"Proneness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay (1900) shows Hewlett's romantic fancy and love for historical characters and pageants. While this novel is full of life, color, and movement, it displays his proneness to allow the romantic vein to run to the fantastic in both episode and style. The Stooping Lady (1907) deals with the love of a lady of high degree for a humble youth whom ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the gratitude they owe the God of Nations for His watchful care, which has shielded them from dire disaster and pointed out to them the way of peace and happiness. Nor should they ever refuse to acknowledge with contrite hearts their proneness to turn away from God's teachings and to follow with sinful pride after their ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... of my religion, I am not to seek to convert anyone who is not born according to our laws. This proneness to conversion, the origin of which some would fain tack on to the Jewish religion, is, nevertheless, diametrically opposed to it. Our rabbis unanimously teach that the written and oral laws which form conjointly our ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... especially with the out-crop, succession, and dip of the mineral veins. In short, their natural endowments are fully equal to the general standard, and only require cultivation, as frequently appears from the quickness with which they detect the bearings of any pecuniary transaction, and their proneness to litigation. Many superstitions, however, still linger amongst them, such as the use of charms and incantations, a belief in witchcraft and an evil eye, a resort to "wise men," and even to the minister of the parish as being a "Master of Arts," ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... me remark upon the proneness which all children have to magnify the importance of little things. A strife often arises among them, about just nothing at all, from a mere spirit ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... institute a rigorous comparison between shutting and not shutting. True, they are not taught to do so, any more than Frenchmen are taught to make gestures. It is in them. They are born with a natural proneness to consider, as if it were a question of algebraic quantities, whether the satisfaction they might impart by shutting the door would not be more than counterbalanced by the dissatisfaction that might accrue from distinctly and unmistakably ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... nation's Representatives in arms, how he had "kept the word of promise to the ear," and how "he had broken it to the hope;" how while his reviews had revealed a mighty army of undoubted ability and eagerness for the fight, his indecision or proneness to delay had made its campaigns the laughing-stock of the world. His brilliant Staff clattered at his heels; but glittering surroundings were powerless to avert the memories of a winter's inactivity at ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... the judgment of their fellow-men, they begin to regard it with comparative indifference. And so, if a dweller in a small village desires to leave the beaten track, he can summon courage to do so with greater readiness than the man of the town. If he has occasionally that proneness to make a fool of himself which seizes every man now and then, he may indulge in the perilous luxury without great carefulness of the consequences. Smith's ordinary conduct is the admiration of Jones as a regular thing; but when Smith switches off into some eccentricity for which Jones has no ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... week at Blairgowrie; I hope not in vain. Much sin, weakness, and uselessness; much delight in the word also, while opening it up at family prayer. May God make the word fire. Opened I Thessalonians, the whole; enriching to my own mind. How true is Psalm 1! yet observed in my heart a strange proneness to be entangled with the affairs of this life; not strange because I am good, but because I have been so often taught that bitterness is the ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... the force of which made man a religious animal. The first is, his proneness to ascribe hostility or benevolent intention to every thing of a memorable sort that occurs to him in the order of nature. The second is that of which I have just treated, the superior dignity of mind over body. This, we persuade ourselves, shall subsist uninjured by ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Shelley, Marlowe is the historical poet most frequently chosen to illustrate the world's proneness to take advantage of the poet's innocence. In the most famous of the poems about Marlowe, The Death of Marlowe, R. H. Horne takes a hopeful view of the world's depravity, for he makes Marlowe's innocence of evil so touching that it moves a prostitute to reform. Other poets, however, ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... quarter of a city than in the residential quarter, it is to be expected that there will be more mental defectives in groups of juvenile delinquents from the slum quarter, because, in the first place, they constitute a larger proportion of the population, and because, secondly, of their greater proneness to social offenses. Moreover, the prevalence of the feeble-minded in certain localities may affect the attitude of the law-enforcing machinery toward the children ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... economist, and biologist, is in the revelation which they receive of what to do and why to do. For this reason philosophy, which treats of the life and works of man, is in the highest sense sociological. The generalisations of philosophy go to improve our methods so that we may have greater proneness for sense of delight and greater possibility for sense delight. Why, what else is there? You are a poet, and you give an unrestorable day, when the sun is shining and the hills lie purple in the distance, ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... personifying