"Penchant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... study.—The course of study is flexible, and because of its resiliency it adapts itself easily and gracefully to the native dispositions and the aptitudes of the various pupils. If the boy has a penchant for agriculture, provision is made for him, both in the theory and in the practical applications of the subject. If he inclines to science, the laboratories accord him a gracious welcome. The studies are ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... unfitted him for this work. Glad to be rid of his job, he returned to the country. He knew nothing of administrative or executive life, and aside from the fact that he was a student of history, with a penchant for making historical parallels, there was nothing to show the bent of ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... only in the Colonies, but also in both Republics, English is almost exclusively used. The Boers, and especially the younger generation, have a much greater aptitude and penchant for learning English than for High Dutch; and generally it has been held more important by the parents that their children should become proficient in English, that language being more easily acquired and of vastly greater use ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... his more serious studies Levinsohn diverted himself occasionally with lighter composition, in which many an antiquated custom served as the butt for his biting satire. In his youth he had a penchant for poetry, and his poem on the flight, or expulsion, of the French from Russia was complimented by the Government. His muse dealt with ephemeral themes, but his bons mots are current among his countrymen to this day. A novel sort of plagiarism ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... grimace, embarrasse, double entendre, equivoque, ecclaircissement, suitte, beveue, facon, penchant, coup ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... gauche. Quand il passa prs de moi, il me regarda un moment avec angoisse. Le malheureux avait envie de me demander si je ne les avais pas vues. Mais il n'osa pas.... A ce moment le portier lui criait du haut de l'escalier, en se penchant: ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... with a man who had filled a larger place in the public eye for a decade than any of his colleagues the world over; students were privileged to study a first work by an eminent musician, whose laurels had been won in a very different field; curiosity lovers had their penchant gratified to the full. The popular interest in the affair was disclosed by the fact that never before in the season had the audience at the Metropolitan been so numerous or brilliant; naturally the presence of the admired composer whetted interest and heightened enthusiasm. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... dutiful son, who seems to have no inconsiderable portion of the paternal penchant for broken heads and other similar divertisements, in three weeks from the receipt of the letter found himself on board the Hydra, and rapidly approaching the classic shores of Sidon, Tyre, Ptolemais; the scenes of scriptural records and deeds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... thought I had made a mistake in entering school, and did not begin to see that I had done properly until I had been there for eight or nine months. I asked for an excuse to leave school early in the first term; it was denied me. I tried to sell my trunk for $7, so that I might run away. I had a penchant for running away from disagreeable surroundings. I was offered $6, but for the sake of the difference of $1 I ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... heartlessness of a flirt who could trifle with the affection of one who had a right to assume in her an honor equal to his own deserved only to be hated with even righteous hatred. She saw the scrawled note which she knew Percy had not seen, but what did it signify? An eccentric old lady's penchant for match making? Perhaps she was even more guilty than the girl in attempting to lead Percy to see in Adelaide more than he ought. She might even take an old flirt's delight in the mere number of conquests made by ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... confiding nature, characterized by a penchant for escapade, is denoted by the joy-wheel at the base of Halley's Comet. And so we come to the life-belt. This—my word, this is all right! Unrivalled for resistance to damp and wear, will last three to six times as long as ordinary ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... soumets; je suis presque timide; ma familiarite n'oseroit s'apprivoiser avec toi; j'ai toujours envie d'oter mon chapeau[75] de dessus ma tete, et, quand je te tutoie, il me semble que je joue:[76] enfin j'ai un penchant a te traiter avec des respects qui te feroient rire. Quelle espece de suivante es-tu donc, ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... a pronounced penchant for amputation, Mr. Bridewell," he said after a moment. "Competent surgeon, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... much greater men than either you or I have waited longer for him before now; let him take his time, let him take his time." This was nobly said of the fine old Scotchman; and although Cockburn and I are blood relations, and I have a particular penchant for my lineage, I cannot help remarking that his manner denoted a great want of feeling. I suppose he was pitched upon by Castlereagh as a proper tool to execute his ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... assailed by an almost continuous succession of such hair-raising shrieks and howls, roars and bellowings, as thoroughly convinced me that North Island was no sort of dwelling-place for human beings with a penchant for peace and quietness. Furthermore, there was a moon, that night, well advanced in her second quarter, and at frequent intervals during a particularly restless night I caught glimpses of shadowy forms moving ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... force and his manner was hesitating and uncertain. A course of self- discipline and training led to constant improvement, and while there has never been a pretense of oratorical flight, issues and questions are discussed plainly and effectively. There is a penchant for reducing statements to simple and understandable terms and for stating his conviction with a measure of aggressiveness that ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... elle-meme quelques unes, et qu'elle a recouvert de ses depots quelques autres filons tout formes. Quant a celles des matieres de ces filons, qui ne paroissent pas etre marines (et c'est de beaucoup la plus grande quantite), j'ai toujours plus de penchant d'en attribuer une partie a l'operation des feux souterreins, a mesure que je vois diminuer la probabilite de les assigner entierement a l'eau. Mais quoi-qu'il en soit, ces gangues ne font pas de meme ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... infrequent,—those who were young enough to be fascinated by the bizarre, and those who were old enough to know that it was all in the game. Mr. Skaggs, of the New York Universe, was one of the former class and a constant visitor,—he and a "lady friend" called "Maudie," who had a penchant for dancing to "Rag-time" melodies as only the "puffessor" of such a club can play them. Of course, the place was a social cesspool, generating a poisonous miasma and reeking with the stench of decayed ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Noah's sons, and his own great-grandsons,—Shem, Ham, and Japheth,—who at this time had attained to the frolicsome ages of ninety-five, ninety-two, and ninety-one, respectively. These boys inherited from their father a violent penchant for aquatics, and scarcely a day passed that they did not paddle around the bayous and sloughs of the Euphrates in their ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... any other game so far as I know, but no one cared for any form of amusement that separated two or four from all the others. I imagine that even courting, the divine solitude of two, must have been handicapped by this persistent penchant ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... with him, and we were silent for a while. Later he asked me diffidently not to mention to any one his penchant for ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... but I did not heed them. For instance, Mrs. Pertonwaithe and Mrs. Wickson exercised tremendous social power in the university town, and from them emanated the sentiment that I was a too-forward and self-assertive young woman with a mischievous penchant for officiousness and interference in other persons' affairs. This I thought no more than natural, considering the part I had played in investigating the case of Jackson's arm. But the effect of such a sentiment, enunciated by two such ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... instinct of the actress in Laura had fostered in her a curious penchant toward melodrama. She had a taste for the magnificent. She revelled in these great musical "effects" upon her organ, the grandiose easily appealed to her, while as for herself, the role of the "grande dame," with this wonderful ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... was not without significance to those familiar with history and its penchant for repetition; but was by no means an epoch-maker. It was simply one more festering sore on the syphilitic body social—another unclean maggot industriously wriggling in the malodorous carcass of a canine. It was another evidence that civilization is in a continual flux, flowing now forward, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... still more painful and deplorable. It was vain to consult her about the arrangements, she would not care about anything, except that by some remarkable effect of her perverse condition, she had been seized with a penchant for maize colour and blue for the bridesmaids, and was deeply offended when Albinia represented that they would look like a procession of macaws, and her aunt declared that Sophy herself would be the most ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a martial man, intimating that he had been peaceful only for a while. In truth, he was, during the influence of love over him and up to the very day of his marriage, secretly as blue-moulded as ever for want of a beating. The heroic penchant lay snugly latent in his heart, unchecked and unmodified. He flattered himself that he was achieving a capital imposition upon the world at large, that he was actually hoaxing mankind in general, and that such an excellent piece of knavish ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... Sin in Milton's Paradise Lost, wind herself round me, her beautiful face gradually changing into that of a skeleton. I cried out with terror, and awoke to sleep no more, and effectually cured by my dream of the penchant which I ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat |
