"Habit" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... part on the farm. Mother now worked another scheme. I took turns with my brother at school and at the plow. What he learned at school on his school-day was taught to me at night, and vice versa. In this way we got a month of schooling each during the year, and got the habit of ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... ears alone. It is very common with teamsters and others, when they want to harness mules, to catch them by the ears, put twitches on their ears. Even blacksmiths, who certainly ought to know better, are in the habit of putting tongs and twitches in their ears when they shoe them. Now, against all these barbarous and inhuman practices, I here, in the name of humanity, enter my protest. The animal becomes almost worthless by the injuries caused by such practices. There are extreme cases in which the twitch ...
— The Mule - A Treatise On The Breeding, Training, - And Uses To Which He May Be Put • Harvey Riley
... pretty decent sort? Did you ever know of a man who loved pie—who'd go out of his way to get pie—that didn't have a heart in him bigger than a pumpkin? I guess you didn't. If a man's got a good stomach he isn't a grouch, and he won't stick a knife into your back; but if he eats from habit—or necessity—he isn't a beautiful character in the eyes of nature, and there's pretty sure to be a cog loose somewhere in his makeup. I'm a grub-scientist, David. I warn you of that before we get off at Thoreau's. I love to eat, and the Frenchman knows ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... the statue to the original duke Lorenzo made it for a long time doubtful whether it was intended to be his tomb. The Florentines, in their poetic way, fell into the habit of calling it Il Pensiero, that is, Thought, or Meditation, sometimes Il Pensieroso, The Thinker. These are, after all, the best names for the statue, which is allegorical rather than historical in its intention. The ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... she left London; but she did do so, and the great heiress had at once seen her lawyers, and instructed them how to act with reference to the mortgages on the Chaldicotes property. Miss Dunstable was in the habit of speaking of herself and her own pecuniary concerns as though she herself were rarely allowed to meddle in their management; but this was one of those small jokes which she ordinarily perpetrated; for in truth few ladies, and perhaps not many gentlemen, have a more thorough ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... in love with innumerable dream heroes before she was out of short skirts, married "Leonce Pontellier" as a sort of reaction from a vague and visionary passion for a tragedian whose unresponsive picture she used to kiss. She acquired the habit of liking her husband in time, and even of liking her children. Though we are not justified in presuming that she ever threw articles from her dressing table at them, as the charming "Emma" had a winsome habit of doing, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... United States had more cloth in her sleeves than in all the rest of her dress, the rounded muscles of Mrs. Marshall's arm, showing through the fabric of her sleeves, smote shockingly upon the eye of the ordinary observer, trained to the American habit of sheep-like uniformity of appearance. And at the time when the front of every woman's waist fell far below her belt in a copiously blousing sag, Mrs. Marshall's trim tautness had in it something horrifying. It must be said for her that she did ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... from his habit of playing, in the dim twilight, Scotch airs without sharps or flats, but with sudden turns and trills, had become the terror of several quiet suburban squares, was here about to be heard in his own defence, when the proceedings were interrupted by strains of a German Band that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... ASSOCIATION.—The association of thoughts—ideas, images, memory—or of a situation with its response, rests primarily on a neural basis. Association is the result of habit working in neurone groups. Its fundamental law is stated by James as follows: "When two elementary brain-processes have been active together or in immediate succession, one of them, on recurring, tends to propagate its excitement into the other." This is but a technical statement of the ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... after meals, does not relieve the distress, one may rest assured that the fluid is an alkali and requires an acid treatment. Proceed, after eating, to squeeze ten drops of lemon-juice into a small quantity of water, and swallow it. The habit of daily life should be made to conform to the laws of health, or local treatment ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... once more," said Beatrice; and again there was a silence, while she stood thinking deeply, but contrary to her usual habit, not speaking, and he knowing well her tendency to lose her repentant feelings by expressing them, was not willing to interrupt her. So they remained for nearly ten minutes, until at last he thought it time to leave her, and made some movement ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... overmuch beholden already. Should I write a letter for her? 'Nay, he is in the house at present,' said she. 'Should I draw her picture, and so earn my money?' 'What, can ye?' said she. I told her I could try; and her habit would well become a picture. So she was agog to be limned, and give it her lad. And I set her to stand in a good light, and soon made sketches two, whereof I send thee one, coloured at odd hours. The other I did most hastily, and with little conscience daub, for which may Heaven forgive me; but time ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... host, those of Zanoni afforded a striking contrast. The bearing of this singular person was at all times characterised by a calm and polished ease, which was attributed by the courtiers to the long habit of society. He could scarcely be called gay; yet few persons more tended to animate the general spirits of a convivial circle. He seemed, by a kind of intuition, to elicit from each companion the qualities in which he most excelled; ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... absent. Mr. Moulton and I walked to the Faubourg St. Honore, to our apothecary, who gave us the name of the nearest doctor. It was not pleasant, to say the least, to be in the streets. We were in the habit of hearing bombs and shells, so that was no novelty; but to see them whizzing over our heads was a new sensation, and not an agreeable one. We found a doctor, a most amiable gentleman, who, although he had been up all night, was quite ready ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... strike the Amp'shrog, you bear away to the left, and anybody'll tell you The Pidgings, as soon as look at you. Small 'ouse, by the river. Kep' by Miss Horkings, now her father's kicked. Female party." This was due to a vague habit of the speaker's mind, which divided the opposite sex into two genders, feminine and neuter; the latter including all those samples, unfortunate enough—or fortunate enough, according as one looks ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the same time. As was Guy's usual habit after sleeping, he lit a torch to see how the current was running. The light woke Canaris and the colonel almost immediately, while Sir Arthur turned on his rug and asked ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... dislike Jorgenson. In the early morning light, white from head to foot in a perfectly clean suit of clothes which seemed hardly to contain any limbs, freshly shaven (Jorgenson's sunken cheeks with their withered colouring always had a sort of gloss as though he had the habit of shaving every two hours or so), he looked as immaculate as though he had been indeed a pure spirit superior to the soiling contacts of the material earth. He was disturbing but he was not repulsive. He gave no ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... sinned out of custom? He then, from his own experience, traces a habit into the very first rise and imperfect beginnings of it; and can tell by how slow and insensible advances it creeps upon the heart; how it works itself by degrees into the very frame and texture of it, and so passes into a second nature; and consequently ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... shortcomings of a large-hearted, healthy, human being. Had he loved less his fellow men and women, he might have been accounted a better man. After all, too, it must be remembered that his failings have been consistently exaggerated. Coleridge, in his habit of drawing nice distinctions, admits that Burns was not a man of degraded genius, but a degraded man of genius. Burns was neither the one nor the other. In spite of the occasional excesses of his later years, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... take her to the opera one night—Drayton had the habit of dropping in for an act or two and then disappearing—but on her own doorstep she tossed off her carriage wrap and sent Martin ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... said that Dr. Henson has had to fight his way into notice, and that he has never lost the defect of those qualities which enabled him so victoriously to reach the mitred top of the ecclesiastical tree. He has climbed. He has loved climbing. Perhaps he has so got into this bracing habit that he may even "climb down," if only in order once more to ascend—a new rendering of reculer pour mieux sauter. I do not think he has much altered since he first set out to conquer fortune by the force of his intellect, an intellect of whose great qualities ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... repenting and thy vows of amending should Allah vouchsafe to save thee, I felt bound to free thee from this thy present plight. So I let down my tail, that thou mightest grasp it and be saved. Yet wouldest thou not quit thy wonted violence and habit of brutality; nor soughtest thou to save thyself by fair means, but thou gavest me a tug which I thought would sever body from soul, so that thou and I are fallen into the same place of distress and death. And now there is but one thing can save us and, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... bonne heure, my good sir. Ulrik Brendel has never been in the habit of forcing himself upon societies of that kind. (Turns to go) But I must not prolong my stay in this house, rich as it is in memories. I must go into the town and find some suitable lodging. I shall find a decent hotel of some kind there, ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... or the other. If he chooses one, he sends a power into society, life, humanity, to help it forward; if the other, he sends in a power to hold it back. This power is not from man's nature, but from something in him outside his nature. When he acts from habit, impulse, passion, and not from choice, he is simply a natural being; when he acts from choice, he is not a natural being, but either a supernatural or a subternatural being, according as he chooses good or evil. When he chooses good, he rises above the natural ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... singular insect has an affinity to Sagra, but differs from that genus in having setiform antennae, porrect mandibles, and securiform palpi. Its habit is also totally different from that of a Sagra, and more like that of some of those insects which belong to the heterogeneous magazine called Prionus. It is, undoubtedly, the most singular and novel form in Captain King's collection, and forms a new genus, of ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... back from the thought as one draws away from the rude touch upon a wound. Lay bare the scars of his life that another profit by their ugliness? Years of habit were against it; everything fundamentally himself was against it. But he was a man who had never yet shrunk from the thing he saw was right to do. The cost of an accomplishment never deterred him from a thing he saw must be accomplished. With each second of listening to her sobs, he was becoming ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... dark, as mystified as you," she acknowledged, frankly, "for it has certainly never been a habit with me to betray the confidence of my friends, and I learned long since not to confide secrets ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... and unruly if you will; a rogue, in his way, with scant respect for property; not above cogging dice or even filching a purse upon occasion when hard driven by necessity—for all that he was gently born and had held honourable employment; a drunkard by long habit, and a swaggering brawler upon the merest provocation. But for all that, riotous and dishonest though he might be in the general commerce of life, yet to the hand that hired him he strove—not always successfully, perhaps, but, at least, always ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... he told me, when a number of the ladies we were in the habit of meeting happened to be together without any gentleman present, the talk turned, half in a philosophical, half in a gossipy spirit, upon the consequences that might follow, should two men, bound in such strange fashion as my brother ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... similitude and likeness is the end of all the manifestations of himself, that we be one with him. Therefore when he would move our affections in us, he puts on the like, and clothes himself, in his word and dispensation, with such a habit as is suitable. So ye have both law and gospel. He laments in the one, he pipes in the other. Both sad and glad dispensations of his providence may be subordinate to these; the one, I mean his judgments, representing that to our eyes which his law did ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... where the whole great forest had fallen. She was a confirmed invalid and an asthmatic. Oxygen had been prescribed for her malady, and a tube was in her room at the moment of the crisis. She had naturally inhaled some as had been her habit when there was a difficulty with her breathing. It had given her relief, and by doling out her supply she had managed to survive the night. Finally she had fallen asleep and been awakened by the buzz of our motor-car. As it was impossible ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of influence that our wealth entitles us to. And I tell you," (and the mean, little sallow face spoke in every lineament of the petty spirit of jealous hate which animated it, and looked out from the small eyes of reddish hazel,) "I tell you," (this lady had a habit of repeating over the same sentences two or three times when greatly wrought upon by her sensibilities,) "money is the lever that moves the world now-a-days. And as long as we have got it, who's a better ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... faith. You will get no present joy and peace out of past faith. The rain of this day twelve months will not moisten the parched ground of to-day. Yesterday's religion was all used up yesterday. And if you would have a continuous flow of joy and peace through your lives, keep up a uniform habit and attitude of trust in God. You will get it then; you will get it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... year, Susan B. Anthony visiting her, says: "She read aloud to us from that charming poem until after eleven o'clock at night." Her conversation, as well as her public addresses, were sprinkled with beautiful and apt citations from her favorite authors, as it was the habit of her life to commit to memory sentiments she most valued ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the ascetic habit of his daily life, "where no rain was," as the Bible would put it, it did seem to him distinctly foolish, not to say careless, not to say out and out incendiary, for any girl to go blushing her way like a fire-brand through a world so palpably populated by young men whose heads ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... palace which stretches its monotonous length on the height; who worship wearily in the stifling air of the churches, urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their doom to be ever old and undying, to live on in the rigidity of habit, as they live on in perpetual midday, without the repose of night or the new birth ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... matter of insignificance. She loved him too well to let such knowledge narrow her estimation of him. She was too essentially of the prairie to consider so trifling a matter. Half the farmers in the country were in the habit of breaking the Customs regulations by cutting wood and hay on Government lands without a permit, and even hauling these things from