"Penchant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exhibited; consequently they enjoy the great advantages of learning the slang language, and of hearing prime chaunts, rum glees, and kiddy catches, in the purest and most bang up style. He has likewise a fine opportunity of contracting an unalterable penchant for the frail sisterhood, blue ruin, milling, cock fighting, bull and badger baiting, donkey racing, drinking, swearing, swaggering, and other refined amusements, so necessary to form the character of an ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... 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. Long before the evening ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... thing imaginable, dislike included, than from passion that was, in any case, short-lived. But this princess of intrepid spirit, versatile gifts, ideal fancies, and platonic theories, who had aimed at an emperor and missed a throne; this amazon, with her penchant for glory and contempt for love, forgot all her sage precepts, and at forty-two fell a victim to a violent passion for the Comte de Lauzun. She has traced its course to the finest shades of sentiment. Her pride, her infatuation, her scruples, her new-born humility—we ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... you as much. We made an interesting journey through the provinces, did we not, my lady? It is a pity your father, the Marquis, could not have enjoyed it with us. He had a penchant for interesting situations, and in France today anything may happen. In a few scant months dukes have turned into pastry cooks, and barbers' boys into generals. Tomorrow it may be a republic, or a monarchy that governs, or some bizarre ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... of thirty or more, and as Mark was present, Juno seized the opportunity for ascertaining, if possible, his real opinion of Helen Lennox, joking him first about his having taken her to ride so soon, and insinuating that he must have a penchant for every new ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... suggested this profession to me at a later date. It is probable; but then I should have had no time for it. Would any workman, artisan, or tradesman give up a certainty, however slight it may be, to yield to a passion which would be surely regarded as a mania? Hence my irresistible penchant for the mysterious could only be followed at this precise period of ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... la brutalite des Noirs libres pour ceux de leur espece. Parviennent-ils a se procurer des esclaves? ils les traitent avec une barbarie dont rien ne peut approcher; ils les nourrissent plus mal encore que ne font les Blancs, et les surchargent de travail: heureusement leur penchant a la faineantise et a l'ivrognerie, les tient dans un etat de ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... quality of movement which characterize the procession of figures rhythmically moving through the picture. Of the two large nudes on the same wall, one, a Besnard, is vulgarly physical, although well painted, and the other too insipid to make one feel that the French penchant for nudes is sufficiently justified. Le Sidaner's poetic evening recommends itself for the quiet intimacy with which it is handled. Herrmann Vogel's portrait of a gentleman in a chair, also on the ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... in a half-hearted way. His feelings had been hurt, so the twenty told me, because his offer to the church had been refused. But the wassail went on; and Brady himself couldn't have hammered the thirst mob into a better imitation of the real penchant for the stuff that you screw out of a ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... 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 and rotten moralities. There is no defence to be made for it. But what do you ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... etc. But most of these are more in the nature of sub-headings to the subjects in our list, and offer a more restricted field of collecting. Indeed I am in some doubt as to whether the large-paper collector should be included here, for his penchant is as far removed from true book-collecting as is that of the specialist in bindings. His hobby can have nothing to do with literature, since it is only the external characteristics of a book which appeal to him. He may be 'wise in his generation,' ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... good. I've always had a penchant for china. My mother-in-law thinks I'm extravagant, and sometimes I think she is right. You never saw my Capodimonte ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... 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 ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... detail the story of the decay of the capital and the pitiful plight of the Throne. The Emperor Go-Nara (1527-1557) was reduced to earning his own living. This he did by his skill as a calligrapher—at least one instance of something useful resulting from the penchant of the Court for the niceties of Chinese art and letters. Any one might leave at the palace a few coins for payment and order a fair copy of this or that excerpt from a famous classic. The palace was overrun, the chronicler says. Its garden ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... doesn't seem real. California gardens are like that, and to those of us from bleak countries they look like pictures out of books. There is this well-groomed garden of the living present hugging up close to the ruins of yesterday and then, if you please, Mother Nature, with her penchant for whimsy, has grown right up against these two a riot of purple and gold lupine, a product of her own ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... a husband. His elation over all that was implied by her consulting him on so personal a matter, was almost lost in his feeling of annoyance. This made it plain that he must lose no time, but marry her offhand. What with her penchant for orphans and for foolish investments, she would make ducks and drakes