"Prepossession" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men are sometimes fatally infected with this disease, either through unhappy prepossession, or some of the other causes above-mentioned, yet I am unwilling to believe that there is in nature so monstrously incongruous a being as a female infidel. The least reflection on the temper, the character, and the education of women, makes the mind revolt with horror ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... against me;—not his arguments in themselves, which I shall easily crumble into dust, but the bias of the court. It is the state of the atmosphere; it is the vibration all around which will more or less echo his assertion of my dishonesty; it is that prepossession against me, which takes it for granted that, when my reasoning is convincing it is only ingenious, and that when my statements are unanswerable, there is always something put out of sight or hidden in my sleeve; it is that plausible, but cruel conclusion to which men are so apt to jump, ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... kingdom. In the matter of fact, for the greater part, these authors appear to be in the right; perhaps not always: but if the lawyers mistake in some particulars, it proves my position still the more strongly; because it demonstrates the powerful prepossession towards antiquity with which the minds of all our lawyers and legislators, and of all the people whom they wish to influence, have been always filled, and the stationary policy of this kingdom in considering their most sacred rights and franchises ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... proper age, as it was expressed in the following letter to the writer of these pages, will be satisfactory to such parents as are yet unconvinced of the efficacy of vaccination; and his opinion is the more valuable, because it was given at a time when there was neither prejudice nor prepossession on the subject. ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Coarse manners, vulgar passions, that beat in 320 On all sides from the ordinary world In which we traffic. Starting from this point I had my face turned toward the truth, began With an advantage furnished by that kind Of prepossession, without which the soul 325 Receives no knowledge that can bring forth good, No genuine insight ever comes to her. From the restraint of over-watchful eyes Preserved, I moved about, year after year, Happy, [a] and now most ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... President, who was not suspected of undue partiality to either. If his assent to the bill for incorporating the national bank produced discontent, the opponents of that measure seemed disposed to ascribe his conduct, in that instance, to his judgment, rather than to any prepossession in favour of the party by whom it was carried. The opposition, therefore, in congress, to the measures of the government, seemed to be levelled at the secretary of the treasury, and at the northern members by whom those measures were generally supported, not at the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... system of this earth on which they must depend, to be imperfect, and in time to perish, would be to reason inconsistently or absurdly. This is the view of nature that I would wish philosophers to take; but, there are certain prejudices of education or prepossession of opinion among them to be overcome, before they can be brought to see those fundamental propositions,—the wasting of the land, and the necessity of its renovation by the co-operation of the mineral system. Let us then consider how men of science, in examining the mineral ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... next day in my monastic costume, I had a billet-doux ready in my pocket. The singing commenced: I soon found out that she had a prepossession, from her selecting a song which in the presence of her aunt I should have put on one side, but it now suited my purpose that she should be indulged. When the aunt made her appearance we stopped, and commenced another: by this little ruse I became a sort of ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and the appearance of his lady, as she went about to solicit votes (which encouraged confident hopes of a still further addition to the house of Spruggins at no remote period), increased the general prepossession in his favour. The other candidates, Bung alone excepted, resigned in despair. The day of election was fixed; and the canvass proceeded with briskness ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to Miriam, who was in her nineteenth year, and was, as we have said, a gentle, timid, shrinking girl. Though she did not encourage, she would not reject the attentions of the polite and elegant stranger, who had so much that was agreeable to say that she insensibly acquired a kind of prepossession in his favour. ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... unnatural, and outrages our knowledge of life; men are much more apt to criticize than to praise the absent; but it shows a prepossession on Shakespeare's part in favour of Posthumus which can only be explained by the fact that in Posthumus he was depicting himself. Every word is significant to us, for Shakespeare evidently tells us here what he thought about himself, ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... at home in 1797. The house was empty, swept, and garnished, when the simple-minded, if lion-hearted, seaman came under the spell of one whose fascinations had overpowered the resistance of a cool-headed man of the world, leading him in his old age, with open eyes, to do what every prepossession and every reasonable conviction of his life condemned ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... other revelations. So, too, with the automatic script of Mr. Hubert Wales, which has been described in my previous book. He had tossed it aside into a drawer as being unworthy of serious consideration, and yet it also proved to be in harmony. In neither of these cases was telepathy or the prepossession of the medium a possible explanation. On the whole, I am inclined to think that these doubtful or dissentient scientific men, having their own weighty studies to attend to, have confined their reading and thought to the more objective side of the ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we can perceive not one of those higher attributes of Poesy which belong to her in all circumstances and throughout all time. Here every thing is art, nakedly, or but awkwardly concealed. No prepossession for the mere antique (and in this case we can imagine no other prepossession) should induce us to dignify with the sacred name of poetry, a series, such as this, of elaborate and threadbare compliments, stitched, apparently, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... ether really an objective existence?" However, it is not necessary to know the answer in order to utilize the ether. In its ideal properties we find the means of determining the form of equations which are valid, and to the learned detached from all metaphysical prepossession this is the ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... himself in one of those difficult situations, in which prepossession, being compelled to fluctuate in uncertainty between several points at once, has no sooner determined and fixed upon one side, than it removes and ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... performs the principal character, are traced with equal distinctness. The silly old mother, obstinate from age as well as bigotry; the modest and sensible Cleante; his brother-in-law, Orgon, prepared to be a dupe by prepossession and self-opinion; Damis, impetuous and unreflecting; Mariane, gentle and patient; with the hasty and petulant sallies of Dorine, who ridicules the family she serves with affection; are all faithfully drawn, and contribute their own share on ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... With this modest prepossession, you may be sure I like to have you commend me, whom, after I have done with myself, I admire of all men living. I only beg that you will commend me no more: it is very ruinous; and praise, like other debts, ceases to be due on being paid. One ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Voyage is a very disappointing book indeed. As this is one of the cases where the record of personal experience is not impertinent, I may say that I first read it some forty years ago, when fresh from reading about it and its author in "Theo's" prose; that I therefore came to it with every prepossession in its favour, and strove to like it, or to think I did. I read it again, if I remember rightly, about the time of the excitement about M. Rostand's Cyrano, and liked it less still; while when I re-read it carefully for this chapter, I liked it least of all. There is, of course, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... turned his eyes to seek Yerba in the half-fear, half-expectation of meeting her mischievous smile. Their glances met; to his surprise hers was smileless, and instantly withdrawn, but not until he had been thrilled by an unconscious prepossession in its luminous depths that he scarcely dared to dwell upon. What mattered now this passage with Don Caesar or the plaudits of his friends? SHE ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... notion that all races of men think and act much in the same way as educated Englishmen, the evidence of superstitious belief and custom collected in this work should suffice to disabuse him of so erroneous a prepossession. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... hurt, and disgusted even more than hurt, by her manner, and observing her with a watchful eye as she coquetted with his friend, he speedily came to the conclusion that St. George was right in his estimate of her character at least, although he now seemed to be flattered and amused by her evident prepossession in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... I mention purely to obviate the prepossession of the art being so frivolous, so unworthy of the attention of the manly and grave, as it is vulgarly, or on a superficial view, imagined. It is not high notions of it that I am so weak as to aim at impressing; ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... begin by a few preliminary remarks to clear the ground. First of all, there is one ridiculous objection which I quote only to record. I mean that which suspects at the bottom of the theories which we are going to discuss some dark background, some prepossession of irrational mysticism. On the contrary, the truth is, we have here perhaps better than anywhere, the spectacle of pure thought face to face with things. But it is a complete thought, not thought reduced to some partial functions, but sufficiently sure of its ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... those who were opposed to them. As regards Bills of this character, it was perfectly certain that they got a much more accurate discussion, and decisions were arrived at far less under the stress of party prepossession than when a Bill was discussed in Committee of the ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... this balance; the degree of moderation which is, in adjusting their treaties, become habitual even to victorious and powerful monarchies, does honour to mankind, and may give hopes of a lasting felicity, to be derived from a prepossession, never, perhaps, equally strong in any former period, or among any number of nations, that the first conquering people will ruin themselves, as well ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... marked by all the old Covenanters' directness, and in spite of her prepossession in Nora Costello's favor, showed clearly that she looked upon her as an extremist, ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Bawdry, puts a whole Row into a pleasing Smirk; when a good Sentence that describes an inward Sentiment of the Soul, is received with the greatest Coldness and Indifference. A Correspondent of mine, upon this Subject, has divided the Female Part of the Audience, and accounts for their Prepossession against this reasonable Delight in the following Manner. The Prude, says he, as she acts always in Contradiction, so she is gravely sullen at a Comedy, and extravagantly gay at a Tragedy. The Coquette is so much taken up with throwing her Eyes around the Audience, ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... our investigation. We found Dixon's lawyer, Leland, in consultation with his client in the bare cell of the county jail. Dixon proved to be a clear-eyed, clean-cut young man. The thing that impressed me most about him, aside from the prepossession in his favour due to the faith of Alma Willard, was the nerve he displayed, whether guilty or innocent. Even an innocent man might well have been staggered by the circumstantial evidence against him and the high tide of ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... his head with his hand. After conversing with Junot about a quarter of an hour he quitted him and came towards me. I never saw him exhibit such an air of dissatisfaction, or appear so much under the influence of some prepossession. I advanced towards him, and as soon as we met, he exclaimed in an abrupt and angry tone, "So! I find I cannot depend upon you.—These women!—Josephine! —if you had loved me, you would before now have told me ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... of self-interest fell, however, upon deaf ears. No eloquence or ingenuity of argument could have availed to stem the strong current of growling prepossession. He was equally unsuccessful in his attempt to touch deeper feelings by exhibiting in a pamphlet, which is perhaps the ablest of the series, The danger of the Protestant Religion, from the present prospect of a Religious ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... distorted and discoloured. They go abroad with certain preconceived notions on the subject, and they make everything answer, in reason's spite, to their favourite theory. In addition to the difficulty of explaining customs and manners foreign to our own, there are all the obstacles of wilful prepossession thrown in the way. It is not, therefore, much to be wondered at that nations have arrived at so little knowledge of one another's characters; and that, where the object has been to widen the breach between them, any slight differences ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... membership of the suspected faction aroused fears almost as acute as those which were excited by the consciousness of guilt, There was a prospect of rough and ready justice, where proof might rest on prepossession and verdicts be considered preordained. The bitterness of the situation was increased by the impossibility of open resistance to the measure; for such a resistance would imply an unwillingness to submit to inquiry, and such ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... should be in the Book. About half a Century ago, there seem'd a degree of incredulity as to the possibility of Courage in a Taylor. ELLIOT'S LIGHT HORSE, at that time compos'd of Taylor-Volunteers. effectually overcame that prejudice. It remain'd to dissolve another still more irrational prepossession, that a Taylor cannot be a Poet. And this Volume will be a victorious Host against an Army of such Prejudices. Indeed the Force is greater than such a Combat requires: for stubborn as other Prejudices ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... going directly against the stream of their prejudices. Men's minds must be prepared to receive what is new to them. Reformation is a work of time. A national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally change at once; we must yield a little to the prepossession which has taken hold on the mind, and we may then bring people to adopt what would offend them if endeavoured to be introduced by storm. When Battisto Franco was employed, in conjunction with Titian, Paul Veronese, and Tintoret, to adorn the library of ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... born in a Country where the Religion of Suesi is directed by the Pepa, who stiles himself the Sovereign Arbitrator of it, had imbibed a strong Prepossession for what in the Kingdom of the Kofirans is called Bigotry, or misplaced Devotion. The Customs and religious Notions of this Nation, which were more free and rational than in the Country of this Princess, had been a Constraint ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... recollected the little fascinating actress from whom I had so suddenly parted on the preceding night; still I must say, that I was so much occupied with the charms of her successor, that I sought the society of the youthful Melpomene more with a view to beguile the time, than from any serious prepossession. ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... channel the brilliant qualities of his son; and for this purpose he sent him, at the age of fifteen, to the university of Montpelier. Petrarch remained there for four years, and attended lectures on law from some of the most famous professors of the science. But his prepossession for Cicero prevented him from much frequenting the dry and dusty walks of jurisprudence. In his epistle to posterity, he endeavours to justify this repugnance by other motives. He represents the abuses, the chicanery, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... between the orator and the audience is expressed in what is called the pertinence of the speaker. There is always a rivalry between the orator and the occasion, between the demands of the hour and the prepossession of the individual. The emergency which has convened the meeting is usually of more importance than anything the debaters have in their minds, and therefore becomes imperative to them. But if one of them have anything of commanding necessity in his heart, how speedily he will find ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Clubs, whose acquaintance the great naturalist cultivated, received the simplicity, yet depth, of his inquiries, as he came among them day after day, utilising all their lore, and yet continually asking what they neither knew nor suspected the drift of. He began his study with a prepossession against the idea of the immense diversity of modern pigeons having originated from one common stock. Yet if such modification has taken place in any creature, pigeons may furnish an example, for they have been kept and bred for thousands of years, being ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... other. As he stood there, in an easy attitude with his hands lightly clasped behind his back and his eye taking in, as it seemed at a glance, everything that was going forward, he struck me as the beau-ideal of a naval officer. I took a strong liking to him on the spot, an instinctive prepossession which was afterwards abundantly justified, for Mr Austin—that was his name—proved to be one of the best officers it has ever been my good fortune ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... other monologues: "honest enough, as the way is: all the same, harboring in the CENTRE OF ITS SENSE a hidden germ of failure, shy but sure, should neutralize that honesty and leave that feel for truth at fault, as the way is too. Some prepossession, such as starts amiss, by but a hair's-breadth at the shoulder-blade, the arm o' the feeler, dip he ne'er so brave; and so leads waveringly, lets fall wide o' the mark his finger meant to find, and fix truth at the ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... and our side slid back again. However, I tried again, and the Coroner backed me again, for which I ever afterwards felt grateful to him as I do now to his memory; and we got another favourable turn, out of some other witness, some member of the family with a strong prepossession against the sinner; and I think we had the doctor back again; and I know that the Coroner summed up for our side, and that I and my British brothers turned round to discuss our verdict, and get ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... then, if possible, raise ourselves above these clouds of prepossession! Let us quit the heavy atmosphere in which we are enucleated; let us in a more unsullied medium—in a more elastic current, contemplate the opinions of men, and observe their various systems. Let us learn to distrust a disordered conception; let us take that faithful monitor, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... infancy, considered by the sailor as a promising genius, because I liked punch better than wine; and I took care to improve this prepossession by continual inquiries about the art of navigation, the degree of heat and cold in different climates, the profits of trade, and the dangers of shipwreck. I admired the courage of the seamen, and gained his heart by importuning him for a recital of his adventures, and a sight of his foreign ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of composition. It is needless to say that the author has not elaborated it into a finished work, or done full justice to his talents in its general treatment. We do not agree with Mr. Headley in his notion of Cromwell, and think that his marked prepossession for his hero has unconsciously led him to alter the natural relations of the facts and principles with which he deals; but still we feel bound to give him credit for an extensive study of his subject, and for bringing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... that it will ever be studied for its style in our new Schools of Literature; a devilish cunning if often there, but it leaves a smack of the pharmacopoeia. However, as George Gissing used to say, "the artist should be free from everything like moral prepossession." ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... praetor's lying with his wife;'—or rather the last word of that opinion,—(for it was all my mother heard of it) caught hold of her by the weak part of the whole sex:—You shall not mistake me,—I mean her curiosity,—she instantly concluded herself the subject of the conversation, and with that prepossession upon her fancy, you will readily conceive every word my father said, was accommodated either to herself, or ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... though prepared for youth and beauty, expected not to see a countenance so intelligent, nor manners so well formed as those of Cecilia: thus mutually astonished and mutually pleased, their first salutations were accompanied by looks so flattering to both, that each saw in the other, an immediate prepossession in her favour, and from the moment that they met, they seemed ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... approach these various problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not less ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... of Gauguin's first exhibition and expressed dislike for the artist's prepossession with form, and for the savage models he chose. Gauguin's ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... strong measures, had expressed a wish for an act of Congress authorizing the Executive to take forcible possession of Florida and of Galveston in the event of Spain refusing to satisfy the reasonable demands made upon her. Now, stimulated by indignant feeling, his prepossession in favor of vigorous action was greatly strengthened, and his counsel was that the United States should prepare at once to take and hold the disputed territory, and indeed some undisputed Spanish territory also. But Mr. Monroe and the rest of the Cabinet preferred a milder ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... external evidence alone to which we owe the knowledge of certain Karaite works as Jewish. There are no medival Jewish works treating of religious and theological problems in which there is so much aloofness, such absence of theological prepossession and religious feeling as in some Karaite writings of Mu'tazilite stamp. Cold and unredeemed logic gives the tone to the ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... to move a great ball of ivory. We do not speak of the fact; we only inquire into the cause of it. The fact is certain, and therefore the cause ought likewise to be certain and precise. Let us look for it without any manner of prepossession or prejudice. What is the reason that a great body carries off a little one? The thing might as naturally happen quite otherwise; for it might as well happen that the most solid body should never move any other body—that is to say, motion might be incommunicable. Nothing but custom ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... penetrating but question-provoking psychology. Into such parts and situations as the drama could afford are impressed every possible revelation of our motives; but his model was always reality and he never yielded truth to whim or prepossession. ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... for I was confident Mrs. Eaton had no great prepossession in my favor, but of course ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... which we have just read; it is published six days before the trial, so that an unimpassioned, unprejudiced jury has ample time to study it, and to form its opinions accordingly, and to go into court with a happy, just prepossession against the prisoner. ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... love is not love. It is only a prepossession, pleasant and profitable, promising many every-day advantages. True love is a deep and elemental thing, a secret incredible glory, in a way, it is even a spiritual triumph. And we should have another ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... has as yet made this special portion of Irish history his own. When he does so—if the keen edge of his perceptions, that is to say, has not been dimmed by too strong an earlier prepossession—we shall perhaps learn that the admitted failure of Essex, so disastrous to himself, was more honourable than the admitted and the well-rewarded success of Mountjoy. The situation, as every English ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... does not run in mechanical grooves can do anything of the sort; unless, of course, the facts have been very impressive. But this by the way. The great obstacle to veracious observation is the element of prepossession in all vision. Has it ever struck you, sir, that we never see anyone more than once, if that? The first time we meet a man we may possibly see him as he is; the second time our vision is colored and modified by the memory of the first. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... smiled. The strange effect of that smile upon her features! It gave gentleness to the mouth, and, by making more manifest the intelligent light of her eyes, emphasised the singular pathos inseparable from their regard. It was a smile to which a man would concede anything, which would vanquish every prepossession, which would inspire pity and tenderness and devotion in the heart of ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... This evangelizing prepossession of Arnold's mind must be recognized in order to understand alike his attitude of superiority, his stiffly didactic method, and his success in attracting converts in whom the seed proved barren. The ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... conceived an incipient affection for Kate Nickleby, after witnessing her failure that morning, and this short conversation with her superior increased the favourable prepossession to a most surprising extent; which was the more remarkable, as when she first scanned that young lady's face and figure, she had entertained certain inward misgivings ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... suddenly to leap up to his with that strange look of awakening and enthusiasm which he had noted before. And in its complete prepossession of all her instincts she rose from the bed, unheeding her bared arms and shoulders and loosened hair, and stood upright before him. For an instant husband and wife regarded each other as unreservedly as in ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... instigated by Malvoisin, whispered to each other, that it was time to declare the pledge of Rebecca forfeited. At this instant a knight, urging his horse to speed, appeared on the plain, advancing towards the lists. An hundred voices exclaimed, 'A champion,' 'a champion!' And, despite the prepossession and prejudices of the multitude, they shouted unanimously as the knight rode into the tilt-yard. The second glance, however, served to destroy the hope that his timely arrival had excited. His horse, urged ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... being dancing and bell-ringing. The overwhelming power of his imagination led him to contemplate acts of impiety and profanity, and to a vivid realisation of the dangers these involved. In particular he was harassed by a curiosity in regard to the "unpardonable sin," and a prepossession that he had already committed it. He continually heard voices urging him to "sell Christ," and was tortured by fearful visions. After severe spiritual conflicts he escaped from this condition, and became an enthusiastic and assured believer. In 1657 he joined the Baptist Church, began to preach, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Mr. Falkland bestowed on her in return, appeared sufficiently encouraging to a mind so full of prepossession as that of Emily. There was a particular complacency in his looks when directed towards her. He had said in a company, of which one of the persons present repeated his remarks to Miss Melville, that she ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... read about him only when you were compelled. When you heard the gospel stories read in church, or learnt them from painters and poets, you came out with an impression of their contents that would have astonished a Chinaman who had read the story without prepossession. Even sceptics who were specially on their guard, put the Bible in the dock, and read the gospels with the object of detecting discrepancies in the four narratives to show that the writers were as subject to error as the ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... Council has thought well of my services; and if I have imagined that a majority has been prejudiced against me, I have formed that conclusion merely from the effects which I have seen and experienced, and not from any undue prepossession against particular individuals, whether Brazilian or Portuguese. But when your excellency adds that those transactions between the late minister and myself, which, owing to their having been conducted verbally, have been ill-understood, have invariably been decided in a manner favourable ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... lay aside prejudice and prepossession, and examine with us this most important social question ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... But old prepossession will find reason for anything. A learned friend of mine wrote to me that he had discovered proof that Newton owned Bacon for his master: the proof was that Newton, in some of his earlier writings, used the {76} phrase experimentum crucis, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Juliet there had intervened one or two other dramas, or the chief materials, at least, of them, although they may very possibly have appeared after the success of the Romeo and Juliet and some other circumstances had given the poet an authority with the proprietors, and created a prepossession in his ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... a nobleman would have considered himself insulted and dishonored if he had been supposed to have become a comedian, or even to have assumed a comedian's garb, were it but in the home- circle. The queen by her example had now destroyed this prepossession, and it was now so much bon ton to act a comedy that even men of gravity, even the first magistrate of Paris, could so much forget the dignity of position as to commit to memory and even to act some of the parts of a buffoon. [Footnote: ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... unusual anxiety of mind), and my dear mother dreaded the cold weather for me, and determined to avoid it. I say that I had had unusual anxiety to bear, still it was not of a kind to render me morbid or fanciful. And what is even more to the point, my mind was perfectly free from prepossession or association in connection with the place we were living in, or the people who had lived there before us. I simply knew nothing whatever of these people, and I had no sort of fancy about the house—that it was haunted, or anything of that ...
— Four Ghost Stories • Mrs. Molesworth
... fashionable watering-place, he had attracted the attention of what appeared to be a respectable, matter of fact woman, the wife of a recently elected rural Senator. She was, however, singularly beautiful, and as singularly cold. It was perhaps this quality, and her evident annoyance at some unreasoning prepossession which Jack's fascinations exercised upon her, that heightened that reckless desire for risk and excitement which really made up the greater part of his gallantry. Nevertheless, as was his habit, he had treated her always with a charming unconsciousness of his own ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... is probable that he continued in secret intent upon the Chronicle of Love, notwithstanding the censure which the Queen seemed to pass upon that branch of study. He now remembered a thousand circumstances of voice and manner, which, had his own prepossession been less, must surely have discriminated the brother from the sister; and he felt ashamed, that, having as it were by heart every particular of Catherine's gestures, words, and manners, he should have thought ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... Fortunatus purse and his deposit at the bank. Whether that characteristic old-fashioned reticence which had been such an important factor for good or ill in his future had suddenly deserted him, or whether some extraordinary prepossession in his companion had affected him, he did not know; but by the time the pair had reached the hillside Flynn was in possession of all the boy's history. On one point only was his reserve unshaken. Conscious although ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... is a sensation in my bosom which whispers, in spite of my reason, that if I absolutely believed that which I now say, there would be no object on earth worthy my living for in order to attain it. This insinuating prepossession whispers, to my secret soul, and in very opposition to my reason and understanding, that Malcolm Fleming, who could pledge his all upon the service of his country, is incapable of nourishing the versatile affection of an ordinary, a coarse, or a venal character. Methinks, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... one she knew and was attached to. It could not be to her father, she said to herself, and yet her father's face recurred to her mind more frequently than any other when she thought of that of the young man she had seen; and from that fact a sort of prepossession in the youth's favor took possession of her, making her long to know ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... allowed their eyes to rest with evident prepossession on the insinuating stranger. "Ah, a ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... have ever been attributed to the typical statesman, and is clearly as imaginative a personage as the Marquis of Posa, in Schiller's "Don Carlos." We are ready to accept any coup de theatre of him. Now, this prepossession is precisely that for which the imagination of the poet makes us ready by working on ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... 'I cannot doubt for a moment. But consult your own good sense and reason rather than a prepossession hastily adopted, probably only because you have met a young woman possessed of the usual accomplishments in a sequestered and romantic situation. Let your part in this great and perilous drama rest upon conviction, and not on a hurried ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... truth amongst an infinite number of lies Stupidity and facility natural to the common people Style wherewith men establish religions and laws Subdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doubt Such a recipe as they will not take themselves Suffer my judgment to be made captive by prepossession Suffer those inconveniences which are not possibly to be avoided Sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe Suicide: a morsel that is to be swallowed without chewing Superstitiously to seek out in ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... company! the dresses! the band! the supper!' The host was a personage supernatural. 'Aladdin's magician, if you like,' said Julia, 'only-good! A perfect gentleman! and I'll say again, confound his enemies.' She presumed, as she was aware she might do, upon the squire's prepossession in her favour, without reckoning that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... while he thought confusedly of the collapse of his expedition into the secret places of his own heart with Dr. Martineau, and then his prepossession with Miss Grammont resumed possession of his mind. Dr. ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... Powers as they now stand. The question will, no doubt, present itself, Is the end worth the cost? That question can, of course, not be answered in absolute terms, inasmuch as it resolves itself into a question of taste and prepossession. An answer to it would also not be greatly to the purpose here, since it would have no particular bearing on the course of action likely to be pursued by these pacific nations in their quest of a settled peace. It is more to the point ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... sent to show him the happiness he was forbidden to enjoy. You will now better understand why "The Deformed Transformed" is too painful to me for discussion. Since writing the above, I have read Dr. Granville's letter on the Emperor of Russia, some passages of which seem applicable to the prepossession I have described. I will not mix up less serious matters with these, which forty years have not made less than present still ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to her, arose in her a towering admiration of him. When she first had seen him, there beside the pool, she definitely had liked him; while they had delved into the mysteries of the alphabet upon the log his patient, willing, helpful kindness had increased her prepossession in his favor. It was only when, after disaster had so swiftly, so unexpectedly, descended on them and she had compared his body, made apparently more slender in comparison to the rude-limbed mountaineers she knew than it was really by ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the keenest misfortunes, which interweaves the laurel of glory amidst the instruments of torture and death, displays something so noble, so exalted, that in despite of the prejudices of education, I cannot but admire it, even in a savage. The prepossession which our sex is supposed to entertain for the character of a soldier is, I know, a standing piece of raillery among the wits. A cockade, a lapell'd coat, and a feather, they will tell you, are irresistible by a female heart. Let it be ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... embodied in them is that of the intellect. This does not mean that they are wanting in emotional force or interest: merely, that in George Meredith's fiction men and women live the life of thought as it is acted upon by practical issues. Character seen in action is always his prepossession; plot is naught save as it exhibits this. The souls of men and women are his quarry, and the test of a civilization the degree in which it has developed the mind for an enlightened control over the emotions and the bodily appetites. Neither does ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... was meted out to Job by his so-called friends was measured to the servant, and at the Impulse of the same heartless doctrinal prepossession. He must have been had to suffer so much; that is the rough and ready verdict of the self-righteous. With crashing emphasis, that complacent explanation of the Servant's sufferings and their own prosperity is shivered to atoms, by the statement of the true reason for ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... is this," she said. "I don't think Peter could quite afford the amount of ground he has bought, and the house he is building. I think possibly he is tying himself up in obligations. It may take him two or three years to come even on it; but it is a prepossession with him. Now can't you see that if we go to him and tell him this sordid, underhand, unmanly tale, how his fine nature is going to be hurt, how his big heart is going to be wrung, how his home-house that he is building with such eager watchfulness will be a weighty Old Man ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the undressing-room, this prepossession was still further strengthened. Here we found a square hall, well lighted from above, having on three of its sides elevated recesses for the visiters, and on the fourth, the passage from the outer porch to the hall, and from this to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... investigation. We found Dixon's lawyer, Leland, in consultation with his client in the bare cell of the county jail. Dixon proved to be a clear-eyed, clean-cut young man. The thing that impressed me most about him, aside from the prepossession in his favor due to the faith of Alma Willard, was the nerve he displayed, whether guilty or innocent. Even an innocent man might well have been staggered by the circumstantial evidence against him and the high tide of public feeling, in spite of the support that he was ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... to his circumstances. The spirit of the Chinaman, on the contrary, renders him quite oblivious to his environment. His mind is closed. Under special circumstances, when a Chinaman has been liberated from the prepossession of his social inheritance, he has shown himself as capable of Occidentalization in clothing, speech, manner, and thought as a Japanese. ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... wrinkle ruffled the corner of his eye, and the gem-like lustre of his blue orbs revealed a freshness of soul and an eternal youth such as fable grants to the sea-gods. He displayed his bare arms and muscular neck with an old man's vanity. Never had a gloomy idea, an evil prepossession, or a keen remorse, arisen to disturb his long and peaceful life. He had never seen a tear flow near him without hurrying to wipe it; poor though he was, he had succeeded in pouring out benefits that all the kings of the earth could not have bought with their gold; ignorant though he ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... we have arranged to cut down the rate of the annual grant, and we have taken care—and this, I think, ought to be set down to our credit—that every estimate for every item included in the programme shall be submitted to vigilant scrutiny here as well as in India. I have no prepossession in favour of military expenditure, but the pressure of facts, the pressure of the situation, the possibilities of contingencies that may arise, seem obviously to make it impossible for any Government or any Minister to acquiesce in the risks on the Indian frontier. We have to consider ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... be made for early prepossession. But at a maturer period of life, after looking at various metrical versions of the Psalms, I am well satisfied that the version used in Scotland is, upon the whole, the best; and that it has in general a simplicity and unction of sacred Poesy; and in many ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... herself submissively to the will of Heaven; then turning to Mr. Launcelot, 'I had indulged,' said she, 'a fond hope of seeing you allied to my family. This is no time for me to insist upon the ceremonies and forms of a vain world. Aurelia looks upon you with the eyes of tender prepossession.' No sooner had she pronounced these words than he threw himself on his knees before the young lady, and pressing her hand to his lips, breathed the softest expressions which the most delicate love could suggest. 'I know,' resumed the mother, ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... its object is absent, long and dreary. It renders even the contemplation of the preferred one more agreeable than the society of others. A prepossession for a particular individual usually makes one jealous of attentions bestowed by him on other persons. I once heard a gentleman remark, that it was this jealousy, which first convinced him that he was in love. You cannot open your lips to ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... principles;—faithfulness to old friendship, generosity, and, I trust I may say, genuine religion." And Mr. F. ever after expressed the same sentiments to his friends. It is confidently hoped that similar instances of unfavourable prepossession, may be corrected by the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... into envelopes and afterwards cast away in the playground. I do not know if the masters saw this—it was never adverted upon—and I did it ruefully enough. The consequence was that one lived hungrily in the midst of plenty, and food became the one prepossession of life. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... P.M. Frazier who had been permitted to go to the village this morning returned with a pasel of Roots and bread which he had purchased. brass buttons is an article of which these people are tolerably fond, the men have taken advantage of their prepossession in favour of buttons and have devested themselves of all they had in possesson which they have given in ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... don't—but, pale and struck with terror, Retire: but look into your past impression! And you will find, though shuddering at the mirror Of your own thoughts, in all their self-confession, The lurking bias,[705] be it truth or error, To the unknown; a secret prepossession, To plunge with all your fears—but where? You know not, And that's the reason ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... of shop disciplinarian, so that it was not until he introduced the inspector, with orders to go straight to the men instead of to the gang boss, that he appreciated the desirability of functional foremanship as a distinct principle in management. The prepossession in favor of the military type was so strong with the managers and owners of Midvale that it was not until years after functional foremanship was in continual use in this shop that he dared to advocate it to his superior officers as ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... acute and excitable feelings: and as, in the adjustment of these, our national measures must ultimately be determined by popular sentiment, we cannot be too anxiously attentive to purify it from all latent passion or prepossession. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... cannot conceive how advantageous a graceful carriage and a pleasing address are, upon all occasions; they ensnare the affections, steal a prepossession in our favour, and play about the heart till they ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... past unkindness, and to testify his present gratitude; moreover, he felt at once indignant at, and ashamed of, his late conduct in joining the popular, and, as he now fully believed, the causeless prepossession against his young friend, and before a more present and a stronger sentiment his habitual deference for his brother's counsels faded easily away. Coupled with these favourable feelings towards Clifford were his sagacious suspicions, ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is a special occasion," said Mr. Philip, with so genial an expression that she stared up at him, her eyebrows knit and her mouth puckering back a smile, her deep hopeful prepossession, which she held in common with all young people, that things really happened prettily, making her ready to believe that it was all a mistake and he was about to announce a treat or a promotion. And he, reading ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... people that the hero of The Money Master, Jean Jacques Barbille, lived. He was the symbol or pattern of their virtues and of their weaknesses. By nature a poet, a philosopher, a farmer and an adventurer, his life was a sacrifice to prepossession and race instinct; to temperament more powerful than logic or common sense, though he was almost professionally the exponent ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... meetings had to be proved first, then the fact of the 'conference', and finally the attempts at murder. The reports of the trial do not, however, differentiate these points in any way, and the religious prepossession of the recorders colours every account. It is therefore necessary to take the facts without the construction put upon them by the natural bias of the Christian judges and writers. The records give in some detail the account of several meetings where the deaths of the King and ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... in diversions, in books, in entertainments, and no manner of business intrude upon us but at stated times. For, though you are made to be the delight of my eyes, and food of all my senses and faculties, yet a turn of care and housewifery, and I know not what prepossession against conversation-pleasures, robs me of the witty and the handsome woman to a degree not to be expressed. I will work my brains and fingers to procure us plenty of all things, and demand nothing of you but to take delight in agreeable dresses, cheerful ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... pretending their Indiamen to be men of war, their officers were apprehensive that any distinction granted to Mr Anson, on account of his bearing the king's commission, would render them less considerable in the eyes of the Chinese, and would establish a prepossession at Canton in favour of ships of war, by which they, as trading vessels, would suffer in their importance: And I wish the affectation of endeavouring to pass for men of war, and the fear of sinking in the estimation ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... Singular prepossession of a man of genius, who does not see that to COMPARE, to APPRAISE, to APPRECIATE, is to MEASURE; that every measure, being only a comparison, indicates for that very reason a true relation, provided the comparison is accurate; that, consequently, value, or real measure, and value, or relative ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... William Jones of Nayland, Bishop Horne, and other men of some note[636]—he answered that he was not acquainted with his works, but 'I have observed him to be mentioned as an enthusiast, which gave me no prepossession in his favour.'[637] But the Christianity of feeling, which lies at the root of all that is sound and true in what the age called enthusiasm, was much encouraged by the theology and philosophy of Berkeley. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... with officers of approved merit, whose removal would have injured the public service, without promoting the interest of his successor. Such a conduct, however, displayed to the Roman world the fairest prospect of the new reign, and the emperor affected to confirm this favorable prepossession, by declaring, that, among all the virtues of his predecessors, he was the most ambitious of imitating the humane ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... a human sense, and apart from macrocosmic magnitudes, important?' he inquired, at last attracted by her manner; for he began to perceive, in spite of his prepossession, that she had really something ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... himself by her again, "is it possible you don't see that what happened yesterday has altered the whole position of things? What infatuation is it, what obstinate prepossession, that blinds you to that? It is too late to say what we might have done or what we ought to have done. Admitting the very worst view of what has been done, it is a fact we must act on now; our position is altered; ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... almost without knowing it, so inbred in him is that preconception of the Christian soul, whose moral fortune constitutes alone the significance of life. In these ways the race element, the New England element, is shown; from it springs the moral prepossession of his art, its universal quality, and its democratic substance. This was the nucleus of inheritance and breeding, which together with his temperament governs his art from within, even amid all its personal reserve and its objectivity. The gradually increasing power of these elements gave his ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... his eyes might be opened to the Word's witness, and his mind illumined; then he set about a systematic examination of the New Testament from beginning to end. So far as possible he sought absolutely to rid himself of all bias of previous opinion or practice, prepossession or prejudice; he prayed and endeavoured to be free from the influence of human tradition, popular custom, and churchly sanction, or that more subtle hindrance, personal pride in his own consistency. He was humble enough to be willing to retract any erroneous teaching and renounce ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... I allow that there is indeed very often a great deal of illusion, prepossession, and imagination in all that is termed magic and sorcery; and sometimes the devil by false appearances combines with them to deceive the simple; but oftener, without the evil spirit being any otherwise a party to it, wicked, corrupt, and interested men, artful and deceptive, ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... I myself went there for the first time, in 1870, he asked me too to hunt them up; but they had all then disappeared. His fondness for the French doubtless accentuated his repugnance to the English, at that time still their traditional enemy. The combination of Irish and French prepossession could scarcely have resulted otherwise; and thus was evolved an atmosphere in which I was brought up, not only passively absorbing, but to a certain degree actively impressed with love for France and the Southern section of the United States, while learning to look askance upon England ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... cultivation and training, and by no means the spontaneous offspring of any primary principle naturally inherent in the mind, as some seem to believe. It is no mere vague persuasion taken up without examination, as a common prepossession to which we are always accustomed; on the contrary, all common prejudices and associations are against it. It is pre-eminently an acquired idea. It is not attained without deep study and reflection. The best informed philosopher ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... such dangers, it becomes twofold the duty of an author carefully to avoid distortion in the outline of his pictures, and to keep his own soul free from unjust prepossession. To give the highest expression to the beautiful in its noblest form is not the privilege of every time; but, in all times alike, it is the duty of the writer of fiction to be true to his art and to his country. To seek for this truth, and where found to exhibit ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... French revolution; she has also written a book entitled "Vindication of the rights of Woman." I had heard it spoken of with a coldness little calculated to excite attention; but as I read with avidity and prepossession every thing written by a lady, I made haste to procure it, and spent the last night, almost the whole of it, in reading it. Be assured that your sex has in her an able advocate. It is, in my opinion, a work of genius. ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... principles might be no less innocent out of a cloyster than in one.—She saw also among this sisterhood a great deal of envy to each other, and perceived early that the flaming zeal professed among them was in some hypocrisy, and enthusiasm in others; so that had she had no prepossession in favour of du Plessis, or any engagement with him, the life of a nun was what she never ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... south-west of Sedan, ready to fall on the flank of any force that sought to break away to Mezieres; and a temporary success of his own 5th corps against the Saxons in la Moncelle strengthened his prepossession in favour of a combined move eastwards towards Carignan and Metz. Accordingly, about nine o'clock he produced the secret order empowering him to succeed MacMahon should the latter be incapacitated. Ducrot at once yielded to the ministerial ukase; the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... expression of the consciousness of kind. "This consciousness is a social and a socializing force, sometimes exceedingly delicate and subtle in its action; sometimes turbulent and all-powerful. Assuming endlessly varied modes of prejudice and of prepossession, of liking and disliking, it tends always to reconstruct and dominate every mode of association and every social grouping."[35] This description by Professor Giddings is so near to a description of worship, that it ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... turn from the splendid gloom of Rembrandt's 'Knight in Armour,' to delight in this beautiful little interior of a Dutch house by Peter de Hoogh. Still you see the prepossession for light, but for more tempered rays and softer shadows. The sunshine is diffused by the yellow curtains throughout the room. The old lady need not fear its revelations, to be sure, for it is Holland—she knows that the whole house has been duly scrubbed with soap and water. Dust and dirt ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... confess, seeing it divided into the four Seasons, I had to encounter a prepossession not very advantageous to any writer: that the Author was treading in a path already so admirably trod by THOMSON; and might be adding one more to an attempt already so often, but so injudiciously and unhappily made, of transmuting that noble Poem from Blank Verse into ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... times to my house, and showed much desire to grow intimate with me. I kept to civilities, because finance entered not into my head, and I regarded as lost time all these conversations. Some time after, the Regent, who spoke to me tolerably often of Law with great prepossession, said that he had to ask of me, nay to demand of me, a favour; it was, to receive a visit from Law regularly every week. I represented to him the perfect inutility of these conversations, in which I was incapable of ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... to Heaven it may turn out so!' repeated Jasper. 'You know—and Mr. Grewgious should now know likewise—that I took a great prepossession against Mr. Neville Landless, arising out of his furious conduct on that first occasion. You know that I came to you, extremely apprehensive, on my dear boy's behalf, of his mad violence. You know that I even entered ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... however, restraining the council's jurisdiction, and the strong prepossession of the people as to the sacredness of freehold rights, made the Star-chamber cautious of determining questions of inheritance, which they commonly remitted to the judges; and from the early part of Elizabeth's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... queen than those of Montrose; and the Covenanters were allowed, without interruption, to proceed in all their hostile measures. Montrose then hastened to Oxford where his invectives against Hamilton's treachery, concurring with the general prepossession, and supported by the unfortunate event of his counsels, were entertained with universal probation. Influenced by the clamor of his party, more than his own suspicions, Charles, as soon as Hamilton appeared, sent him prisoner to Pendennis ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... all sorcerers, the Past,—and how confront or cross-examine invisible witnesses, especially witnesses whom it was a kind of impiety to doubt? Evidence that would have been convincing in ordinary cases was of no weight against the general prepossession. In 1659 the house of a man in Brightling, Sussex, was troubled by a demon, who set it on fire at various times, and was continually throwing things about. The clergy of the neighborhood held a day of fasting and prayer in consequence. ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... noticed the strange look of prepossession on his face at the ball last night, as if he knew ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... implacable resentment, he accused her, or caused her to be accused by Conde, of having wished to betray his interests to serve those of the Duke de Nemours, giving her even to understand that "if a like prepossession took her for another, she was capable of going to the same extremities if that person desired it."[2] The accusation is yet more absurd than odious. The Duke de Nemours was not the least in the world a party chief; he was a friend of Conde, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... usual method of presenting the elements of the earth's history the facts are set forth in a manner which leads the student to conceive that history as in a way completed. The natural prepossession to the effect that the visible universe represents something done, rather than something endlessly doing, is thus re-enforced, with the result that one may fail to gain the largest and most educative impression which physical science can afford him in the sense of the swift and unending ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... that final factor which underlies the security of civil society even more than it affects the relations of states. The well-balanced faculties of Washington saw this in his day with absolute clearness. Jefferson either would not or could not. That there should be no navy was a cardinal prepossession of his political thought, born of an exaggerated fear of organized military force as a political, factor. Though possessed with a passion for annexation which dominated much of his political action, he prescribed ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... get some idea from ocular inspection whether the little winter stream or Wadi there could ever have been the divinely-appointed boundary of the land promised to Abraham and his seed for ever. My prepossession is certainly to ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... something in the style of this remark, that heightened my prepossession in his favour, and made me pursue my purpose with more zeal. "Let us try what we can do for you," I answered. "If we save your life, we shall have done you some service, and, as for recompense, we will ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... occasion I speak impartially: I am not a collector or admirer of collections, consequently no rival; but I have some early prepossession in favour of Greece, and do not think the honour of England advanced by plunder, whether of India ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... age, though an age doubtless with its differences of more or less imaginative individual minds—with one, here or there, eminent, though but by a little, above a merely receptive majority, the spokesman of a universal, though faintly-felt prepossession, attaching the errant fancies of the people around him to definite names and images. The myth grew up gradually, and at many distant places, in many minds, independent of each other, but dealing in a common temper with certain elements and aspects of the natural ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... 'Dolphuses. Dang it, I believe the foolish woman likes the chap the better for having a name she can't speak! Remember, I warn you he's a sham!" And off strode the honest miller, leaving Mrs. Deborah too angry for reply, and confirmed both in her prejudice and prepossession by the natural effect of that spirit of contradiction which formed so large an ingredient in her composition, and was not wholly wanting ...
— Aunt Deborah • Mary Russell Mitford
... here republished, and recommended as a closet piece [i.e., for private reading], to recreate an intelligent mind in a vacant hour: for vacant the reader must be, from every strong prepossession, in order to relish an entertainment, quod nequeo monstrare et sentio tantum, which cannot be enjoyed to the degree it deserves, but by those of the most polite Taste among Scholars, the best Breeding among Gentlemen, and the least acquainted with ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... way of conciliating the other members of the household. The girl's father tolerated him, if he did not even like him. Whether he suspected his project or not Dick did not feel sure; but it was something to have got a foot-hold in the house, and to have overcome any prepossession against him which his uncle might have entertained. To be a good listener and a bad billiard-player was not a very great sacrifice to effect this object. Then old Sophy could hardly help feeling well-disposed towards him, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... account," says Burney, "be reconsidered without prepossession, and the idea that will immediately and most naturally occur is that Southern India, discovered by De Gonneville, was Madagascar. De Gonneville, having doubled (passed round) the Cape, was by tempests driven into calm latitudes, and so near to this land that ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... grieved, Captain Mertoun, that domestic fractions should be promulgated on our first meeting, and feel much prepossession for your ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... in his chair all the time. And in this last case we have an example of a fact, of which there is ample illustration, that during the prevalence of an epidemic delusion, the honest testimony of any number of individuals on one side, if given under a prepossession, is of no more weight than that of a single adverse ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... and poetical works; their modern editor is even of opinion that they were meant as parodies and satires on the vitiated taste of the time: but to find this hypothesis ridiculous, we have only to read them without any such prepossession. Had Cervantes entertained such a design, he would certainly have accomplished it in a very different way in one piece, and also in a manner both highly amusing and not liable to misconception. No, they ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... that men are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist, ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... of Inspiration. 4. Inspiration in general, or Natural Inspiration. 5. Christian or Supernatural Inspiration. 6. Inspiration of the Scriptures, especially of the New Testament Scriptures. 7. Authority of the Scriptures. 8. The Christian Prepossession. 9. Conclusion. Chapter VI. Orthodox Idea Of Sin, As Depravity And As Guilt. 1. The Question stated. 2. The four Moments or Characters of Evil. The Fall, Natural Depravity, Total Depravity, Inability. 3. Orthodox and Liberal View of Man, as morally diseased or otherwise. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... have usually placed it. The question, that is, has usually presented itself to them as one concerning the relative strength of the impulse in men and women. When so considered, not hastily and with prepossession, as is too often the case, but with a genuine desire to get at the real facts in all their aspects, there is no reason, as we have seen, to conclude that, on the whole, the sexual impulse in women is ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... investigation. Nature had been proved a figment of human imagination so that, once rid of all but a mock allegiance to her facts and laws, we might be free to invent any world we chose and believe it to be absolutely real and independent of our nature. Strange prepossession, that while part of human life and mind was to be an avenue to reality and to put men in relation to external and eternal things, the whole of human life and mind should not be able to do so! Conceptions ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... sir," says he. "I daresay you would be pleased to see your new colony there, where you once reigned with more felicity than most of your brother monarchs in the world." In a word, the scheme hit so exactly with my temper, that is to say, the prepossession I was under, and of which I have said so much, that I told him, in a few words, if he agreed with the merchants, I would go with him; but I told him I would not promise to go any further than my own island. "Why, sir," says he, "you don't want to be left there again, I hope?" "But," said I, "can ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... What prepossession, what blindness must it be to compare the son of Sophronicus to the son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion there is between them! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... and that her passion was not sufficiently romantic; in which piece of folly my rebel encouraged her, and the affair broke off in a manner which has brought on her the imputation of having given way to an idle prepossession in favor ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... his eyes and shaking his head: he did not, however, interrupt him. When he had done, he said to him, "Forgive me, Saadi, if I anticipate Khaujeh Hassan, before he answers you, to tell you, that I am vexed at your prepossession against his sincerity, and that you still persist in not believing the assurances he has already given you. I have told you before, and I repeat it once more, that I believe those two accidents which befell him, upon his bare ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... little conversation with the doctor sufficed to satisfy Langholm's curiosity, and to remove from his mind the wild prepossession which he had allowed to grow upon it with every hour of that wasted day. The doctor was also one of the Bohemian colony in Chelsea, and by no means loath to talk about a tragedy of which he had exceptional knowledge, since he himself ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... books, and could make a little knowledge in these matters go a great way. Clarence could not conceal from himself that he admired Melvina, and, although his good sense and discrimination opposed this admiration, he could rarely spend an evening with Miss Fenton, without a strong prepossession in her favor. Still, with her, as with every one, he maintained a consistency of character that annoyed her. He could not be brought to flatter her in any way; and for this she thought him cold, and often felt under restraint in his society. One thing in her which he ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... Little, Love me Long." A great charm of Thackeray's books was, that in every fresh one we heard a little news of the dear old friends of former ones; and "Very Hard Cash" has all the advantage of prepossession in its favor. Its forerunner was a startling thing to the circulating-library, for the hero was an entirely new character, dashing among the elegancies of the habitual hero like a shaggy dog in a drawing-room; and though the author admires him to the core of his heart, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Royal was the first who was taken with him: Miss Hyde seemed to be following the steps of her mistress: this immediately brought him into credit, and his reputation was established in England before his arrival. Prepossession in the minds of women is sufficient to find access to their hearts: Jermyn found them in dispositions so favourable for him, that he had nothing ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... Lord Ormont's prepossession against Aminta's aunt; and who can tell? perhaps of much of his behaviour to the beautiful young wife he at least admired, sincerely admired, though he caused her to hang her head—cast a cloud on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