across the border when such a course suited them, and in every case it was "contraband"; ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... "I know it is habit and does not come from her heart. She has the best heart one can wish for, better than any here. She is bold, full of character, and with a solid understanding; now indeed ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... returning to the Yoshiwara, nothing happened. A space of five nights passed. His habit was to return early; and as his thin dress was wet with sweat he would change it. Going upstairs he took out the thin garment from the clothes-basket (tsuzura). With this in hand he was about to descend. Now as at one time the place had been a brothel the steps ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... had been committed and his manner of using his weapons shewed plainly that he did not contemplate any, his sentence was commuted to imprisonment for fourteen years, the first three to be spent in irons. At the end of that time the criminal habit was confirmed. For various offences he was sentenced at different times to periods aggregating in all to thirty years. After his last sentence had expired—six years ago—he began a new life and has not committed crime since. His whole career showed many ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... applied the same rules of judgment to National centralization. The two are dissimilar as are darkness and light. State centralization is tyranny; National centralization is freedom. State centralization means special laws; National centralization means general laws. The continued habit of States to make laws for every part of their own boundaries brought to the surface the "State rights" theory which precipitated upon us our civil war. States had become so absolute in themselves that out of it grew the feeling of absoluteness ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in low tones, then led the way by the garden path to the front door of the house, which she opened with a key from her girdle, motioning to me to pass in before her. I did so, and thinking little of such matters at the moment, turned by habit into the doorway of the sitting-room which I knew so well, lifting my feet to avoid stumbling on its step, and passing into the room found my way through the gloom to the wide fireplace where I took my stand. Lily watched me enter, then following me, she lit a taper at ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... known the habitual circuit of the mayordomo in his efforts to avoid him, the search would have been hopeless. But, rightly conjecturing that he would in his demented condition follow the force of habit, he spurred his horse along the high-road until he reached the lane leading to the grassy amphitheatre already described, which was once his favorite resort. Since then it had participated in the terrible transformation already wrought in the valley by the railroad. A deep ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... so far resigned to my lot that I feel small pain at the thought of having to part from what has been called the pleasant habit of existence, the sweet fable of life. I would not care to live my wasted life over again, and so to prolong my span. Strange to say, I have but little wish to be younger. I submit with a chill at my heart. I humbly submit because ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... also a blessed and useful habit and very effectual against the devil, who is ever about us, and lies in wait to bring us into sin and shame, calamity and trouble, but who is very loath to hear God's name, and cannot remain long ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... there might be some question of duty involved in his "standing by her," as he phrased it to himself, "till she got her color back." There was an unconscious appeal in the last words he had heard her speak which constrained him to do so. He was not in the habit of pitying himself, but had there been another soul to follow this mental readjustment of himself to his mutilated life, it would surely have pitied the eagerness with which he clung to this one shadow of a duty to a fellow-creature. It was ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... effects on the over-contracted person's spiritual life. This follows as a necessary consequence from the theory of our emotions to which I made reference at the beginning of this article. For by the sensations that so incessantly pour in from the over-tense excited body the over-tense and excited habit of mind is kept up; and the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner atmosphere never quite clears away. If you never wholly give yourself up to the chair you sit in, but always keep your leg- and body-muscles half contracted for a rise; ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... in which we live, if it is become not only our occasional policy, but our habit, no great objection can be made to the modes in which it may be diversified,—though I confess I cannot be charmed with the idea of our exposing our lazar sores at the door of every proud servitor of the French Republic, where the court dogs will not deign to lick ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... churches are more or less large and splendid, the palaces pretty spacious, all the world over; and that there is scarcely a capital city in this Europe but has its pompous bronze statue or two of some periwigged, hook-nosed emperor, in a Roman habit, waving his bronze baton on his broad-flanked brazen charger. We only saw these state old lions in Lisbon, whose roar has long since ceased to frighten one. First we went to the Church of St. Roch, to see a famous piece of mosaic-work ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... plainly and say what you heard." The prosecuting attorney gave a nervous twitch at his pointed beard, a habit peculiar to him, and leaned a little toward the witness. The elder judge blinked drowsily, straightened in his chair, then turned and looked at the crucifix on the wall, for when the sun touched the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... vicinity or created little pools of brackish water—and various kinds of animals, particularly deer, resorted there to satisfy their natural craving for salt by drinking from these or licking the moist earth. Hunters took advantage of this habit, and one of their common customs was to watch in the dusk or at night, and secure their approaching prey by an easy shot. Skill with the rifle and success in the chase were points of friendly emulation. In many localities the boy or youth who shot a squirrel ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... for Cook's circulars and booklets advertising personally conducted excursions. And, with the arrival of each new circular or booklet, she picked out, as she had just done, the particular tours she would go on when her "some day" came. It was funny, this queer habit of hers, but not half as funny as the thought of her really going would have been. I would have as soon thought of our front door leaving home and starting on its travels as of Hephzy's doing it. The door was no more a part and fixture ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... got into the habit of using it, now I have seen what a slave it can make of a strong man," whispered ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... a habit like our sailors chewing tobacco. The Malays think it is good for them, and keeps off ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... habit of frequently indulging in the use of tobacco, her husband was not deprived entirely of his solace. Going into the wigwam, he unbosomed his griefs to her, and she kindly loaned him her ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... could succeed in averting the threatened shame, it must be kindly persuasion, coupled with a calm, dispassionate appeal to her understanding. The quiet, gentle way in which she had met his anger, he now saw, had left the advantage of the first encounter on her side. His male nature and long habit of rule made an equal self-control very difficult, on his part, and he resolved to postpone a recurrence to the subject until he should feel able to meet his daughter with her own weapons. Probably some reflection ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... the habit of hearing the Viscount de Gramont; my grandson, mentioned in this unceremonious manner; it may be the mode adopted in this uncivilized country, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... habit, the tobacco habit, the opium habit, singly or all together," said he, "but preserve me from ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... revolution," said Michel, "to become the humble servants of a moon whom we are in the habit of considering our servant. And is that the ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... corner of this room lay a mat, on which stood a wooden head-prop, indicating that the naturalist was in the habit of sleeping on it. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... ring; "Miss Bronte was announced; and in came a young-looking lady, almost child-like in stature, in a deep mourning dress, neat as a Quaker's, with her beautiful hair smooth and brown, her fine eyes blazing with meaning and her sensible face indicating a habit of self-control." She came,—hesitated one moment at finding four or five people assembled,—then went straight to Miss Martineau with intuitive recognition, and, with the free-masonry of good feeling and gentle breeding, she soon became as one of the family seated round the tea-table; and, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... no great talent for cookery, and feeling beaten and awed by Jemima's dashing generalship, hovered around the outskirts of the preparations, and flirting a little with Hawkins, from languid habit, rather than any special regard ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... leaves the egg, during his babyhood, and all through his life, he explores the sea with thousands of other Herrings crowded round him. His name is from a foreign word—heer or herr, an army. His enemies—ourselves among them—find this habit of his a good one. It makes ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... first thing I did was to go quite out of my knowledge, and go by another name. This I did effectually, for I went into the Mint too, took lodgings in a very private place, dressed up in the habit of a widow, and called ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... little apart, grim mirth in his eyes, as Tiffany ushered into the circle a lean, shabby country-gentleman, whose habit would have shamed a scarecrow. Tiffany disappeared and the new-comer made Brilliana an awkward bow. "Sweet lady, you sent for me and I ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... old or more, and then go before a head talapoin appointed for the purpose, called a rowli, who is the most learned of the order, who examines them many times, whether they will leave their friends, foregoing the company of women, and assume the habit of a talapoin. If any one be content, he is made to ride through the streets on a horse, very richly apparelled, accompanied by many drums and trumpets, to shew that he is about to quit the riches and vanity of the world. A few days afterwards, he is again carried through ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... here, with the horsewhip laid about his shoulders at that very thornbush, by one of the fine gentlefolks, just because he had mended the gap in the hedge they was used to ride through, and my Lady sitting by in her laced scarlet habit on her fine horse, smiling like a painted picture, and saying, 'Thank you, sir, the rascals need to learn not to interfere with our sport,' all in that gentle sounding low voice of hers, enough to ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that she required? If she had asked the sun and stars, and the whole universe, he would have promised them. Quitting her in spite of his love, he set out on the journey without delay, only dressing himself before he left the city in the habit of a pilgrim. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... every day for a twelvemonth, if there were a scintilla of hope. My life should be a series of offers. But the thing is decided. I know from her manner, from her face, that I have no chance. I have been in the habit of thinking myself rather a nice kind of fellow, and the women have encouraged the idea. But I don't answer here, Winstanley. Miss Tempest will have nothing ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... shipboard, especially receiving-ships, that the men become very careless; and in carrying water, paint, or grease about the ship, frequently spill some of it on deck. While this state of things continues, it is impossible to keep a ship clean, and, in order to break up this habit, the culprits are obliged to wipe up whatever they have spilled, and then carry a swab about the deck until they can detect some one else equally unfortunate. This is not a pleasant task; for, as soon as this rule is put in force, the men become very careful, and the luckless offender is sometimes ...
— Frank on a Gun-Boat • Harry Castlemon
... emptiness of the big northern wilderness one falls into the habit of talking to one's self. But Kazan's head was alert, and his eyes watchful, ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... the new direction has been definitely followed, and has become the normal habit of the life, there come times of failure, alluded to in the Pistis Sophia, when Jesus is asked whether a man may be again admitted to the Mysteries, after he has fallen away, if he again repents. The answer of Jesus is in the affirmative, but he states that ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... even know that he had a father, poor innocent! The father kept behind a pillar, so that he might not be seen. He gazed at his child and he wept. He adored that little fellow, poor man! I could see that. This spot has become sanctified in my sight, and I have contracted a habit of coming hither to listen to the mass. I prefer it to the stall to which I have a right, in my capacity of warden. I knew that unhappy gentleman a little, too. He had a father-in-law, a wealthy aunt, relatives, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and his own table, but he would not allow that he was ever anything but a lodger in the place, where he continued till he died. In the process of time he came so far to trust his experience of me, that he formed the habit of giving me an annual supper. Some days before this event, he would appear in my study, and with divers delicate and tentative approaches, nearly always of the same tenor, he would say that he should like to ask my family to an oyster supper with him. "But you know," he would ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of England, for the two kings were hostages for one another. "The King of France, who was not a suspicious man," says Fleuranges, "was mighty vexed at there being so little confidence in one another. He got up one morning very early, which is not his habit, took two gentlemen and a page, the first three he could find, mounted his horse, and went to visit the King of England at the castle of Guines. When he came on to the castle-bridge, all the English were mighty astonished. As he rode amongst them, the king gayly called upon ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... She had simply relaxed hold on her mind; and so, escaping her, it had gone wandering off into shadowy prophecies of the immediate years. For, as Amelia had been telling herself for the last three months, since she had begun to outgrow the habit of a dual life, she was not old. Whenever she looked in the glass, she could not help noting how free from wrinkles her swarthy face had been kept, and that the line of her mouth was still scarlet over white, even teeth. Her crisp black hair, curling in those tight fine rolls which a ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... to view, or lamentable in tone. He was sufficiently humane to have felt for anyone suffering, and the proof of it is, that the only creature he saw under such an influence he pitied so deplorably, as to make melancholy a habit with him. He fretted her because he would do nothing, and this spectacle of a lover beloved, but consenting to be mystified, consentingly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the art of arts, the trade of trades, for life, we content ourselves with teaching our children the catechism and the commandments; we preach them sermons on the good of being good, and the evil of being evil; in our higher education we advance to the theory of habit and the freedom of the will; and then, when failure follows failure, ipsa experientia reclamante, we hug ourselves with a