their superiors, with a licensed licentiousness. This forms a distinct characteristic from those other popular customs and pastimes which the learned have also traced to the Roman, and even more ancient nations. Our present inquiry is, to illustrate that proneness in man, of delighting to reverse the order of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... without than from within, and hence there is apt to be a dryness of surface, a lack of that sheen, that spontaneous warm emanation, which, in good original work, comes from free inward impulsion. To counteract, in so far as may be, this proneness to a mechanical inflexibility, the translator should keep himself free to wield boldly and with full swing his own native speech. By his line-for-line allegiance, Mr. Longfellow forfeits much of this freedom. He is too intent on the words; he sacrifices ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... verse, is bound to reply that, what Mr. HENLEY has done for England is to make it as ridiculous as is possible to a man with a limited audience. Mr. HENLEY has a pretty gift of versification, but it is spoiled by a wearisome proneness to smartness, and an assumption of personal superiority that occasionally reaches the heights of the ludicrous. If 'ARRY had been at the University, and had bent what he calls his mind upon verse-making, some of the truculent rhyme ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... ancient housemaid, of whose gaunt and witch-like appearance it would be impossible to convey any idea but by the pencil, furnished one among the numerous instances of Lord Byron's proneness to attach himself to any thing, however homely, that had once enlisted his good nature in its behalf, and become associated with his thoughts. He first found this old woman at his lodgings in Bennet Street, where, for a whole season, she was the perpetual scarecrow of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... little thing—so little that it seemed ridiculous to think of it as among the momentous happenings in a life—but with that extraordinary proneness of the little to usurp the significant places of memory, it had become at last one of the important milestones in her experience. At the end, when she forgot everything else, she would not forget Harry's foolish words, nor the look in his indignant boyish face when he uttered them. Until ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... of words: that proneness to dissemble, which inevitably attends all women who ever were or ever will be in love, was struggling with her high and truthful nature. But Constantia was still Constantia, and could not depart from truth, so as successfully to feign what she did not feel: her sentence consequently ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... zemindar is an Indian subject, and as such exposed to the common lot of his fellows. The mean and depraved state of a mere zemindar is therefore this very dependence above mentioned on a despotic government, this very proneness to shake off his allegiance, and this very exposure to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, which are consequent on the political state of Hindostanic governments. Bulwant Sing, if he had been, and Cheyt Sing, as long as he was, a zemindar, stood exactly in this mean ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Horsfield's Catalogue, and described at some length under the name of Bibos asseel; but it appears that all this distinction was founded on the single skull of a female gaur, and is an instance of the proneness of naturalists to create new species on insufficient data. He himself remarks that when the skin was removed it was evident that the animal was nearly related to Gavaeus gaurus, or, as he calls it, Bibos cavifrons. Mr. G. ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... humor of the title would tally precisely with what Ben Jonson tells us in his 'Discoveries,' under the head Dominus Verulamius, that 'his language (where he could spare or pass by a jest) was nobly censorious.' Sir Thomas More had the same proneness to merriment, a coincidence the more striking as both these great men were Lord Chancellors. A comic stroke of this description would have been highly attractive to a mind so constituted, and might easily escape the notice of a printer, who was more likely to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... wild beasts. Here he sees a bear, there a lion, yonder a leopard, a wolf, a dragon. Devils of all sorts, doubts of all sorts, fears of all sorts haunt and molest his soul. This man feeleth the infirmity of his flesh; he findeth a proneness in himself to be desperate. Now he chides with God, flings and tumbles like a wild bull in a net, and still the guilt of all returns upon himself to the crushing of him to pieces. Yet he feeleth his heart so hard that he can find, as he thinks, no kindness under ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... and of peculiarities of mental constitution, that I conversed and reasoned with them with the greatest freedom and the utmost confidence. But I found at length that my expectations were vain. I was conversing once with a colleague who belonged to this class, on man's natural proneness to evil. He was one of the best and most enlightened of that school of theologians, and he regarded me at the time with very kindly feelings. And we were agreed as to the fact of man's natural tendency to evil, but he had been led to rest his belief in the doctrine on somewhat different grounds ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... was impossible to see without remarking the lines of subtle intelligence displayed in its leathery wrinkles. The eyes were light blue, very quick, almost merry—and yet not quite, for if there was humour in them, it was of the kind that takes its pleasures quietly; there was no proneness to laughter ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... eloquence in which he has several Superiors. 