of her fortune unless a man ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... whisperings and the moments of intense excitement when, with locked arms and heads close together, they drew surreptitiously away from their fellows for secret conclave. When presently Greaser Tunxton, a solitary youngster who ranked high among the polers and high markers with a curious penchant for chemistry, began to be seen in their company, the Tennessee ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... themselves and justified his choice. General Foster, now commanding the department of North Carolina, has shown himself an able, active general. All who have been connected with him, speak highly of him. Though not a Massachusetts man, he has a peculiar penchant for Massachusetts troops: he was first at Annapolis, and picked out for the first brigade the Massachusetts soldiers. Recently, through the Governor, he has obtained some eight or ten more regiments, and in some way or other he has the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... comfortable home in Philadelphia, and traverse such inclement wilds. But love can play the "wild" with any young man. Yet we will not spoil our narrative by introducing any of it here. Nor could it have been love that induced Joe to share his master's freaks; but rather a rare penchant for the miraculous adventures to be enjoyed in the western wilderness, and the gold which his master often showered upon him with a reckless hand. Joe's forefathers were from the Isle of Erin, and although he had lost the brogue, he still ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... It was positively uncanny, the heathen ceremonies those grey ones pulled off in burying their grey brother. And I was only fifteen, alii kapo over them by blood of heathenness and right of hereditary heathen rule, with a penchant for Jules Verne and shortly to sail for England for my education! So one learns. Small wonder my father was a philosopher, in his own lifetime spanning the history of man from human sacrifice and idol worship, through the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... souvent se parler, se chercher? Dans le fond des forets alloient-ils se cacher? Helas! ils se voyaient avec pleine licence; Le ciel de leurs soupirs approuvait l'innocence; Ils suivaient sans remords leur penchant amoureux; Tous les jours se levaient clairs et sereins ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... structure you may elect to use for a camp, do not fail to cover the roof with a screen of green boughs before building your campfire. Because there will usually be one fellow in camp who has a penchant for feeding the fire with old mulchy deadwood and brush, for the fun of watching the blaze and the sparks that are prone to fly upward; forgetting that the blazing cinders are also prone to drop downward on the roof of the tent, burning ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... and make yourself quite at home. You're right, it is getting sharp and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see signs of frost, the first of the season, in the morning. We're up here knocking about a little, partly to hunt, but mostly because I've a penchant, that is, a weakness for exploring out-of-the-way places. Stackpole, did you say your name was?—well, mine's Cuthbert Reynolds, this is my friend, Eli Perkins, and, you seem to know Owen, so I won't try to introduce him. ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... faded from Francis' glance. The situation appealed to his strong penchant for merry plaisanterie. Besides—such was his overweening pride—to hear a woman confess she cared for another dampened his own ardor, instead of stimulating it. "None but himself could be his parallel;" the royal lover could brook no rival. Had she merely ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... kilometres off my proper route, from whence a dozen kilometres over a very good road brings me to Sezanne, where the Hotel de France affords excellent accommodation. After the table d'hote the clanging bells of the old church hard by announce services of some kind, and having a natural penchant when in strange places from wandering whithersoever inclination leads, in anticipation of the ever possible item of interest, I meander into the church and take a seat. There appears to be nothing extraordinary about the service, the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... but it seems that he and his family have a penchant for doing that sort of thing, and, some years ago, in one of the big mergers in which his family took a prominent part, they, or some one connected with them, pinched the Honorable Horace Carwell so that he squealed ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... always endeavour to be as dutiful as possible. She is so very strenuous, and so tormenting in her entreaties and commands, with regard to my reconciliation, with that detestable Lord G. [2] that I suppose she has a penchant for his Lordship; but I am confident that he does not return it, for he rather dislikes her than otherwise, at least as far as I can judge. But she has an excellent opinion of her personal attractions, sinks her age a good six years, avers that when I was born she was only eighteen, when ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... result of his chagrin. Here he remained for twenty years. "Olympic" succeeded better at Berlin, though the boisterousness of the music seems to have called out some sharp strictures even among the Berlinese, whose penchant for noisy operatic effects was then as now a butt for the satire of the musical wits. Apropos of the long run of "Olympic" at Berlin, an amusing anecdote is told on the authority of Castel-Blaze. A wealthy amateur had become deaf, and suffered ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... 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 paint—I mean life—of extraordinary durability. Now for the ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... 