complacent self-satisfied reflection that the fault is not ours, that all which men could do we have done. The freedom of the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... is the last effort of the human imagination; it is to the god of the savage, what an inhabitant of the city of Sybaris, where effiminacy and luxury reigned, where pomp and pageantry had reached their climax, clothed with a curiously embroidered purple habit of silk, was to a man either quite naked, or simply covered with the skin of a beast perhaps newly slain. It is only in civilized societies, that leisure affords the opportunity of dreaming—that ease procures the facility of reasoning; in these associations, idle speculators meditate, dispute, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... sustained by the opinion of Attorney-General John C. Crittenden, and they also under his advice claimed the right to review the President's nominations before they were sent to the Senate. To the President, who had as Governor and as General been in the habit of exercising autocratic command, these attempts to hamper his action were very annoying, and at times he ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... knowledge—since I had kept no time for the first hundred hours after getting aboard, and there was then, in the complete darkness that surrounded me, no means of distinguishing the one from the other. I had a means of telling, however, and it was this: During all my life I had been trained to the habit of going to bed at a particular hour—ten o'clock at night—and also of rising at six exactly. This was a rule in my father's house, as well as that of my uncle—in the latter, indeed, I was compelled to observe it with a stern exactitude. The ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... "Don't get Spotty's habit, and throw up your hands just because you see me, Kate," went on the colonel soothingly. "I'm not after you professionally this time. In fact, if things turn out the way I want, I may shut my eyes to one or two little phases of your—er—let us call it career. I may ignore one or two little ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... This habit of illustrating by historical examples had an educational value of its own, but serves well to show how comparatively feeble was the appeal of Stoicism to the conscience. It may be seen well in Valerius Maximus, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... Schoolfield house and cook supper for a house-party. This week he stepped up to Con-o-way. Says he had to walk it twice a week—formed the habit when he was on old river Steamer Burroughs and had to walk up to Conway Monday and back home Saturday. About thirty miles (or more from his place) to Conway. At 87 he still takes this little exercise almost weekly. Having such a struggle holding on to his land. ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... I know that I have been gripped by the demon of curiosity. But how could I help it? I have not yet acquired the habit of penetrating to the heart of these great misfortunes; I cannot go among them with the calmness of your three soldiers of the Lord. But, let me tell you, it is since I have recovered from that first excitement that I have chiefly ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... York, Francesca discovered that the young lawyer whom for six months she had been advising to marry somebody more worthy than herself was at last about to do it. This was somewhat in the nature of a shock, for Francesca had been in the habit, ever since she was seventeen, of giving her lovers similar advice, and up to this time no one of them has ever taken it. She therefore has had the not unnatural hope, I think, of organising at one time or another all these disappointed and faithful swains into a celibate brotherhood; ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a thought too slender for Oriental taste; she moved along beside her lord with a sinuous, languorous grace, gently stirring her fan of ostrich plumes. She was unveiled; indeed it was her immodest habit to go naked of face more often than was seemly, which is but the least of the many undesirable infidel ways which had survived her induction into the Faith of Islam—a necessary step before Asad, who was devout to the point of bigotry, would consent to make her his wife. He had found ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... shortly after their first intercourse with Europeans, and whom we may safely trust in what they tell us of the oral literature and hieroglyphic writings of the natives. Acosta, in his 'Historia natural y moral,' vi. 7, tells us that the Indians were still in the habit of reciting from memory the addresses and speeches of their ancient orators, and numerous songs composed by their national poets. As it was impossible to acquire these by means of hieroglyphics ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Cat-sha, who was in the habit of personally assuring himself of the safety of the prisoners several times during each night, passed on. Then E-chee, after stooping to whisper to Rene to be of good ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... escape, under Foster's cloak. To Marcia he said jocularly, though still in an undertone: "'Snatched like a brand from the burning!'" And he added: "My lady, had you consulted me, I should have suggested the April issue. These magazines have a bad habit ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... high with chips that its weight balanced the grain-sack, he prepared to start riverward. But first, prompted by an old habit, he climbed to a high point of bluff near by, and, standing where lookouts had maintained a post before severe weather compelled their withdrawal, carefully scanned the white horizon. To the west, from where—the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... wicker cages; others ran at full liberty in all parts of the boat. At the approach of rain the macaws sent forth noisy cries, the toucan wanted to reach the shore to fish, and the little monkeys (the titis) went in search of Father Zea, to take shelter in the large sleeves of his Franciscan habit. These incidents sometimes amused us so much that we forgot the torment of the mosquitos. At night we placed a leather case (petaca), containing our provisions, in the centre; then our instruments, and the cages of our animals; our hammocks were ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... less one indefinitely multiplied, the probability that it does select must needs be the same indefinite multiple of virtual infinity. Not less than this is the preponderance of probability that the invariably recurrent sequences of phenomena which we are in the habit of referring to gravitation, are premeditated, and that the law of gravitation has, so to speak, been wittingly ordained. And in this respect all invariable sequences of phenomena, otherwise termed laws of nature, stand plainly in the ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... him, and the play began. It was Silvio's custom to preserve a complete silence when playing. He never disputed, and never entered into explanations. If the punter made a mistake in calculating, he immediately paid him the difference or noted down the surplus. We were acquainted with this habit of his, and we always allowed him to have his own way; but among us on this occasion was an officer who had only recently been transferred to our regiment. During the course of the game, this officer absently scored one point too many. Silvio took the ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... left arm, with an air of carelessness, but, as a close inspection would have shown, so grasped by his right hand, held down out of sight, as to enable him to bring it to an instant aim,—"Mr. Phillips, were you in the habit of going to Quebec, fall and spring, to dispose of your peltries, about the time ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... pitiful contortion of the face, and a hopeless attempt to raise the useless hand. Clearly there was work enough for the next three hours! With the promptness, not only natural in him, but added to by long habit, Theodore went to work. Under his orders the room assumed very speedily a different aspect; the attending physician was sent for and consulted with; he was a dull little man, but appeared to know enough to say that he didn't know what to do for the sick man. "It was a curious case; he had ...
— Three People • Pansy
... cultivation of the faculty of speech. The culture of his vocal organs should keep pace with the culture of his mental powers. While acquiring a knowledge of literature and science, he should also form the habit of speaking his vernacular with propriety, grace, ease, and elegance, sparing no effort to acquire what has been aptly called "the music of the phrase; that clear, flowing, and decided sound of the whole sentence, which embraces both tone and accent, and which is only ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... that the inconvenience of homophones is so great that a language will naturally evolve some phonetic habit to guard itself against them, although it would otherwise neglect such distinction. I wish that this admirable instinct were more evident in English. He writes thus of the lists of words which he gives 'to show what ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... word correctly. On the master's birthday I always wove him a garland and wrote him a poem; he received them half with smiles and half as a joke; the last time, however, he scolded me. The street lads had also heard from their parents of my peculiar turn of mind, and that I was in the habit of going to the houses of the gentry. I was therefore one day pursued by a wild crowd of them, who shouted after me derisively, "There runs the play-writer!" I hid myself at home in a corner, wept, ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... have known a sermon which in matter and style were really excellent made, to some hearers at least, almost unendurable by the accident that the preacher had got the habit of (needlessly) clearing his throat at the end ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... them, a sinewy, weather-beaten man of some sixty years old, who was known as Peter Lambton. He had for many years been a scout attached to the army and was one of the most experienced hunters on the frontier. He was a tall, angular man, except that he stooped slightly, the result of a habit of walking with the head bent forward in the attitude of listening. The years which had passed over him had had no effect upon his figure. He walked with a long, noiseless tread, like that of an Indian, and was one of the men attached to his company in whom, wisely, ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... once explain to you the reason why the old people used to talk of first, second, third, fourth town, etc., as far back as we can remember and up to the present. No names were given to the townships by legal proclamation, as we said before, until long after they were settled, and hence the habit was formed ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... should prefer that you keep the blue room for Paul Vence, who wishes to come. It is possible, too, that Choulette may come without warning. It is his habit. We shall see him some morning ringing like a beggar at the gate. You know my husband is mistaken when he thinks Le Menil pleases me. And then I must go to Paris next week for two or ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... America and Great Britain have a habit of calling our enemies by names which would arouse the fighting blood of the most peaceable individual, and when there is a Venezuelan question to be discussed we do not hesitate to practice this custom, born of our blood-alliance, ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... to those who questioned them, they were in the habit of dismissing the subject lightly. After all, it was nothing to them, since he had never joined ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... garden paths, coming to him with their little histories of pain and disappointment and sorrow; which were as great to them as any of the wider miseries of sufferers more beset with anguish than themselves. He thought of it all sorrowfully and tenderly,—his habit was ever to think of others rather than himself,—and he wondered sadly, as he considered all the bitterness and hardships of the poor human creatures who are forced into life on this planet,—why life should be made so cruel and hard for them,—why sudden and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... feast in Wesel prison. Some time later Prince L—— succeeded in getting home. Although he was heartily congratulated upon his good fortune, his absence was sorely felt by those whom he was in the habit of befriending. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... must not be understood that all the phenomena attending the production of forged signatures can be given. Inasmuch as each person has a peculiar muscular co-ordination that is manifested in the production of habitually written signatures, so each forger from the same cause has an individual habit that must be used when simulating; hence there will be as many styles of writing manifested in production of forgeries as there are forgers to produce them. No positive rule can be laid down for the classification of their peculiarities excepting the manner of accuracy with which the simulation ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... into the scullery to wash his hands and face, and from force of habit came on to the hearth with the towel ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... Korak yurt—that is, of one of the wooden yurts of the settled Koraks—presents a strange and not very inviting appearance to one who has never become accustomed by long habit to its dirt, smoke, and frigid atmosphere. It receives its only light, and that of a cheerless, gloomy character, through the round hole, about twenty feet above the floor, which serves as window, door, and chimney, and which is reached by a round log with holes in it, that stands perpendicularly ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... think you'll be able to raise your children and grandchildren and so on to do the same? To have guts enough to resist the pull of such an ungodly habit-forming drug ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... customary for the whole family to separate, after prayers. Most of us went to bed at that early hour, though Mr. Hardinge himself seldom sought his pillow until midnight. This habit compelled us to use a good deal of caution in getting out of the house, in which Rupert and myself succeeded, however, without discovery, just as the clock struck eleven. We had taken leave of the girls in ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... himself conning the ship, was livelily interested in what was passing around. I believe also that, though an unusually accomplished officer professionally, he had done a good deal of staff duty; had less than the usual deck habit of his period. Besides, men used mostly to sails seemed to think steamers could get out of any scrape at any moment. However that be, after a glance to see that we were rightly headed for a clear opening, he began gazing about ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... 20. The Barber Shops.—This habit of genteel idleness naturally develops various peculiar institutions. For example, the barber shops are almost club rooms. Few Hellenes at this time shave their beards[*], but to go with unkempt whiskers ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... he understood it. The teacher had a habit of spending an evening, now and then, at Dr. Lanham's, and the boys no doubt intended to play a prank on him in going or coming. There being now no moonlight, the village streets were very dark, and there was every opportunity for a trick. Riley's ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... know that she is spoiling her boy by inches; making a nursery darling, instead of a hardy soldier of him? You are weaving silken bonds to fasten me more securely here, when you ought rather to aid me in snapping the fetters of affection, habit, and association. Come, be so good as to brush the dust out of my hair, while you tell me everything about everybody, which you have failed to write during these long ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... his playfellow the ever witty, the precocious, the all-fascinating Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. 'She was,' he wrote, 'a playfellow of mine when we were children. She was always a dirty little thing. This habit continued with her. When at Florence, the Grand Duke gave her apartments in his palace. One room sufficed for everything; and when she went away, the stench was so strong that they were obliged to fumigate the chamber with vinegar ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Omphale)—Ver. 1026. He alludes to the story of Omphale, Queen of Lydia, and Hercules. Being violently in love with her, the hero laid aside his club and boar's skin, and in the habit of a woman plied the spindle and distaff with her maids. See a curious story of Omphale, Hercules, and Faunus, in the Fasti of Ovid, B. ii. l. 305. As to the reappearance of Thraso here, Colman has the following remarks: "Thraso, says Donatus, is brought back ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... lying in a group, ruminating, as is their habit, by night. Rufus drew a tangle of wool over his head, and otherwise contrived to pose as a sheep lying down. He assumed that when thus bagged up in fresh sheepskin, the odor of a sheep would be diffused, and the ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... large amount of dust and nuggets from his claim. I said yes; that he would probably get five or six thousand pounds, if it held out as well as it opened. We exchanged a few other words, and then the question was indirectly put to me—if my poor uncle was in the habit of sending his money to the government office or keeping it buried in his tent. I suspected nothing, for I knew that the men stood in good estimation with the police force, and foolishly answered that he seldom sent money by escort ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the habit of crying all night," said Patty. "I'm quite willing to give up my pretty rooms, but Mona won't let me, and I never ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... Gregory Nazianzen observes.(65) What cannot superstition effect upon the mind of man, when once his imagination is heated? The president in this ceremony was called Hierophantes. He wore a peculiar habit, and was not permitted to marry. The first who served in this function, and whom Ceres herself instructed, was Eumolpus; from whom his successors were called Eumolpidae. He had three colleagues; one who carried a torch;(66) another a herald,(67) whose office was to pronounce certain mysterious ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Panama hat, sunning himself on the terrace before the Casino, or lunching at the Hermitage or Metropole with people he knew, appearing to the world to lead the idle life of a well-to-do man about town—one of a thousand other good-looking, wealthy men whose habit it was annually to spend the worst weeks in the year ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... with their uncle, a man nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote. He had travelled in his younger years, and was held in this part of the county to have contracted a too rambling habit of mind. Mr. Brooke's conclusions were as difficult to predict as the weather: it was only safe to say that he would act with benevolent intentions, and that he would spend as little money as possible in carrying them out. For the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... dirges, but they enlivened him as they sighed forth. They stirred his senses, and through his senses his mind, and through his mind his body, and so the anthropologist made a fiddle help save a life, which fact no mortal man will believe whose habit it is to chatter blindfold about man ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... this miserable career of intrigue and man-trap, and yet nothing come of it? But so it was. The first question a newly-landed regiment was asked, if coming from where they resided, was, "Well, how are the girls?" "Oh, gloriously. Matty is there." "Ah, indeed! poor thing." "Has Fan sported a new habit?" "Is it the old gray with the hussar braiding? Confound it, that was seedy when I saw them in Corfu. And Mother Dal as fat and vulgar as ever?" "Dawson of ours was the last, and was called up for sentence when we were ordered away; of course, he bolted," ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... confiscated property be induced to disgorge except by Imperial order and that with full compensation? Why had Severus so sedulously, yet so obviously, avoided naming the present holder of my former property? The Emperor was an austere man, stern by habit, almost grim by nature, certainly serious. He had spoken seriously. Yet I sensed a jest somewhere in the background of his thoughts. I almost believed I had caught the glint of a twinkle in his hard, gray eyes. Could I be wrong? Could ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... orders to have his trunks sent to him at his father's; and, a hardy pedestrian by habit, he now struck across the park, passed the dell and the hollow tree, commonly called "Guy's Oak," and across woodland and fields golden with ripening corn, took his way to the town, in the centre of which, square, solid, and imposing, stood the respectable ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... circumstance, therefore, French music found itself moulded in foreign musical forms. And in the same way that Germany in the eighteenth century tried to imitate French architecture and literature, so France in the nineteenth century acquired the habit of speaking German in music. As most men speak more than they think, even thought itself became Germanised; and it was difficult then to discover, through this traditional insincerity, the true and spontaneous ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... believed, since the broccoli is coarser than the cauliflower, more variable in character, more robust in habit, and requires a longer season, that it is the original form, of which the cauliflower is only an improvement. Thus, Vilmorin says: "The sprouting or asparagus broccoli represents the first form exhibited ...
— The Cauliflower • A. A. Crozier
... convenient for the lower range of countries and events. He writes with the care, the intelligence, the knowledge of the work of other men, which distinguish Charles Knight's Popular History of England. I have known very deep students indeed who were in the habit of constantly using him. He says, with reason, that no writer has sought truth and justice with more perfect good faith, or has been more careful to keep aloof from party spirit and accepted judgments. As he was a constitutionalist, the revolution ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... offence, which is of all fears the noblest. Mother knew not what to say. Of course she would never dream of taking such a gift as that; and yet she saw how sadly Lorna would be disappointed. Therefore, mother did, from habit, what she almost always did, she called me to help her. But knowing that my eyes were full—for anything noble moves me so, quite as rashly as things pitiful—I pretended not to hear my mother, but to see a ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... ruling class who lived in luxury. The long struggle for liberty in England and in the English colonies was a struggle against the power of rulers to impose taxes without the consent of the people. The habit of mind with respect to taxation formed under such conditions has to a considerable extent persisted into the present, when conditions ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... do beat all curration fer managin' tings. I'd nebber'd got long so h'yer, not by no means, ez I hez, but fer her advice—her'n an' 'Liab's, gentlemen. Dar she am now," he added, as a slight figure, mounted on a powerful black horse, and dressed in a dark riding-habit, with a black plume hanging from a low-crowned felt hat, came out of the woods below and cantered easily along the road a hundred yards away, toward the school-house. The visitors watched her curiously, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... that I was astonished is putting it mildly. If you know the English at all, you know it is not their habit to address strangers, even under the most pressing circumstances. Yet here was one of that haughty race actually interfering in my selection of a stick. I ended by buying the one he preferred, and he strolled along with ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... could possibly mean by so sentimental a prolusion. But just as he began to come out with his "Ay, ay, we are all mortal, Vita incerta, mors certissima!" and two or three more pithy reflections, which he was in the habit of uttering after funerals, when the will of the deceased was about to be opened,—just then Mrs. Dods was pleased to become the ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... each individual life; the very farm-servants felt his influence, and the forester was proud to do the honors of his wood to such a gentleman. Fink was a good deal in the woods with Anton, who, as well as Karl, soon fell into the habit of asking his advice. He bought two strong cart-horses—for his own use, he said—but he cleverly contrived that they should work on the baron's farm, and laughed at Anton's scruples. The latter was happy to have ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... clergyman's solemn dignity did not make his remark less impertinent, considering that Ella Linton was her dearest friend. And yet people were in the habit of giving George Holland praise for his tact. Such persons had never seen him angry, ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... to interrogate me, or to comment upon my situation, one entered the apartment, whose habit and mien tended to encourage me. The stranger was characterized by an aspect full of composure and benignity, a face in which the serious lines of age were blended with the ruddiness and smoothness of youth, and a garb that bespoke that religious profession with whose benevolent doctrines ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... fully met the emergency. He was liberal to the tenants of the State, courteous and accessible to all, upright in his administration, and, above all, he kept his hands clean from bribes and peculation. The provincials were as much astonished as delighted: for Rome was not in the habit of sending them such officers. They invented honours for him such as had never been bestowed ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... Quakers grew to be influential at home, and in the colonies, where they founded Pennsylvania (1681). Their refusal to take oaths, their quaint "thee" and "thou," their simple and somber costumes, and their habit of sitting silent in religious meeting until the spirit should move a member to speak, made them a most picturesque body. Professional ministers and the ceremonial observance of Baptism and the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... with Madame Dambreuse. Her husband would be back in a moment; and Frederick, while he followed her, admired the appearance of the house and the profusion of oil-cloth that was displayed in it. Then he waited a few minutes in a kind of office, into which the Citizen was in the habit of retiring, in order to ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... Paul and Maedel and Alan,—Kathie is too big for that now,—stand on a table near the closet and deliver their parts. Felix makes up the funniest names for us on the programme, and we answer to them as readily as if we were in the habit of doing so ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... and Mr Kissing had given orders that on no account should cigars be lit within the precincts of the Income-tax Office. Mr Eames had taken upon himself to understand that such orders did not apply to a private secretary, and was well aware that Sir Raffle knew his habit. To Mr Kissing, I regret to say, he put himself in opposition whenever and wherever opposition was possible; so that men in the office said that one of the two must go at last. "But Johnny can do anything, you know, because he has got money." That ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... of change, the old Will keep their youthful bent. When once the cloth has got its fold, The smelling-pot its scent, In vain your efforts and your care To make them other than they are. To work reform, do what you will, Old habit will be habit still. Nor fork[27] nor strap can mend its manners, Nor cudgel-blows beat down its banners. Secure the doors against the renter, And through the windows ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Masturbation, the habit of self-abuse, often formed before puberty, is an artificial development of sexual precocity. Most boys, from the age of nine to fourteen, interest themselves in sex questions and matters, but these are usually presented to them in a lewd and improper manner, by improperly informed ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... philosopher, and was in the habit of making many of his tenets minister to his amusement, when in his more sportive and genial moods. Not to exhaust his characteristics too early in the story, it need only be observed here that he held body and soul distinct, and so far antagonistic ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of some lonely feeling, by / whatever cause it may have been excited; but those Sonnets appear to me / the most exquisite, in which moral Sentiments, Affections, or Feelings, / are deduced from, and associated with, the scenery of Nature. Such / compositions generate a habit of thought highly favourable to delicacy of / character. They create a sweet and indissoluble union between the / intellectual and the material world. Easily remembered from their briefness, / and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... The habit of viewing things cheerfully, and of thinking about life hopefully, may be made to grow up in us like any ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... your habit to shirk responsibility—to "pass the buck"—whenever possible? If so, you will never be the "boss." One man has no one to whom he can pass the buck. That person is the chief. Accept and welcome responsibility. Have the courage to face the consequences ...
— Cape Cod and All the Pilgrim Land, June 1922, Volume 6, Number 4 • Various
... begin with, must be at the centre of the camp, as this was the safest place, and next to him must come his most faithful followers, as their habit was. Beyond these, in a ring, lay the cavalry and the charioteers. [9] For Cyrus held to it that these troops also needed a safe position: their equipment could not be kept at hand for them, and if they were to be of any use at all they needed considerable time for arming. [10] The ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... (in fact, it is widely grokked that cats have the hacker nature). Many drive incredibly decrepit heaps and forget to wash them; richer ones drive spiffy Porsches and RX-7s and then forget to have them washed. Almost all hackers have terribly bad handwriting, and often fall into the habit of block-printing everything like ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... in the nature of present things. Before mankind emerged from the valley of these restraints—if ever they did emerge—thousands of generations must follow one another, there must be tens of thousands of years of struggle and thought and trial, in the teeth of prevalent habit and opinion—and primordial ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... had gotten him to go she was afraid he'd come back, and so she persuaded my mother to live here, where there isn't any tobacco, and where I could be sent to school. That took her a year, and now she is breaking up my habit of reading nothing but novels. She gets us all down in the end. One day when she and Joe were little children they were out at the wood-pile, and Georgiana was sitting on a log eating a jam biscuit, with her feet on the log in front of her. Joe had a hand-axe, and was chopping at anything till he ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... kept the rule, the Bulls of the Order had been of use to him, so that he did not pass into purgatory. I do not know why I came to have this revealed to me; I think it must be because I was to learn that it is not enough for a man to be a friar in his habit—I mean, to wear the habit—to attain to that state of high perfection which that of a ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... as Hume supposed, that we have no reason for our inferences from experience, and draw them only because either we have been in the habit of drawing them, or because we are so constituted as to be unable to help drawing them, the reason of our drawing them plainly could not be that we perceive any necessary connection between antecedent and consequent events, or any ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... rose and promenaded, as his habit was, up and down the room. "Now let's see," he continued, "how I ought to proceed in order to discover the probable conduct of a man whose antecedents, traits, and mind are known to me. To begin with, I throw off my own individuality and try to assume his. I substitute ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... cruelty to his prisoners. Hale asked if he might have a minister with him, but Cunningham refused. Then he asked for a Bible, but that, too, was forbidden. How he spent the night we cannot tell; part of it, no doubt, in prayer, for that was the habit of ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... seldom took his ease in a chair: even his reading and writing were commonly performed while reclining upon a couch. When writing, he doubled his tablets on his knee, and it may be presumed that habit made the practice easy and natural. The couch is, indeed, perhaps the chief article of Roman furniture. So regular was it to recline that, where we should speak of a sitting-room, the Romans spoke of a "reclining-room." At business they sat; but they reclined in ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Princess, hatted and gloved, is ushered in by the hotel manager, spruce and artifically bland by professional habit, but treating his customer with a condescending affability which sails very close to the east wind ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... great crisis was seen approaching, the public feeling showed itself by violent agitation. It was not surprising, therefore, that all the faces of these gentlemen at the council-table bore marks of great depression. The Governor of Paris offered his resignation, as he was in the habit of doing after every rather stormy sitting; but his colleagues refused to accept it, as they had before. What was to be done? Had not the Governor of Paris sworn never to capitulate? After a night spent in discussing the question, the members of Government decided on the following plan of ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... mistress. She asked other young ladies, especially that fair girl with auburn hair, whom Julia called a "fat thing." That meant, under the circumstances, a plump and rounded model, with small hands and feet; a perfect figure in a riding habit, and at night a satin ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... known France so unanimous in the desire for peace; but notwithstanding the injury to our interests and the shock to our opinions, the country has no confidence in its right to resist, and has lost the habit of it. There will be grumblings and prophecies of misfortune, but there will be no opposition; and if there should be any military success, followed by territorial aggrandisement, people will forget their ill humour, ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... all his Nauie with one ship controld, He toare his hayre, and loudlie cryd from farre, For honour Spanyards, and for shame be bold; Awaken Vertue, say her slumbers marre Iberias auncient valure, and infold Her wondred puissance, and her glorious deeds, In cowards habit, and ignoble weeds. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... what chiefly conciliated her to Varney, whom she regarded, moreover, as her aunt's most intimate friend, was that she was persuaded he was unhappy, and wronged by the world of fortune. Varney had a habit of so representing himself,—of dwelling with a bitter eloquence, which his natural malignity made forcible, on the injustice of the world to superior intellect. He was a great accuser of Fate. It ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Arabic original of the word coffee meant force, or vigor, once expressed the hope that the coffee drink might return to popular favor in England as "a cheap substitute for those enervating teas and beverages which produce the pernicious habit ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Blifil, who, he may be assured, conducted herself through the whole season in which grief is to make its appearance on the outside of the body, with the strictest regard to all the rules of custom and decency, suiting the alterations of her countenance to the several alterations of her habit: for as this changed from weeds to black, from black to grey, from grey to white, so did her countenance change from dismal to sorrowful, from sorrowful to sad, and from sad to serious, till the day came in which she was allowed to ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding |
