized his moral obliquity, and curbed his propensity for satire, which was a case of that "exercise of natural faculty" which affects all gifted persons. And when he left that region he visited all the neighbors, and asked pardon of those whom he had ridiculed. The true Lincoln ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... rights in its wild game. It is natural for a frontiersman to feel that because he is in the wilds he has a God-given right to live off the country; but to-day that idea is totally wrong! If some way can not be found to curb that all-pervading propensity among our frontiersmen, then we may as well bid all our open-field big game a long farewell; for the deadly "residents" surely will exterminate it, outside the game preserves. The "residents" are, in my opinion, about ten times more destructive than the sportsmen. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... 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 ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
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