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Tendency   Listen
noun
Tendency  n.  (pl. tendencies)  Direction or course toward any place, object, effect, or result; drift; causal or efficient influence to bring about an effect or result. "Writings of this kind, if conducted with candor, have a more particular tendency to the good of their country." "In every experimental science, there is a tendency toward perfection."
Synonyms: Disposition; inclination; proneness; drift; scope; aim.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Tendency" Quotes from Famous Books



... of brown hair, and carefully-trimmed whiskers that curled round towards his upper lip, where they spent themselves in a faint moustache. His eyes were rather small, and his nose had a decided upward tendency; but, with his pink-and-white complexion and compact well-made figure, he was far from ill-looking, though he ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... forum or debating club that it is of interest here to notice. From this point of view it fairly reflects the influential position of the dissenting body in Royston towards the end of the last century, and that growing tendency to the discussion of abstract principles in national affairs which prevailed more or less from the French Revolution to the Reform Bill, but especially during the last few years ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... to new methods for future occasions. As a general rule, they were wise enough to keep still, and only among themselves did they express their chagrin and disappointment, or suggest that they were not entirely cured of their tendency to run away. The strict discipline of the squadron could not be evaded, and they were compelled to perform all ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... for the most part then, were democratic in tendency. Noteworthy for their attitude of community cooperation and mutual helpfulness, supported by a faith which could not afford to be exclusive, temperate in their personal habits, particularly in the use of alcohol, the patriots of the Fair Play territory looked ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... designation which marked her to be claimed by him. But for John and Jane the index of Providence pointed a brighter passage through life. They had only to conquer the weakness native to them—the dreadful tendency downward. They had, in the spiritual sense, frail hearts. The girl had been secretive about the early activity of hers, though her aunt knew of two or three adventures wanting in nothing save boldness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... fleets anchored in the Downs, the requirements of the great number of men on board, as well as the needs of the vessels, would have a tendency to maintain the supply of skilled and hardy boatmen to meet those needs. Pritchard, in his History of Deal, which is a mine of interesting information, gives a sketch of events and battles in the Downs since 1063. Tostig, Godwin, and Harold are noticed; sea fights between ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... speaking of a similar custom in Australia, Eyre (Central Australia, i, p. 213), says: "This extraordinary and inexplicable custom must have a great tendency to prevent the rapid increase of the population."—Stanley. [Stanley does not translate ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... as I can remember, past five o'clock when I turned along Praed Street. The darkness was coming on, and there was a slight rain falling, and a tendency to fog. However, I noticed something—I am naturally very quick of observation. As I passed the end of the street which goes round the back of the Grand Junction Canal basin, the street called Iron Gate Wharf, I saw turn into it, walking very quickly, ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher

... a 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 ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... fancies of the imagination, are practically atrophied. You will see beggars who find it too troublesome, on cold days, to extricate their hands for the purpose of demanding alms! Man has been described as a tool-making animal, but the burnous effectually counteracts that wholesome tendency; it is a mummifying vesture, a step in the direction of fossilification. Will the natives ever realize that the abolition of this sleeveless and buttonless anachronism is one of the conditions of their betterment? Have they made the burnous, or vice-versa? No ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... in every age been celebrated for the mildness of the climate and the fertility of the soil, seems to be destined to groan under all the horrors of eternal servitude. Whether these effects are merely produced by fortune, or whether the natural advantages it enjoys have a necessary tendency to soften the minds of the inhabitants to sloth and effeminacy, it is certain that the people of Asia have, in general, been the unresisting prey of every invader. At this time several fierce and barbarous nations ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... erected his, upon deceit and oppression; hence the treasures of knowledge were locked up, an inundation of riches and power flowed into the church, with destructive tendency. ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... Miss Heredith searchingly about the young bride. According to an eminent expert in jurisprudence, the tendency to believe the testimony of others is an inherent instinct implanted in the human breast by the Almighty. If that be so, it is to be feared that the seed had failed to germinate in Merrington's bosom, for his ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... be too strongly warned against the tendency of embellishing everything that concerns the heart-life, and this is ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi

... Who for the favours of his ladye fayre Would sally forth to strafe the evil-doer Or beard the dragon in his inmost lair; Find it no more, dear heart, a ground for stray tiffs Because, forsooth, you can't detect in me A tendency to go out whopping caitiffs Daily from ten ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various

... not altogether trust the marquis, but he had always taken a delight in doing anything for anybody—a delight rooted in a natural tendency to ministration, unusually strong, and specially developed by the instructions of Alexander Graham conjoined with the necessities of his blind grandfather; while there was an alluring something, it must be confessed, in the marquis's high position —which ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... essential or spiritual principle supposed by alchemists to be transfusible into material things; an imparted characteristic or tendency. ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson

... pathos, of tragedy, and of awe that can touch the heart or impress the imagination—that was the mission of the church; and as it got further and further afield and had to deal with rude and ruder barbarians the tendency grew to print in still larger capitals. The Catholic church, in short, did for religion what the new journalism has done for the press. It has sensationalized in order to get a ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead

... theology was austere, and their polity, in Church and State, stern; but, in their modes of life, there were some features which gave peculiar opportunity to exercise and gratify a love of social excitement of a pleasurable kind. Let me mention some of the customs having a tendency in this direction, that prevailed in the early settlements of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... have become impressed all at once with the belief that the work contained matter of an heretical description. The general interpretation put upon the book seems to have shown the authorities that they had mistaken its true tendency, notwithstanding the fact that it had been examined again and again by theologians deputed for the duty. To the communication from the Grand Duke the Pope returned answer, that he had decided to submit ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... severe censurer of pieces of a light or indecent turn, which had a tendency to corrupt the morals of youth, to convey polluted images, or to wound religion, whether in itself, or through the sides of its professors, and this, whoever were the authors, and how admirable soever the execution. She often pitied ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... lines. Things cannot go on any longer as they are. Unless something is done to rescue your daughter from the loneliness and sorrow of the life she has been leading for years she will soon pine away. She always had a tendency to consumption, for which reason I sent her to Ems years ago. This old trouble is now aggravated by a new one; her nerves are giving out. Nothing but a change of air can check this. But whither shall I send her? It would not ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... becoming manifest, both in the King's mind as to the tendency of his ideas, and in the eyes of his ministers as to the determination now being formed in the palace. By the very statement of the question it was resolved upon. Guizot and Duchatel thus expressed it to the King: ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... tender, while the fireman crawled out on the running board and extinguished the headlight. The night was very dark, and Jawn leaned out of the cab window, his left hand gripping the throttle lever. The fireman was badly in need of sleep, and showed a tendency to grumble in a half-incoherent way, but Jawn was as silent as at the start. To Harvey, who even in the excitement was afraid to sit down for fear of falling asleep, the engineer was a ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... Ezekielos (Ezekiel), who flourished in about 150 before the common era. In his play, "The Exodus from Egypt," modelled after Euripides, Moses, as we know him in the Bible, is the hero. Otherwise the play is thoroughly Hellenic, showing the Greek tendency to become didactic and reflective and use the heroes of sacred legend as human types. Besides, two fragments of Jewish-Hellenic dramas, in trimeter verse, have come down to us, the one treating of the unity of God, the other of the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... detests me in return— and by way of further offence the material was roughened and displayed a mottled check. The cut was that of a country tailor, the coat accentuating the curve of Aunt Eliza's back, while the skirt showed a persistent tendency to sag at the back. When I fastened the last button of the horror and surveyed myself in the glass, I chuckled sardonically at the remembrance of heroines of fiction whose exquisite grace of outline refused to be concealed ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... exoteric religions of the Romans resembled that of the Greeks, from whom it was borrowed or inherited, there was little or no original thought along metaphysics, religion or philosophy among the Romans. This was probably due to the fact that the whole tendency of Rome was toward material advancement and attainment, little or no attention being given to matters concerning the soul, future life, etc. Some few of the philosophers of Rome advanced theories regarding the future ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson

... direction. And I may here in parenthesis remark that our military men throughout refrained from committing the error of the German generals, and interfering in politics themselves. It is undoubtedly to the credit of our Emperor that whenever any tendency to such interference appeared he quashed it at once. But in particular I should point out that the Archduke Frederick confined his activity solely to the task of bringing about peace. He has rendered most valuable service in this, as also in his endeavours to arrive at favourable relations ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin

... of the race. And so incurable was this obliquity in the soul of Cyrus, that it forced him now to take a tone which he had resolutely set his mind against from the moment of Mrs. Peachey's visit. He wanted to be pleasant, but something deep down within him—some inherited tendency to bully—was stronger ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... was a weak one, had begun to yield, while I remained calm as ever, only that every draught seemed to send a flush of vigour through my limbs. Simon's utterance became more and more indistinct. He took to singing French chansons of a not very moral tendency. I rose suddenly from the table just at the conclusion of one of those incoherent verses, and, fixing my eyes on him with a quiet smile, said: "Simon, I have deceived you. I learned your secret this evening. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... Accordingly, in this case, as the marriage of Peter made it still more probable than it was before that he would in the end secure to his branch of the family the supreme power, it greatly increased the tendency among the nobles to pay their court to him and to his friends. This tendency was still more strengthened by the expectation which soon after arose, that Peter's wife was about to give birth to a son. The probability of the appearance of a son and heir on ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott

... associate with actors. I detest them, but it is only in their company that I can feel I am not glaringly conspicuous. Their talk infects me. I notice a growing tendency to dramatic brevity, to dashes and pauses in my style, to a punctuation of bows and attitudes. Barnaby has remarked it too. I offended Wembly by calling him "Dear Boy" yesterday. I dread the end, but I cannot escape ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... viewed by refracted light, exhibit a deep red color. These blood-corpuscles have been termed discs, and are not, as some have supposed, solid material, but are very nearly fluid. The red corpuscles although subjected to continual movement, have a tendency to approach one another, and when their flattened surfaces come in contact, so firmly do they adhere that they change their shape rather than submit to a separation. If separated, however, they return to ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... six-and-twenty, a manly, well-looking young fellow, with fair hair and bright blue eyes. He was not very tall, and had already begun to develop a tendency towards stoutness, which gave him considerable trouble in after years. At present he kept it down by heavy doses of physical exercise, so that it amounted only to a little unusual fullness of body and the suspicion of a double chin. His enemies called him fat. His friends ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... do everything I could to make them comfortable," he remarked, telling about it later, "and then if they cooked up any racket we should have to see what the end would be. I knew that if they were well filled, it would have a tendency to make them good-natured, and besides that it puts a man in rather an awkward position, when he's got well treated, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... announced that the French had broken the German offensive and could break the German defensive whenever they chose. This pleasing illusion was maintained, not so much by a censorship of the truth as by incapacity on the part of those in authority to discern it, and by a natural tendency of the wish to be father of the thought. German communiqus afforded some means of correction, but they were universally disbelieved or discounted as containing an amount of falsehood of which no ally could ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... or four couples, Lilly marking time with the toe of her white-kid slipper. The elixir of the dance could rush to her head like wine, but she was not sought after as a partner, due to her reserve against a too locked embrace and a curious tendency ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... length and width of the machine. This, of course, it does, but I personally object to any machine in which the wing surface is high above the weight. I consider that it makes the machine very difficult to handle in bad weather, as a puff of wind striking the surface, high above one, has a great tendency ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... and mother ran away and got married when they were nineteen, and they're afraid she inherited the tendency. So they picked out a good, strict, church school. Mae doesn't know how she's ever going to fix her hair without a maid. She's awfully superstitious about moonstones. She never wears anything but silk stockings and she can't stand hash. I'll have to teach her how to make a ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... asserts that "the influencing a judge out of court seems at that period scarcely to have been considered as improper," he give the very words of Sir Edward Coke on the subject. "I will not thus declare what may be my judgment by these auricular confessions of new and pernicious tendency, and not according to the customs of the realm." Is it possible to imagine that Coke, who had himself been Attorney-General during thirteen years, who had conducted a far greater number of important State prosecutions than any other lawyer named in English ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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 fires, and its beaming smiles, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... have rhythm. All that can be said is that verse will scan, while prose will not. The difference is purely formal. Very few poets have succeeded in being so poetical as Isaiah, Sir Thomas Browne, and Ruskin have been in prose. It can only be stated that, as a rule, writers have shown an instinctive tendency to choose verse for the expression of the very highest emotion. The supreme literature is in verse, but the finest achievements in prose approach so nearly to the finest achievements in verse that it is ill work deciding between them. In ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT

... the Peloponnesus, who neglected this art, were the most barbarous in Greece. Baron de Montesquieu, in "The Spirit of Laws," remarked that as the popular exercises of wrestling and boxing had a natural tendency to render the ancient Grecians hardy and fierce, there was a necessity for tempering those exercises with others, with a view to rendering the people more susceptible of humane feelings. For this purpose, said Montesquieu, music, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... of Moses, and accordingly were greatly and justly condemned by them, as appears here and every where else in Josephus. Nor is the case of our modern masquerades, plays, operas, and the like "pomps and vanities of this wicked world," of any better tendency under Christianity. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... the substance was as follows:—It commenced with a declaration that the king had no intention of acting otherwise than became a good Catholic prince; or of injuring the church or attacking the privileges conceded by God to the Holy See. If his words could be lawfully shown to have such a tendency, he would revoke, emend, and correct them in ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... the worst side into account, not an optimism which is only made possible by wearing blinkers. I was reading a day or two ago a suggestive and brilliant book by one of our most prolific critics, Mr. Chesterton, on the subject of Dickens. Mr. Chesterton is of opinion that our modern tendency to pessimism results from our inveterate realism. Contrasting modern fictions with the old heroic stories, he says that we take some indecisive clerk for the subject of a story, and call the weak-kneed cad "the hero." He seems to think that we ought ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... tendency, due, no doubt, to the necessity of handling public questions in a bulky and striking manner, to over-emphasise and over-accentuate, and the president was touched by his national failing. He suggested now that there should be a new era, starting from that ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... days of our grandfathers and grandmothers, the children were taught from the beginning to perform many household duties which the children of today know nothing of. Whether it be a cause or an effect, the truth of the matter is that the modern tendency is to get away from the home influence and home responsibilities at a very early age—to break loose from "mother's apron strings." The talk deals with this phase ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... changed his teacher, who had insisted that he was a tenor, within two months, and since that time had been under the instruction of the master who had declared that he was a baritone. I had known him for some time, and the only perceptible change to me in the voice was a decided tendency to cover and sombre the upper tones. Upon examination, the only thing abnormal was the condition of the soft palate and the surrounding tissue extending down both pharyngeal pillars. The soft palate was swollen to nearly three times its original size and hung down upon the tongue. The symptoms ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller

... The tendency seemed toward a mighty simplification, as though the complexities of the world were reverting toward their original philosophic unity. The complex summer had become simple autumn; the autumn, winter; now the very winter itself was apparently losing its differentiations of ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... material in the roots for future use. Consequently the substance of the root is largely taken into the tops as the plan approaches maturity. It is different with the clover plant. This is a biennial with some tendency toward the perennial plant. It lives long and develops an extensive root system, and its stores up material in the roots during part of its life for use at a later period. About one-third of the total nitrogen content of the clover plant is contained ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins

... French, and not Catholic. You look for it in vain in Rome, for instance, except where the organisation comes from France. The soeurs de charite, who are of all Catholic nations, are organised entirely by the French. The institutions here are branch institutions. In Rome the tendency of everything is to confusion and 'individuality' with separate pockets. Lamoriciere was in despair at it all, and even now people talk of his resigning, though he gave a dinner the other day to his staff, with the toast ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... floor-makers, who seem, at times to act upon the supposition that as a floor has nothing to do but lie still and be trodden upon, it only needs to be laid in place and let alone. This may be true of stone flagging; it is far from being true of inch boards, that have an incurable tendency to warp, twist, spring and shake. Lining floors, especially, whatever their thickness, should be nailed—spiked is a more forcible term—to every possible bearing and with generous frequency; to be specific, say every three inches. The finished hoards must also be secured ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... P. aucuparia, the leaves have a blunter apex than is usually found in either of the American species, and have a more decided tendency ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... famous monuments of Semitic art date from the Persian and Hellenistic periods, and if we glance at them in this connexion it is in order to illustrate during its most obvious phase a tendency of which the earlier effects are less pronounced. In the sarcophagus of the Sidonian king Eshmu-'azar II, which is preserved in the Louvre,(1) we have indeed a monument to which no Semitic sculptor can lay claim. Workmanship and material are Egyptian, ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King

... what he was saying, she asked him if it was really because he suffered from his liver that he had a vision. He replied that he believed that the bad state of his digestive organs, general fatigue, and a tendency to congestion, had all predisposed him to behold ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... thing of incessant action, whose mistakes are many and whose failures stand out in relief. Those who have betrayed it can be pointed out. Those who have lost all revolutionary fervor and all notion of class can be held up as a tendency. Those who have fallen into the traps of the bureaucrats and have given way to the flattery or to the corruption of the bourgeoisie can be listed and put upon the index. Even working-class political action can ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... India. Dr. G. Bidie, of Madras, states that the expressed juice of the leaves is in great repute, wherever the plant grows, as an emetic for children and is safe, certain and speedy in its action. Like ipecacuanha it seems to have little tendency to act on the bowels or depress the vital powers, and it decidedly increases the secretion of the pulmonary organs. Probably an infusion of the dried leaves or an extract prepared from the green plant would retain all its active ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... we hardly know whether we are reading a Christian allegory or no. Allegory has always been a favourite form with Christian writers, and more than one cause may be assigned for it. Already there was, in the taste of the age when the Christian literature arose, a tendency to symbolism, which is seen outside the pale of Christianity. Moreover, the long time in which the profession of Christianity was dangerous, favoured the growth of symbolism as a covert means of mutual intelligence. Then Christian thought had in its own nature something which invited allegory, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... Doubtless this tendency, unless restrained by other demands, is not exempt from danger. We may be carried away by the attraction peculiar to these noble studies, withdraw into antiquity and fall into a species of historical mysticism which ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... also of this reformation, he brought me this morning the enclosed letter, which, indeed, I was glad to see, because, though it seems couched in terms which might have been made public, yet has a secret gall in it, and a manifest tendency to reproach the Government with partiality and injustice, and (as it acknowledges expressly) was written to serve a present turn. As this is an earnest of his just intention, I hope he will ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto

... his fellow-prisoners; for not a farthing of the stolen money had ever been recovered. Even after the events of July 1830, some persons may remember the terror caused in Paris by this daring crime, worthy to compare in importance with the robbery of medals from the Public Library; for the unhappy tendency of our age is to make a murder the more interesting in proportion to the greater sum of money secured ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... most important educational work is his "Treatise on Studies." Rollin anticipated modern practice by seeking to make learning pleasant and discipline humane. He would use the rod only as a last resort—a theory quite contrary to the practice of that time. Too much freedom, he thought, would have a tendency to make children impudent; too frequent appeal to fear breaks the spirit; praise arouses and encourages the child, but too much of it makes him vain. Therefore the teacher must avoid both extremes. While he would have girls know the four ground ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... might serve to correct the frequent misapprehension of Mr. Browning's religious views which has been based on the literal evidence of 'Christmas Eve', were it not that its companion poem has failed to do so; though the tendency of 'Easter Day' is as different from that of its precursor as their common Christianity admits. The balance of argument in 'Christmas Eve' is in favour of direct revelation of religious truth and prosaic certainty regarding it; while the 'Easter Day' vision ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... that any prejudice against it should exist.[30] Samuel Hopkins said in 1776 that something should be speedily done with respect to the slaves to prevent their turning against the Americans. He was of the opinion that the way to counteract the tendency of the Negroes to join the British was not to restrain them by force and severity but by public acts to set the slaves free and encourage them to labor and take arms in defense of the American cause.[31] ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... of anything strictly within his professional range, interested himself in trying to fathom the moral attitude of these people. He was still suspicious of them, notwithstanding a growing tendency to like every one of their pleasant, really agreeable faces. There was neither solemnity, sourness, nor bitterness to be seen anywhere; at the same time, there was no sign of levity. In every countenance was the same inexplicable ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... read it by the watchmaker's eye in luminous rings eruptive of the infinitesimal, or pointed with examples and types under the broad Alpine survey of the spirit born of our united social intelligence, which is the Comic Spirit? Wise men say the latter. They tell us that there is a constant tendency in the Book to accumulate excess of substance, and such repleteness, obscuring the glass it holds to mankind, renders us inexact in the recognition of our individual countenances: a perilous thing for civilization. And these wise men are strong in their opinion that we should ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... aboriginal folk-lore cannot reach its highest scientific value until some method is adopted by means of which an accurate record of the stories can be obtained and preserved. In observations on the traditions of the Indian tribes, the tendency of the listener to add his own thoughts or interpretations is very great. Moreover, no two Indians tell the same story alike. These are sources of error which cannot be eliminated, but by giving the exact words of the speaker it is possible to do ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes

... money, to take up another point, Kenny felt that his son had a peculiar genius for always having money somewhere. Brian had of necessity been saved considerable inconvenience by a tendency to economy and resource. As usual, if anybody suffered it ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple

... were all that now remained from our first boyish heats kindled by the French Revolution, when if we were misled, we erred in the company of some, who are accounted very good men now—rather than any tendency at this time to Republican doctrines— assisted us in assuming a style of writing, while the paper lasted, consonant in no very under-tone to the right earnest fanaticism of F. Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than recommend, possible abdications. Blocks, axes, Whitehall ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... septum. In the third the lumen of the vagina, about two inches from the introitus, was distinctly narrowed by a ridge of tissue. There was uterine displacement and some endocervicitis, but no history of injury or operation and no tendency to contraction. The two remaining cases occurred in patients seen by Dr. J. F. Scott. In one the septum was about 1 3/4 inches from the entrance to the vagina and contained an orifice large enough to admit a uterine probe. During labor the septum resisted the advance of the head for several ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... throughout the contest, to observe the blood-thirstiness that is developed in the hour of triumph, and to be conscious that he is himself among its objects! There are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency—which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbors—to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm. If the guillotine, as applied to office-holders, were a literal fact instead of one of the most apt of metaphors, it is my ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... oldest states in the world I come from, have such faith in its duration, that they are all gradually shaping their institutions so as to melt into ours, and their most thoughtful politicians say that, whether they like it or not, the inevitable tendency of these old ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... impart to a young man, and after several experiments Mrs. Horn found it impossible to say that she wished Margaret could somehow be interested in lower things than those which occupied her. She had watched with growing anxiety the girl's tendency to various kinds of self-devotion. She had dark hours in which she even feared her entire withdrawal from the world in a life of good works. Before now, girls had entered the Protestant sisterhoods, which appeal so potently to the young and generous imagination, and Margaret was of just the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... This persistent tendency to a reduction of wages acquired new strength from the introduction of sewing-machines. As they came gradually into general use, we found the cry raised in all the shops that machine-work was so much better ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various

... 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

... contortions of the limbs, see the agony of the face, note the fangs of the serpent ready to embed themselves in the flesh. While fastening these fearful details in your mind have you not felt some of the horror of it, and has not that feeling shown a tendency to innervate some of the muscles, has not your face shown some of the suffering which you have been studying, and have you not felt a tendency toward the muscular movements of one writhing in agony? Certainly, such motor impulses do result from certain kinds ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith

... called, is so stingy towards me, that I do not care to imitate it. Therefore, with a kind of anxious pleasure, I have secretly (in order not to be prevented by prudent counsel) prepared this edition the particular tendency of which you will find stated in an introductory notice. Only a few copies have been struck off, and I send you herewith a parcel of them, asking you to dispose of them in the following manner. Of the three copies ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... its vicinity, and a dreary world it appeared to me. An early tinge of melancholy was thus infused into my character; and the dismal stories of the monks, about devils and evil spirits, with which they affrighted my young imagination, gave me a tendency to superstition, which I could never effectually shake off. They took the same delight to work upon my ardent feelings that had been so mischievously exercised ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... may think there is no possibility of its being real. That such hints and notices are given us I believe few that have made any observation of things can deny; that they are certain discoveries of an invisible world, and a converse of spirits, we cannot doubt; and if the tendency of them seems to be to warn us of danger, why should we not suppose they are from some friendly agent (whether supreme, or inferior and subordinate, is not the question), and that they are given ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... whom she felt a thoroughly justified tendency to look down, had at any rate an attentive and considerate lover. Elaine walked towards the Park gates feeling that in one essential Suzette possessed something that had been denied to her, and at the gates she met Joyeuse and his spruce young ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... and noble simplicity of the young chatelaine in giving her orders. If an air of distinction seems hereditary in some families it is surely because the exercise of the duties conferred by the possession of wealth has a natural tendency to ennoble the whole ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... a turbid mixture of different races has a tendency to separate after a time into its constituent elements, and certain originally distinct types to re-appear with their characteristic features, how does this law ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams

... and ridiculous as this patchwork appears, it symbolizes a belief of full three thousand years. Men have always been prone to fill with imaginations what they have never sounded with their senses, and it is to this tendency we owe poetry and the arts. The sea was a mystery, and is so still. It was easy to people its twilight depths with forms of grace and beauty and power, for surely the denizens taken from it were strange enough to ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... the mountains, turning them over and over in its course, rubbing down all rough points, and becoming itself discoloured with the particles it has rubbed off the pebbles. All this matter thus produced has a tendency to fall to the bottom and form banks of gravel; but the violence of the stream is constantly altering the shape and position of these beds, carrying the gravel farther, and throwing down in their place half-triturated ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... these, such matters being removed and apart from its own way of life and conduct. It was a little world in itself, and had only the vaguest interest in any other world, save perhaps the world to come, which was indeed a very real prospect to most of the villagers, their inherited tendency being towards a quaint and simple piety that was as childlike as it was sincere. The small congregation to which John Walden preached twice every Sunday was composed of as honest men and clean-minded women as could be found ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... have no fault to find with implications of Hamilton's Federalism, but unfortunately his policy was in certain other respects tainted with a more doubtful tendency. On the persistent vitality of Hamilton's national principle depends the safety of the American republic and the fertility of the American idea, but he did not seek a sufficiently broad, popular ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... same. He had travelled and amused himself,—he had studied languages and literature,—he had made many friends; but after all said and done, the bonde's cutting observations had described him correctly enough. The do-nothing, care-nothing tendency, common to the very wealthy in this age, had crept upon him unconsciously; the easy, cool, indifferent nonchalance common to men of his class and breeding was habitual with him, and he had never thought it worth while to exert his dormant abilities. Why then, should he now begin to think it ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... the day for using the cold bath is, no doubt, the morning, or at least before dinner, and the best mode, that of quick immersion. As cold bathing has a tendency to propel the blood to the head, it ought always to be a rule to wet that part as soon as possible. By due attention to this circumstance, there is reason to believe that violent head-aches, and other complaints which frequently proceed from cold ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin

... Comedies by Bjornson, published in Everyman's Library in 1912.] For nearly ten years previous to this voluntary exile, Bjornson had been immersed in theatrical management and political propagandism. His political activities (guided by a more or less pronounced republican tendency) centred in an agitation for a truer equality between the kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, his point of view being that Norway had come to be regarded too much as a mere appanage of Sweden. Between that and his manifold and distracting cares as theatrical director, he had let imaginative ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... ever done by Friedrich Wilhelm; who had been forced, by sheer compulsion, to embark in that big game.—"Royal Prussia," the Western or POLISH Prussia: this too, as all Newspapers know, has, in our times, gone the same road as the other. Which probably, after all, it may have had, in Nature, some tendency to do? Cut away, for reasons, by the Polish sword, in that Battle of Tannenberg, long since; and then, also for reasons, cut back again! That is the fact;—not unexampled in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... familiar landscape and its small society, was missing too, and it seemed that the ranks thinned steadily day by day. Rat, ever observant of all winged movement, saw that it was taking daily a southing tendency; and even as he lay in bed at night he thought he could make out, passing in the darkness overhead, the beat and quiver of impatient pinions, obedient ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame

... the report comes of a great forest fire in the Northwest, and occasionally the world is horrified by reports of a terrible calamity of this character, involving great loss of life and property. Owing to this fact there is a tendency to look on the northwestern tier of States as one huge forest, ever offering a temptation to that terrible destructive agency—fire. People who profess to have made tours through the country, add ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... problems in the Spaccio della Bestia, and the Cavallo Pegaseo. And though he exchanged the manner of his model for more serious exposition in the trio of metaphysical dialogues, named La Cena delle Ceneri, Della Causa, and Dell' Infinito Universo, yet the irresistible tendency to dramatic satire emerges even there in the description of England and in the characters of the indispensable pedant buffoon. His dialogue on the Eroici Furori is sustained at a high pitch of aspiring ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... perhaps, you will consider merely conjectural criticism: plausible, but not demonstrative. I own it has a higher character in my eyes; and, unless I am greatly mistaken, even the ghost of his own father glances at his adipose tendency, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various

... running her long fingers through her own bronze-flecked ringlets. Selective breeding this, with a vengeance, I thought; an ancient experiment in heredity which of course would in time result in the stamping out of the tendency to depart from type that lies in all organisms; resulting, obviously, at last, in three fixed forms of black-haired, ruddy-haired, and silver-haired—but this, with a shock of realization it came to me, was also an accurate description of the dark-polled ladala, their fair-haired rulers ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... movement the particles of matter tend to become globular from contact with one another. Two species of matter are thus formed, one larger and globular, which continue their circular motion with a constant tendency to fly from the centre of the axis of rotation, the other composed of the clippings resulting from the grinding process. These smaller "filings" from the main bodies, becoming smaller and smaller, gradually lose ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... market price of gold, in the several countries with which we shall principally be connected in commerce, and to take an average from them. Perhaps we might, with safety, lean to a proportion somewhat above par for gold, considering our neighborhood and commerce with the sources of the coins, and the tendency which the high price of gold in Spain has, to draw thither all that of their mines, leaving silver principally for our and other markets. It is not impossible that 15 for 1, may be found an eligible proportion. I state it, however, as a ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... to restrain the violent tendency of your nature for analysis, and to cultivate synthetical propensities. What is virtue? What's the use of truth? What's the use of honour? What's a guinea but a d——d yellow circle? The whole effort of your ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell

... a dun, warns you to look after your affairs and correct all tendency towards neglect of business ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... money; so he buys a tinker's cart and apparatus, and sets up as tinker, and subsequently as blacksmith; a person living in a tent, or in anything else, must do something or go mad; Lavengro had a mind, as he himself well knew, with some slight tendency to madness, and had he not employed himself, he must have gone wild; so to employ himself he drew upon one of his resources, the only one available at the time. Authorship had nearly killed him, he was sick of reading, and had besides no books; but he possessed the rudiments ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... works are of a pure and lofty style, the later ones are not always in good taste. The former are conceived generally in strict observance of classical rules, and will bear comparison with the numismatic masterpieces of antiquity; the latter reflect the realistic tendency of ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... PTOLEMY.—It will be observed that the Greek geographer regarded the Indian Ocean as a landlocked body of water, while he appears to have some knowledge of the so ces of the Nile. The general tendency of the map is to extend Asia very much to the east, which led to the miscalculation encouraging ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs

... intelligence. In the soul of the Hindoo, the Chinese, and the Eastern Slav, the long-inculcated duty of subordination has become almost a second nature, while the most intelligent tribes of the ancient Greeks were famous—or, from a Chinese point of view, perhaps infamous—for a strong tendency in the opposite direction. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... mean by sayin' that, old pal?" questioned the other, who apparently saw nothing in the affair calculated to create any tendency toward dismay in his mind. "You got me in a tail spin, partner—lift the lid, won't you, ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... predictions of his predecessors in the same line, might be left to receive not only the answer of his own book to the selfsame talk of the slavers fifty years ago, but also that of the accumulated refutations which America has furnished for the last twenty-five years as to the retrograde tendency so falsely imputed. But, taking it as a serious contention, we find that it involves a suggestion that the according of electoral votes to citizens of a certain complexion would, per se and ipso facto, produce a revulsion ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... as a dramatic writer, and his masterly powers in comedy are so well evinced in the Relapse, the Provoked Wife, and other plays, that were it not for their strong libertine tendency which have properly banished them from the stage, and almost from the closet, he would have been regarded as a standard classic author in English dramatic literature. His private character seems to have been amiable, and his conduct tolerably correct. He died at his own ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... left him without a peer among his own people, exposed him to the suspicion and underground machinations of his foreign protectors; he therefore quitted them and withdrew to Hebron, where his fellow-countrymen hastened to proclaim him king.* From that time onwards the tendency of the Hebrew race was to drift apart into two distinct bodies; one of them, the house of Joseph, which called itself by the name of Israel, took up its position in the north, on the banks of the Jordan; the other, which is ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... property. Neither his person, nor his politics, nor his absence of culture, found favour in Richard Calmady's sight. And to-day, being somewhat on edge, the brewer's large, blustering presence and manner—at once patronising and servile—struck him as peculiarly odious. Image betrayed an evil tendency to emphasise his remarks by slapping his acquaintances upon the back. He was also guilty of supposing a defect of hearing in all persons older than, or in any measure denied the absolute plethora of physical vigour so conspicuous in, himself. He invariably raised his voice in addressing Richard. ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... show that there is no cause for serious alarm. In woollens, on the other hand, there is apparently better ground for Mr. Williams's mourning. The table on the preceding page points to a distinct downward tendency in our export of woollen manufactures, a tendency which has been only partly checked by the inflation of 1895. If this were the whole truth about our woollen trade, it might be conceded that here at any rate ...
— Are we Ruined by the Germans? • Harold Cox

... of jackals were unceremoniously dislodged from a disused sepulchre, which was allotted to Ananda for his future residence. The king permitted no alteration in his costume, and took care that the food doled out to him should have no tendency to impair his sanctity, which speedily gave promise of attaining a very high pitch. His hair had already become as matted and his nails as long as the Jogi could have desired, when he received a visit from another royal messenger. The Rajah, so ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett

... by the empty and frivolous than by others, is yet inwardly vain; so in Art the quickly attained harmony of the exterior, without inward fulness. And if it is the part of theory and instruction to oppose the spiritless copying of beautiful forms, especially must they oppose the tendency toward an effeminate characterless Art, which gives itself, indeed, higher names, but therewith only seeks to hide its incapacity to fulfil the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... in the South do not inspire any such tendency. Men are judged there not by what they are and are to be, but by what they can now do. Only such things as have an echo in them, that reverberate in the ear of public opinion, that produce an effect of notice, honor, advancement ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... meeting-house. He becomes accustomed to the ways that are characteristic of country people, and finds a place for himself in the industry and social activity of the countryside. When the boy who has grown up in a rural community comes to manhood, his natural tendency is to accept the occupation of farming with which he has become acquainted in boyhood, to woo a country maid for a mate, and to make for himself a rural home after the pattern of his ancestors. In that case his social environment ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... direct usurpation on the just powers of the general Government, and on the equal rights of other States; a plain violation of the Constitution, a proceeding essentially revolutionary in its character and tendency. ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... who, since Sylla's time, had made their way into the Senate had yielded to patrician ascendency. Cicero aimed at a reunion of the orders; and the consulship of Crassus, little as Cicero liked Crassus personally, was a sign of a growing tendency in this direction. At all costs the knights must be prevented from identifying themselves with the democrats, and therefore all possible compliments and all possible concessions to their interests ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... been afraid to read. It still remained unopened in his pocket. But Florence, though she was unhappy, was not even yet jealous. Her fears did not lie in that direction, nor had she naturally any tendency to such uneasiness. He was ill, she thought; or if not ill in health, then ill at ease. Some trouble afflicted him of which he could not bring himself to tell her the facts, and as she thought of this she remembered her own stubbornness on the subject of their marriage, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... middle stature and not uncomely, but there was a look of vacillation about his face, which would have struck even an indifferent physiognomist, while his thin lips, which he was constantly biting (when he was not biting his nails), seemed to indicate a tendency towards cruelty. ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... quarrels were resumed and the northern kingdom, under Bruce, cut itself finally free by the stroke of Bannockburn. Otherwise the reign is a mere interlude, and it is with the succeeding one that we find the new national tendency yet further developed. The great French wars, in which England won so much glory, were opened by Edward III., and grew more and more nationalist. But even to feel the transition of the time we must first realize that the third Edward made as strictly legal and dynastic a claim ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... this little treatise will not fail to see the drift and tendency of Champlain's mind and character unfolded on nearly every page. His indomitable perseverance, his careful observation, his honest purpose and amiable spirit are at all times apparent. Although a Frenchman, a foreigner, and an entire stranger ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain

... there was in each case a real Jaedus or treaty, not imposed by the Imperial power, but having a local origin and springing from the need of common action. The operative force was centripetal; and as the force continues to operate, the tendency of the mass is towards a chemical in lieu of a mechanical fusion.[49] But in the case of the United Kingdom a change from organic union to Federation would be the beginning of dissolution; and the centrifugal force, once set in motion, might lead further ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... they are more properly called, Patricians and Plebeians. The experience of all ages warrants the inference, which may be best stated in the words of Dr. Faber: "In the progress of the human mind there is an invariable tendency not to introduce into an undisturbed community a palpable difference between lords and serfs, instead of a legal equality of rights; but to abolish such difference by enfranchising the serfs. Hence, from ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... government against autocracy and despotism. This we can do with great advantage in our relations with Roumania, and it will be a source of much gratification to me if the information which I have here attempted to disseminate should have the slightest tendency in ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... saved by a Roman Catholic priest!" repeated Tozer, pondering these words in his mind as he slowly pronounced them. He could make nothing of them at first, but finally concluded that they concealed some half-suggested tendency to Rome. ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... and enemy were so mixed that it needed an expert eye to distinguish them. They circled, climbed, dived, looped over and about one another, and it seemed as if the tendency of the oncoming wave was ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... inducements too highly coloured in many instances, have been held out to them, the consequence of which has been that many, whose expectations were excited, suffered proportionate disappointment at the outset of their career as emigrants. Convinced of the injurious tendency of such a practice, and regarding it as a culpable and cruel mockery of misfortunes, which, having been unavoidable, claim our best sympathies, I should not have said so much as I have done on this ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... greatly 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

... living alone could never produce such symmetry and saliency of muscles: race- crossing, climate, perpetual exercise, healthy labor—many conditions must have combined to cause it. Also it is certain that this tropical sun has a tendency to dissolve spare flesh, to melt away all superfluous tissue, leaving the muscular fibre dense and ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... vessels, and given an advantage to the memorialists in question, who had at one time monopolized to themselves the freights, postage, and passage money in sailing ships? or would not, on the contrary, such a state of things have operated so to give a British tendency to trade everywhere, and to furnish freights to British ships, at prices at which the American ship owners could not afford to ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... of the Russian Army of invasion in the Principalities, the Powers could not but be ready to confirm their word by action. If "the Turk" now goes into the background, and if the approaching War appears to you as a "War of tendency" this is the case only because the very motives which may induce the Emperor to insist on his demands—in defiance of the opposition of the whole of Europe, and with the danger of a War that may devastate the world, do betray a distinct ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... sort. Mary retained the most numerous portion of her acquaintance, and the majority of those whom she principally valued. It was only the supporters and the subjects of the unprincipled manners of a court, that she lost. This however is immaterial. The tendency of the proceeding, strictly considered, and uniformly acted upon, would have been to proscribe her from all valuable society. And who was the person proscribed? The firmest champion, and, as I strongly suspect, the greatest ornament ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin

... at present to report any nearer approach to the elementary analysis and all attempts at purification have shown a tendency to make the active substance either disappear entirely or else distribute itself over the several fractions instead of concentrating itself in one. Its basic nature seems to be well established by its behavior with ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy

... than was Jacques Chapeau. Jacques had been in Paris with his master, and finding that all his fellow-servants in the metropolis were admirers of the revolution, he had himself acquired a strong revolutionary tendency. His party in Paris had been the extreme Ultra-Democrats: he had been five or six times at the Jacobins, three or four times at the Cordeliers; he had learnt to look on a lamp-rope as the proper destination of an aristocrat, and considered himself equal to anybody, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... and good practical tendency let us praise this second Parliament; admit, nevertheless, that its history amounts to little—that it handsomely did nothing, and left Oliver to do. But it does propose to modify our constitution, increase the Protector's powers—make him, in fact, a king—make also a second chamber. To the perturbation ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... entirely dispensed with, as the air is pressed out of the cotton and it has no tendency to expand again, and the covering needed is only sufficient to keep the ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... and, looking over the rail-fence into the yard of an adjoining farm-house, a diminutive affair of only four rooms and a box-like porch, he saw an attractive figure. It was that of a graceful young woman about twenty-two years of age. Her hair, which was a rich golden brown, and had a tendency to curl, was unbound, and as she raised and lowered her bare arms it swung to and fro on ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... not so foolish as to imagine for one moment that I can correct the worrying tendency of the age, but I do want to be free from worry myself, to show others that it is unnecessary and needless, and also, that it is possible to live a life free from its demoralizing ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... contemptible in machines, or automatons, capable of producing effects so desirable? Marcus Aurelius was useful to the vast Roman Empire. By what right would a machine despise a machine, whose springs facilitate its action? Good men are springs, which second society in its tendency to happiness; the wicked are ill-formed springs, which disturb the order, progress, and harmony of society. If, for its own utility, society cherishes and rewards the good, it also harasses and destroys the wicked, as ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... and trustful; is it free from the morbid self-love which calls itself "sensitive feeling" and frets at imaginary offences; is the tendency to be grateful for kindness, yet take kindness meekly, and accept as a benefit what the vain call a due? From dispositions thus blessed, sweet temper will come forth to gladden thee, spontaneous and free. Quick with some, with some slow, word and look ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... stay and see this thing through. Some perverse will made him watch his father drawn over the borders of life. And yet, now, every day, the great red-hot stroke of horrified fear through the bowels of the son struck a further inflammation. Gerald went about all day with a tendency to cringe, as if there were the point of a sword of Damocles pricking the nape ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... questions that could not be understood, and commenting on the answers received, he insured perpetual laughter, with the most salutary effects on the over-consideration of any political question, together with a tendency to make his neighbors say: "Ah! Tom Gaunt, he's a proper caution, he is!" An encomium dear to his ears. What he seriously thought about anything in this world, no one knew; but some suspected him of voting Liberal, because he disturbed their meetings most. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... we called upon to tolerate it either. I have the misfortune to concur entirely with the verdict pronounced by the Bishop of Exeter on the subject of 'Essays and Reviews.' Let those who feel little jealousy for GOD'S honour measure out in grains their censure of a volume, the confessed tendency of which is to sap the foundation of Faith, and to introduce irreligion with a flood-tide. Such shall not, at all events, be my method. Private regard, if it is to weigh largely with him who stands up for GOD'S Truth, should first have weighed ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... his nature, and if, as is undeniable, the nature with which he fronts the world is the product of heredity and environment, he would no more be "forced" to do good had God given him impulses strong enough to overcome all tendency to evil than he is now when his impulses come to him from his ancestors ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... to the chief Personage connected with these transactions, it is a proof of the tendency of knowledge, to produce a spirit of tolerance, that they who, judging merely from the surface of events, have been most forward in reprobating his separation from the Whigs, as a rupture of political ties and an ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... was among the lowly, but whose brilliant beauty in your eyes annihilated all social inequalities? Love levels all distinctions, is an adage old as the hills. It brings down the proud heart, and teaches condescension to the haughty spirit; but its tendency is to elevate, to ennoble. It does not make a peasant of the prince, but a prince of ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... 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 ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers

... position on one of the illustrateds; and then I can always turn dealer," he said, uttering the monstrous proposition, which was enough to shake the Latin Quarter to the dust, with entire simplicity. "It's all experience, besides," he continued; "and it seems to me there's a tendency to underrate experience, both as net profit and investment. Never mind. That's done with. But it took courage for you to say what you did, and I'll never forget it. Here's my hand, Mr. Dodd. I'm not your equal ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was the wretched state of the man, whose talents had promised a fair and honourable career, had it not been the wretched tendency of his mind, from boyhood upward, to pamper every unwholesome and unhallowed feeling as a token of the exuberance of genius. De Montaigne, though he touched as lightly as possible upon this dark domestic calamity in his first communications ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... same friend, in his legal practice, with that tendency to mystery which was so remarkable in his conduct in other respects. He delighted in surprising his opponents, and in laying, as it were, ambuscades for them. A suit, in which I was not counsel, but which ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... and kind of food to consume, although the demands of appetite should not be disregarded until it has been demonstrated beyond a doubt that it is not voicing the needs of nature. There has been a tendency which perhaps was a survival of the Puritanical ideas of the early days to stamp as hurtful whatever seemed desirable and pleasant; as examples might be cited the craving for water by fever patients, and for sugar by growing children, which have ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder

... espoused all the passions the spirit of France contained. All through Europe his cousins in Israel espoused like him the causes and the ideas of their adopted countries. Moreover, according to their method, they even had a tendency toward an exaggeration of whatever they adopted. This fine fellow, with ardent but rather heavy voice and look, with his regular features as if marked with a stamp imposed, was more pronounced in his convictions than was ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland

... other hand, as the traveler stays but a short time in each place, his descriptions must generally consist of mere sketches instead of detailed observations. Hence arises, as I have found to my cost, a constant tendency to fill up the wide gaps of knowledge by inaccurate and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... our race have learned, by this time, to take somewhat less literally the old proverb, "None but the brave deserve the fair." Love, it is true, is still recognized as one of the passions (in theory at least) even among the most highly civilized peoples; but the tendency is more and more to count it ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... the extreme moments of it, all those extraordinary means of intense musical expression which the dramatic composer may have found out in his effort to represent the tragic and extreme moments of dramatic complication. And thus the tendency of the musical art is constantly toward the complex, and toward the bringing together of relations so subtle as to have been unintelligible to earlier musicians, and unintelligible now, at first ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... supposed to have been from the beginning of organic life; and the effect which we observe is not change but permanence of species. The individuals still have individual qualities; they still have the tendency to inherit, in addition to the qualities of the species, those of the individual; the individuals still change their abode, and therewith also their conditions of life; a natural selection still takes place in the struggle for existence; and what is the result? From an observation ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... fact that the snake was of a poisonous tendency, and it was left writhing on the ant-heap, with the little creatures swarming in an army out of their holes to commence the task of picking its bones into ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn

... Cardinal Moran, have advocated equal suffrage, but they are in the minority. The Pope has not yet definitely stated the position of the Church; individual Catholics are free to take any side they wish, as it is not a matter of faith; but the tendency of Roman Catholicism is against votes ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... a foot below it is brown, which passes, as you proceed, into deeper yellow; about four feet deep, it passes into sand. No ravines exist, and mounds only do about a few of the larger trees. The soil as usual is light, friable, easily reduced to powder, and has a very slight tendency to stiffness. ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith

... cigars, Simms having begun to smoke of late years to discourage a tendency to stoutness. Then all would join in the diversions of the afternoon, which sometimes led to the "Edge of the Swamp," a gruesome place which the poet of Woodlands had celebrated in his ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett

... many people. In the first place for the young lady, your ward, Colonel. Then for your kinsman—and Mr. Ulick Sullivan. After that for quite a number of honest gentlemen, tolerably harmless and tolerably well-reputed here, whose only fault is a tendency to heroics after dinner. It would be so serious, and for so many, Colonel, that for my part I should be glad to suffer in such good company. Particularly," he continued, with a droll look, the droller for his appreciation of the Colonel's face of discomfiture, "as being a Protestant ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... address that I delivered when I was formally inducted into the Chair of Topical Linguistics. I mention this fact not because it is of the slightest importance in this present narrative, but because I think that it well illustrates the tendency towards illogical association that is so curious a characteristic of the ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... the enemy," he said, "and has communicated the same tendency to all his men. It's a fatal mistake in war; it's a fatal mistake, I tell you, sir. The ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... clear, that these proceedings of the evening had no connection with the Meeting, but, on the contrary, that every thing which was said at the Meeting had a natural tendency to prevent them. As to the attack on the office of the Morning Chronicle, that might possibly arise out of what Mr. Hunt said at the Meeting. And, what then? Was he to endure the calumnies, the unprovoked calumnies, of that paper for years, and never reply a word? It would have cost ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... natural tendency to think of Jesus as different from other men in the human element of his personality. Our adoration of him as our divine Lord makes it seem almost sacrilege to place his humanity in the ordinary rank with that of other men. It seems to us that life ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... person shows the character of the vital force as modified by the environment of food, air, motives, and education. The brain, no less than the body,—indeed, more fully than the body,—shows the elements of the life and the tendency to health and longevity, or the reverse, upon which an expert cranioscopist can give ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... in early years, and of house linen and curtain-fringes in later life, is so very interesting to her own eyes, that she cannot believe but what other people will rejoice to behold it. I would not, however, be held as regarding this tendency as evil. It leads to conversation of some sort among people, and perhaps to a kind of sympathy. Mrs. Jones will look at Mrs. White's linen chest, hoping that Mrs. White may be induced to look at hers. One can only pour out of a jug that which is in it. For the most of us, if we do ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... special importance to this political application of his paper, for he gave it the title, which otherwise would have been hardly suitable, of "The Freedom of Science in the Modern Polity." Unfortunately he forgot to add to this title the two words in which the special tendency of his discourse culminates; the two pregnant ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel



Words linked to "Tendency" :   inclination, negativity, impartiality, electronegativity, disposition, disfavour, denominationalism, proclivity, tendencious, favor, drift, disfavor, Militant Tendency, nonpartisanship, leaning, literalism, call, favoritism, disapproval, partiality, sympathy, desire, partisanship, heterosis, understanding, tend, favour, perseveration



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