"Proneness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strange that so peculiar and so similar a belief should be indigenous in the minds of such distinctive races. At the period when the free importation from Africa was carried on, the most difficult thing the planters had to contend with was a proneness to suicide on the part of those slaves who were newly imported, and who ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... N. tendency; aptness, aptitude; proneness, proclivity, bent, turn, tone, bias, set, leaning to, predisposition, inclination, propensity, susceptibility; conatus[Lat], nisus[Lat]; liability &c. 177; quality, nature, temperament; idiocrasy[obs3], idiosyncrasy; cast, vein, grain; humor, mood; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Conscious, too, doubtless, as he faced a nation's Representatives in arms, how he had "kept the word of promise to the ear," and how "he had broken it to the hope;" how while his reviews had revealed a mighty army of undoubted ability and eagerness for the fight, his indecision or proneness to delay had made its campaigns the laughing-stock of the world. His brilliant Staff clattered at his heels; but glittering surroundings were powerless to avert the memories of a winter's inactivity at Manassas, the delay ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... outward respect, however much they may mislead them with falsehoods. Your London and Paris publics are not to be dealt with as if composed of credulous old women, but require something like a plausible mystification to throw dust in their eyes. They have a remarkable proneness to believe that which they wish, it is true; but, beyond that weakness, some limits are placed to their faith and appearances must be a ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... attention on the outdoor work. I managed to keep Bobsey under my eye for the most part, and in the afternoon I left him for only a few moments at the sugar-bush while I carried up some sap. A man called to see me on business, and I was detained. Knowing the little fellow's proneness to mischief, and forgetfulness of all commands, I at last hastened back with a half guilty ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... it is—of using them. Staunch to his own opinion only when it seemed to involve some moral principle, he was almost too ready to yield it, in all practical matters, to anyone whom he supposed to possess more practical knowledge than he. To distrust himself, to accuse himself, to confess his proneness to hard judgments, while, to the eye of those who knew him and the facts, he was exercising a splendid charity and magnanimity; to hold himself up as a warning of "wasted time," while he was, but too literally, working himself ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... was at last on the table, he felt more at ease; his host's genial manner gave him confidence; and he was led on to talk of his work and prospects at Cloon, of the long drives over the "mountainy roads," and the often imaginary ailments of the patients who demanded his attendance, and their proneness when really ill to take the advice of priest or passer-by on sanitary matters rather than his own. "But I'll get out of it, I hope, some day," he said, looking at Louise; "when I get a few more paying patients and the infirmary, I can ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... from the depths of our talk, and expanded, like the one the fisherman released from the copper vessel, until they blotted everything bright from our vision. Insensibly, we yielded to the occult force that swayed us, and indulged in gloomy speculation. We had talked some time upon the proneness of the human mind to mysticism, and the almost universal love of the terrible, when Hammond suddenly said to me, "What do you consider to be the greatest ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... They institute a rigorous comparison between shutting and not shutting. True, they are not taught to do so, any more than Frenchmen are taught to make gestures. It is in them. They are born with a natural proneness to consider, as if it were a question of algebraic quantities, whether the satisfaction they might impart by shutting the door would not be more than counterbalanced by the dissatisfaction that might accrue from distinctly and unmistakably shutting it. Still, it seems strange ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... them. Benevolence was natural to her, but she was not always prudent in its exercise. Hence her protection was often extended to persons who did not deserve it. Her taste for splendour and expense was excessive. This proneness to luxury became a habit which seemed constantly indulged without any motive. What scenes have I not witnessed when the moment for paying the tradesmen's bills arrived! She always kept back one-half of their claims, and the discovery ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... unseemly grow seemly, the unfriendly are friendly to thee; For no good and evil supremely thou hast blended in one by decree. For all thy decree is one ever—a Word that endureth for aye, Which mortals, rebellious, endeavor to flee from and shun to obey— Ill-fated, that, worn with proneness for the lord-ship of goodly things, Neither hear nor behold, in its oneness, the law that divinity brings; Which men with reason obeying, might attain unto glorious life, No longer aimlessly straying in the paths of ignoble strife. There are men with a zeal unblest, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... council," Ameres replied, "and told me that he had been informed of the murmurs of the populace against me. He said that as one of his most trusted counselors, and as a high priest of Osiris, he knew that the charges against me were baseless; but that in view of the proneness of the people of Thebes to excitement and tumult, he should be glad to order a company of soldiers to keep guard over my house. I refused. I said that I was conscious of no evil, that none could say that I was slack in my ministrations in the temple, or that I had ever spoken a word in disrespect ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... a good woman, and knew that it behoved her to obey. Had not her aunt come all the way from Cologne, from the distant city of Rhenish Prussia, to live in Nuremberg for her sake, and should she be unfaithful and rebellious? Now Madame Staubach understood and appreciated the proneness to rebellion in her niece's heart, but did not quite understand, and perhaps could not appreciate, the attempt to put down that rebellion which the niece was ever making from day ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... my coming, and this assumption that I would accept the terms irritated me. Assumptions as to what I should do under given conditions had always irritated me, and accounted, in a large measure, for my proneness to surprise and disappoint people. Pickering summoned a clerk to witness ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... An allusion to 'Jack on shore' almost persuaded her that his uncle Everard had inspired the writer of the article. Beauchamp's reply to the question of his loyalty was not quoted: he was, however, complimented on his frankness. At the same time he was assured that his error lay in a too great proneness to make distinctions, and that there was no distinction between sovereign and country in a loyal and contented land, which could thank him for gallant services in war, while taking him for the solitary example to be cited ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of sympathy, because, raised so far above us in outward things, we deem the griefs and feelings of common humanity unknown and uncared for? To our mind, the destiny of the Sovereign, the awful responsibility, the utter loneliness of station, the general want of sympathy, the proneness to be condemned for faults or omissions of which they are, individually, as innocent as their contemners, present a subject for consideration and sympathy, and ought to check the unkind thoughts and hasty condemnation, excited merely because they are placed in rank and circumstances ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... This proneness to finery in dress, however, which Boswell and others of Goldsmith's contemporaries, who did not understand the secret plies of his character, attributed to vanity, arose, we are convinced, from a widely different motive. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the understanding examines a miraculous history; it judges truly of what I may call the human part of the case; that is to say, of the rarity of miracles,—of the fallibility of human testimony,—of the proneness of most minds to exaggeration,—and of the critical arguments affecting the genuineness or the date of the narrative itself. But it forgets the divine part, namely, the power and providence of God, that He ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... A proneness to credulity is ever blameable. And it is very possible, that sometimes, in a very wonderful narration, a jest may be intended to be palmed upon the world, instead of any elucidation of truth.—But facts, positively affirmed, should be hearkened to with patience: and, at least, so far recorded, ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King
... abuses of the old poor law. Mendicancy and indiscriminate almsgiving have produced in Ireland results similar to what indiscriminate relief produced in England—the like reckless disregard of the future, the like idle and disorderly conduct, and the same proneness to outrage having then characterised the English pauper labourer which are now too generally the characteristics of the Irish peasant. An abuse of a good law caused the evil in the one case, and a removal of that abuse ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... king commissioned to navigate the course of the Indus and the waters of the Indian Ocean. At the same time, the very ardour of their temperament, and their consequent pride, their impatience of all regular control, their habitual proneness to civic strife, and to sanguinary quarrels with the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities, rendered them the most dangerous subjects imaginable to govern, and their loyalty very uncertain. Moreover, their admission as vassals of the Persian empire had not altered their ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a little thing—so little that it seemed ridiculous to think of it as among the momentous happenings in a life—but with that extraordinary proneness of the little to usurp the significant places of memory, it had become at last one of the important milestones in her experience. At the end, when she forgot everything else, she would not forget Harry's foolish words, nor ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... great point gained, though there was still much for Henrietta to learn. It was the first time she had ever been conscious of her own selfishness, or perhaps more justly, of her proneness to make all give way to her own ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as it were in a written book, Cataline had long before remarked young Arvina. He had noted several points of his mental constitution, which he considered liable to receive such impressions as he would—his proneness to defer to the thoughts of others, his want of energetic resolution, and not least his generous indignation against every thing that savored of cruelty or oppression. He had resolved to operate on these, whenever he might find occasion; and should he meet success in his first efforts, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... especially with the out-crop, succession, and dip of the mineral veins. In short, their natural endowments are fully equal to the general standard, and only require cultivation, as frequently appears from the quickness with which they detect the bearings of any pecuniary transaction, and their proneness to litigation. Many superstitions, however, still linger amongst them, such as the use of charms and incantations, a belief in witchcraft and an evil eye, a resort to "wise men," and even to the minister of ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... in his son a perverseness of nature, and a proneness to commit mischievous and more than childish tricks. The mother, out of a blind affection for her child, took them all for growing proofs of spirit and manliness, and as marks of an extraordinary ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... children all about the character, interests and deceptions of parlor-life. They should undeceive them in their natural proneness to judge people from the standpoint of character assumed in the parlor. They see the lamb there, but not the lion; the smile but not the frown; the affability of manner, but not the tyranny of spirit. They hear the language of flattery, but not the tongue ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... the same general laws as other parts of the body. If the brain of the child is free from defects at birth, and acquires no improper impressions in infancy, it will not easily become diseased in after life. But, if the brain has inherited defects, or has acquired a proneness to disease by mismanagement in early life, it will more easily yield to influences that cause diseased action. The hereditary tendency to disease is one of the most powerful causes that produce nervous and mental affections. Consequently, children have ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... manuscripts, and patronised the most illustrious writers of the reign: Swift, the English Rabelais, Pope, Boileau, and Prior, the Regnier of Great Britain. But he was not unjustly reproached for his obstinacy of character, the changeableness of his opinions, his proneness to descend to little means, and ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... an aridity of spirit in prayer, of inability to fix my thoughts, of a proneness to dissipate my tenderness on childish objects; I desire to elevate myself to and be absorbed in God, to attain at once to the contemplation of essential being, and yet I disdain mental prayer and rational and discursive meditation. How, without attaining to its purity, how, without beholding ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... of a steamer for England. It was an odd, bewildering incident from top to bottom. No doubt this particular delusion was occasioned by the poor fellow, whose mind was then fast decaying, reading about the transmission of the Koh-i-noor, and musing about it with a mad-man's proneness to dwell upon ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... force of which made man a religious animal. The first is, his proneness to ascribe hostility or benevolent intention to every thing of a memorable sort that occurs to him in the order of nature. The second is that of which I have just treated, the superior dignity of mind over body. This, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... she reappeared among us. I looked into her eyes, but saw no tear. There was something which seemed strangely haughty in her air, and yet it was the air of woe. A Spanish and an Indian grief, which would not visibly lament. Pride's height in vain abased to proneness on the rack; ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... nine tribes and a half, which were carried off by Shalmanezer, king of Assyria, and which settled in Media, remained there long, they would, by intermarrying with the nations of that country, from a natural fickleness and proneness to idolatry, and from the force of example, have adopted and bowed before the Gods of the Medes and Assyrians; and have carried them along with them. But he affirms that there is not the least trace of this idolatry to be discovered among the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... than myself, had just entered the army time enough to be returned in the Gazette as severely wounded in the action of the 18th. I was destined for the church—as much, I believe, from my mother's proneness to Prelacy, (in a very different sense from its usual acceptation,) she being fond of expatiating on her descent from one of the Seven of immortal memory, as from my being a formal, bookish boy, of a reserved and rather contemplative disposition. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... The proneness of his imagination to wander in this forbidden field is unwittingly betrayed by his remarking at Sky, in support of the doctrine that animal substances are less cleanly than vegetable: "I have often thought that, if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns, or cotton, I mean ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... jealous of rebellious intentions. A zemindar is an Indian subject, and as such exposed to the common lot of his fellows. The mean and depraved state of a mere zemindar is therefore this very dependence above mentioned on a despotic government, this very proneness to shake off his allegiance, and this very exposure to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, which are consequent on the political state of Hindostanic governments. Bulwant Sing, if he had been, and Cheyt Sing, as long ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his wistful, wounded eyes, by a plaintive note in his voice, a painful want of confidence in his welcome, and a constant but indifferently successful effort to correct his natural incivility of manner and proneness to take offence. By his keen brows and forehead he is clearly a shrewd man; and there is no sign of straitened means or commercial diffidence about him: he is well dressed, and would be classed at a guess as a prosperous master manufacturer in a business inherited ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... stories of communications with spirits; gave to supernatural tales of witchcraft and demonology a wondering credence, and allowed them to occupy their conversation, speculations, and reveries. They carried a belief of such things, and a proneness to indulge it, into their daily life, their literature, and the proceedings of tribunals, ecclesiastical and civil. The fearful results shrouded their annals in darkness and shame. Let those results for ever stand conspicuous, beacon-monuments ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... of ignorance of causes, of the proneness to seek the solution of phenomena out of and beyond nature, and of the consequent natural but unreasoning dread of the Unknown and Invisible (ignorantly termed the supernatural), is at once universal in the extent, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... had we failed to fight, not one of these censuring mouths but would have hissed at us like an adder with contempt Nay, we ourselves should, as it were, soon have lost the musical speech and high carriage of men, and fallen to a proneness and a hissing, degraded in our own eyes even more than in those of our neighbors. Of course, from this state we should have risen; but it would have been to see the redness of war on our own fields and its flames wrapping our own households. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... their management, as with apes, monkeys and bears, it is necessary to take into account the temperament not only of the species, but also of each animal; and there are times when this necessity bears hard upon human nerves. The proneness of captive deer to maim and to kill themselves and each other calls for the utmost vigilance, and for heroic endurance on the part of the ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... some intimation of what was in hand against him, or had taken fright? His movements might have been planned to gain for him, in getting beyond their reach, twelve hours' advantage? The honest man who had expended the sweat of his brow became uneasy, and began to complain with bitterness of the proneness of mankind to cheat him—him invested with ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... for that of the most amiable dispositions. They are 'severe in youthful virtue unreproved.' There is a passage in his prose-works (the Treatise on Education) which shows, I think, his extreme openness and proneness to pleasing outward impressions in a striking point of view. 'But to return to our own institute,' he says, 'besides these constant exercises at home, there is another opportunity of gaining experience to ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... me from so many perils both of body and soul; His care of me by means of His Angels; and His other individual benefits. Under the second head come all my faults and the punishments due to me, whether in the past or now in the present; my proneness to sin; my misuse of my own powers by habituating my thoughts and desires—as well as the inclinations of my other various faculties—to evil; my sojourning in a region far away from His Friendship and ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... it had given him an inward satisfaction. But the necessity of overcoming small obstacles becomes wearisome to a self-confident personality as much by the certitude of success as by the monotony of effort. He mistrusted his superior's proneness to fussy action. That old Englishman had no judgment, he said to himself. It was useless to suppose that, acquainted with the true state of the case, he would keep it to himself. He would talk of doing impracticable things. Nostromo feared him as one ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... proneness to injury extends throughout its growth. The seedlings are liable to be destroyed by an insect closely resembling the turnip-fly, as well as by the frog. Caterpillars feed upon the leaves of older plants, and the white ant destroys them by consuming their ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... to rise at once, and by a simultaneous effort to throw off the yoke of their oppressors. It is difficult at this distant period to assign the proper credit due to these early accusations against the Indians. There was a proneness to suspicion and an aptness to acts of violence on the part of the whites that gave weight and importance to every idle tale. Informers abounded where tale-bearing met with countenance and reward, and the sword was readily unsheathed when its ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... a man rose from his seat and entered his protest against the singing of that hymn any more. It is not true, he said, that the man whom God has converted feels any proneness to wander. He had had the grace of God in his soul for—we don't remember how many years—and he could testify that the desire to wander from God's commandments had been wholly removed. He, therefore, repeated his protest against the use of a hymn containing a sentiment so dishonorable ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... analytical processes; a characteristic which was illustrated at Cambridge by his uniform partiality for analysis, and comparative distaste for the geometrical method, in his mathematical studies. His early proneness to dwell upon the more recondite departments of each science and branch of inquiry has been alluded to above. It is not to be inferred that, as a consequence of this tendency, he blinded himself, at any period of his life, to the necessity and the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... but intolerably old." He complained of "nothing but weakness, and loss of nervous energy." "I look as strong as a cart-horse, but cannot get round the garden without resting once or twice," Soon he was back again at St. Paul's, preaching a sermon on Peace, and rebuking the "excessive proneness to War." "I shall try the same subject again—a subject utterly untouched by the clergy."[143] The summer passed in its usual occupations, and on the 28th of July he preached for the last time in the pulpit of the Cathedral. ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... ordinary mortal as embodying ideas of grandeur, power, might, and intellect to which the latter is unaccustomed. Education, economic changes, and the art of manners have done much to conceal, if not eradicate, human proneness to servility, and the Byzantinism of the time of Caligula and Nero, of Tiberius, Constantine, or Nikiphoros, of the Stuarts and the Bourbons, has long been modified into respect for oneself as well as for the person one addresses. ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... lack of sympathy of motive, which caused a disinclination on the one part to ask for what on the other there would be more than a disinclination to give. This tended to crystallise the national proneness to defer until the emergency arose the measures necessary to meet it. It followed, then, that while attention was given to the needs of the moment, practically all provision for the requirements of the future was relegated to the background. A further defect in the system was ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... discourse. The unthinking rake of former days must have learned and reflected much during his period of adversity and soldiering, to convert himself into the intelligent, well-informed, and unaffected man he had now become. One thing that struck me in him, however, was an occasional absence of mind and proneness to reverie. If there was a short pause in the conversation, his thoughts seemed to wander far away; and at times an expression of perplexed uneasiness, if not of care, came over his countenance. I had only to address him, however, to dissipate these ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... to the principles of my religion, I am not to seek to convert anyone who is not born according to our laws. This proneness to conversion, the origin of which some would fain tack on to the Jewish religion, is, nevertheless, diametrically opposed to it. Our rabbis unanimously teach that the written and oral laws which form conjointly our revealed religion are obligatory on our nation only. "Moses commanded us ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... can not fail to be picturesque in the extreme. Here on the placid bosom of this inland sea, the pleasure seeker can enjoy all the delights and exhilarating influences of ocean travel without its inconveniences. No sea sickness, no proneness to reflect on "to be or not to be," but, amid the bracing breezes, the steady, easy glide of the commodious steamer over pleasant waters, takes him through scenes as fair as the poet's brightest dreams. This "Mediterranean of the Pacific" throughout its length and breadth is adorned with heavily-wooded ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... is their proneness to blood revenge, by which, as among other savages, a succession of retaliatory murders is long kept up. They believe also, when a person dies, that his death is caused by the agency of an evil spirit secured by some enemy; and, having settled who ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... God of Nations for His watchful care, which has shielded them from dire disaster and pointed out to them the way of peace and happiness. Nor should they ever refuse to acknowledge with contrite hearts their proneness to turn away from God's teachings and to follow with sinful pride after ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... of society indulge in it more or less; and because, as we have already said, it proceeds in every instance from mental deficiencies and moral defects, from insincerity and dissimulation, and from an effeminate proneness to use up in speaking the energy we should turn to doing and apply to life and conduct. Without a substratum of sincerity, no man can speak right on, but runs astray into a kind of phraseology ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... treaty than alleged as a pretence for breaking off the negotiation? Sad, indeed, will be the condition of the world if we are never to make peace with an adverse party whose sincerity we have reason to suspect. Even just grounds for such suspicions will but too often occur, and when such fail, the proneness of man to impute evil qualities, as well as evil designs, to his enemies, will suggest false ones. In the present case the suspicion of insincerity was, it is true, so just, as to amount to a moral certainty. The example of the petition of ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... into the debate himself, gave Yonge his notes, as the latter came late into the House, from which be could speak admirably and fluently, though he had missed the preceding discussion. Sir William, who had a proneness to poetry, wrote the epilogue to Johnson's tragedy of "Irene." 'When I published the plan for my Dictionary," says the Doctor, "Lord'Chesterfield told me that the word great should be pronounced so as to rhyme to state; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... proneness to dilate upon this favorite theme; I may recur to it hereafter. Suffice it to say, the intimacy thus formed, continued for a considerable time; and in company with the worthy Diedrich, I visited many of the places celebrated ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... reading, and proneness to angry misconception, must be inferred in the conduct of the American side of this discussion; for another notable and even graver instance occurs in the despatch[298] communicating Jackson's dismissal to ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... when read with a due attention to dates, shows that Wycherley's proneness to take offence has at least been exaggerated. Pope's services to Wycherley were rendered on two separate occasions. The first set of poems were corrected during 1706 and 1707, and Wycherley, in speaking ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... bellow, and make an hideous noise within me. It showed me also that Jesus Christ had yet a word of grace and mercy for me, that He had not, as I had feared, quite forsaken and cast off my soul; yea, this was a kind of chide for my proneness to desperation; a kind of threatening of me, if I did not, notwithstanding my sins, and the heinousness of them, venture my salvation upon the Son of God. But as to my determining about this strange dispensation, what it was, I know not; or from whence it came, I know not; I have not yet ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... surface of the body, swelled legs, putrid gums, and, above all, an extraordinary lassitude of the whole body, especially after any exercise, however inconsiderable and this lassitude at last degenerates into a proneness to swoon, and even to die, on the least exertion of strength, or even on the least motion. This disease is usually attended, also, by a strange dejection of spirits, with shiverings, tremblings, and a disposition to be seized with the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... comforting to know that God, our heavenly Father, sees and knows it all; that He pities our weakness and proneness to sin! How precious are His promises of help in time of trial, if we look to Him for it, at the same time using all our ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... species, and is so noted in Horsfield's Catalogue, and described at some length under the name of Bibos asseel; but it appears that all this distinction was founded on the single skull of a female gaur, and is an instance of the proneness of naturalists to create new species on insufficient data. He himself remarks that when the skin was removed it was evident that the animal was nearly related to Gavaeus gaurus, or, as he calls it, Bibos cavifrons. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... fathers.... If we would listen to some literary historians, we should believe that the darkest ages contained many individuals, not only distinguished among their contemporaries, but positively eminent for abilities and knowledge. A proneness to extol every monk of whose productions a few letters or a devotional treatise survives, every bishop of whom it is related that he composed homilies, runs through the laborious work of the Benedictines of St. Maur, the 'Literary History of France,' and, in a less degree, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... being able to anticipate the words or the wants of the various persons who attended his levees, before they uttered a word. This sometimes led him into ridiculous embarrassment; and it was this proneness to lavish promises, which gave occasion ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... be the cause of it, the fact remains that ever since the Devil's lie in Eden was absorbed by, and ruined man, there has been a proneness, a latent tendency to idolatry in the human race. And the manifestations of this tendency have not been confined to peoples who in their recent past have been won from ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... Marlowe is the historical poet most frequently chosen to illustrate the world's proneness to take advantage of the poet's innocence. In the most famous of the poems about Marlowe, The Death of Marlowe, R. H. Horne takes a hopeful view of the world's depravity, for he makes Marlowe's innocence of evil so touching that it moves ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... enthusiastic respect. Without one taint of envy in his nature, conscious of his own extraordinary powers, he was quick to recognize genius in others; and his hearty praise of the powers of his rivals shows how sound and generous the heart was under his irritability. His proneness to satire and power of epigram made him enemies, but even these yielded to the suavity and fascination which alternated with his bitter moods. His sympathies were peculiarly open for young musicians. Mendelssohn and Liszt were stimulated by his warm and encouraging ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... bound to reply that, what Mr. HENLEY has done for England is to make it as ridiculous as is possible to a man with a limited audience. Mr. HENLEY has a pretty gift of versification, but it is spoiled by a wearisome proneness to smartness, and an assumption of personal superiority that occasionally reaches the heights of the ludicrous. If 'ARRY had been at the University, and had bent what he calls his mind upon verse-making, some of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... a stretch of weedy lawn was a shambling structure built years before by one Azariah Prouse, who believed among other strange matters that the earth is flat and that houses are built higher than one story only at great peril, because of the earth's proneness to tip if overbalanced. Prouse had compromised with this belief, however, and made his house a story and a half high, in what I conceive to have been a dare-devil spirit. The reckless upper rooms were thus ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... regarded as a mediocre in goodness who never consoleth others by saying what is not true; who giveth having promised; and who keepeth an eye over the weakness of others. These, however, are the indications of a bad man, viz., incapacity to be controlled; liability to be afflicted by dangers; proneness to give way to wrath, ungratefulness; inability to become another's friend, and wickedness of heart. He too is the worst of men, who is dissatisfied with any good that may come to him from others who is suspicious of his own self, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... referred to the people, the people learned of every thing to judge. Their genius was artificially forced, and in each of its capacities. They had no need of formal education. Their whole life was one school. The very faults of their assembly, in its proneness to be seduced by extraordinary eloquence, aroused the emulation of the orator, and kept constantly awake the imagination of the audience. An Athenian was, by the necessity of birth, what Milton dreamed that man could only become by the labours of completest education: in peace a legislator, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... being allowed to remain in the ground until wanted for use, though it may be well kept, in moist sand in the cellar. Care is necessary in saving seed as it shells and blows away like thistle seed, as soon as ripe. It must be sown quite thick, on account of its proneness not to vegetate. It should be more ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... his appeal—that was the chief thing—and as to accuracy, well, Titian was not the man to be over-scrupulous when his own interests were involved. But even though the statement were not deliberately made to heighten the effect of an appeal, we must in any case make allowances for the natural proneness to exaggerate their age which usually characterises men of advanced years, so that any ex parte statement of this kind must be received with due caution. Where, moreover, as in the present case, we have evidence ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... that I have no conception of what a voyage of sixty or seventy days will be in point of fatigue and suffering; that the insecurity, compared with packet-ships or steamers, is great; that the cabin, being on deck, will be terribly exposed, in case of a gale, &c., &c. I am well aware of the proneness of volunteer counsellors to frighten and excite one, and have generally disregarded them. But this time I feel a trembling solicitude on account of my child, and am doubtful, harassed, almost ill." And again, under date of April ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... say that!" cried Janice, in some little panic, for she knew Dexter's proneness to gossip. "Don't you ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... had been much easier while they were traveling in fast motors or in parlor cars. The trolley with its frequent stops, the proneness of the plain folk to lunch upon bananas and peanuts and cast the skins and shells thereof upon the floor ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... makes the transit an arduous undertaking, and one not to be accomplished easily without the aid of "backstays" (pronounced "backster"), a simple contrivance somewhat upon the principle of snowshoes. When the proneness to slip off the unaccustomed foot has been overcome, backstays are not so awkward as they look. A couple of flat pieces of inch-thick wood, four inches wide by six long, with a loop of leather defectively fastened for ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... duty, so that they might learn of him with pleasure. Whatever be considered the faulty part of his own character, he freely acknowledged to others, with an admonition to avoid the like. His sensitive nature induced a too great proneness to a self-accusing spirit; yet in this was there no affected humility, though it might unfortunately dispose some to think evil of him where little or none existed, or form an excuse to others for their neglect of him. With respect to other men, however, all his feelings and judgments ever gave ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay (1900) shows Hewlett's romantic fancy and love for historical characters and pageants. While this novel is full of life, color, and movement, it displays his proneness to allow the romantic vein to run to the fantastic in both episode and style. The Stooping Lady (1907) deals with the love of a lady of high degree for a humble youth whom her ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... preparation for war were misleading to those who only witnessed one side of the pending conflict. The North had, up to Sumter, been slow to act, and this was not reassuring to the friends of the Union South, or, perhaps, anywhere. The proneness of mankind to be on the successful side has shown itself in all trying times. It is only the virtue of individual obstinacy that enables the few to go against an ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, as, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling-block to all those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... but sarcastic French writer has observed on the proneness of tourists to exalt the peasants of Ossau into the Arcadian beings of Virgil and Theocritus, representing them as assembling together to sing the verses of Despourrins: that—"it is, perhaps, better to see romance than not to see at all; but those who have discovered these pastoral ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... interior faculties under due command. The appetites of the body are only to be reduced by universal temperance, and assiduous mortification and watchfulness over all the senses. The interior powers of the soul must be restrained, as the imagination, memory, and understanding: their proneness to distraction, and the itching curiosity of the mind, must be curbed, and their repugnance to attend to spiritual things corrected by habits of recollection, holy meditation, and prayer. Above all, the will must be rendered supple and pliant ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... Berlin, with more than two million people, is still entitled to but six seats; and the disproportion in other great cities and densely inhabited regions is almost as flagrant.[328] There has long been demand for a redistribution of seats; but, by reason of the proneness of urban constituencies to return to the Reichstag socialists or other radicals, the Government has never been willing to meet the (p. 224) demand. By states, the 397 seats are distributed as follows: Prussia, 236; Bavaria, 48; Saxony, 23; Wuerttemberg, 17; Alsace-Lorraine (Imperial ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... surprise in meeting there with Dr. Warton.(213) He joined Mrs. Delany instantly, and kept with us during the whole walk. He congratulated me upon my appointment, in terms of rapture; his ecstacies are excited so readily, from the excessive warmth of his disposition, and its proneness to admire and wonder, that my new situation was a subject to awaken an enthusiasm ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... to see without remarking the lines of subtle intelligence displayed in its leathery wrinkles. The eyes were light blue, very quick, almost merry—and yet not quite, for if there was humour in them, it was of the kind that takes its pleasures quietly; there was no proneness to laughter in the ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... the Indians of Guiana, an English missionary, who knew them well, says that the worst feature in their character is their proneness to blood revenge, "by which a succession of retaliatory murders may be kept up for a long time. It is closely connected with their system of sorcery, which we shall presently consider. A person dies,—and it is supposed that an enemy has secured the agency of an evil ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... athletic beauty. He was past forty years of age, and the sudden cessation from severe bodily toil to which in his active life as a convict and squatter he had been accustomed, had increased Rex's natural proneness to fat, and instead of being portly he had become gross. His cheeks were inflamed with the frequent application of hot and rebellious liquors to his blood. His hands were swollen, and not so steady as of yore. His whiskers were streaked with unhealthy ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... course of which much of the marvellous, to call it by the most indulgent term, was necessarily mixed up—not perhaps that he was quite sensible of this himself, but because he possessed a constitutional proneness to exaggeration that rendered him even more credulous of the good things he uttered than those to whom he ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... assurance; that it consisted in believing that "I am pardoned;" and that works might be left to themselves, to come as they might, as being necessary fruits of faith, without our trouble? Did they know anything of the "apprehensive" power of faith, or of man's proneness to consider his imperfect services, done in and by grace, as adequate to purchase eternal life? There is no proof they did. Let then these three protesters be ever so cogent an argument against the Catholic creed, this does not bring them a whit nearer ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... times, there is no potation equal to porter and stout, or, what is better still, an equal part of porter and stout. Ale, except for a few constitutions, is too subtle and too sweet, generally causing acidity or heartburn, and stout alone is too potent to admit of a full draught, from its proneness to affect the head; and quantity, as well as moderate strength, is required to make the draught effectual; the equal mixture, therefore, of stout and porter yields all the properties desired or desirable as a medicinal agent ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... had not fallen upon the goose on the table. Mr. BROOKFIELD as Louis the Eleventh, incidentally suggests that that wily monarch was guilty of a crime with which he has not hitherto been credited—a proneness to give imitations of Mr. IRVING in the character of Mephistopheles. For the rest, the piece itself is most interesting, is capitally staged, and in the subordinate characters, fairly acted. In the Red Lamp, which followed the Ballad ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... plenipotentiaries was their proneness for what, for want of a better word, may be termed conspirative and circuitous action may be inferred from the record of their official and unofficial conversations and acts. When holding converse with Kolchak's authorized ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 69),—we may say of him, that his "foot is set in the right way," that is, his will is actually right, and the obstacle to happiness is removed. The evil habit in him is not an actual adhesion of his will to evil, but a proneness to relapse into that state. It is only remotely and potentially evil. It is a seed of evil, which however will not germinate in the good and blissful surroundings to which the soul has been transplanted, but remain for ever sterile, or rather, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... remunerative employment to our own people, then emigrating for want of work. "Nothing but Sloth or Envy," he said, "can possibly hinder my labours from being crowned with the wished for success; our habitual fondness for the one hath already brought us to the brink of ruin, and our proneness to the other hath almost discouraged all pious endeavours to promote our ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... for plays and spectacles. How far the Europeanising of the country, which is having, and is bound still further to have, an effect on dramatic art, will affect the amusements of the people and their proneness for the theatre remains to be seen. There is so far nothing approaching the English music-hall in Japan. Let me express a hope that there never will be. It is a long cry from the graceful Geisha to the inanities and banalities which ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... felicity. Nevertheless, it was highly diverting to watch the influence of the palm wine on their looks, language, and ideas. The flushed countenance is invisible in a black lady, but then she has the liquid and unsettled eye, the proneness to talk with irresistible garrulity, the gentle simper, or the bursting laugh at any trifle, or at nothing at all; and to wind up the list of symptoms, she has that complaisant idea of her own good points, and superior qualifications, which elicit her own approbation, without exciting the applauses ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... not dare so much as touch the bed, but went out at once to make his report. He had questioned the boy—a dull boy, but he thought honest. Assuredly he had seen no lady on his way. His lies deceived Maulfry, who would have known better but for her proneness to think everybody a fool. Soon Isoult heard the thud of hoofs on the herbage; then Alice came running in to hear ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... which he has related the degeneracy of the successors of the Caesars. It was an age of intellectual ferment. Rousseau was writing his Contrat Social (1760), the Encyclopedie was leavening Gallic thought. There was a particular proneness to accept fresh ideas; a new sense of national consciousness ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... villagers had long felt for their old pastor soon began to revive. Man naturally looks on the unfortunate with pity. The Beaumonts no longer excited envy, which (such is our proneness to offend) is often the substitute for gratitude. Dr. Beaumont was now their superior only in goodness and wisdom; a superiority more easily endured than that created by affluence or a larger share of temporal indulgencies. Many too began to be weary of the tautology and confusion of ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... which some of our philosophers and gloomy sectarians have branded our nature—the principle of universal selfishness, the proneness to all evil, they have given us—still, the detestation in which inhumanity to the distressed, or insolence to the fallen, are held by all mankind, shows that they are not natives of the human heart. Even the unhappy partner of our kind who is undone, the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... a strong partiality towards that unpopular class of beings, country boys: I have a large acquaintance amongst them, and I can almost say, that I know good of many and harm of none. In general they are an open, spirited, good-humoured race, with a proneness to embrace the pleasures and eschew the evils of their condition, a capacity for happiness, quite unmatched in man, or woman, or a girl. They are patient, too, and bear their fate as scape-goats (for all sins whatsoever are laid as matters ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... perception in art, and his social aptitudes, lacked that sustained zeal for some moral principle which leads either to the doing of great things or to the attainment of sublime character. The dangers of Hebraism lay in excess of absorption, in a proneness to fanaticism, in an obstinacy which might become rabidness, in a certain misplaced loudness and disregard of dignity. The dangers of Hellenism lay in proneness to sacrifice character to talent, and deeds to thought. Hebraism ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... almost invariably at once of one mind. (Lord, to Thee is the praise due for this!!!) We are as much, or more than ever united in spirit; and if the Lord permit, we desire to labour together till He come. Who that knows the proneness in man to seek his own, and to get glory to himself; who that knows that the heart naturally is full of envy; who that is acquainted with the position which we both hold in the church, and the occasions ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... was the only way of escape from what had become an intolerable nuisance. To Mr. Thomas's letter the reader will thank me for adding one not less interesting with which Dr. Henry Danson has favored me. We have here, with the same fun and animal spirits, a little of the proneness to mischief which his other schoolfellow says he was free from; but the mischief is all of the harmless kind, and might perhaps have been better described as but ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... its best development under a relatively archaic culture; the term "devout" being of course here used in its anthropological sense simply, and not as implying anything with respect to the spiritual attitude so characterized, beyond the fact of a proneness to devout observances. It appears also that this devout attitude marks a type of human nature which is more in consonance with the predatory mode of life than with the later-developed, more consistently and organically ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... respect as a modified Mahometanism. I could relate many instances, affecting myself, where trustfulness has incurred payment in this coin, but, having no desire to stimulate the Indian's existing proneness to practical joking, I stay my hand at ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... several, of nearly equal strength as far as North America was concerned, with all of whom she had differences arising out of conflicting interests, and with whom, moreover, she was in direct geographical contact,—a condition which has been recognized usually as entailing peculiar proneness to political friction; for, while the interests of two nations may clash in quarters of the world remote from either, there is both greater frequency and greater bitterness when matters of dispute exist near at ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... a few corrupt Readings,—and they have imposed largely on many critics,—which, strange to relate, have arisen from nothing else but the proneness of words standing side by side in a sentence to be attracted into a likeness of ending,—whether in respect of grammatical form or of sound; whereby sometimes the sense is made to suffer grievously,—sometimes ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... and moonshine. Though he could confine himself to facts with modest brevity when speaking of his achievements to white people—as we have already noticed—the Fighting Nigger, it must be owned, was something of a long-winded boaster, with a proneness to slide off into the fabulous, when blowing his own trumpet for the entertainment of his colored admirers, who bolted whatever monstrosity he might choose to toss into their greedy chops. But let us be just. It was with no direct intention of hoaxing or deceiving his hearers that he played the fabler; ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... "A proneness to take bribes may be generated from the habit of taking fees," said Lord Keeper Williams in his Inaugural Address, making an ungenerous allusion to Francis Bacon, whilst he uttered a statement which was no calumny upon King James's Bench and Bar, though it is signally inapplicable ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... personifying their superiors, with a licensed licentiousness. This forms a distinct characteristic from those other popular customs and pastimes which the learned have also traced to the Roman, and even more ancient nations. Our present inquiry is, to illustrate that proneness in man, of delighting to reverse the order of society, and ridiculing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... difficulty in ascertaining the truth on any question; growth of myth and legend in the Russian atmosphere of secrecy and repression. Difficulties of the American Minister arising from too great proneness of Americans to believe Russian stories; typical examples. American adventurers; a musical apostle; his Russian career. Relation of the Legation to the Chicago Exposition; crankish requests from queer people connected with it; danger of their bringing ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... rather prided myself upon being called a good girl by all my acquaintances. But I now saw things in a different light; and when I went home and began self-examination, I soon found I had a very wicked heart. I tried to do better, but the more I tried to live unto God the more I discovered the proneness of my heart to sin. I tried to think good thoughts, and evil thoughts came directly in my way to mar my peace. Day after day I made effort to purify my thoughts. It was all in vain. A pure thought immediately suggested ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... wistfully. Clara had a wicked temper when she was in liquor, and had the ordinary human proneness to lying, to mischievous gossip, and to utter laziness. The life she led, compelling cleanliness and neatness and a certain amount of thrift under penalty of instant ruin, had done her much good in saving her from going to pieces and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... some very pertinent remarks on the peculiarities of Ascham's style. "One of these," he writes, "is his proneness to alliteration, due perhaps to his desire to reproduce the most striking features of the Early English.... A tendency of an almost directly opposite kind is the balance of sentences which he imitates from Classical models.... These two are perhaps the most ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... remark upon the proneness which all children have to magnify the importance of little things. A strife often arises among them, about just nothing at all, from a ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... shown in reckless purveying to his dangerous weakness,—the desire to be called a king. Already Caesar had more than kingly power, and it was the obvious part of a friend to warn him against this ambition. Here and there are apt indications of his proneness to those vicious levities and debasing luxuries which afterwards ripened into such a gigantic profligacy. He has not yet attained to that rank and full-blown combination of cruelty, perfidy, and voluptuousness, which the world associates with his name, but he is plainly on the ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... which the criminal justice must maintain silence looks toward witnesses and accused. If, in the first instance, the cause of too much communicativeness was an over-proneness to talk; its cause in this case is a certain conceit that teases one into talking. Whether the justice wants to show the accused how much he already knows or how correctly he has drawn his conclusions; ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the whole day with Sheriff Court processes. There is something sickening in seeing poor devils drawn into great expense about trifles by interested attorneys. But too cheap access to litigation has its evils on the other hand, for the proneness of the lower class to gratify spite and revenge in this way would be a dreadful evil were they able to endure the expense. Very few cases come before the Sheriff-court of Selkirkshire that ought to come anywhere. Wretched wranglings ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott |