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 ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... him—amiable, meek, and silent as ever. And so was Baby La Certe, a five-year-old by that time, and obviously a girl with a stronger penchant than ever ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... very proud of it. But apropos of Madame Duval, she has been long absent from Paris, just returned, and looking out for conquests. She says she has a great penchant for the English; promises me to be at ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very curious and interesting, the literary fate of Charles Lamb. Jocular Bishops, archly toying Rural Deans, Rectors with a "penchant" for anecdote, scholarly Canons with a weakness for Rum Punch, are all inclined to speak as if in some odd way he was of their own very tribe. He had absolutely nothing in common with them, except a talent for giving false impressions! ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... the pursuit. Yet it is probable that had I been launched about this time into some agreeable career, that of arms for example, for which, being the son of a soldier, I had, as was natural, a sort of penchant, I might have thought nothing more of the acquisition of tongues of any kind; but, having nothing to do, I followed the only course suited to my genius which appeared ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... not find it in her heart to say no. It would have been wise if she had done so. A pair of jealous eyes was fixed upon her. Miss Emily Carter had for a considerable time tried to fascinate Mr. de Brabazon, whose wealth made him a very desirable match, and she viewed his decided penchant for Florence ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... swinging doors inscribed "Ladies" on one side and "Gents" on the other. Miss France laughingly insisted that they pass each on the proper side of this divided portal. She was a creature of swift moods; one moment feverishly gay, the next brooding, with a penchant for satire. He wondered how she endured the hard work of a telephone switch-operator. But one felt that whatever she willed she would do. Eagerly she sipped her steaming coffee from a heavy crockery cup, nibbling at a bit of French bread. Then she said to him so suddenly that he almost ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... baths and shower baths were among his most constant practices. In those days scientific ablution was not very generally practised, and I am sure that in many places during his travels my father was looked upon as an amiable maniac with a penchant for washing. ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... by our dear friend, who, leading us to our rooms, had a rack-off of his waste steam in the ever delicious cunt of my loved wife, who, it will be recollected, had a great penchant for the Count, when she used to prefer him at our Percy Street orgies. When the Count retired, I plunged my excited prick into the balmy bath he had prepared for me in my wife's cunt, fucking her fast and furiously the instant he retired, a change she loved above all things; ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... Watts, D.D., was born at Southampton, Eng., in 1674. His father was a deacon of the Independent Church there, and though not an uncultured man himself, he is said to have had little patience with the incurable penchant of his boy for making rhymes and verses. We hear nothing of the lad's mother, but we can fancy her hand and spirit in the indulgence of his poetic tastes as well as in his religious training. The tradition ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... cameras, but we fear that our kindest remarks may be misunderstood by one so unused to a quiet civilisation with no revolutions, so we refrain from all personal comments. This product of a land of luxuriant vegetation has a quaint penchant for collecting matchboxes (filled), old boots, deer horns, and any odd things lying about the camp belonging to himself or other people; still he is always cheerful and content, never grumbles, and can give valuable information respecting the ways ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... and an ermine, All private favourites of Don Juan;—for (Let deeper sages the true cause determine) He had a kind of inclination, or Weakness, for what most people deem mere vermin, Live animals: an old maid of threescore For cats and birds more penchant ne'er displayed, Although he was not old, nor ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... bullfinch, and an ermine, All private favourites of Don Juan;—for (Let deeper sages the true cause determine) He had a kind of inclination, or Weakness, for what most people deem mere vermin, Live animals: an old maid of threescore For cats and birds more penchant ne'er display'd, Although he was not old, nor even ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... 1864 in Laclede, Missouri, and is tall, wiry and strong. Every inch of his six feet is of fighting material. He is a man of action and has a penchant for utilizing the services of young men rather than staid old officers of experience. Pershing is a real military man, and has been notably absent from such things as banquets and other functions ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... which he draws from it or alter the situation as I have described it. For morality, to be genuine, must be a choice; the good must know its alternative or it is not good. Only those who already have a penchant for sin will be corrupted by imaginative sympathy with passion; a character that cannot resist such an influence is already undermined. Life itself is the great temptation; how can one who cannot look with equanimity upon ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... to note that the problem is not unique to the United States. In the Soviet Union, which counts itself as the world's prime investigator of space, there is likewise an element of citizenry which finds itself puzzled over the U.S.S.R.'s penchant for the interplanetary reaches. ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... knows there is very little good of arguing the point much further. He has known Ted for eight years without finding out that a certain bitter and Calvinistic penchant for self-crucifixion is one of his ruling forces—and one of those least easily deduced from his externals. Still ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... had lost all the interest which I used formerly to take in politics; but the extreme pleasure I felt at the news of the Reform Bill's being thrown out by the House of Lords, and of the expulsion, or resignation of Earl Grey, &c., convinced me that I have not as yet lost all my penchant for politics. I am extremely glad that aunt has consented to take in 'Fraser's Magazine;' for, though I know from your description of its general contents it will be rather uninteresting when compared with 'Blackwood,' still it will ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... The penchant for pedigrees and genealogical registers, made up from a mixture of genealogico-historical and ethnologico-statistical elements, is a characteristic feature of Judaism; along with the thing the word ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... in my boyhood days I had a strong penchant for military parade. I remember well the respect always shown to Revolutionary veterans, who survived to the period of my boyhood. At every meeting, political or otherwise, where these soldiers appeared to share in the assemblage of citizens, they were received with profound respect. Hats came ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... force productrice des actions des animaux, et de quelques faits particuliers qui resultent de l'emploi de cette force; p. 302. De la consommation et de l'epuisement du fluide nerveux dans la production des actions animales; p. 314. De l'origine du penchant aux memes actions; p. 318. De l'instinct des animaux; p. 320. De l'industrie de ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... poor devil is continually drunk and dort. On the fifth day of this regime he has an extreme disgust for spirit; he earnestly requests other diet: but his desire must not be yielded to until the poor wretch no longer desires to eat or drink: he is then certainly cured of his penchant for drunkenness. He acquires such a disgust for brandy or other spirits that he is ready to vomit at ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... the woodshed a disemboweled chest of drawers had been turned into an apartment-house for dolls. All the dolls that had dwelt in the Madigan family since Kate's babyhood (with the exception of Split's Dora, whom Fom, according to the preordained penchant of mothers, loved best because for her sake she suffered most) had ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... peculiar ideas of independence and his abruptness in speaking his mind 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 ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... and carrying Cunningham's patent topsails, the Teutonic skipper cracked on all his ship could stagger under, and thanked heaven when he saw the stranger hull-down; for Bully, with his fidus achates, the almost equally notorious Captain Ben Peese, had a penchant for boarding Dutchmen and asking for a look at their chronometers, and in his absent-minded way, taking these ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... narrower and overhung with wandering branches and creepers. The brambles seemed to have a special penchant for Mrs. Hading's flying ends of tulle and lace, and she spent most of her time disengaging herself while Druro went ahead, pushing branches out of the way. Poor Marice! Her feet ached in their high-heeled shoes, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... strength of thought, something like the rudiments of good sense; and it will not seem surprising that I was generally a welcome guest where I visited, or any great wonder that always, where two or three met together, there was I among them. But far beyond all other impulses of my heart, was un penchant a l' adorable moitie du genre humain. My heart was completely tinder, and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other; and, as in every other warfare in this world, my fortune was various; sometimes I was received with favour, and sometimes I was mortified with ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... conciliate a political faction, the life of many a private soldier was sacrificed. Lincoln, it is true, was by no means solitary in the unwisdom of his selections for command. His rival in Richmond, it is said, had a fatal penchant for his first wife's relations; his political supporters were constantly rewarded by appointments in the field, and the worst disasters that befell the Confederacy were due, in great part, to the blunders of officers ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... list of wealthy tax-payers, the list contained four lawyers, and only one was a barrister. The instance proves little, for a lawyer may be very rich and yet pay no taxes. The assessors may fight shy of his bell-pull as they go their rounds, because of his penchant to find flaws in their actions and bring them official discredit in an apparently laborious task, but in reality ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... chosen," Godensky went on, "happens to be a protege of mine. I made him—gave him his first case, his first success; and have employed him more than once since. Odd, what a penchant Mr. Dundas seems to have for men in whom I, too, have confidence! Last night, it was Girard. To-day, it ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... often attracted by sugared trees, whether old or fresh; and Dr. Knaggs says that by day several butterflies, chiefly Vanessidae, a group comprising the "Peacock," the "Tortoiseshell," the "Red Admiral," the "Painted Lady," and the "Camberwell Beauty," have a penchant for the sugar, and may, by this means, be enticed within our reach; and the "Purple Emperor" ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... sentimental imbecility; he took in several weekly papers of unpromising title for the chief purpose of deciphering cryptograms, in which pursuit he had singular success. Add to these characteristics a penchant for cheap jewellery, and Oliver Peak ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... a basketful," he thought, and he began to dwell pleasantly upon the satisfaction the sight of his successful foray would give the doctor, who had a special penchant for truffles, and had often talked about what expensive delicacies they were for those who ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... did she divulge her clerical romance. When she had first returned to her country there had been a pagan, Swinburnian young man in Asheville, for whose passionate kisses and unsentimental conversations she had taken a decided penchant—they had discussed the matter pro and con with an intellectual romancing quite devoid of sappiness. Eventually she had decided to marry for background, and the young pagan from Asheville had gone through a spiritual crisis, joined the Catholic Church, ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... not look like it," observed the young girl, taking the album from the table and gazing earnestly upon Elsie's lovely countenance. "What a sweet, gentle, lovable face it is! I'm sure I shall dote on her; and if I can only persuade her to return my penchant, won't we have grand good times while she's here? But there's Simon with old Joan and the carriage. He'll hunt them up for me at the depot; won't ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... eyes, moist now with the pressure of his emotions, and while he was wiping them, Mrs. McKaye and her daughters exchanged frightened glances. Elizabeth's penchant for ill-timed humor disappeared; she stood, alert and awed, biting her lip. Jane's eyebrows went up in quick warning to her mother, who paled and flushed alternately. The latter understood now why Andrew Daney had ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... his left he caught sight of a white tub into which, he recalled sadly, not even a Geoffrey could coax a glittering drop. Yes—he was at Baldpate Inn. He remembered—the climb with the dazed Quimby up the snowy road, the plaint of the lovelorn haberdasher, the vagaries of the professor with a penchant for blondes, the mysterious click of the door-latch on the floor above. And last of all—strange that it should have been last—a girl in blue corduroy somewhat darker than her eyes, who ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... with a very decided penchant for getting into trouble and showing temper. It might have been expected that between the only two natives of Italy in the school there would be at least some fraternal feeling, but these lads appeared instinctively to avoid each other, and Tony's being a senior, made ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... materially to lighten, the crushing burden of the sense of sin. The same intention underlies the effort, occasionally made, to persuade men that, seeing they are such as God created them, it is not for them to repine at being what they are, nor to "take too serious a view" of any "penchant for {151} revolt"—another delightful phrase—they may discover within themselves; as a recent writer has it, "The responsibility of its presence and action does not rest with us, nor are we justified in insulting God who made us, by repenting of what He has done. We might as well repent ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... — N. willingness, voluntariness &c. adj[obs3].; willing mind, heart. disposition, inclination, leaning, animus; frame of mind, humor, mood, vein; bent &c. (turn of mind) 820; penchant &c. (desire) 865; aptitude &c. 698. docility, docibleness[obs3]; persuasibleness[obs3], persuasibility[obs3]; pliability &c. (softness) 324. geniality, cordiality; goodwill; alacrity, readiness, earnestness, forwardness; eagerness &c. (desire) 865. asset &c. 488; compliance &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... 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 ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... a frightened manner, and tried to draw back. Possibly he took me for a latter-day Jack-the-Ripper, with a penchant for elderly male paupers. Or he may have thought I was inveigling him into the commission of some desperate crime. ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Se penchant vers les dahlias, Des paons cabrient des rosace lunaire L'assoupissement des branches venere Son pale ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the interest which I used formerly to take in politics, but the extreme pleasure I felt at the news of the Reform Bill's being thrown out by the House of Lords, and of the expulsion or resignation of Earl Grey, etc., etc., convinced me that I have not as yet lost all my penchant for politics. I am extremely glad that aunt has consented to take in Fraser's Magazine, for though I know from your description of its general contents it will be rather uninteresting when compared with Blackwood, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... as being "not all there". The expression, I imagine, implies a regret that there should not be more. As, however, what there was of Miss McEvoy was chiefly remarkable for a monstrous appetite and a marked penchant for young men, it seems to me mainly to be regretted that there should be as much of ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... darkness our ears were 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 restlessly ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... 