"Proclivity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... student, captivated by the style of the Spectator, a model he assiduously cultivated in his own extensive writings afterwards. He was not assisted in his studies, and all he ever knew of mathematics he taught himself. Being addicted to literature by natural proclivity he inserted his own articles in his brother's newspaper, and these being very favorably commented upon by the local public, or at least noticed and talked about, his authorship of them was discovered, and this led to a quarrel between ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... interest fails to give added zest and energy. There is no possible ground of association on which societies are not formed, and the trivial, fictitious, or imaginary pretences on which men thus combine, meet, and act in concert, are manifest proofs of a social proclivity so strong as to create reasons for its indulgence where such reasons do not already exist. Even in science and in the most abstruse forms of erudition, men of learning seek mutual countenance and encouragement, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... have a natural proclivity for quoting the appropriate dirge when sorrow shows itself. The Book of Lamentations—Shakespeare's sadder lines—roll off their tongues majestically and seem to give them consolation—as it were to lay a sound, unjoyous basis for the proper enjoyment of ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... lie through them. In a picturesque and undulating country, studded with parks and mansions of wealth and taste, you are plunging through a long, dark tunnel, or walled into a deep cut, before your eye can catch the view that dashes by your carriage window. If you have a utilitarian proclivity and purpose, and would like to see the great agricultural industries of the country, they present themselves to you in as confused aspects as the sceneries of the passing landscape. The face of every ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... arrived each at the wrong place. The soul of the princess was one of those, and she went far astray. She does not belong by rights to this world at all, but to some other planet, probably Mercury. Her proclivity to her true sphere destroys all the natural influence which this orb would otherwise possess over her corporeal frame. She cares for nothing here. There is no relation ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... curb a proclivity for such fanciful trash.' He cleared his throat for the utterance. He put out his hand and Helen hastily slipped her own into it. Silently they returned to their own camp site, the girl carrying in her free hand the wand tipped with the bluebird feather. Several times they paused and looked ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... to say, nothing more than a propensity towards sickness. But with regard to whatever is good, as some are more inclined to different good qualities than others, we may call this a facility or tendency: this tendency to evil is a proclivity or inclination to falling: but where anything is neither good nor bad, it may have the ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... for fun and mischief, there was also in his disposition as evident a proclivity to seriousness and earnestness. If it gave him delight to play off upon a stranger the joke of "bagging the game," he enjoyed with equal ardor the correct rendering of a difficult translation, or the solution ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... of this obnoxious proclivity, and did what he could to divert him back to medicine again. But it was no use. Underneath his Galen and Hippocrates were secreted copies of Euclid and Archimedes, to be studied at every available opportunity. Old Vincenzo perceived ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge |
