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Prevailing   Listen
adjective
Prevailing  adj.  
1.
Having superior force or influence; efficacious; persuasive. "Saints shall assist thee with prevailing prayers."
2.
Predominant; prevalent; most general; as, the prevailing disease of a climate; a prevailing opinion.
Synonyms: Syn. See Prevalent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prevailing" Quotes from Famous Books



... navigation acts, look into the question of boundaries, and determine the title to the Narragansett country, henceforth to be called the King's Province. The commissioners were to make it clear that they were not come to interfere with the prevailing religious systems, but to demand liberty of conscience for all, though Clarendon could not repress the hope that ultimately the New Englanders might return to the Anglican fold. The secret instructions were even ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews

... of Indian Missions was held in the parlors of the Riggs House, January 8th. The presence of Senator Dawes, Representative Cutcheon, and other distinguished persons, gave weight to the deliberations, and special interest was added to the meeting by the troubles now prevailing in the Dakotas among the Sioux Indians. Commissioner Morgan, Captain Pratt of the Carlisle School, General Armstrong of Hampton, and the Secretaries of the Missionary Societies presented an array of facts and of recent information that gave a more favorable aspect to the situation than is generally ...
— American Missionary, Vol. 45, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various

... was, like many another pagan, no great believer in the gods, although, partly from regard to prevailing sentiment, partly because of his business relations, he outwardly gave attention to the ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark

... "surely the Prince himself is accountable for the prevailing fashion, and as you must know, he is said to be the ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... conviction or genuine despair, in others it may be something entirely artificial, merely a cloak to cover personal defects. Sometimes it may even be due to a desire to pose as a martyr, and sometimes nothing more than an attempt to ape the prevailing fashion. To these types Wilhelm Scherer adds "Muessiggaenger, welche sich die Zeit mit uebler Laune vertreiben, missvergnuegte Lyriker, deren Gedichte nicht mehr gelesen werden, und Spatzenkoepfe, welche den Pessimismus ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... prevailing voice was still against it; and when we went to market, and met there the people from the Hollow (who were somewhat more bucolic than we), they passed about the open secret. Dana did not speak to his wife. Again we knew he never would. The summer waned; the cows were turned into the ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... aware of this herself; for though she must submit, as her own propriety of mind directed, in spite of her aunt Norris's opinion, to being the principal lady in company, and to all the little distinctions consequent thereon, she found, while they were at table, such a happy flow of conversation prevailing, in which she was not required to take any part—there was so much to be said between the brother and sister about Bath, so much between the two young men about hunting, so much of politics between Mr. Crawford and Dr. Grant, and of everything ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... presence of Nero, when he was dying by the poison administered by the hands of that tyrant. The sighs, however, which I vented in my brother's presence, might convince him that I attributed my sickness rather to his ill offices than to the prevailing contagion. ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... an animated countenance. He was not originally distinguished either by birth or fortune, and has arrived at his present situation by a concurrence of fortuitous circumstances, by great and various talents, much address, and a spirit of intrigue. He is now supported by the prevailing party; and, I confess, I could not regard with much complacence a man, whom the machinations of the Jacobins had forced into the ministry, and whose hypocritical and affected resignation has contributed to deceive the people, and ruin ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... the K—— is breaking up. He may rally for a short time, but he has no stamina to resist attacks of the gout constantly prevailing in his habit. I have this from an authority I cannot doubt. He was in his bed the whole time I was at Brighton, from Wednesday to Monday, and I believe has not been out since. I am assured here that the markets are rising, and along the coast where I pursued my trip—I mean at Hastings, E. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... of course, a misnomer. In reality it is farming under drier conditions than those prevailing in the countries in which scientific agriculture originated. Many suggestions for a better name have been made. "Scientific agriculture" has-been proposed, but all agriculture should be scientific, and agriculture without irrigation in an arid country has no right to lay sole claim to so general ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... another letter, "that the Unitarian party embraces the most intelligent and high-minded portion of the community. It is my opinion that the views of the Unitarians are the best and only security against the spirit of infidelity which is prevailing so extensively amongst the most highly educated and intelligent men in Europe." See Memoir of Nathan Appleton, ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... women; often the girls wore aprons, as did the women on occasions; these were narrow and edged with lace. "Petty coats" are mentioned in wills among the garments of the women. We would not assume that in 1621-2 all the women in Plymouth colony wore silken or even homespun clothes of prevailing English fashion. Many of these that are mentioned in inventories and retained heirlooms, with rich laces and embroideries, were brought later from England; probably Winslow, Allerton and even Standish brought back such gifts ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble

... spoke, if at all, in low and solemn tones. The women, on the other hand, as ever, did their best to show themselves entirely at ease by addressing, one after another, remarks to their host calculated to prevent his having any doubt as to the sort of weather now prevailing outside or likely to prevail ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... what direction that force would assume,—whether it would determine itself to social triumphs, or to triumphs of art,—it was impossible to divine. Her moral tendencies, her sentiments, her true and prevailing character, did not appear in the lines of her face. She seemed equal to anything, but might not choose to put forth her strength. You felt that a great possibility lay behind that brow, but you felt, also, that the talent that ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... now passing through was everywhere tinted purple, the prevailing color of the Gillikin Country; but as the Sawhorse ascended a hill they found that upon the other side everything was of ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... features of the black-jack exponent. There was a subtle but noticeable resemblance to those of Mr. Bat Jarvis. Apparently the latter's oiled forelock, worn low over the forehead, was more a concession to the general fashion prevailing in gang circles than an expression of personal taste. Mr. Repetto had it, too. In his case it was almost white, for the fallen warrior was an albino. His eyes, which were closed, had white lashes and were set as near together as ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... prescribed for it. Hence the backward axial movements of Uranus and Neptune may very well be a survival, due to the inefficiency of solar tides at their great distance, of a state of things originally prevailing universally throughout ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... duties of high-priest of the Republic? It was impossible for an educated Roman who read Plato and Zeno to believe in Janus and Juno. It was all very well for the people so to believe, he said, who must be kept in order; but scepticism increased in the higher classes until the prevailing atheism culminated in the poetry of Lucretius, who had the boldness to declare that faith in the gods had been the curse of the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... and fury of the bloody persecutors, but also to those who resorted to him and Mr. Brown, for their advice in difficult cases, in carrying on and bearing up a faithful testimony against both right and left-hand extremes, with every other prevailing corruption, and defection in that day, it being a day of treading down in the valley ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... and barbarous assailants, who, under some lawless pretext of fees to be paid, began a regular pillage of such parts of the caravan as had not fled their attack. I again had an opportunity of ascertaining that my good star was prevailing; for now, whilst those who possessed any article of dress which might give respectability to their appearance became the object of the robbers' attention, I and my solitary mule had the satisfaction to find ourselves so totally unworthy of notice, that we proceeded without molestation on the ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... approached the foreman, he discovered that individual, several degrees less breezy than usual, engaged in an animated conversation with a young man whose prevailing expression was so penitential that Dennis, with prompt Celtic intuition, decided that he was gazing ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... north over a hilly country with scrub, grass, York-gum, and wattle—the prevailing rocks red sandstone, quartz, and granite; at 8.30 crossed a stream-bed with pools of brackish water trending east, and at 8.50 entered a good grassy country which appeared to extend ten to twelve miles to the ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... attitudes becomes a very great factor in mental healing. There is a long line of testimony that what may be called the complex of faith does just this with unique power, for faith implies supernatural intervention. If there be anywhere an all-prevailing power whose word is law and we could really be persuaded that such a power had really intervened—even if it actually had not—on our behalf and brought its supernatural resource to bear upon our troubled case, then we ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... charity, For sweet remembrance sake, These souls, to God so very nigh, Into your keeping take! Speed them by sacrifice and suffrage, where They burn to pour for you a more prevailing prayer. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... days failed to disclose to us any other method of increase but this multiple-fission, and it was only the intense suggestiveness of past experience that kept us still alert and prevented us from inferring that it was the only method. But eventually we perceived that while this was the prevailing phenomenon, there were scattered among the other forms of the same monad larger than the rest, and with a singular granular aspect toward the flagellate end. It may be easily contrasted with the normal or ordinary form. Now by doggedly following ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... accordingly and found that my whole duty for the evening consisted in inscribing on three separate sheets of paper, "Murray follows Murphy—Pullen follows." I got my guinea and was instructed to appear again on the following afternoon when I found a very different condition of affairs prevailing. Every bench was packed, the side galleries were full, and it would have been impossible to squeeze another person into the Stranger's Gallery above the clock. A great field night was toward, and from the time at which I first entered the box at about ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... was the prevailing form of mysticism in those days; even Eckhart's pupil, Suso, belonged to this class of mystics. This vague sentimentalism saved many a mind from the rigid dogmas of the Church, and as its vagueness could be interpreted ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... prince whose chief characteristics have just been described. His titles of Confessor and Saint belong not to the general instincts of Christendom but to the most transitory feelings of the age." (I protest, No.) "His opinions, his prevailing motives, were such as in no part of modern Europe would now be shared by any educated teacher or ruler." (That's true enough.) "But in spite of these irreconcilable differences, there was a solid ground for the charm which he exercised over his contemporaries. His ...
— The Pleasures of England - Lectures given in Oxford • John Ruskin

... weep, shake hands, embrace each other. For a brief moment the calmest are carried away by intensity of patriotic feeling. The social aspect of Vosges travel is one of its chief charms. You must here live with French people, whether you will or no. Insular reserve cannot resist the prevailing friendliness and good-fellowship. How long such a state of things will exist, who can say? Fortunately for the lover of nature, most of the places I have mentioned are too unobtrusive ever to become popular. "Nothing to see here, and nothing ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... Publicity, the continent indicates the description of man who may be its fit habitant. It suggests a nation vast in numbers and in power, existing not as an aggregate of fragments, but as an organic unit, the vital spirit of the whole prevailing in each of its parts; and consequently predicts a man suitable for wide and yet intimate societies. Let us not, however, thoughtlessly jump to accept these easy prognostics; first let it be fully understood what an enormous demand they imply. Americans speak complacently of their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... I was so much indulged in my infant years that I was never obliged to attend to anything, and consequently am without the accomplishments which are now necessary to finish a pretty woman. Not that I am an advocate for the prevailing fashion of acquiring a perfect knowledge of all languages, arts, and sciences. It is throwing time away to be mistress of French, Italian, and German: music, singing, and drawing, &c., will gain a woman some applause, but will not ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... myself in setting up specimens, but found they would not keep, as I had no arsenic to work with, using in its place a disinfectant which was not a preservative, consequently my specimens began to get mouldy and to smell high, and this prevailing mustiness brought them to an untimely end, or at least the greater portion of them. Thinking a day in the sunshine and fresh air might improve them, I took them all out of the house, and carried them a few at a time down to the small ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling

... prevailing prices the contractor got a fair profit at the contract price of $1.15; at 99 cts., any profit is questionable, according to City Engineer George S. Hanes, who gives us the above records. Expansion joints are located from 20 to 80 ft. apart ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... pediments, then the relief became bolder, and a head or arm was projected from the wall, the groups being still arranged with reference to the building, which serves also as a frame to hold the figures; and when, at last, the greatest freedom of style and treatment was reached, the prevailing genius of architecture still enforced a certain calmness and continence in the statue. As soon as the statue was begun for itself, and with no reference to the temple or palace, the art began to decline: freak, extravagance, and exhibition, took ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... for those large questions which I touched in connection with Mr. Buckle, we live in times of disintegration, and none can tell what will be after us. What opinions, what convictions, the infant of to-day will find prevailing on the earth, if he and it live out together to the middle of another century, only a very bold man would undertake to conjecture. "The time will come," said Lichtenberg, in scorn at the materializing tendencies of modern thought,—"the time ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... The prevailing theories, and practice, regarding the employment of color in therapeutics and human welfare work, are in the main correct. But, I urge the study of the occult significance of color, as mentioned in this book in connection with the human aura and its astral colors, as a sound ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi

... people loved to see their great men brought down to their own level. Nor did comedy flourish until the morals of society were degenerated, and ridicule had become the most effective weapon to assail prevailing follies. Comedy reached its culminating point when society was both the most corrupt and the most intellectual, as in France, when Moliere pointed his envenomed shafts against popular vices. It pertained to the age of Socrates and ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... generally speaking, more sensitive to their surrounding influences than grown people are. Some are veritable little sensitive plates, registering the influences about them, and embodying them as they grow. How careful in their prevailing mental states then should be those who have them in charge, and especially how careful should a mother be during the time she is carrying the child, and when every thought, every mental as well ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine

... faith, however—or, rather, of delight in the memory of faith—is not Mr. Hardy's prevailing mood. At the same time, his unfaith relates to the duration of love rather than to human destiny. He believes in "the world's amendment." He can enter upon a war without ironical doubts, as we see ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... them; for perhaps there was a swift current of air up there in the zenith. However, not a leaf stirred on the Common; the foliage hung black and massive, as if cut in bronze; even the gaslights appeared to be infected by the prevailing calm, burning steadily behind their glass screens and turning the neighboring leaves into the tenderest emerald. Here and there, in the sombre row of houses stretching along Beacon Street, an illuminated window gilded a few square feet of darkness; and now and ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... epithets, for besides calling Lord Harcourt a groom, he qualified the Bishop with bastard and atheist,' particularly to one of the Princess's chaplains, who, begged to be excused from hearing such language against a prelate of the church, and not prevailing, has drawn up a narrative, sent it to the Bishop, and offered to swear to it. For Lord Harcourt, besides being treated with considerable contempt by the Princess, he is not uninformed of the light in which he was intended to stand, by an amazing piece of imprudence of the last, but not the most ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... Under the prevailing conditions, it was impossible to take machine guns up, so we depended entirely upon Lewis guns. Fortunately no determined attack was made on us during this time as it is extremely doubtful if we could have held them there. We would, of course, ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... temperamental tendency toward that recklessness and extravagance which later historical conditions stimulated and confirmed. The more completely one studies the history of our forefathers on American soil, the more deeply does one become conscious of the prevailing atmosphere ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... we contemplate architectural works the more do we find them adapted to express the prevailing spirit of an epoch. Here, on the flank of the Duomo, stands the Campanile by Giotto, erect, isolated, like St. Michael's tower at Bordeaux, or the tower of St. Jacques at Paris; the medieval man, in fact, loves to build high; he aspires to heaven, his elevations ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various

... business, all intrigues of courtiers, and restraints of office; no longer in the horrors of, attendance and dependence, but with the promise of a competent provision for life—with the consciousness of its having been, honourably obtained; and to brighten all, the hope, the delightful hope, of soon prevailing on the woman he loved, to become his ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... p. 185.) seems to consider the "prevailing opinion," that Boduc or Boduoc on the British coin must be intended for our magnanimous Queen Boadicea, to be merely a "pleasing vision," over which he is "sorry to cast a cloud." Yet his own remark, that the name Budic (a mere ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various

... want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled, and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... mere Insinuations & angry Reflections of a disappointed Man lessen your good opinion of one whom you know to have been, early, decided, active, persevering and inflexible in the Cause of America? If this should be the prevailing Disposition, what honest Man will be safe? The consistent Patriot, after having endurd Fatigue & Danger for the Establishment of publick Liberty, would find himself still in the greatest Perils among his own Countrymen. I will say nothing decisively ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams

... might naturally be inquired, which college did she endow? But, alas! the prevailing disposition of Elizabeth was the reverse of liberal; and her revenues, it may be added, were narrow. During the whole course of her long reign, not a single conspicuous act of public munificence sheds ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... cheerful story, but it was soon driven out of our heads by others. Fog was the prevailing topic; yarns of the fogs of the northern seas being varied by "red fogs" off the Cape de Verd Islands; and not the least dismal of the narratives was told by Alister Auchterlay, of a fog on Ben Nevis, in which his own grandmother's uncle perished, chiefly, as it appeared, in consequence ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... neighboring widow—all the middle-aged women there are widows, with dim or dimmer memories of husbands lost off the Banks, or elsewhere at sea—who came in to get his meals and make his bed, and then had instructions to leave. It was in one of her prevailing absences that I arrived with my bag, and I had to hammer a long time with the knocker on the open door before Alderling came clacking down the stairs in his slippers from the top of the house, and gave me his somewhat defiant greeting. I could almost have said ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... Dorcas to set the room to rights after the confusion of the morning, when the mistress had suddenly been taken with a violent colic, which had turned her blue and rigid, and had convinced her household that she was taken for death, and that by a seizure of the prevailing malady. ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... movement is a discontinuous syncopation of fours and twos; the prevailing formal unit is [][U][U][U], but it is varied now by [][U][][U], and now by simply [][U], with the usual substitution of [][U][U] for [][U]. It is an excellent exercise to analyze Jean Ingelow's Like a Laverock in the Lift and observe the pauses, holds, and substitutions. ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum

... surely the song of praise, not the moan of lamentation, becomes me. Yet I do lament, Edward, daily lament, my many offenses against God; but I am assured that Christ's blood cleanseth from all sin, and that in him I have a powerful and all-prevailing Advocate with the Father. I know in whom I have believed, and that he will never cast off nor forsake me. I am sinking into the grave, but I do not shrink from that prospect, because the bitterness of death is taken away by my Saviour, who died for my ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... were, however, effected, due to the fact that materials were purchased in large quantities and consequently at a much reduced price. Standardization of sizes saved from $5 to $6 per thousand feet b. m. on lumber, and a further saving of from $3 to $11 over prevailing prices was effected by the lumber subcommittee of the Council of National Defense. The Raw Materials Committee effected similar savings in prepared roofing, nails, and other construction materials. The ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... possibilities of expression. Such must be his comprehension of thought, and such his copiousness of language. Out of many readings possible, he must be able to select that which best suits with the state, opinions, and modes of language prevailing in every age, and with his author's particular cast of thought, and turn of expression. Such must be his knowledge, and such his taste. Conjectural criticism demands more than humanity possesses, and he that exercises it with most praise, has very frequent need of indulgence. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... with forty-two men in the party, sailed north. They hugged the coast and kept a careful lookout for a harbor, but passed the present Humboldt Bay in rather calm weather and in the daytime without seeing it. The cause of what was then inexplicable is now quite plain. The entrance has the prevailing northwest slant. The view into the bay from the ocean is cut off by the overlapping south spit. A direct view reveals no entrance; you can not see in by looking back after having passed it. At sea the line of breakers seems continuous, the protruding point from the south connecting ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock

... the Conqueror, in the presence of his wife, his two sons Robert and William, his favourite Archbishop Lanfranc, John Archbishop of Rouen, and Thomas Archbishop of York—towards the year 1080: but I strongly suspect, from the present prevailing character of the architecture, that nothing more than the west front and the towers upon which the spires rest, remain of its ancient structure. The spires (as the Abbe De La Rue conjectures, and as I should also have thought) ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... was a very small girl, even in that group of pale-faced, under-sized, under-fed girls. A Russian Jewess, evidently. Her shoes were ludicrous. They curled up at the toes, and the heels were run down. Her dress was a sort of parody on the prevailing fashion. But on her face, as she trudged along, hugging the pole of the great pennant that flapped in the breeze, was stamped a look.—well, you see that same look in some pictures of Joan of Arc. It wasn't ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber

... sweet and mystical significance, surely the prevailing feeling in the hearts of bride and bridegroom is, or should be, that of happiness,—happiness bubbling and dancing, all sunny ripples ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne

... the year 1730 the entire country held but 6000 inhabitants, of whom about 500 lived in the ruined capital and the remaining urban population was disseminated among the vestiges of Cotui, Santiago, Azua, Banica, Monte Plata, Bayaguana, La Vega, Higuey and Seibo. Such was the poverty prevailing that a majority of the people went in rags; and the arrival of the ship from Mexico, which brought the salaries of the civil officials and the military, was hailed with the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... experience, which uniformly had pointed in the very opposite direction; and so far it ought to have been paradoxical, (that is, revolting to popular opinion,) but was not so; for it fell in with prevailing opinions, with the oldest, blindest, and most inveterate of human superstitions. If extravagant, yet to the multitude it did not seem extravagant. So natural a craze, therefore, however baseless, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... of life more brilliant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any which could hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very proudest eminence of superiority, to which the gifts of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in New England's earliest days, when the professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... for your good, take care how you judge!' Her emphasis had been derived from her eyes quite as much as from the stress she laid upon her words. She continued to look at him; and if, when he entered the house, he had had any latent hope of prevailing in the least with her, she now looked it out ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... and archbishops have been chosen. They boast almost sixteen thousand writers, some of great distinction. Their monasteries furnished retreats where the scholar might study and write in spite of the prevailing disorder of the times. The copying of books, as has been said, was a natural occupation of the monks. Doubtless their work was often done carelessly, with little heart and less understanding. But, with the great loss of manuscripts due to the destruction of libraries and the indifference of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... considerable time, after they (the Anglo-Saxons) had established themselves in this country, their buildings were of wood, and this appears to have been the prevailing material employed at the time of the Conquest, although stone had been occasionally used several centuries earlier.... No timber-work of Saxon date can be in existence at the present time, but it is contended by some antiquaries ...
— Our Homeland Churches and How to Study Them • Sidney Heath

... plants are peculiar to the plains, and are rarely met with in any other situation. The trees, too, though inferior in size to those in the forests, are more picturesque, growing in groups or singly, at considerable intervals, giving a sort of park-like appearance to this portion of the country. The prevailing opinion seems to be, that the plains laid out in grazing or dairy farms would answer the purpose of settlers well; as there is plenty of land that will grow wheat and other corn-crops, and can be improved at a small expense, besides abundance of natural pasture ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... was her father's state. But the impatience with which he shook the arm he grasped, and repeated, as he opened convulsively his other hand, "The gold, Sibyll, the gold! Why didst thou hide it from me?" speedily convinced her that her father's mind was under the influence of the prevailing malady that made all its weakness and all ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... place, making its first appearance, like the epic, in Ionia and the AEgean islands, but finding its most appreciative audience and enthusiastic support in Athens, the coming home of the muse. Song became the prevailing literary demand, and was supplied abundantly by such choice singers as Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, Simonides, and others of the soft and cheerful vein, the biting satires of Archilochus, the noble odes ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... humorist, at every sign of the enemy. In truth, this little band had plenty of stomach for fighting, despite its loose organization; and quite a number fought all through the war. Mark Twain is doubtless correct in the main, in his assertion that he has not given an unfair picture of the conditions prevailing in many of the militia camps in the first months of the war between the states. The men were raw and unseasoned, and even the leaders were lacking in the rudiments of military training and discipline. The situation was strange and unprecedented, the terrors were none ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... stage will be much milder, the fever lower, the cough a trifle more marked, but will drag on for from a week to ten days before anything definite happens. Usually the child is supposed to be suffering with a slight cold, hence the prevailing impression that colds run into whooping-cough, if neglected. Then one day the child is suddenly seized with a coughing fit, consisting of from ten to fifteen short coughs in rapid succession of increasing intensity, until ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... present rate of income and excess profit taxes not in the first year of the war, but started on a much lower scale and by successive steps, in the course of nearly three years, attained the figures now prevailing. ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn

... question during those crucial months from November, 1774, to July, 1776. For extremists on either side, the question presented no difficulty; for conservatives like Hutchinson, who had long since lost all sympathy with prevailing measures of resistance, or for radicals like Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, who pressed eagerly forward toward independence. But in 1774 the great majority of thinking men, abhorring the notion of war or separation from England, were yet convinced that strong protest, and ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... virtues named above. The essence of the Vedas is Truth: the essence of Truth is self-control, and the essence of self-control is abstention from the pleasures of the world. These all are to be noticed in behaviour that is virtuous. They that follow those deluded fools that mock the forms of faith prevailing among men, are dragged into destruction for walking in such a sinful path. They, however, that are virtuous and engaged in the observance of vows, who are devoted to the srutis and the virtue of abstention ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... observed, was the prevailing desire in Milly's new ambitions. Like all poor mortals who have not either triumphed indubitably in the world's eyes or sunk irretrievably into the mire, she hungered for some definite self-accomplishment, ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... the owl in sunshine. All agree in worshiping a superior being, whose omnipotence has created and whose providence maintains all things. Each one is permitted to think and worship as he pleases; they only who publicly attack the prevailing religion, are punished as peace-disturbers. The people pray seldom, but with so ardent a devotion, that a looker-on would think them enraptured during the ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg

... Vicomte hesitated, then with a slight shrug of the shoulders directed against the extraordinary code of honour prevailing in this fog-ridden island, he ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy

... public interest in me died before anything tangible was done. Still, there were several prosperous families of the old-fashioned class, each of which wanted to provide me with excellent board. But then Reb Sender's wife, in a fit of compassion and carried away by the prevailing spirit of the moment, claimed the sole ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... confidingly for guidance, attracting the attention of the simple townspeople in such sort that a distinction would belong to her protegee which would be pleasantly reflected upon herself. A love of distinction was the spinster's prevailing sin,—a distinction growing out of the working of good deeds, if it might be, but at any rate some worthy and notable distinction. The Doctorate of her good brother, his occasional discourses which had been subject of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... much as I can now do to make both ends meet," he would say, despondingly, and sometimes give utterance to such expressions even in the presence of his wife. Mrs. Bancroft was not a woman very deeply read in the prevailing philosophies of the day; but she had a simple mode of reasoning, or rather of concluding, on most subjects that came up for her special consideration. On this matter, in particular, so perplexing to her husband, her very satisfactory solution to the ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur

... desired righteous judgment, but one who only thirsted after gain. The one privilege which seemed worth fighting for or worth buying was the privilege of assessing their own fines and managing their own courts. Half a century later we see the prevailing terror at a visit of the judges to Cornwall, when all the people fled for refuge to the woods, and could hardly be compelled or persuaded to come back again. Yet later the people won a concession that in time of war no circuits ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green

... The prevailing expression of the assemblage changed. There was a settling down into seats, and a resumption of knitting ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... it in the moment of inspiration—whether it be that she considers the habit of pure and polished composition an attainment of very secondary importance—or whether it be that she has allowed herself to be infected by the prevailing mannerisms of the day—certain it is, that there is a large proportion of her poetry in which she has failed to add the graces of good style and of careful versification to her other excellent acquirements. That she can write pure English, and that she frequently does so, is undeniable. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various

... any vane for our windmill. It did not need any. The wind nearly always blew either up or down the river, more often up the river, for the prevailing summer winds in that part of the country are southerly. But, aside from that, east and west winds could not very well reach us on account of the hills on both sides of the river. The wheel was set facing the north, because the strongest winds came from that direction, and as an ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... hair, the prevailing colour being that of dark grey, with a broad band of black running from the neck downwards on each side of the body. It lives entirely on ants; and on opening its mouth we found that it could not provide itself with other food, as it was entirely destitute of teeth. Its claws, which ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... than the spirit of conformity, and nothing more quickly paralyzes the best parts of a man. A gleam of truth illuminates his mind, and forthwith he proceeds to compare it with the prevailing tone of his community or his set. If it agree not with that, he distrusts and perhaps disowns it; it is left to perish, and he to that extent perishes with it. By and by, when some one more independent, more truth-loving, more ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various

... fairly modest and inclined to think that the laws of business are known better by business men. Imprisonment for debt is, of course, absolutely abolished everywhere, and in most States a woman is not subject to personal arrest in civil process. The statutes prevailing throughout the country, which give special preference to claims for wages or even for material furnished by "material men," have already been noted. It may be broadly stated that the presumption is that such claims are everywhere a preferred debt ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... the camp standard, is the thing desired in the awarding of emblems. Non-competitive tests are being recognized as the best lever of uplift and the most effective spur in arousing the latent ability of boys. The desire to down the other fellow is the reason for much of the prevailing demoralization of athletics and competitive games. Prizes should not be confused with "honors." An honor emblem should be representative of the best gift the camp can bestow and the recipient should be made to feel its worth. The emblem cannot be ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... the process of a very slow, yet very tremendous, change. The distant yet ultimate development of this process will bring about a most important revolution in the world of modern thought. It will be marked by a complete reversal of the prevailing present-day evaluation of the history of a continent and of the accomplishments and possibilities of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... right, in nature and reason, the christian princes in Europe, claimed the lands of heathen people, upon a discovery made by any of their subjects, is equally mysterious. Such, however, was the doctrine universally prevailing, when the lands in America were discovered; but, as the people of England, upon those principles, held all the lands they possessed, by grants from the King, and the King had never granted the lands in America to them, it is certain they could have ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... away from journalism and toward literature. Society soon felt the full force of the extraordinary talent at the command of the new censor of contemporary manners and morals. There was a well-directed and incessant fire of wit against the prevailing taste of dramatic art; against the vices of gambling and dueling; against extravagance and affectation of dress and manner: and there was also criticism ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... possible for one to be forgetful of our all important cause for a moment, my particular friendship for you would be a prevailing inducement with me, to make my utmost feeble exertions to prevent your disappointment after the great pains you have taken to serve us. I have endeavored, and shall continue those endeavors while I stay here, to brighten the dark side of the picture which ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... he was sent out to take charge of his mother's property, and his grandson, Robert Barrett Browning, relates with pardonable pride how he resigned the post, which was a lucrative one, because he could not tolerate the system of slave labor prevailing there. By this act he forfeited all the estate designed for him, and returned to England to face privation and to make his own way. He, too, became a clerk in the Bank of England, and in 1811, at the age of thirty, married Sarah Anna ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... generic, collective; broad, comprehensive, sweeping; encyclopedical[obs3], widespread &c. (dispersed) 73. universal; catholic, catholical[obs3]; common, worldwide; , ecumenical, oecumenical[obs3]; transcendental; prevalent, prevailing, rife, epidemic, besetting; all over, covered with. Pan-American, Anglican[obs3], Pan-Hellenic, Pan-Germanic, slavic; panharmonic[obs3]. every, all; unspecified, impersonal. customary &c. (habitual) 613. Adv. whatever, whatsoever; to a man, one and all. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... on the 8th of February 1517. In twelve days we passed Cape St Antonio in the land of a tribe of savages called Guanatareyes, after which we sailed to the westwards at random, being entirely ignorant of the shallows, currents, or prevailing, winds in these seas. We were in most imminent danger during our voyage for two days and two nights in a violent storm; but the wind subsided, and in twenty-one days after leaving Cuba, we came to a coast which had never been before discovered. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... certain style. His home was a fine old place in the vicinity, but in his appearance there was no suggestion of the country; nor did he resemble the violet, although he was somewhat redolent of the extract of that modest flower. He was dressed in the extreme of the prevailing mode, and evidently cultivated a metropolitan air, rather than the unobtrusive bearing of one who is so thoroughly a gentleman that he can afford to be himself. Mr. Strahan was quite sure of his welcome, ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... after the ball, Charteris and Gerrard had shaken from their feet the dust of Ranjitgarh with its Occidental influences, and were journeying, though westward, towards the pure unadulterated East in their respective districts. Charteris' sphere of influence was reached first, a land of prevailing sand-colour with oases of almost painful green, over which the Granthi sovereignty had never been more than merely nominal. A Granthi army had made periodic inroads into Darwan, sweeping off all the cattle it could find, by way of collecting the revenue, and the ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier

... book. The writer was obviously a man who read closely and reflected to good effect on what he read, with the result that he saw new things and helped open new problems and point the way to a generally more fruitful study of his author. Because of this and its prevailing sound critical qualities the anonymous essay ranks with the more important Shakespearian documents of the century. The editors of the Augustan Reprints are to be commended for their decision to give it a place in their valuable series. A critical work which is so viable, which has ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous

... lacked the strength of imagination, the sureness of insight and the delicacy of fancy necessary to great poetry. He was rather a sentimentalist to whom study and practice had given an exceptional command of rhythm. The prevailing note of his best-known lyrics is one of sentimental sorrow—the note which is of the very widest appeal. His public is largely the same public which weeps over the death of little Nell and loves to look at Landseer's "The Old ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... recent fiction it is obvious that we ought to remember that it only conforms to the tendencies of our social life, our prevailing ethics, and to the art conditions of our time. Literature is never in any age an isolated product. It is closely related to the development or retrogression of the time in all departments of life. The literary production of our day seems, and no doubt is, more various ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... of judgment. A word of encouragement or of disapproval from us may be the turning-point in their destinies, may set the seal on what they are to become. Even as the flowers are drawn by the sun and the willows follow the prevailing wind, their young lives may be turned to good or saved from ill by our loving sympathy or remonstrance in the nick of time. We clinch our fingers in the stress of uncertainty. Good counsel? Yes, a thousand times yes; but who will ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... strict scientific terminology, and force upon us the lesson that we must be satisfied with an approximate accuracy. For practical purposes Humboldt's classification of languages may be quite sufficient, and we have no difficulty in classing any given language, according to the prevailing character of its formation, as either isolating, or combinatory, or inflectional. But when we analyze each language more carefully we find there is not one exclusively isolating, or exclusively combinatory, or exclusively inflectional. The power of composition, which is retained unimpaired ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... pleasurably. The beautiful neatness and order prevailing on board a man of war were specially delightful to Frank after the rough life he had so long led, and the silence and discipline of the men presented an equally strong contrast to the incessant chattering and noise kept ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty

... or five purple finger-like spikes raying upward from the top. The second is also quite slender, growing in tufts two feet high by one wide, with culms often somewhat curving, which, as the spikes go out of bloom, have a whitish fuzzy look. These two are prevailing grasses at this season on dry and sandy fields and hill-sides. The culms of both, not to mention their pretty flowers, reflect a purple tinge, and help to declare the ripeness of the year. Perhaps I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... cliffs, rising landward tier above tier and shooting up into rocky spires that culminate in the towering peak of the Morne Diablotin, five thousand feet high. Under the shelter of this rugged island, while the prevailing trade wind blows steadily from the eastward, there are sudden calms, or irregular flaws of wind blowing now from one point, now from another, diverted by the irregular ridges of the high land. This April morning the sun had hardly ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale

... pottery from this mound is generally fine in texture, and of a light-gray color. Many of the fragments have been blackened by burning subsequently to their original firing, and some may have been originally blackened with graphite. The prevailing colors seen in the fragments are yellowish and reddish grays. The percentage of powdered shell used in tempering has usually been very large, forming at times at least half the mass. The flakes of shell are very coarse, being ...
— Illustrated Catalogue of a Portion of the Collections Made During the Field Season of 1881 • William H. Holmes

... is true; but its top was loaded with handbills and posters announcing meetings, and the dust lay thick on its lid. The writing table was better suited to an office than a lady's "own room," and it was strewn with the prevailing litter. ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice

... time encountered Mr. Harte in Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue, he would simply have been aware of a man dressed in perfect taste, but in the height of the prevailing fashion. On the streets of San Francisco, however, Bret Harte was always a notable figure, from the fact that the average man wore "slops," devoid alike of style or cut, and usually of shiny broadcloth. Broad-brimmed black felt hats were the customary headgear, completing ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley

... equanimity with which the Baron endured his misfortunes had something in it venerable and even sublime. There was no fruitless repining, no turbid melancholy; he bore his lot, and the hardships which it involved, with a good-humored, though serious composure, and used no violent language against the prevailing party. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... he not lost much wealth by wreck of sea? Buried some dear friend? Hath not else his eye Stray'd his affection in unlawful love? A sin prevailing much in youthful men Who give their eyes the liberty of gazing. Which of these sorrows is he ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... directly concern and serve the function of their place; 'tis so much to be a king, that this alone remains to them. The outer glare that environs him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there repelled and dissipated, being filled and stopped by this prevailing light. The senate awarded the prize of eloquence to Tiberius; he refused it, esteeming that though it had been just, he could derive no advantage from a judgment so partial, and that was so ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... yet made up their minds as to what ought to be done about Reconstruction, the great majority had a strong professional bias which made them feel that the doing or not doing of it should be in their hands and not in those of the Executive. It was by taking advantage of this prevailing sentiment that the Radicals, though still a minority, contrived to get the leadership more and more into ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... fact, and the hour was thought to have come when the "Disunited States" could be held up as a spectacle to the people of Europe. A Te Deum in Westminster Abbey would hardly have added emphasis to the expression of what appeared to be the prevailing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... clothes as a caricature or a comic valentine! She had a wreath of red paper roses in her hair and a chain of them reached from one shoulder nearly to the hem of her skirt on the other side. The dress itself was made without regard to the prevailing mode and of the three-cent-a-yard bunting bought by sheepmen by the bolt to be used for flags to scare off coyotes in lambing time. The body of the dress was blue, trimmed with the same material in red. The sleeves were ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... Greek literature were likewise drawn into the controversy. The Greeks themselves had set the example of arguing both for and against slavery. Their practice and their prevailing teaching, however, gave support to this institution. They clearly enunciated the doctrine that there is a natural division among human beings; that some are born to command and others to obey; that it is natural to some men ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy

... among our own native treasures, two treatises on this subject, composed with no ordinary talent, and not their least value consists in one being an apology for solitude, while the other combats that prevailing passion of the studious. Zimmerman's popular work is overloaded with commonplace; the garrulity of eloquence. The two treatises now noticed may be compared to the highly-finished gems, whose figure may be more finely designed, and whose ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... conditions prevailing during the winter months it is no wonder that from day to day spring was eagerly looked for. Undoubtedly it was a happy occasion when the agent could record on the evening of Sunday, March 27, 1831, that the weather ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... sprawling sycamores. These always interest us from the generosity of their height and girth, and from their great variety of color-tones, induced by the patchy scaling of the bark—soft grays, buffs, greens, and ivory whites prevailing. When sufficiently refreshed in this cool bower, we ventured once more into the fierce light of the open river, and two miles below shot into the broader and more inviting Massac Creek (928 miles), just as, of old, George Rogers Clark did with his little flotilla, when en ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... pneumatologists of the middle ages. These schoolmen, in reference to the account that Lucifer rebelled against heaven, and that Michael the archangel warred against him, long agitated the momentous question, what order of angels fell on the occasion. At length it became the prevailing opinion that Lucifer was of the order of Seraphins. It was also proved after infinite research, that Agares, Belial, and Barbatos, each of them deposed angels of great rank, had been of the order of Virtues; that Beleth, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... The prevailing thought was this—that I was going back to winter. Grim relapse this, I mused, to go forth from bud and bloom and bird, to pendant icicle and drifted snow. For the blood soon warms beneath Southern skies, and a man soon recognizes that a garden was the ancestral home ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... Colonel seemed not to hear. His ungenerous design was beginning to be hateful to him. Not only old Charlie's unprovoked goodness was prevailing; the eulogy on Belles Demoiselles had stirred the depths of an intense love for his beautiful home. True, if he held to it, the caving of the bank, at its present fearful speed, would let the house into the river within three months; but were it not better to lose it so, than sell his ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... stands in wide contrast to the prevailing tone of the time. It seems right and admirable that Tyndale should risk life and limb in learning the laws of glaciers, that large-brained Agassiz should pursue for years, if need be, his microscopic researches into the natural ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... or scarlet geranium growing alone in an otherwise flowerless field. The most common species—and in some cases the entire flight seems to be composed of this kind only—is the Aeschna bonariensis Raml, the prevailing colour of which is pale blue. But the really wonderful thing about them all alike is, that they appear only when flying before the southwest wind, called pampero—the wind that blows from the interior of the pampas. The pampero is a dry, cold wind, exceedingly ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... confidence of the people,' The speech, though intended to please an audience of country-gentlemen, represented a genuine belief.[6] The country-gentlemen formed the class to which not only the constitutional laws but the prevailing sentiment of the country gave the lead in politics as in the whole social system. Even reformers proposed to improve the House of Commons chiefly by increasing the number of county-members, and a county-member was almost necessarily a country-gentleman of an exalted kind. Although the country-gentleman ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... now, the purple sky was enswathing itself in pearly grays. Something glowed pinkly overhead; and was extinguished almost immediately by the prevailing gray. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner

... desperately in love with me, and soon offered me his hand and his crown. I was so taken up with the thoughts of my calamities, that the prince, though so lovely a person, did not make so great an impression on me as he might have done at another time. However, gratitude prevailing, I did not refuse to make him happy, and our nuptials were concluded with ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown

... reverence, and preserves sacredly in a place of honour these relics of her husband's departed father. The tankards are on the side-table still, but the bossed silver is undimmed by handling, and there are no dregs to send forth unpleasant suggestions: the only prevailing scent is of the lavender and rose-leaves that fill the vases of Derbyshire spar. All is purity and order in this once dreary room, for, fifteen years ago, it was entered by a new ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot

... there is deep hostility toward, all claims to rule based on alleged superiority of race or creed or class. We doubt if Mr. Froude could have hit on a more unpalatable mode, or a mode more likely to clash with the prevailing tendencies of American opinion, of defending English rule in Ireland than the argument that, Englishmen being stronger and wiser than Irishmen, Irishmen ought to submit to have themselves governed on English ideas ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... wealthy, ever thinks he has enough of this world's goods; those who have the most are often the most eager in grasping for more. Courts of law can only regulate the more flagrant outbursts of the prevailing sentiment, they do not and ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... enjoyment of social and civil rights and privileges, both sexes are proportionately advanced in refinement and all that ennobles human nature. In our own country, where women are received on an equality with men, we find good order and good manners prevailing. Because women frequent railroad cars and steamboats, markets, shops, and post-offices, those places must be, and are, conducted with order and decency. The only great resorts from which woman is excluded by law are the election places; and the violence, rowdyism, profanity, and obscenity of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... Milton in octava rima. As a whole the influence of the Sevillan school was healthful. By insisting upon purity of diction and regularity in versification, the members of the school helped somewhat to restrain the license and improve the bad taste prevailing in the Spanish literature of the time. The Catalonian Manuel de CABANYES (1808-1833) remained unaffected by the warring literary schools and followed with passionate enthusiasm the precepts of the ancients and ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various

... news' had been received at Maple Grove that Durward would accompany her cousins home. Mr. Graham would, of course, join him there, and accordingly, extensive preparations were immediately commenced. An unusual degree of sickness was prevailing among the female portion of Mrs. Livingstone's servants, and the very day before the company was expected, Aunt Milly, the head cook was taken suddenly ill. Coaxing, scolding, and threatening were alike ineffectual. The old negress ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... this subject have prevailed in the Christian Church as Orthodox. The first may be called the warlike view of Christ's work, the second may be called the legal view, and the third the governmental view. The first was the prevailing Orthodox view from the earliest times till the middle ages, and is based on the idea of a conflict or war between Christ and the Devil for the soul of man. The Devil had gained possession of the human race in consequence of its sin. The right of the Devil over men was fully admitted. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... the republic bound itself by a solemn act to observe these assizes. The copy which had been preserved at Nicosia was subsequently lost by some unknown event, and when in the mean time the French language had ceased to be the prevailing one, there was a commission appointed in the year 1531 to make out a new text from the best manuscripts which could be found. This revision of the assizes of Jerusalem was translated into Italian, and was still in use in 1571, making ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... something of the orographical structure of the country and the agencies that have been at work. The coastal plains are sedimentaries of Tertiary formation. The medanos, or sand-dunes, of the coast, blown into singular forms by the prevailing norte from the Gulf, give place, as we proceed inland, to the foothills of the Eastern Sierra. Here the Cretaceous formation is shown—the hard crystalline limestone—and this, from its durable nature, has furnished material for the new breakwater ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock

... enclosures or by the conversion of land from tillage to pasture, men who had nothing to lose and everything to gain by a general turmoil. In these men the wandering monks found ready listeners to their complaints, and there were (p. 353) others, besides the monks, who eagerly turned to account the prevailing dissatisfaction. The northern lords, Darcy and Hussey, had for years been representing to Chapuys the certainty of success if the Emperor invaded England, and promising to do their part when he came. Darcy had, at Christmas ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... closely breeds decay. Are we in danger of covering ourselves and our children too closely from sun and wind and rain, making them weak and less resistant than they should be? The prevalence of tuberculosis and its cure by fresh air seems to indicate this. The attempt to gain privacy under prevailing conditions tends this way. ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... is also abnormal. But a good many men are possessed of an excess of libido; it is either congenital or acquired. Some men torture their wives "to death," not literally but figuratively. Harboring the prevailing idea that a wife has no rights in this respect, that her body is not her own, that she must always hold herself ready to satisfy his abnormal desires, such a husband exercises his marital rights without consideration for the physical condition or the mental feelings of his partner. Some husbands ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... upholding those checks so stringent, that sexual excess cannot prevail to the same extent as in civilization; (2) even in the absence of such checks, that difficulty of obtaining sexual erethism which has been noted as so common among savages, when not overcome by the stimulating influences prevailing at special times and seasons, and which is probably in large measure dependent on hard condition of life as well as an insensitive quality of nervous texture, still remains an important factor, tending to produce a natural chastity. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... him on a coat of mail, Which was made of a fish's scale, That when his foe should him assail, No point should be prevailing: His rapier was a hornet's sting, It was a very dangerous thing, For if he chanced to hurt the King, It ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... advanced in years, but the high-backed oaken chair in which she sat was not more upright than she. Dressed with the utmost nicety and precision in a quaint mixture of bygone costume, with some slight concession to the prevailing taste, which rather served to point the old style pleasantly than to impair its effect, she sat in a stately manner, with ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... quick, apprehensive glance toward his companion. His one prevailing idea just then was that they ought to get up, and skip out as lively as they could, leaving their nice fire for the two rough woodmen to enjoy. As far as he could see, neither of the men seemed to possess any firearm; at least they certainly did not carry guns, as ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter

... a palace when compared with the prevailing style of architecture in that country, and cost an immense sum of money. It was large and roomy, purely American in its construction, but the manner of conducting it was strictly Mexican, varying between the customs of the higher and lower ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... doubtful of useful ability, dependent for sustenance on a sentiment then prevailing, that for anti-slavery expression was as reserved as the "Reserve" was Western. I have often thought of my feelings of doubt and fear to go with Mr. Douglass, as an epoch in my life's history. The parting of the ways, the embarkation to a wider field of action, the close connection between ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... and address. He redoubled, if possible, his deference and respect, whetting his assiduity to the keenest edge of attention; and, in short, regulated his dress, conversation, and deportment, according to the fancy, turn, and prevailing humour of his young mistress. He, moreover, attempted to profit by her curiosity, which he knew to be truly feminine; and having culled from the library of his patron certain dangerous books, calculated to debauch the minds of young people, left them occasionally upon the table ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... They, on all sides, presented a barrier, through which it was impossible to pass. The shadows which they cast over the water, at the extreme point of the lake, produced the effect of half darkness, which, in conjunction with the silence prevailing in that dismal solitude, gave it an aspect so dreary and saddening, as to produce in us most painful feelings; each of us as it were, struck with terror, kept his thoughts to himself, ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere

... Company moved into the Boar's Head at one o'clock in the afternoon, they could truthfully say that the prevailing smell was now that of quick-lime. The parapet was evenly built up, the firing step had been partly restored, and in the Snout there were good emplacements for the machine guns. Certain unpleasant reminders were still to be found if one looked for them. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... the Dust," that I would "write no more in dialogue!" However, I bowed to public judgment in this matter at once (knowing also my inventive powers to be of the feeblest); but in reprinting the book (at the prevailing request of my kind friend, Mr. Henry Willett), I would pray the readers whom it may at first offend by its disconnected method, to examine, nevertheless, with care, the passages in which the principal speaker sums the conclusions of any dialogue: for these summaries were ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... are mostly all shops, and even the cabins profess to afford "lodging and entherthainment;" so that it is to be presumed that the poverty of the place is attributable to circumstances and misfortune, and not to the idleness of the inhabitants. The prevailing feeling, however, arising in any human mind, on entering the place, would be that of compassion for the judges, barristers, attorneys, crown clerks, grand jury, long panel, witnesses, &c., who have to be crammed into this little place, and lodged and fed for ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... rule, the distribution of forests is effected by the winds and by moving water. The prevailing westerly winds of the temperate zones have carried many species eastward and have extended the forest areas in that direction. Freshets, floods, and overflows have been even more active in carrying seeds, sprouts, ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... promised issue of the positive philosophy, which had already been twice commenced in print (The Ages of the World, 1815; Mythological Lectures, 1830), was both times suspended. Being called to the Berlin Academy by Frederick William IV., in order to counterbalance the prevailing Hegelianism, Schelling delivered lectures in the university also (on Mythology and Revelation), which he ceased, however, when notes taken by his hearers were printed without his consent.[5] His collected works were published in fourteen volumes (1856-61) under ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... poor. When I first came to live here in this township, there were about a hundred and thirty peasant families in it, and some two hundred hearths in the valley. The local authorities were such as might be expected in the prevailing wretchedness of the population. The mayor himself could not write, and the deputy-mayor was a small farmer, who lived beyond the limits of the Commune. The justice of the peace was a poor devil who had nothing but his ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac

... on the unseasonableness of discord, a soothing address to the vanity of each party, and the exertion of the authority which his services in that day's victory entitled him to assume, at length succeeded in prevailing upon them to adjourn farther discussion of the controversy. But although Kettledrummle and Poundtext were thus for the time silenced, they continued to eye each other like two dogs, who, having been separated ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... low, dumpy shops whence issue puffs of air as cold as if coming from a cellar. Here are dealers in toys, cardboard boxes, second-hand books. The articles displayed in their windows are covered with dust, and owing to the prevailing darkness, can only be perceived indistinctly. The shop fronts, formed of small panes of glass, streak the goods with a peculiar greenish reflex. Beyond, behind the display in the windows, the dim interiors resemble a number of lugubrious cavities ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... some hundred or more of his immediate personal friends gave him a private dinner at a famous uptown restaurant. I was placed next him at table. It goes without saying that we had all sorts of a good time—he Caesar and I Brutus—the prevailing joke ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... have gained largely, but the increase in these, though very great, is less surprising than the new States of the Northwest. The prevailing tendency of Southern agriculture to large farms and the employment of many hands is especially felt in States where land is still abundant. The greatest increase is in Texas, where 174,184 farms are reported, against 61,125 in 1870; in Florida, with 23,438 farms, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... is now a notable innovation, which marked the advent of a new age. Instead of the prevailing hempen cables with which these cruisers had been supplied and had been in use for centuries among our ships, these cutters were ordered to be furnished with chain cables "in order that the vessels may have the less occasion for going to a King's Port to refit or make purchases." If ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... prices prevailing, is it any wonder that the egrets and herons are being relentlessly pursued to the uttermost ends of the earth? I think that any man who really knows the habits of egrets and herons, and the total impossibility of any quantity ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... been held. It seems to have been a very successful gathering. "Seldom," writes one who was present, "have I experienced such a strong impression as was made upon me by this first vegetarian congress in Moscow." Unity seems to have been the prevailing note. Papers were read on the general significance and the various aspects of vegetarianism, followed by discussions. Amongst the various excursions undertaken was a pilgrimage to Yasnaya Polyana, including ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... livelihood get some queer propositions from those who have crude ideas about the operation of the literary machine. There is a prevailing idea among those who have never dabbled in literature very much, that the divine afflatus works a good deal like a corn sheller. ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye



Words linked to "Prevailing" :   rife, prevailing westerly, prevalent, predominant, prevailing party, frequent, prevailing wind



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