'Willing to wound and not afraid to strike, until he receives a blow in return, he has not yet betrayed any illegal ardour, or Irish alacrity, in accepting the defiances, and resenting the disgraceful terms which his proneness to evil-speaking have (sic) brought upon him. In the cases of Mackinnon and Manners,[*E] he sheltered himself behind those parliamentary privileges, which Fox, Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, Tierney, Adam, Shelburne, Grattan, Corry, Curran, and Clare disdained to adopt as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... friends. In this time, the better to mature and strengthen his design, Sejanus labours to marry Livia, and worketh with all his ingine, to remove Tiberius from the knowledge of public business, with allurements of a quiet and retired life; the latter of which, Tiberius, out of a proneness to lust, and a desire to hide those unnatural pleasures which he could not so publicly practise, embraceth: the former enkindleth his fears, and there gives him first cause of doubt or suspect ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... Gibbon, was, in the same neighbourhood, polishing those balanced periods in which he has related the degeneracy of the successors of the Caesars. It was an age of intellectual ferment. Rousseau was writing his Contrat Social (1760), the Encyclopedie was leavening Gallic thought. There was a particular proneness to accept fresh ideas; a new sense of national ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... fires;(6) to stir the very depths of our souls, and elevate and perfect our gifted nature; to afford us the utmost inspiration to climb with Him the heights of Heaven. He stooped to our own estate, in all things made like unto us, except, indeed, our proneness and ability to sin. Since He loved us, He longed to be like us, in as far as that was possible, and not even our sin-stained, wounded nature could stay the force ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... feelings, he hardly knew how to take part with Eleanor against the archdeacon, or with the archdeacon against Eleanor. It will be said that he should never have suspected her. Alas! he never should have done so. But Mr Harding was by no means a perfect character. His indecision, his weakness, his proneness to be led by others, his want of self-confidence, he was very far from being perfect. And then it must be remembered that such a marriage as that which the archdeacon contemplated with disgust, which we who know Mr Slope so well would regard with equal disgust, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... not an uningenious—at least for a native of that "purple land, where law secures not life," who would work out of the very reproach, an argument of honor to his country. If it be true, however, that proneness to the commission of unwonted and atrocious crime is to be held a token of extraordinary vigor—vigor of nerve, of temperament, of passion, of physical development—in a race of men, then surely must the Anglo-Norman breed, under all circumstances of time, place, and climate, be singularly destitute ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... scorned. For the present, however, it was all a profound and disturbing mystery, and after an hour of futile concentration there came to Bryce the old childish impulse to go to his father with his troubles. That sturdy old soul, freed from the hot passions of youth, its impetuosity and its proneness to consider cause rather than effect, had weathered too many storms in his day to permit the present one to benumb his brain as ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... transit an arduous undertaking, and one not to be accomplished easily without the aid of "backstays" (pronounced "backster"), a simple contrivance somewhat upon the principle of snowshoes. When the proneness to slip off the unaccustomed foot has been overcome, backstays are not so awkward as they look. A couple of flat pieces of inch-thick wood, four inches wide by six long, with a loop of leather defectively fastened for the insertion of the foot went to make up the pair of "backsters" ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... her power she did not lose any of her friends, because she forgot none of them. Benevolence was natural to her, but she was not always prudent in its exercise. Hence her protection was often extended to persons who did not deserve it. Her taste for splendour and expense was excessive. This proneness to luxury became a habit which seemed constantly indulged without any motive. What scenes have I not witnessed when the moment for paying the tradesmen's bills arrived! She always kept back one-half of their claims, and the discovery of this exposed ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Madame Olivier. She said that this was good enough for Arabs or for a chit like Nell, who could not be jolted any more than a fly which should alight upon a camel's hump, but not for persons dignified, and not too light, and having at the same time a certain proneness to ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments into one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominate in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... Anglo-Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the third generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other classes, have their own proprieties. The only value of my criticisms, therefore, lay in their exemplifying the proneness of a traveller to measure one people by the distinctive characteristics of another,—as English writers invariably measure us, and take upon themselves to be disgusted accordingly, instead of trying to find out some principle of beauty with which we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... rather prided myself upon being called a good girl by all my acquaintances. But I now saw things in a different light; and when I went home and began self-examination, I soon found I had a very wicked heart. I tried to do better, but the more I tried to live unto God the more I discovered the proneness of my heart to sin. I tried to think good thoughts, and evil thoughts came directly in my way to mar my peace. Day after day I made effort to purify my thoughts. It was all in vain. A pure thought ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... the general circumstances in the situation of the Caesar, which pointed him out to the jealousy of the emperor. But these being no more than what adhere necessarily to the case of every heir as such, and meeting fortunately with no more proneness to suspicion in the temper of the Augustus than they did with countenance in the conduct of the Caesar, made so little impression, that at length these malicious efforts died away, from mere ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Smith's historic art, his lax criticism, his superficial acquaintance with foreign countries, his occasional proneness to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of rhetorical effect, his aversion for spiritual things, are all covered by one transcendent merit, which, in a man of so much ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... so much more severe, in the case of the wife than it is in the case of the husband, so the caution ought to be greater in making the accusation, or entertaining the suspicion. Men ought to be very slow in entertaining such suspicions: they ought to have clear proof before they can suspect; a proneness to such suspicions is a very unfortunate turn of the mind; and, indeed, few characters are more despicable than that of a jealous-headed husband; rather than be tied to the whims of one of whom, an innocent woman of spirit would earn her bread over the washing-tub, or with ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... future use. Its authors meant it to be, as, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling-block to all those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... out. It may not manifest itself at once in overt action, but it affects the motor pathways and either weakens or strengthens connections so that when the opportunity comes, some act will be furthered or hindered. In view of the proneness to permit base thoughts to enter the mind, human beings might sometimes fear even to think. A more optimistic idea, however, is that noble thoughts lead to noble acts. Therefore, keep in your mind the kind of thoughts ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... on which Melanchthon was writing all his life!" (Conservative Ref., 291; Schmauk, 748.) This indefinite and wavering attitude towards divine truth, the natural consequence of the humanistic bent of his mind, produced in Melanchthon a general tendency and proneness to surrender or compromise doctrinal matters in the interest of policy, and to barter away eternal truth for temporal peace. It made him an indifferentist and a unionist, always ready to strike a bargain also ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... "A proneness to take bribes may be generated from the habit of taking fees," said Lord Keeper Williams in his Inaugural Address, making an ungenerous allusion to Francis Bacon, whilst he uttered a statement which was no calumny ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Mr Borthwick's note I add one of several letters addressed to me, which shows the proneness to speculate ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... not yet out of our natures, there is a proneness in us to build [even] upon the right foundation, wood, hay, and stubble, instead of gold and silver, and precious stones (1 Cor 3:11-15). How was both David the king, Nathan the prophet, and Uzza ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... essence of this punishment to do. In Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her sentence bore, that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of ignorance of causes, of the proneness to seek the solution of phenomena out of and beyond nature, and of the consequent natural but unreasoning dread of the Unknown and Invisible (ignorantly termed the supernatural), is at once universal in the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... it your proneness to domestication, For he dwells in man's barn, and I build in man's thatch, As we say to each other—but, to our vexation, O'er your safety alone man ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... for breaking off the negotiation? Sad, indeed, will be the condition of the world if we are never to make peace with an adverse party whose sincerity we have reason to suspect. Even just grounds for such suspicions will but too often occur, and when such fail, the proneness of man to impute evil qualities, as well as evil designs, to his enemies, will suggest false ones. In the present case the suspicion of insincerity was, it is true, so just, as to amount to a moral certainty. The example of the petition of right was a satisfactory proof that the king made ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... almost invariably at once of one mind. (Lord, to Thee is the praise due for this!!!) We are as much, or more than ever united in spirit; and if the Lord permit, we desire to labour together till He come. Who that knows the proneness in man to seek his own, and to get glory to himself; who that knows that the heart naturally is full of envy; who that is acquainted with the position which we both hold in the church, and the occasions thereby ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... thoughts that before did rise, like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow, and make a hideous noise within me. It shewed me also that Jesus Christ had yet a word of grace and mercy for me that he had not, as I feared, quite forsaken and cast off my soul: Yea, this was a kind of check for my proneness to desperation; a kind of threatening of me if I did not, notwithstanding my sins and the heinousness of them, venture my salvation upon the Son of God. But as to my determining about this strange dispensation, what it was, ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton |