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 date ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... America. The hope of this is so pleasant to me, that I have thought of little else for the week past, and having conferred with some friends on the matter, I shall try, in obedience to your request, to give you a statement of our capabilities, without indulging my penchant for the favorable side. Your picture of America is faithful enough: yet Boston contains some genuine taste for literature, and a good deal of traditional reverence for it. For a few years past, we have had, every winter, several courses ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Mr. Kinsella," laughed Mrs. Brown. "She has already confessed to a penchant to seriousness and finds 'beauty in extreme old age'," and pinching Molly's blushing cheek, she went over to join a group of recently made acquaintances who were looking at a distant sail through an overworked spyglass belonging to one of ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... in the body. Some of the likes and dislikes which I, so to say, produced then in 1866 have remained to the present hour. For instance, one particular article of food (I will not mention what, or it would be fatal to my reader's gravity), for which she previously had a penchant, I rendered so distasteful to her that the very smell of it now makes her uncomfortable. I must plead guilty to having experimented somewhat in this way; but what a wonderful light it sheds upon the great problem of the motives of human action! ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... especially had been impressed by the numbers of corks that flew in the house and on the green; and when I invited him to a bottle of champagne, he made hissing sounds and a plop to indicate that Rui had a penchant for that ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... aptitudes or his training incline him to account for facts and sequences in other terms than those of causation or matter-of-fact, they lower his productive efficiency or industrial usefulness. This lowering of efficiency through a penchant for animistic methods of apprehending facts is especially apparent when taken in the mass-when a given population with an animistic turn is viewed as a whole. The economic drawbacks of animism are more patent and its consequences ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... know, Louis—I am somewhat perplexed. If, as you say, Ray Palmer is so deeply smitten with Ruth he must have gotten over his penchant for the other girl. I will think over your proposition, and tell ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Cineas found at Rome, they were an assembly of kings, above law, who dealt out justice fresh and evenly balanced as from the hand of the eternal. In all the uprisings in California there has never been manifested any particular penchant on the part of the people for catching and hanging criminals. They do not like it. Naturally the law detests vigilance because vigilance is a standing reproach to law. Let the law look to it and ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... the diabolical "archdeacon" in "Notre Dame" to the moment when Quasimodo watches him fall from the parapet, are just what one might expect to enjoy in some old-fashioned melodramatic theatre designed for such among the pure in heart as have a penchant for ghastliness. But one forgets all this in a moment when some extraordinary touch of illuminating imagination gets hold of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... flowery expressions and japonica-domish flubdubs. He revels in all those knock-kneed, antique, or crooked and twisted words we used all of us to puzzle our brains over in the days of our youth, and grammar lessons and rhetoric exercises. He has a penchant as strong as cheap boarding-house butter, for mystification, and a free delivery of hard words, perfectly and unequivocally wonderful. We listened one long hour by the clock of Rumford Hall, one night, to an outpouring of argumentum ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Waterloo station. The journey to Bond Street remained in Milburgh's memory like a horrible dream. He was not used to travelling on omnibuses, being something of a sybarite who spared nothing to ensure his own comfort. Ling Chu on the contrary had a penchant for buses and ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... immortal and heavenly voice, a guide given us by Nature, a light revealed unto every man on coming into the world, a law engraved upon our hearts; it is the voice of conscience, the dictum of reason, the inspiration of sentiment, the penchant of feeling; it is the love of self in others; it is enlightened self-interest; or else it is an innate idea, the imperative command of applied reason, which has its source in the concepts of pure reason; it is a passional attraction," &c., &c. This may be as true as it seems ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... le soleil descend dans son brasier; Et voila qu'au penchant des mers, sur les collines, Partout, les milans roux, les chouettes felines, L'autour glouton, l'orfraie horrible dont l'oeil luit Avec du sang le jour, qui devient feu la nuit, Tous les tristes oiseaux mangeurs de chair humaine, Fils de ces vieux vautours nes de l'aigle romaine Que la louve ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... 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 adapted to the boy ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... M. Viot sans ses clefs, hagard, effar, courant de droite et de 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
... his own evidence is to be believed, (and according to some recent suggestions, that is the only evidence which ought to be received) he has no penchant for it. The farmer asks him to join the village dance, whereupon he indignantly exclaims, "What! I sport a toe among such a set of rustics!" Upon the whole I am inclined to believe that as a manufacturer of stays he takes his name from a part of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... Tony. "How goes it? Lookin' a bit white about the gills, aren't you, eh?... Whew! Merriton, old chap, that's my ribs, if you don't mind. I've no penchant for your bayonet-like elbow ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... she were as beautiful as the morning and terrible as an army with banners, and had "round full arms," and "the skin of her face was white and clean, except where it flushed into a most charming pink upon her smooth, cool cheeks." For while "Landy Rivers" was at college he had been seized with the penchant for writing short stories, and had worshiped at the shrines of Maupassant and Kipling, and when a man is craft mad enough to worship Maupassant truly and know him well, when he has that tingling for technique in his fingers, not Aphrodite herself, new risen from ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... etchings bemoaning the current Sumerian go-go lifestyle with its insistence on myths with plotlines and characters and action, not like we had in the old days. As artists, it would be a hell of a lot easier if our audiences were more tolerant of our penchant for boring them. We'd get to explore a lot more ideas without worrying about tarting them up with easy-to-swallow chocolate coatings of entertainment. We like to think of shortened attention spans as a product of the information age, but ...
— Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books • Cory Doctorow
... I am endeavouring to describe, against our doctrine of personality, does not stop with a demand for de-humanized air and space. It has a passionate "penchant" for the projection of such vague imaginative images as "spirit" and "life." Forgetful that no man has ever seen or touched this "spirit," apart from a personal soul, or this "life," apart from some living thing, the temperament ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... to progress exists than the reputation for talent which this class acquire on a flimsy basis of superficial brilliance in conversation or a penchant for witty repartee. They are self-opinionated and egoistical, with a conceit and assurance out of all proportion to their abilities. Their mental perspective is distorted and they are conspicuous for their obstinacy. In conversation ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... the Ganymede. Hence all the odes of Hafiz are addressed to youths, as proved by such Arabic exclamations as 'Afaka 'llah Allah assain thee (masculine)[FN400]: the object is often fanciful but it would be held coarse and immodest to address an imaginary girl.[FN401] An illustration of the penchant is told at Shiraz concerning a certain Mujtahid, the head of the Shi'ah creed, corresponding with a prince-archbishop in Europe. A friend once said to him, "There is a question I would fain address ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... of Jack Marlowe and his penchant for cards? Surely the trap had been well baited, and devised with marvellous cunning. That cheque of mine would be cashed at my bank in the morning without question. I should be dead—and they would ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... some peculiarity attached to each of them. Jim Crow was famous for its vigorous and varied rascality; Simpson's Ranges became notorious as the most reckless gambling-field in the country. Card-playing was the recreation the diggers most indulged in here, if we except a decided penchant for Chow-baiting. Done found that already the gambling propensity had impressed itself on the lead, and the luckiest man on Simpson's was a short, fat, complacent Yankee, who refused to handle pick or shovel because, as he said to Done, it might spoil his hand. Jim did not doubt ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... this, Athanasi Vassilievitch," said the Prince, "for you are about the only honest man of my acquaintance. What has inspired in you such a penchant ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... state—and remain there for the duration of his life. This making of a choice is a momentous thing in a prospective engineer's life. It should be approached with all caution, and with due regard for the nature of the life he would lead after graduating from school. If he have a penchant for outdoor life, then the choice, in a way, is easy. He should select mining or civil engineering as his particular vocation. If he be of those who prefer to remain more or less indoors in the practice ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... composed a number of pages. The inclusion of his "Friendly Daemon" makes this suspicion not unlikely. And furthermore, certain anecdotes told in the first section, particularly in the first eighty pages, are such stories as would have appealed to Defoe's penchant for the uncanny, and might well have been selected by him. The style is not different from that of ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... out of the commission looking extraordinarily epate. Questioned, he averred that his penchant for inventing forcepumps had prejudiced ces messieurs in his disfavour; and shook his poor old head and sniffed hopelessly. Mexique exited in a placidly cheerful condition, shrugging his ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... said Mr. Chromatic, "it may be Tenorina, for I imagine Graziosa has conceived a penchant for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... double-hit could be delivered, with both blows upon his impudent mouth. In an instant he was on his back, with his heels in the air; and, as I prepared to operate upon his backer, or upon any bystander who might have a penchant for fighting, the crowd gave way, and immediately devoted themselves to their companion, who lay upon the ground in stupid astonishment, with his fingers down his throat searching for a tooth; his eyes were fixed upon my hands to discover the weapon with which he had ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... with white, for Mr. Rivers's good taste could endure, as little as Dr. May's sense of propriety, the sight of a daughter without shade to her face, Ethel, finally, gave in, on being put in mind that her papa had a penchant for swan's-down, and on Margaret's promising to wear a dress of ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the sable-hued preacher, Brother Washington, also demanded strategic approach. The question of pockets must be delicately handled lest any reflection be cast upon the integrity of the race, and their known penchant for pockets. ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... instruments, which gives us a picture of the moonlit glens of fairyland, peopled with airy spirits. The vision is dispelled by a sudden ff chord for full orchestra which, from its setting, is one of the loudest effects in music, thoroughly characteristic of Weber's penchant for dramatic contrast. The main body of the work (allegro con fuoco) opens with a dashing theme for the strings of great brilliancy, most typical of Weber. Though we may feel that it has little substance (note the tonic and dominant foundation of the harmony) we cannot be insensible ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... during the Restoration; aged member of the old clerical school. Excellent company; a frequenter of the home of Mme. de la Baudraye, where he satisfied his penchant for gaming. With much finesse Duret showed this young woman the character of M. de la Baudraye in its true light. He counseled her to seek in literature relief from the bitterness of her wedded life. [The Muse of ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... continued: "'Well, be that as it may,' said Horry, 'he was an able man of sagacity, this sea-captain, and, like many another, had a penchant for being a gentleman. But he was more of an oddity than Hertford's beast of Gevaudan, and was dressed like Salvinio, the monkey my Lord Holland brought back from his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... grimace, embarrasse, double entendre, equivoque, ecclaircissement, suitte, beveue, facon, penchant, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... the crux—you can only be admitted in the first place. And if you are admitted, do not fail to look out of the rear windows upon the ancient Granary Burying Ground, where rest the ashes of Hancock, Sewall, Faneuil, Samuel Adams, Otis, Revere, and many more notables. If you have a penchant for graveyards, this one, entered from Tremont Street, is more than worthy of ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... Valencia's maid into giving them a bit of ribbon, or a cast-off glove, which had belonged to the idol. Whereon that maiden, in virtuous indignation, told Mr. Bowie, and complained moreover (as maids are bound to do to valets for whom they have a penchant), of their having dared to compliment her on her own good looks: by which act she succeeded, of course, in making Mr. Bowie understand that other people still thought her pretty, if he did not; and also in ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... entirely disappeared. The number of women physicians becomes more and more rare in the following centuries just in proportion as we approach our own time. Pasquier says that we find a certain number of them anxious for knowledge and with a special penchant for the study of the natural sciences and even of medicine, but very few of them ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... admiration of the magnificence of the great city, for with Notre Dame and the Louvre in sight, I could not easily entertain other sentiments. A little building arrested my attention, and I saw quite a crowd of persons standing in front of it. It was La Morgue. I entered it, not that I have a penchant for horrors, but to see a sight strangely contrasting with all I had heretofore seen in Paris. It was a long, low interior, and one end of the room was fenced off from the rest, and in it a row of dead ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... human hand holding a smaller nugget. It was found out that O'Brien had displayed this nugget as a curiosity at a road-house a few nights before, and later on it was found that Relphe, one of the men who had vanished, had a penchant for curios, and amongst them had this nugget and a specially odd coin. Things were beginning to look interesting and, as Inspector Scarth wanted a man who answered O'Brien's description for robbing the cache of Mr. Hansen at Wolf's Island, O'Brien ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... a decided penchant prevails for music, the preference is given by the mass to a few ordinary airs, calculated to inspire that love of country which every reminiscence of the struggle for independence calls forth. The favourite air is the so-called national one ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... trick: had walked on the stage in one of Wilson's scenes; had started a quarrel with an usher in the audience—everything that ingenuity could conceive he had practised on his friend. Bok had known this penchant of Field's, and when he insisted on taking the bag of oranges into the theatre, Field's purpose ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... necessary to give a separate and distinct reply to the theory of Mr. Congreve, that Roman Imperialism was the type of all good government, and a desirable precedent for ourselves. Those who feel any penchant for the notion, I should strongly recommend to read the answer of Professor G. Smith, in the Oxford Essays for 1856, which is as complete and crushing as that gentleman's performances usually are. But ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... spirit of 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 ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... recollection of "other eyes as innocent as thine, child." In short, he was that most touching of all beings, the Hero-cum-Villain. And it was with a sigh of relief that we saw him at the eleventh hour, having successfully twitted the "Government Men" and the Excise (should he have an additional penchant for smuggling), safely restored to the arms of the long-suffering possessor of ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... at the country-house of Count Almaviva. Figaro, the Count's valet, and Susanna, the Countess's maid, are to be married that day; but Figaro, who is well aware that the Count has a penchant for his fiancee, is on his guard against machinations in that quarter. Enter the page Cherubino, an ardent youth who is devotedly attached to his mistress. He has been caught by the Count flirting with Barberina, the gardener's daughter, and promptly dismissed from his service, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild |
