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Tendency   /tˈɛndənsi/   Listen
Tendency

noun
(pl. tendencies)
1.
An attitude of mind especially one that favors one alternative over others.  Synonyms: disposition, inclination.  "A tendency to be too strict"
2.
An inclination to do something.  Synonyms: leaning, propensity.
3.
A characteristic likelihood of or natural disposition toward a certain condition or character or effect.  Synonym: inclination.  "Fabric with a tendency to shrink"
4.
A general direction in which something tends to move.  Synonym: trend.  "The trend of the stock market"



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"Tendency" Quotes from Famous Books



... let me remind you of two or three ways in which this great truth of the text is obscured to us, and in some respects contradicted, in the practice of many professing Christians. First, let me say my text insists upon this, that the conduct, not the creed, makes the Christian. There is a continual tendency on our part, as there was with these believers in Asia Minor long ago, to substitute the mere acceptance, especially the orthodox acceptance, of certain great fundamental Christian truths for Christianity. A man may believe ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... or panaceas, to nostrums and specifics, such, for instance, as pretend to cure the same disease in every patient, is easy and natural. With the latter also, impositions of a dangerous tendency are often practised. It may be asked how far they are practicably admissible, and in what cases they are wholly unavailing? The answer is not difficult. In those diseases, which in every instance depend upon the same cause, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... in usual manner. As soon as engine has fired release choker three-fourths of way in. Run until engine has warmed up then push choker all the way in, remembering to never use choker longer than necessary, as when not needed it has a tendency to foul up engine and ruin the lubricating oil in ...
— Marvel Carbureter and Heat Control - As Used on Series 691 Nash Sixes Booklet S • Anonymous

... the king that smiled; it was the young lady presented, because, for the first time in her life, she heard, given to her by Madame, who generally showed no tendency to spoil her, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... liberal to Jones on the marriage, and hath omitted no instance of shewing his affection to him and his lady, who love him as a father. Whatever in the nature of Jones had a tendency to vice, has been corrected by continual conversation with this good man, and by his union with the lovely and virtuous Sophia. He hath also, by reflection on his past follies, acquired a discretion and prudence very uncommon in ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... rather cool and curt manner towards their new passengers but in the course of a day or two visibly thawed. The captain afterwards, in explanation, stated that from information he had received in regard to the Australians he had expected to find in them an absence of discipline and a tendency to "smash things." He was now agreeably surprised to discover them so tractable and well-behaved—comparing them in a most favourable manner with ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett

... rencontre, would be your fate in the thrust of a sword, or the pulling of a trigger—I therefore prefer to apologise; and I call Desborough, if he has recovered his wits, to bear evidence that I do apologise for having suspected you, who are completely the slave of your own vanity, of any tendency, however slight, towards grace or good sense. And I farther apologise for the time that I have wasted in endeavouring to wash an Ethiopian white, or in recommending rational ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... with that in view. What she doubted was, whether a quarter of them would ever carry out their intention; and this was one thing which, favoring on the whole as she did the elective system, she could but acknowledge told against it,—the uncertainty which their youth, and the natural tendency of a girl's mind to change, gave. She had known them in one year, or even a shorter time, an enthusiast in one profession, then, becoming tired of it, and sure another was more suited to their abilities, turn ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... affects the breathing at first. In some it causes an oppression on the chest. On me, it had little effect, if any; and at all events, the feeling goes off, after the first month or so. There is a general tendency to nervous irritation, and to inflammatory complaints, and during September and October, on account of the heavy rains and the drained lakes on which part of the city is built, there is said to be a good deal of ague. Since the time of the cholera in 1833, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... little, this turbulence has calmed down—perhaps it was never very great. Little by little I have come to realize that if following Dionysus induces the will to bound and leap, devotion to Apollo has a tendency to throw the mind back until it rests upon the harmony of eternal form. There is ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... dependent upon some circumstance, you are compelled to understand the words according to their strictly literal meaning. Thus, if our Lord, instead of saying what he did in this case, had used such an expression as this,—"If thy right hand offend thee, and if the tendency to offend be insuperable, cut it off;" or, "If thy right eye offend thee, and its extraction would not endanger life, pluck it out," it is clear that the expressions could only have been taken in their strictly literal sense. So, in the words under review, it is also ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... polite, much more so than most American children in similar schools. They certainly appreciated warmly what we were doing for them and were most anxious to do as the children do in American schools. They lacked the life and tendency to mischief of American children. After a few weeks there was little trouble about discipline or order, and they learned to control themselves better and to pay better attention. It took months to break the habit of studying aloud, ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 4, October, 1900 • Various

... matter of such diverse usage that it is difficult to generalize regarding it. The tendency seems at present to be in the direction of using the slur (in instrumental music) as a phrase-mark exclusively, it being understood that unless there is some direction to the contrary, the tones are to be performed in a ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... his opposite qualities. Fragile and somewhat delicate, was he seduced by the strength and dexterity which his friend exhibited in all his exercises? Timid and naturally taciturn, was he governed by the assurance of that athlete with the loud laugh, with the invincible energy? Did the surprising tendency toward art which the other one showed conquer him, as well as sympathy for the misfortunes which were confided to him and which touched him more than they touched him ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... wife, whom he had passionately loved, and by whom he had had an only son. With those same metallic powders he had wrought considerable havoc with the health of his son also, which, on the contrary, he had wished to reinforce, as he detected in his organisation anaemia and a tendency to consumption inherited from his mother. The title of "magician" he had acquired, among other things, from the fact that he considered himself a great-grandson—not in the direct line, of course—of the famous Bruce, in whose honour he had named his son Yakoff.[51] He was the sort of ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... the hope of an hour or two's release as the fruit of diligence. The performance of every hand tended accordingly to be standardized at the customary accomplishment of the weakest and slowest members of the group. This tendency, however, was almost equally strong in ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... pronunciation of French names. In general, the French distribute the accent pretty evenly among all the syllables of their words. We mark an accent on the final syllable, chiefly in order to correct a natural English tendency to slight that syllable in pronunciation. In a few cases, we let a well-established English pronunciation stand. N notes a peculiar nasal sound, ue, a peculiar vowel sound, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... reins, she seems to have yielded on all occasions with little scruple, and as little delicacy. She appears in the strongest sense a voluptuary and sensualist, but without refinement. We compassionate her errors, and respect her talents; but our compassion is lessened by the mischievous tendency of her doctrines and example; and our respect is certainly not extended or improved by her exclaiming against prejudices of some of the most dangerous of which she was herself perpetually the victim, by her praises of virtue, the sanctity of which she habitually violated, ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... the old fashioned system of examination marks based on a hundred per cent scale, shows herself out of touch not only with the Scouting spirit, but with the whole trend of modern education today. When the tendency of great universities is distinctly toward substituting psychological tests for examinations, when the United States Army picks its officers by such tests, it would be absurd for a young people's recreational movement to ...
— The Girl Scouts Their History and Practice • Anonymous

... brotherhood; but a word in his ear from Pisen-face Lynch convinced Fellowes that it would be well to run straight. Fate had snatched him from behind the bar to carry out a part not unconnected with certain schemes of Judson Eells and any tendency to run out on his trusting backers would be visited with summary punishment. At least that was what he gathered in the brief moment they had together before Lynch gave him the ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... engineering; and still more by a subaqueous explosion of powder by the means of the voltaic battery—"a method by which Colonel Pasley was engaged near Portsmouth in raising a vessel which had sunk there." It would be hardly fair to surmise the probable tendency of the Khan's secret thoughts on thus witnessing the care bestowed on the training of those destined hereafter to maintain the Feringhi yoke on his native country; but he expressed himself highly gratified by all that he saw; and we find him, shortly after, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... palaeographical differences mark a tendency which reaches fuller development in later uncial manuscripts, it is clear that their presence in our manuscript is a sign of its more recent character as compared with manuscripts of the oldest type. Just as our manuscript is clearly older than the Codex Fuldensis ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand

... or Ferragus, is, of course, another, though a somewhat minor example—Collin or Vautrin being the chief—of that strange tendency to take intense interest in criminals, which seems to be a pretty constant eccentricity of many human minds, and which laid an extraordinary grasp on the great French writers of Balzac's time. I must confess, though it may sink me very low in some eyes, that I have never been able to ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... woman in the world to commit a morbid or ill-regulated act. But the act she was meditating now was one which seemed like the act of insanity. Yet had Hetty never in her life seemed farther removed from any such tendency. She was calm, cheerful, self-contained. If any one saw any change in her, it seemed like nothing more than the natural increase of quiet and decorum coming with her increased age. Even her husband, when he looked back on these months, trying in anguish to remember every day, every ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson

... tack. As soon as these changes have been made, away spins the little fairy bark on her new course, but always keeping the same side, or that on which the out-rigger is placed to windward. It will be easily understood that the pressure of the sail has a tendency to lift the weight at the extremity of the out-rigger above the surface of the water. In sailing along, therefore, the log just skims the tops of the waves, but scarcely ever buries itself in them, so that little or no interruption to the velocity of the canoe is caused by the out-rigger. When ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... wonder why the mouse should have any tendency to enter B, and why after so doing, it should trouble to go further, knowing, as it does from previous experiences, that entering one of the electric-boxes may result in discomfort. The fact is, a dancer has no very constant tendency to go from ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes

... treat the people as a herd of sheep the purpose of which is to serve as food for parasites is still very strong; but this tendency no longer goes unchallenged; it is being met with tremendous opposition; increased social knowledge and revolutionary ideas have taught the workingmen to unite their efforts against those who have been comfortably seated on their backs ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... illuminated with electric light, and the marble dining hall was extravagantly lurid. Had X. consulted his convenience he would certainly have worn his black sun spectacles, but actually feared to alarm his followers by exhibiting any further tendency to eccentricity on their first day in a strange country, and so he resigned himself to blink owlishly throughout the meal. The absence of a punkah, a necessity to which he was accustomed, was also a trial. However, there ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser

... A natural tendency of the youthful mind to comparative physiology had discovered a fancied resemblance which justified any graceful personalities of this kind; but Langton probably felt that candour had its limits, and that this was a question that required judgment ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... be said to be the case in a cold, raw night in November, when mankind has a tendency to become chronically cross out of doors, and nature, generally, looks lugubrious; for, just in proportion as the exterior world grows miserably chill, the world "at home," with its blazing gas, its drawn curtains, its crackling ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... heart of one anxious parent, I shall feel a much higher gratification in reflecting on this trifling performance, than could possibly result from the applause which might attend the most elegant finished piece of literature whose tendency might deprave the ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson

... body is not striking either for its beauty or its strength or suppleness. The breasts, except with girls of a very tender age, become deformed, and very pendant, and the great tendency to fatness rather interferes with the artistic ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... which others esteem holy. Examples, familiar to those versed in books, are therefore omitted. The dangerous side of this so-called philosophy did not lie so much in isolated expressions as in its whole tendency to cripple the spirit and harden the heart, so that victory might be rendered more sure and easy to the cunning talker, who strove, not for the cause of truth, but for his own private advantage. In the school of the clear-seeing, free-speaking Romans Zwingli soon ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... whence; and it is impossible to tell whether they should be ascribed to the beginning, to the end, or to an intermediate period of the laying. To sum up: in the laying of the Three-pronged Osmia, no order governs the succession of the sexes; only, the series has a marked tendency to begin with females and ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... establish an artist's reputation, made me understand that persistent toil and a thorough knowledge of the craft, might, in some happy hour of lucidity, power, and enthusiasm, by the fortunate occurrence of a subject in perfect concord with the tendency of our mind, lead to the production of a single work, short but as perfect as we can make it. Then I learned to see that the best-known writers have hardly ever left us more than one such volume; and that needful ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... Secondly, in doing this, we hope to treat design itself as an essential part of good workmanship. During the last century most of the arts, save painting and sculpture of an academic kind, were little considered, and there was a tendency to look on "design" as a mere matter of appearance. Such "ornamentation" as there was was usually obtained by following in a mechanical way a drawing provided by an artist who often knew little of the technical processes involved in production. With the critical attention ...
— Wood-Block Printing - A Description of the Craft of Woodcutting and Colour Printing Based on the Japanese Practice • F. Morley Fletcher

... a strong proof of the diffusive tendency of every thing in this country, that America never yet collected a fleet. Nothing is wanting to this display of power but the will. But a fleet requires only one commander, and a feeling is fast spreading in the country that we ought to be all commanders; unless the spirit of ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... a strong taste for music, I was much attracted by choral singing; and on Sundays and in the evenings I tried to copy out airs from different books, and accustomed my hand a little to writing. This tendency was, however, choked within me by too much work with the cattle, and by other farm labour. In a word, I had but little fair weather in my search for knowledge. One thing enticed me from another, to the detriment of my plans; some fair Eve often standing with an apple ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... diabolical harpoon and dragged away in triumph. Popular opinion seems to have been divided as to the reason for the devil's particular attention to Father Jose, some asserting that the extreme piety of the Padre excited the Evil One's animosity, and others that his adipose tendency simply rendered him, from a professional ...
— Legends and Tales • Bret Harte

... himself, but in the Prince such an attitude struck him as unbecoming. Then he cheered up. After all, John had given evidence of having a certain amount of what he would have called "get-up" in him. For the purposes for which he needed him, a tendency to make light of things was not amiss. It was essentially as a performing prince that he had engaged John. He wanted him to do unusual things, which would make people talk—aeroplaning was one that occurred to him. Perhaps a prince who took a serious view ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... is so insidious in its approach, and so distressing, and often fatal, in its consequences, that the form of its commencement ought to be known to all individuals who are liable to its attacks, either from an hereditary tendency, or other causes. When it commences in the glands about the neck, behind the ears, in the arm-pits, hams, &c., it appears as hard and indolent swellings, somewhat moveable under the skin, the colour of which is little ...
— Observations on the Causes, Symptoms, and Nature of Scrofula or King's Evil, Scurvy, and Cancer • John Kent

... there is already discernible a tendency to diarrhoea and dysentery. The men are living principally upon salt meat, and there is a lack of vegetables. I have been here since Sunday and have tasted fresh meat but once since that time. I am only one of the many. Of course the worst has passed for the ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... anything Elizabeth Eliza had a terror of it was a June-bug. She had heard that they had a tendency to get into the hair. One had been caught in the hair of a friend of hers, who had long, luxuriant hair. But the legs of the June-bug were caught in it like fishhooks, and it had to be cut out, and the June-bug was only extricated by sacrificing large masses ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... by the present. It is not possible to secure instant or permanent happiness but by the forbearance of some immediate gratification. This is so evidently true with regard to the whole of our existence, that all the precepts of theology have no other tendency than to enforce a life of faith; a life regulated not by our senses but our belief; a life in which pleasures are to be refused for fear of invisible punishments, and calamities sometimes to be sought, and always endured, in hope of rewards ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... he said, "you are too clever to fall into the common error of women, and idealize your lover. The tendency is a constituent part of the feminine nature, it is true. The average woman will idealize the old tweed coat on her lover's back. But your eyes are too clear for that sort of thing. I am a very ordinary young man, my dear. Becky ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... the cumulative wisdom of the world, becomes obedient; as a woman becomes great she grows disdainful and rebellious. Thus it is that while in the common walks of life woman is infinitely purer than man, as we ascend into the higher realms, whether in art, letters or statecraft, we discover a tendency to reverse this law until we often find great men anchorites and great women trampling on the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... inscribed Mark Twain's definition of a gentleman. He hasn't got the definition—he has only heard of it, and he wants me to tell him in which one of my books or speeches he can find it. I couldn't think, when I read that letter, what in the nation the man meant, but shaving somehow has a tendency to release thought, and just now it all came ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... when she realized the tendency of Dion's mind. Fear made her clairvoyant. There were moments when she seemed to look into that mind as into a room through an open window, to see the thoughts as living things going about their business. There was something appalling in this man's brooding desire to strike ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... Holy Virgin aid you," she said gently. Yet, as she passed out of the door, with a grateful smile, a characteristic reaction came over Key. His romantic belief in the interposition of Providence was not without a tendency to apply the ordinary rules of human evidence to such phenomena. Sister Seraphina's application to him seemed little short of miraculous interference; but what if it were only a trick to get rid of him, while the girl, whose escapade ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte

... the effects upon human character, produced by the face of different countries, we might expect to find, in the Indian, among other things, a strong tendency toward poetical thought, embodied, not in the mode of expression usually denominated poetry, but in the style of his addresses, the peculiarities of his theories, or the construction of his mythology, language, ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... his sister. Mrs. Bolton was certainly not addicted to papistical observances, nor was she at all likely to recommend the seclusion of her daughter in a convent. All her religious doctrines were those of the Low Church. But she had a tendency to arrive at similar results by other means. She was so afraid of the world, the flesh, and the devil, that she would fain shut up her child so as to keep her from the reach of all evil. Vowed celibacy was abominable to her, because it was the resource of ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... at chapel twice every Sunday, and at prayer-meetings as often through the week as Musgrave chose to take him. To this he held. The Squire's pheasants suffered no longer, and Tommy's big lurcher displayed a tendency towards virtue which earned him the admiration of all the gamekeepers on the estate. Efforts were made to get the big man to pray at the ordinary love-feasts that were held in connection with the chapel, ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman

... the general tenour and tendency of the tales and traditions of the Ainos wear a widely different aspect from that which characterises the folk-lore of Japan. The Ainos, in their humble way, are addicted to moralising and to speculating on the origin of things. A perusal of the following tales will show that a surprisingly ...
— Aino Folk-Tales • Basil Hall Chamberlain

... more general word socialism might be divided into three distinct classes, namely: the political party, the theoretical socialist, and last what might be called a general tendency. ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever

... the strength of her love to God that made her unhappy in being thus barred out from him. It was rather the check thus given to the whole upward tendency of her being, with its multitude of undefined hopes and longings now drawing nigh to the birth. It was in her ideal self rather than her conscious self that her misery arose. And now, dearly as she loved Mr Cowie, she began to doubt whether ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... to win all the persons who approached her, mistresses and comrades, and she began to practise that continued comedy of attitude and of sentiment to which the fatal desire to please, so quickly leads-that charming and dangerous tendency which borders much less on goodness than falseness. At eighteen, submitted to a sort of continual cabotinage, Lydia was, beneath the most attractive exterior, a being profoundly, though unconsciously, wicked, capable of very little affection—she loved no one truly but her brother—open ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... but that it is nearly always possible to foresee every consequence with unfailing certainty. Moreover, because of the reduction of forces there is no call to take very many variations into consideration. This explains why there is a tendency in modern master play to enforce the exchange of pieces, as soon as there is the slightest advantage sufficient to bring about one of the elementary end- game positions, in which the win ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker

... Beatrice, on a note of commiseration. And if the corners of her mouth betrayed a tendency to curve upwards, she immediately compelled them down. "But perhaps he does not speak Italian ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... and secluded lakes of Wisconsin were held in esteem or fear by the northern tribes, and it was the now-forgotten events and superstitions connected with them, not less than the frontier tendency for strong names, that gave a lurid and diabolical nomenclature to parts of this region. Devils, witches, magicians, and manitous were perpetuated, and Indians whose prowess was thought to be supernatural left dim ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... slight sip of brackish water would enter my lips,—for I naturally tried to swim as low as possible,—and then would follow a slight gasping and contest against chocking, that seemed to me a perfect convulsion; for I suppose the tendency to choke and sneeze is always enhanced by the circumstance that one's life may depend on keeping still, just as yawning becomes irresistible where to yawn would be social ruin, and just as one is sure to sleep in church, if one sits in a conspicuous pew. At other ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... is necessary to acquire the right action of the hands, there being always a tendency, the same as in tatting and macrame, to confuse the movements of the two. As soon as you realize that the upward drawing of the needle and the downward pressure of the stuff with the thimble must be simultaneous, you will find that you can work with great rapidity and with admirable ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont

... judge of a horse. When the cob was stabled, and the farmer came to the inn to have a drink, he was forced to admit a tendency to cow hocks, which, it would seem, is held a fatal ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... will always prevent disease. It is the natural incidence of the law of cause and effect that man, collectively, cannot expect to go through life unmolested by disturbances of health. From the very outset the tendency to disease is inherited; and indeed today, although we have now learned how to combat the enemy, yet opposing hosts are seen to be so vast and strongly entrenched about us that we realize to some ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... who are superior in age and wisdom, it is incumbent, more than on your brothers, to be cautious that nothing of a contrary tendency may arise; for, in all disputes, he that is the stronger, even though he receive the injury, appears, because his power is greater, to have inflicted it. And do you, Adherbal and Hiempsal, respect and regard a kinsman of such a character; imitate his virtues, ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust

... if my pink silk was too much. Something a little more austere, in the velvet or alpaca line, might have been more appropriate to the occasion. Still, there was a rosy brightness about my silk that had a tendency to give a glow of youthful thoughtlessness to intelligence, and combine an idea ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... "renaissance" has grown to cover a vaguer period, and there has been a constant tendency to push the date of its beginning ever backward, as we detect more and more the dimly dawning light amid the darkness of earlier ages. Of late, writers have fallen into the way of calling Dante the "morning star of the Renaissance"; and the period ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... the doctors told us that she might die in one of these attacks, so that we did all in our power to avoid these terrible accidents. My mother knew this, and rather took advantage of it, and, as I had inherited this tendency to fits of rage from her, I could not and did not wish to live with her. As for me, I am not placid. I am active and always ready for fight, and what I want I always want immediately. I have not the gentle obstinacy peculiar to my mother. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... include everything that can be said against the west front of the minster. Gothic churches have often been noble and triumphant works of art in spite of errors almost as grave. Unfortunately the west front suffers from a tendency first beginning to show itself in the middle of the fourteenth century, which afterwards became the most serious drawback of the whole Perpendicular style. It is not only because the porches do not project that it appears flat and thin. The ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock

... continued Martin, in his quick and rather heedless way, "that we Poles are under a cloud in Europe now. We are the wounded man by the side of the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and there is a tendency to pass by on the other side. We are a nation with a bad want, and it is nobody's business to satisfy it. Everybody is ready, however, to admit that we have ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman

... gilds exhibited in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a tendency to split somewhat along the present lines of capital and labor. On the one hand the old gild organization would be usurped and controlled by the wealthier master-workmen, called "livery men," because they wore rich uniforms, or a class ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... see here the beginning of that tendency of the Neoplatonic school to find a sanction for all their theories in some perversion of the plain ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... intellectual equipment of the average Englishman to which I have referred; for unless they had habitually only half-listened, half-read, half-understood, there could be no need for their undergoing a course of instruction late in life. Surely it is more sensible to check this peculiarly English tendency to mental laziness quite early in life, as Mr. Chittenden did with his boys. To my mind another striking characteristic of the average English man and woman is their want of observation. They don't ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton

... to be noticed. The first is derived from the Christian religion, which admits only of two classes of spirits, exclusive of the souls of men—Angels, namely, and Devils. This doctrine had a necessary tendency to abolish the distinction among subordinate spirits, which had been introduced by the superstitions of the Scandinavians. The existence of the Fairies was readily admitted; but, as they had no pretensions to the angelic character, they ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott

... of Baraguan, of Carichana, of Uniama, of Calitamini, and of Sipapo, successively appear. This sketch may serve to give a general idea of the geological configuration of the ground. We recognize everywhere on the globe a tendency toward regular forms, in those mountains that appear the most irregularly grouped. Every link appears, in a transverse section, like a distinct summit, to those who navigate the Orinoco; but this division ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... syphilis is employed, but on account of the tendency of potassium iodide to increase the oedema of the larynx, this drug must at first be used with caution. Intubation or tracheotomy may be called for on account of sudden urgent dyspnoea or of increasing stenosis. The ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles

... caught up the princess to throw her into the chancellor's barge. He lost his balance, however, and, dropping into the bottom of the barge, lost his hold of his daughter; not, however, before imparting to her the downward tendency of his own person, though in a somewhat different direction; for, as the king fell into the boat, she fell into the water. With a burst of delightful laughter she disappeared in the lake. A cry of horror ascended from the boats. They had never seen the princess go down before. Half ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald

... the Russian priesthood of the present time, we must call to mind this severe school through which it has passed, and we must also take into consideration the spirit which has been for centuries predominant in the Eastern Church—I mean the strong tendency both in the clergy and in the laity to attribute an inordinate importance to the ceremonial element of religion. Primitive mankind is everywhere and always disposed to regard religion as simply a mass of mysterious rites which have a secret magical power of averting evil in this world and securing ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... with great care, and were the best of their kind to be had—popular science, history, and biography, with a large, a very large, proportion of such fiction as had a tendency to elevate and instruct, while it interested, its readers. The books were not to be taken from the building, except upon rare occasions and under peculiar circumstances; but the reading-room, which was nicely carpeted, well warmed, and furnished ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow

... shapeless stains, the colour-box may be taken away till it knows better: but as soon as it begins painting red coats on soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should have colours at command; and, without restraining its choice of subject in that imaginative and historical art, of a military tendency, which children delight in, (generally quite as valuable, by the way, as any historical art delighted in by their elders,) it should be gently led by the parents to try to draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things it can see and likes,—birds, or butterflies, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... increasing civilisation, to prepare it the more easily the denser the population becomes. Carey, an eminent American economist, has pointed this out, and has thereby shown that the otherwise indisputably operative natural law, according to which a species has an inevitable tendency to outgrow its means of sustenance, does not apply to man. The fact that want and misery have, notwithstanding, hitherto always operated as checks upon the growth of the population is not the result of a natural ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... frequent rests are much better than long stops, which have a tendency to stiffen the muscles. The walker on a long tramp must pay especial attention to the care of his feet. They should be bathed frequently in cold water to which a little alum has been added. A rough place or crease in the stocking will sometimes ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... in his mouth, partly to show every one around how cool this inferno had left him, and partly to steady his nerves. But just as he was striking the match, a violent desire to laugh assailed him. He suppressed this tendency towards hysterics, but he shook so much that it was impossible to light the cigarette, and in the end he ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... seemed to me to have as much interest in watching the people who passed to and fro as in the shops. He amused himself by wondering where this one was going and what that one was doing. With his usual tendency, he chose to imagine they were all bent on mischief or folly, and because they happened to be in a certain street, and because in that street he had frequently heard some of his fellow- students speak of a low theatre, he jumped to the conclusion that every one ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... mortal could read, and to which no mortal could listen. I remember, that, though that not very amiable individual has outlived such wits as he once had, he has not outlived the unbecoming emotions of envy and jealousy; and he retains a strong tendency to evil-speaking and slandering. You told me, unamiable individual, how disgusted you were at hearing a friend of mine, who is one of the best preachers in Britain, preach one of his finest sermons. Perhaps you really were disgusted: there is such a thing as casting pearls ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various

... German corps. This is not quite exact. Of nearly thirteen thousand men in the corps, only forty-five hundred were Germans. But it must be admitted that so many officers high in rank were of that nationality, that the general tendency and feeling were decidedly unlike the rest of the army. Moreover, there is not wanting testimony to show that there were some who wore shoulder-straps in the corps who gave evidence of having taken up the profession of arms to make ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... farm I gave some hint as to the causes which have kept us from building a better house hitherto. Some day we shall have one, of course; or, possibly, we shall have more than one, for some of our chums have been showing a tendency towards matrimony of late; and if any of us marry they must have houses of their own, I suppose. We should need a barrack else, you understand, for families ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... several life and fire insurance companies, banks, two or three railroads, and several industrials are controlled. We found that the anatomy of Big Business was strikingly like that of Tammany Hall: the same pyramiding of influence, the same tendency of power to center on individuals who did not necessarily sit in the official seats, the same effort of human organization to grow independently of legal arrangements. Thus in the life insurance companies, and the Hughes investigation ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... treasure of a small minority only, it has none the less pervaded all the great scientific and literary work done up to the middle of this century. It has presided over the birth of our new state; and the day will certainly come when public opinion in Germany will turn away from the tendency of her present literature, science, and politics—a somewhat narrow patriotism, a rather shallow materialism, and a thoroughly false parliamentary regime—and come back to the spirit of the generations to whom, after all, she owes her intellectual, though not perhaps her political ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... slave-market. Luxury increasing slaves were purchased not merely for the purposes of labour, but of pleasure. The accomplished musician of the beautiful virgin was an article of taste or a victim of passion. Thus, what it was the tendency of barbarism to originate, it became the tendency of civilization ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of certain terms, or to enlarge the significance of certain things. Nationality is excellent in its place; and the instinct of self-love is the root of a man, which will develop into sacrificial virtues. But all the virtues are means and uses; and, if we hinder their tendency to growth and expansion, we both destroy them as virtues, and degrade them to that rankest species of corruption reserved for the most noble organizations. For instance,—non-intervention in the affairs of neighbouring states is a high political virtue; but non-intervention ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... talk about the glories of faith had a disadvantage for Phillida in that it also fell in with a tendency of her nature and with the habits nourished in her by her father. Millard thought he had reached the depths of her life in coming to know about her work among the poor, but a woman's motives are apt to be more involved than a man imagines ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... of this sort would have been in the last degree difficult and dangerous with any man. With the admiral they were simply impossible. His tendency to veer about from one subject to another; his habit of keeping his tongue perpetually going, so long as there was anybody, no matter whom, within reach of the sound of his voice; his comical want of all dignity and reserve with his servants, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... was gloomy, with some tendency to rain. I passed under the hill of Dinas Bran. About a furlong from its western base I turned round and surveyed it—and perhaps the best view of the noble mountain is to be obtained from the place where I turned round. How grand though sad from ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... tendency, natural to most persons, to differ with their fellows in office (it is always difficult for a number of men to attain harmony, especially in a position of any influence)—through this natural tendency, then, all their power was dissipated and torn to shreds. None of their resolutions ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... bird or four-footed beast that came under my observation, often, I fancy, making too much of it, and giving the wild creatures credit for more "sense" than they really possessed. The nature lover is always tempted to do this very thing; his tendency is to humanize the wild life about him, and to read his own traits and moods into whatever he looks upon. I have never consciously done this myself, at least to the extent of willfully misleading my reader. But some of our later ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs

... time we came at last to a revolving barrel as the earliest traceable rudiment of the whole fabric. And imagine that it had been possible to show that all these changes had resulted, first, from a tendency of the structure to vary indefinitely; and secondly, from something in the surrounding world which helped all variations in the direction of an accurate time-keeper, and checked all those in other directions; then ...
— Criticisms on "The Origin of Species" - From 'The Natural History Review', 1864 • Thomas H. Huxley

... of Sotades and Ovid," says the writer of the Preface, who is certainly Burton, "to our own time, Western authors have treated the subject either jocularly or with a tendency to hymn the joys of immorality, and the gospel of debauchery. The Indian author has taken the opposite view, and it is impossible not to admire the delicacy with which he has handled an exceedingly difficult theme. ....Feeling convinced that monogamy is a happier state than ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... her began in the Spring of 1873. Several times since I have known her, she has been carried so low that we have thought her release near at hand; and, indeed, the general tendency has been downwards. I recently asked an intelligent physician, who had attended her for a year or more, to give me the facts in her case. He replied: 'She is diseased throughout. Her system is thoroughly soured. It responds to nothing. Almost every function ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various

... without the aid of the theory of maya, or illusion, which is a characteristic of Samkara's monism. This community has become very influential, chiefly in Bombay Presidency; but in recent times it has been under a cloud owing to the scandals arising from a tendency to practise immoral orgies and from the claims of its priesthood, as representing the god, to enjoy the persons ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett

... it best for him to go forwards before his wounds had become very painful. He accordingly rode forwards to the village of Boolinkoomboo on one of our horses. Found myself very sick, and unable to stand erect without feeling a tendency to faint; the people so sickly that it was with some difficulty we got the loads put into the tents, though it threatened rain. To my great astonishment, Ashton, the sailor whom I had left in the woods ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park

... historical works, and her memoirs, make up her literary budget. M. d'Haussonville claims that her memoirs of the court of France are not reliable, because she was so often absent from court; also, in them she shows a tendency to avenge herself, in a way, upon Mme. de Maintenon, whose friend she was until the trouble between this lady and Mme. de Montespan occurred. The latter was the intimate friend of Mme. de La Fayette. As for her literary work proper, her desire to write was possibly encouraged, if ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... impulse, which is commonly iniquitous. But what's the good of being Chief Inspector of the Universe, And prying into everything from pompous Law to puny verse, If everything or nearly so, shows a confounded tendency To go right of its own accord? My Masterful Resplendency Would radiate aurorally, a world would gaze on trustingly If only things in general wouldn't go on so disgustingly. Where is the pull of being Earth's Inspector autocratical, When the Progress ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various

... was intended to intimate that the introduction of the purchaser would not be allowed, without the cognizance and sanction of the university.[72] Nor was the bookseller able to purchase books without her consent, lest they should be of an immoral or heretical tendency; and they were absolutely forbidden to buy any of the students, without ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... "deciphering,"—garbling, manufacturing, till they make a romance of it,—alas, your Majesty? Nay, at any rate, what are the Letters? Grumkow can plead that they are the foolishest insignificant rubbish of Court-gossip, not tending any bad road, if they have a tendency. That they are adapted to the nature of the beast, and of the situation,—this he will ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... of rather terrible things, Miss Pierson," went on the principal, picking up a slip of paper and reading aloud, "'inattention, insubordination, impertinence and a tendency to make trouble.' Have you any answer to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower

... from all distinct stories of that order, in any solitary frontier between two great empires—as here, for instance, or in the desert between Syria and the Euphrates—there is an inevitable tendency, in minds of any deep sensibility, to people the solitudes with phantom images of powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, therefore, in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led continually to brood over the political ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... Jeanne and those very men against whom she hurled menace and invective had much in common; alike they were impelled by faith, chastity, simple ignorance, pious duty, resignation to God's will, and a tendency to magnify the minor matters of devotion. Zizka[1923] had established in his camp that purity of morals which the Maid was endeavouring to introduce among the Armagnacs. The peasant soldiers of Bohemia ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... to see how these circumstances react upon the village girls. The frolicsome and giddy appear to enjoy themselves much as the boys do, but the position must be cruel to those of a serious tendency. To be treated with disrespect and be made the subjects of rough wit as they go about is only the more acute part of their difficulty. One may suppose that at home they find little appreciation of any high sentiments, but are driven, in self-defence, to be rather ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... William's English campaigns the richest in political teaching. We see how near the cities of England came for a moment—as we shall presently see a chief city of northern Gaul—to running the same course as the cities of Italy and Provence. Signs of the same tendency may sometimes be suspected elsewhere, but they are not so clearly revealed. William's later campaigns are of the deepest importance in English history; they are far richer in recorded personal actors than the siege of Exeter; ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... strongly recommended by the parliamentary committee of 1832, the government determined to increase the rigour of transportation. The effects of the French revolution, and the pressure of commercial distress, had produced a strong tendency to crime. In the agricultural districts of England riot and arson were prevalent: the utmost exertion of the laborer did not preserve his family from want. Depredations upon game, and other species of rural property, exasperated the legislative ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... the "bad lot," had the character of being a big, surly, unattractive young fellow, whose eccentricity presented itself to those who knew his stock, as being of a kind which might develop at any time into any objectionable tendency. His bearing was not such as allured, and his fortune was not of the order which placed a man in the view of the world. He had no money to expend, no hospitalities to offer and apparently no disposition to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... data demonstrate the existence of a considerable correlation between short life (brachybioty, Karl Pearson calls it) in parent and short life in offspring. Not only is the tendency to live long inherited, but the tendency not to ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... this case the old tree were a reasonable being that could co-operate with the gardener, what would the gardener's language be to it? Would it not be this: 'Yield now thyself entirely to this new nature with which I have invested thee; repress every tendency of the old nature to give buds or sprouts; let all thy sap and all thy life-powers rise up into this graft from yonder beautiful tree which I have put on thee, so shalt thou bring forth sweet and much fruit.' And the language of the tree to the gardener would be: 'When thou graftest me, oh, ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers

... some of which were brought to their minds by views of the western country through which they were passing. Professor Snodgrass took no interest in anything except a big book which he was studying carefully, at times making notes on slips of paper, which had a tendency to drop into the aisle, or under the seat when he was not looking. In consequence the car, in the vicinity of where the professor sat, looked as though a theatrical snow-storm ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young

... considers not by any means so dangerous as has been represented. At 9,000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean the air becomes extremely rarified, and the sky exhibits a blue-black appearance. He does not consider it at all safe for persons to attempt the ascent, having a tendency to apoplexy, for at the height of 15,000 feet above the level of the sea, the extremely rarified state of the air, as well as the almost unbearable oppression of the sun's rays, though surrounded with snow, would increase that tendency to an alarming extent. So ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various

... the exact symptoms exhibited by a person to whom a small dose of orosin has been administered. In most cases, however, such a state of mind develops into actual insanity with a homicidal tendency. Such a patient should be very carefully watched, for in ninety per cent. the chance of a cure ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... perhaps they derived an increase of knowledge in thievish arts of every description. At the commencement of the fifteenth century no nation in Europe was at all calculated to vie with the Italian in arts of any kind, whether those whose tendency was the benefit or improvement of society, or those the practice of which serves to injure and undermine it. The artists and artisans of Italy were to be found in all the countries of Europe, from Madrid to Moscow, and so were its charlatans, ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... sisters and mothers;" "girls run about as they please, without care or guidance." This state of things is "a spreading social evil," and men are at their wit's end to know what is to be done about it. They are ransacking "national character and customs, religion, and the particular tendency of the present literary and scientific thought, and the teaching and preaching of the public press," to find out the root of the trouble. One writer ascribes it to the "exceeding restlessness and the desire to be doing something which are predominant and indomitable in the Anglo-Saxon ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson

... our fellow-creatures. If any or all of these may be considered likewise as private affections, as tending to private good, this does not hinder them from being public affections too, or destroy the good influence of them upon society, and their tendency to public good. It may be added that as persons without any conviction from reason of the desirableness of life would yet of course preserve it merely from the appetite of hunger, so, by acting merely from regard (suppose) to reputation, ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler

... Canada is much colder than our section of the Province. Learned men say something about the regular northward tendency of the isothermal lines from east to west; certain it is that, the farther west you go, the higher is the mean annual temperature, back to the Pacific, I believe. So the French Canadians have much the worst of the cold. You might have noticed flights of steps to the doors ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... doesn't get into as much mischief since he began to go to school," acknowledged Marilla. "I suppose he works off the tendency with the other boys. But it's a wonder to me we haven't heard from Richard Keith before this. Never a ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... terminated; for this second absorption of variolous matter acts like common matter, and produces only irritative fever in those children, whose constitutions have already experienced the absorption of common matter; and inflammation with a tendency to produce new abscesses in those, whose constitutions have not experienced the absorptions ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... art which are found in Duerer's MSS. and books on proportion. He did not give them the final form or order which he intended, and it seems to me that to arrange the more important according to the subjects they treat of will be the simplest way of arriving at general conceptions as to their tendency and value. We shall thus bring together repetitions of the same thought and contradictory answers to the same question; and after each series of sentences, I myself shall discuss the points raised, illustrating my remarks from modern writers whose opinion in these matters ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... narrow home of fire, hemmed in by brilliant colors, nearly all—perhaps quite all—of which could be found in a glowing furnace. Every shade of yellow is there—lemon yellow, sulphur yellow, the yellow of amber, the yellow of orange with its tendency toward red, the yellow of gold, sand color, sun color. Cannot all these yellows be found in a fire? And there are the reds—pink of the carnation, pink of the coral, red of the little rose that grows in certain ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... my taking notice, in this address to you, of an anonymous production; but the manner in which that performance has been introduced to the army, the effect it was intended to have, together with some other circumstances, will amply justify my observations on the tendency ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... very impressive, the nerve-pulp being harassed by the gradually swelling prelude. There is defiant power in the first theme, and the constant reference to it betrays the composer's exasperated mental condition. This tendency to return upon himself, a tormenting introspection, certainly signifies a grave state. But consider the musical weight of the work, the recklessly bold outpourings of a mind almost distraught! There is no greater test for the poet-pianist ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker

... and goddesses, which were more decent, and had more the appearance of religious solemnity, though even in these, the women dressed out in all their finery; and, adorned with flowers and garlands, either formed splendid processions, or assisted in performing ceremonies, the general tendency of which was to ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous

... papyrus by some amateur. The conventional attribution of the Hymns to Homer, in spite of linguistic objections, and of many allusions to things unknown or unfamiliar in the Epics, is merely the result of the tendency to set down "masterless" compositions to a well-known name. Anything of epic characteristics was allotted to the master of Epic. In the same way an unfathered joke of Lockhart's was attributed to Sydney ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang

... 'Every child will tell you that the tendency of spirits to return to the old haunts of bodily life is almost universal. The universal laws apply ... there is no escape from the great law, the ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips

... according to their wishes, subject, where conflict of claim arises, to their relative ranking right. It has always been observed that the personal eccentricities of individuals in great bodies have a wonderful tendency to balance and mutually complement one another, and this principle is strikingly illustrated in our system of choice of occupation and locality. The preference blanks are filled out in June, and by the first of August everybody knows just where he or she is to report for ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... unless one could read into it a trifle of apology for her rustling silk dress and black kid gloves. She developed a love for long words which had not distinguished her in her earlier years, and this tendency betrayed her into occasional malapropisms, the best of which is perhaps worth preserving. My mother was a very notable housewife and trainer of domestic servants. It was her pet hobby to take some neglected ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... 'corners' and 'rings' and steal the money of the municipality; never mind; some day, when we have time, we will straighten things out. In youth, also, one is tempted to gallant apparel, bravery of show, a defiant bearing, gold and lace and colour. In cities this tendency of youth is shown by great buildings and big institutions. In youth, there is a natural exaggeration in talk: hence the spread-eagle of which we hear so much. Then everything which belongs to youth ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant

... more powerful influence than the winds, yet less taken into account. It is the spinning of the earth on its axis. Undoubtedly are the "trades" indebted to this for their direction towards the west,—the simple centrifugal tendency of the atmosphere. Otherwise, would these winds blow due northward and southward, coming into collision on the line ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... the accepted spot; the crowds gathered there, and the omnibus, stopping there, emptied and refilled. But there has been a gradual tendency towards the abandonment of the corners, causing the omnibuses to pull up farther and farther from them, so that it seems almost as if a time may come when, instead of Piccadilly Circus, for example, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various

... so-called Sheppard-Towner Bill is one answer in the United States to the right of the child and its mother to life and health. There are those who deplore the tendency to seek for such aid to individuals through the Federal Government. The Governor of New York State, for example, although a man of progressive ideas and liberal point of view, opposed "starting aid to mothers and babies from the Washington end," declaring that work for the "welfare of ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... kinds are apt to beget love, so experience teaches us that none have a more direct tendency this way than those of a religious kind between persons of different sexes. The doctor found himself so agreeable to Miss Bridget, that he now began to lament an unfortunate accident which had happened to him about ten years before; namely, his marriage with another woman, who was not only ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... Heaven to all Anglo-Saxon races, but which nevertheless a proper education ought in the end to achieve. Were I asked whether I saw in America any improvement upon Britain in the supreme matter of intellectual honesty, I should reply, No. I seemed to see in America precisely the same tendency as in Britain to pretend, for the sake of instant comfort, that things are not what they are, the same timid but determined dislike of the whole truth, the same capacity to be shocked by notorious and universal ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... martial law in Canada, and placing arms in the hands of people unaccustomed to their use, hostile to our institutions, and heated by intestine dissensions, have a direct tendency to disturb the peace of our citizens, and demands the immediate interference ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... acquainted evidently with grief but not weakened by it, had a high forehead to which the quality of the skin gave a singular polish—it glittered even when seen at a distance; a nose which achieved a high free curve; and a tendency to throw back her head and carry it well above her, as if to disengage it from the possible entanglements of the rest of her person. If you had seen her walk you would have felt her to tread the earth after a fashion suggesting ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... this fern the novice should bear in mind the tendency of the curved sori of youth to become straightened and even confluent with age, although such changes are rather unreliable. Possibly the suggestion of the poetic Davenport may be helpful to some ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton

... to beg Remonencq to come with him to the registrar as a second witness. Here in Paris, in this land of ours besotted with Equality, the inequality of conditions is glaringly apparent everywhere and in everything. The immutable tendency of things peeps out even in the practical aspects of Death. In well-to-do families, a relative, a friend, or a man of business spares the mourners these painful details; but in this, as in the matter of taxation, the whole burden falls heaviest upon ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... special degree irritating to me that, as often as I turned the conversation upon music, and particularly upon singing, he was sure to interrupt me, with that sardonic smile upon his face and those repulsive singing tones of his, by some remark of a quite opposite tendency, very often of a commonplace character. From the great distress which at such times Antonia's glances betrayed, I perceived that he only did it to deprive me of a pretext for calling upon her for a song. But I didn't relinquish my design. The hindrances which the Councillor threw in my ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... his messages to Congress, the President foretold and denounced the tendency of wealth acquired in masses and rapidly by the war contractors and the like as "approaching despotism." He saw liberty attacked in "the effort to place capital on an equal footing with—if not above—labor in the structure of government." It is never to be forgotten ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... formed of personalities essentially different in origin and in tendency," he said. "Yet the most important fact in the political history of recent years is the possibility, I should say the necessity, to introduce unity of views in the government of the republic. These are ideas which you, my dear Garin, have expressed ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... other hand, the tortoise was just sent as a souvenir we should discourage the practice. The tendency on the part of our soldiers in India and Egypt to send home elephants and camels as mementos of the localities in which they are serving is already putting something of a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various

... speaking, we reached the summit of a little hill which sloped down to the valley; Madame Pierson, yielding to the downward tendency, began to trip lightly down the incline. Without knowing why, I did the same, and we ran down the hill, arm in arm; the long grass under our feet retarded our progress. Finally, like two birds, spent with flight, we reached the ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... made to the objections of the modern audience to the state of nudity which would be natural to the time in which the story is laid. But even making allowance for this, the tendency is always to overdo, to have too many beads and fringes and war-bonnets. No more than his white brother did the Indian wear all his ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin

... have my husband burdened with my brother. Henry is too generous as it is; and the Stock Exchange is in such a fearful state now that it is difficult to make a bare living." She sighed heavily, and glanced round the expensively furnished drawing-room, as if wondering whether that abominable tendency towards suspicion on the part of the public, which was causing it to eschew all sorts of speculation, might not result in her losing the few luxuries she ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt

... stout," says the book, "a single pair of pre-molars in each jaw, first toe of the fore-foot rudimentary, tail cylindrical," etc. The dormouse was anything but stout—six months' fasting, save for half a nut, had effectually restrained any tendency that way. No doubt in other respects he was in fair accordance with museum pattern, but he differed in ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... destroy their influence, by arousing the distrust of the Indian, and by separating, when possible, the latter from their side. In proof of this, and so that my statement may not be taken as an exaggeration, it is sufficient to cite substantially two notable measures which, by their tendency, were obviously intended to weaken the influence and good ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... perpetuated. The ministers of the new truth inevitably rise in dignity till they grow into a hierarchy. That truth inevitably seeks to establish itself as scientifically true, and with the aid of the ruling philosophical tendency of the day clothes itself in a view of the universe and in a creed. Thus the essence of Christianity came to consist not in loving the Master and following him in faith and love, but in upholding the authority ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... sleep and propagate his kind like the lower animals. Despite his thick veneer of selfishness, man is at heart a creature of sentiment, and religion is the poetry of the common people. Crude it may be, but its tendency is toward the stars, while all else in man is animalistic and of the earth. Strike the religion, the poetry, out of a people, and you reduce them to the level of educated animals. Annul the power that draws them upward and they must sink back to primordial ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... natural that after the first occupation of the New World the tendency of the explorers should have been to turn their attention to the south and to the still undiscovered lands. At the first glimpse the aspect of the Atlantic coast to the south of Brazil gave little promise of the wealth—that is to say, of the gold—sought by the pioneers, ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... western facade of the Palaces of Food Products and Education are examples of the new tendency in sculpture. These are "The Triumph of the Field" and "Abundance" by Charles R. Harley, the modernist. He has made them intricate and teeming with imagery, giving the beholder much food for study and personal ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry

... in England, Walderhurst had seen him occasionally, and had only remarked and heard unpleasant things of him,—a tendency to selfish bad manners, reckless living, and low flirtation. He once saw him on the top of a bus with his arm round the waist of an awful, giggling shop-girl kind of person, who was adorned with tremendous feathers and a thick fringe coming unfrizzled with the heat and sticking out here ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... only be stimulated by the most delicately-applied influences. Observant and reflective parents, who have not chosen to leave the entire development and upbringing of their children in the hands of nurses, will have noticed that there is a natural tendency on the part of a child, if not interfered with, to think and to expand its faculty of imagination. This tendency is not shared to an equal extent by all children; there are, of course, dissimilarities caused by ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... population, dependant finally on the minimum yearly produce of the district they control. If ever they rise above that limit the natural checks of famine, and of pestilence following enfeeblement, will come into operation, and they will always be kept near this limit by the natural tendency of humanity to increase. The limit would rise with increasing public intelligence, and the organization of the towns would ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... simple, truthful work. But the Pre-Raphaelites are exposed to especial dangers; just now to the dangers that come from success. And these are of two kinds; first, the undermining of that humility which is the secret of mastery; and secondly, the tendency to the development of peculiarities and mannerisms, to the exaggeration of special features that have attracted attention in their work, and which have a factitious value set upon them by the public, as they are taken to be the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... strong after other advocates were exhausted. In his pleadings before a jury he used every resource at his command, indulging in flights of oratory that kindled the imagination, dazzling his hearers with rhetorical tropes and figures, at times humorous and playful, with a tendency to personal allusion most uncomfortable for his opponent. Jordan was terrible in sarcasm. One Asbury Newman, a poor, worthless, drunken fellow, ever ready to testify on either side for a drink of whiskey, was brought upon the witness ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... harmless, or even praiseworthy, sense. What could that sense have been? This question each ancient mythologist answered in accordance with his own taste and prejudices, and above all, and like all other and later speculators, in harmony with the general tendency of his own studies. If he lived when physical speculation was coming into fashion, as in the age of Empedocles, he thought that the Homeric poems must contain a veiled account of physical philosophy. This was the opinion of Theagenes ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... here. The most respectable houses, known throughout the length and breadth of the country for their honorable dealings, are exposed to legal prosecution any moment that an officious fanatic or jealous rival pleases to bring a charge that certain works in their store have an immoral tendency." ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various

... which he formed a part, the singular characters with whom he was placed in contact, the risk and responsibility which seemed suddenly to have encompassed him with their ever-stimulating influence, and, lastly, by the novelty of foreign travel, which, even under ordinary circumstances, has a tendency to rouse and stir ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... in politics, and when of late the King, wishing to check so dangerous a tendency, had sought to know the reason why, she had answered with perfect frankness: "Max says" (for to her, also, Max, the man born to inaction, had been talking), "Max says he is not sure if he means to come to the throne. If he doesn't, it is just as well ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman



Words linked to "Tendency" :   call, tendencious, attitude, favoritism, partisanship, way, disfavour, disposition, inclination, movement, bent, propensity, tendentious, favour, buoyancy, desire, favouritism, mental attitude, denominationalism, sympathy, disfavor, drift, predisposition, trend, negativity, tend, partiality, hybrid vigor, electronegativity, stainability, understanding, literalism, favor, dislike, nonpartisanship, impartiality, perseveration, direction, disapproval, proclivity, heterosis, devices, set



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