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Predilection   Listen
noun
Predilection  n.  A previous liking; a prepossession of mind in favor of something; predisposition to choose or like; partiality.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Predilection" Quotes from Famous Books



... not settle down quietly amid fashions a century old. And Lucy Lennox, when she returned to the farmhouse, was not quite the same as when she went away. Indeed, Aunt Betsy in her guileless heart feared that she had actually fallen from grace, imputing the fall wholly to Lucy's predilection for a certain little book on whose back was written "Common Prayer," and at which Aunt Betsy scarcely dared to look, lest she should be guilty of the enormities practiced by the Romanists themselves. Clearer headed than his sister, the deacon read the black-bound book, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... supposed that I had been drowned in making the attempt. Aware that it would not be good for my health to return previously to the expiration of the seven years, I determined to learn a new profession—that of a sailor, for which I always had a predilection; besides, it quieted my conscience as to the impropriety of not submitting to the just punishment of the law, as you will acknowledge that seven years at sea, and seven years' transportation, are one and the same thing. From Batavia I went to Calcutta, and worked before the mast in the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat

... was scrupulously, determinedly dainty, from the flowered tea-gown about her slim, girlish figure,—her predilection for that then novel and suspected garment was regarded as a sure mark of a certain Parisian levity by her neighbours,—to her just a little "precious" enunciation. In France, in the seventeenth century, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne

... Jews in West and South Barbary, have a predilection for the European costume, in preference to their own, the former being respected, the latter not: moreover the character of a merchant is highly respected by the Moors, and the European dress is a kind of passport ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... be fit for him. Is the plea of "not recollecting" such prominent facts to be admitted? Mr. Bowles has been at a public school, and as I have been publicly educated also, I can sympathise with his predilection. When we were in the third form even, had we pleaded on the Monday morning, that we had not brought up the Saturday's exercise, because "we had forgotten it," what would have been the reply? And is an excuse, which would not be pardoned to a schoolboy, to pass current ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... Slee replied that, while boarding was a "miserable business anyhow," he had been particularly fortunate in securing a place on one of the most pleasant streets—"the family a small one and choice spirits, with no predilection for taking boarders, and consenting to the present arrangement only because of the anticipated pleasure of your company." The price, Slee added, would be reasonable. As a matter of fact a house on Delaware Avenue—still the fine ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... speak to her again? How could she inform Captain of the compact she and her friends had made without involving Mary in it? Her mother would naturally inquire the reason for this rather remarkable movement. She might be displeased, as well as surprised, over Mary's strange predilection for the French girl. Her Captain knew all that had happened during her freshman year. On that memorable day when she had leaped into the river to rescue Marcia Arnold, and afterward come home, a curious little figure clad in Jerry Macy's ample ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... was an ambitious man, full of courage and astuteness, familiar with the sword and with poison, which he used alternately, according to the occasion, without feeling any repugnance or any predilection for either of them; but quite decided to be his nephew's heir whether ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... like of that, Sir Wycherly? Because I stick to a man I like, he accuses me of having a predilection for his whole country. Here's Atwood, now; he was my clerk, when in a sloop; and he has followed me to the Plantagenet, and because I do not throw him overboard, he wishes to make it appear half Scotland ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... dance are sometimes to be seen on the wet grass, especially on the banks of rivers. Their exhalation is injurious, and is called alfgust or elfblst, causing a swelling, which is easily contracted by too nearly approaching places where they have spat, etc. They have a predilection for certain spots, but particularly for large trees, which on that account the owners do not venture to meddle with, but look on them as something sacred, on which the weal or woe of the place depends. Certain diseases among their cattle are attributed ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... matrimony held that the husband and wife must be "yoked" together, so that neither one could exercise any individual predilection or choice of friends, or recreation, or taste or desire. And this is still the average idea of a successful marriage. It is an idea that is not confined to the ignorant, and the narrow-minded. It is the attitude of society at large, though upon what argument such an idea is based, must ...
— Sex=The Unknown Quantity - The Spiritual Function of Sex • Ali Nomad

... books held an unaccountable fascination for him, he could not explain this predilection, for their influence over him ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... He is even far above all the praises bestowed upon him; no one could describe the tone of his voice, his smile, or the expression of his eye, so filled with deep and noble thought; I am not at all surprised at the empress's predilection for him. He has already succeeded in winning the attachment of his people in Courland; he is seen once, and he pleases; again, and he is loved.... I believe that were the king to die, he would ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... He had, while staying with me, one of those febrile attacks to which persons who have once suffered from malarious disease are so liable, and I could not fail to remark his sensible observations thereon, and his judicious management of his sickness. He had a great natural predilection for medical science, and always took great interest in all that related to the profession. I endeavored to persuade him to commit to writing the results of his medical observations and experience among the natives of Africa, but he was too much occupied with the preparation of ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... occasions of their utilization makes manifest the great part that freeing the body from corrupting matter played in the treatment of disease. The theorists and clinical physicians of the century placed such faith in the humoral doctrine that, on the basis of this predilection, much of the opposition to cinchona, or quinine, in a period greatly troubled by malaria, can be explained. Cinchona, discovered in Spanish America and known in seventeenth-century Europe, had demonstrable ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... was frequently a guest in Ferrara, executed some paintings for him, and the duke likewise gave Raphael some commissions. He even founded a museum of antiquities. In Lucretia's cabinet there was a Cupid by Michael Angelo. The predilection of the duchess for the fine arts, however, was not very strong; in this respect she was not to be compared with her sister-in-law, Isabella of Mantua, who maintained constant relations with all the prominent artists of the age and had her agents in all the large cities of Italy ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... drawing-room; indeed, the whole establishment wore a paltry air, to her thinking, who had a predilection for the ornately massive in style. But if Grace had been foolish enough to marry a lawyer, in a town already too full of lawyers, and he young, and with his way to make, what could she expect? Alfred's daughter should surely have done ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann

... but absolute, understood of all, explainable by none, and of greater, or at least more universal, interest than any other emotion. Those equally fitted to enjoy all Wagner's operas show, it is observed, a predilection usually for Tristan and Isolde. If the pre-eminent beauty of the music accounts for this, the fact suggests none the less that Wagner could reach his utmost eloquence on the theme. It is as if the composer had wished for once a fair field to render all he felt ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

... endowment, aptitude, attribute, talent, predilection, bent. Failing, shortcoming, defect, fault, foible, infirmity. Famous, renowned, celebrated, noted, distinguished, eminent, illustrious. Fashion, mode, style, vogue, rage, fad. Fast, rapid, swift, quick, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... generally, I think, more highly organized than those which elicited his father's peculiar tenderness; it was natural that he should exact more pictorial or more companionable qualities from them. But father and son concurred in the fondness for snakes, and in a singular predilection for owls; and they had not been long established in Warwick Crescent, when a bird of that family was domesticated there. We shall hear of it in a letter ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... number of rooms reached that height. The small cluster adjoining on the north, and those on the southeast, southwest, and west, were built later and belong to the last period of the occupancy of the group. The builders exhibited a decided predilection for a flat site, as an examination of the sites of the various room clusters in the ground plan (plate XVII) will show, and when the sight of the main cluster became so crowded that additional rooms could be added only by building them on the sloping hillside, recourse was had to other sites. ...
— Aboriginal Remains in Verde Valley, Arizona • Cosmos Mindeleff

... models. The second was in that poetic vein which occasionally cropped out in Seward's speeches, and over which Lincoln on better acquaintance was wont good-naturedly to rally him. It is evidence of Lincoln's predilection for poetic language, at least at the close of a speech, that he adopted the ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... likely to become deceitful, and that every habit of useful action must resolve itself into some elementary practice of manual labour. And I would, in all sober and direct earnestness advise you, whatever may be the aim, predilection, or necessity of your lives, to resolve upon this one thing at least, that you will enable yourselves daily to do actually with your hands, something that is useful to mankind. To do anything well with your hands, useful or not;—to be, even in trifling, [Greek: palamesi daemon] is ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... striking truth and reality; on the unfeigned regard he had for work of all kinds, and the sense he had of its value, both for the complex aggregate of society and the growth and protection of the individual. In all this there was no excitement; no predilection for one class of work above another; no enthusiasm for any one- sided object: but a humble, profound, and most religious consciousness that work is the appointed calling of man on earth; the end for which his various faculties were given; the element in which his nature is ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... cloudy weather in the financial world of New York, and he wisely judged it best that his own eyes should be on the spot to see to his own interests. Nobody was sorry for this determination. Mrs. Rossitur always liked what her husband liked, but she had at the same time a decided predilection for home. Marion was glad to leave her convent for the gay world, which her parents promised she should immediately enter. And Hugh and Fleda had too lively a spring of happiness within themselves to care where its ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... the South for its fondness of titles —a fondness for titles pure and simple, regardless of whether they are genuine or pinchbeck. We forget that whatever a Southerner likes the rest of the human race likes, and that there is no law of predilection lodged in one people that is absent from another people. There is no variety in the human race. We are all children, all children of the one Adam, and we love toys. We can soon acquire that Southern disease if some one will give it a start. It already ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... boiled in milk with rich spices, being a standing dish in old times for Christmas Eve. I was happy to find my old friend, minced pie, in the retinue of the feast and, finding him to be perfectly orthodox, and that I need not be ashamed of my predilection, I greeted him with all the warmth wherewith we usually greet an ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... condescendingly, and whose habit of reigning on the stage had procured for him for life that exceptional position of a spoiled and admired child-king! When he left the house, the shopkeepers on the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, with the predilection of the Parisian for everything and everybody connected with the theatre, saluted him respectfully. He was always so well dressed! And then he was so kind, so obliging! When you think that every Saturday night, he, Ruy Blas, Antony, Raphael in the 'Filles de Maybre,' Andres in the 'Pirates de la ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... and distinct views of his God; yet, though he may become religious, it is hardly to be expected that he will become a very precise and straightlaced person; it is probable that he will retain, with his scholarship, something of his gypsyism, his predilection for the hammer and tongs, and perhaps some inclination to put on certain gloves, not white kid, with any friend who may be inclined for a little old English diversion, and a readiness to take a glass of ale, with plenty of ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... fix our eyes on geographical maps, and to read the narratives of navigators, we feel for certain countries and climates a sort of predilection, which we know not how to account for at a more advanced period of life. These impressions, however, exercise a considerable influence over our determinations; and from a sort of instinct we endeavour to connect ourselves with objects ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... lahtora. In shape it is circular, ordinarily varying from 51/2 to 7 inches in diameter, and from 2 to 21/2 inches in thickness. Hemp, old rags, and thorny twigs are freely used in the formation of the outer portion of the nest, but the Shrike shows a decided predilection for the former. In one nest I observed the cast skin of a snake worked in with the outer materials; in two others some kind of vegetable fibre was used to bind and secure the thorn twigs, and one had the margin made of fine neem-tree twigs and leaves. The ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... acquainted with similar or still greater visitations among the ancients, but, as later ages have always been fond of referring to Grecian antiquity, the learned of those times, from a partial and meagre predilection, were contented with the descriptions of Thucydides, even where nature had revealed, in infinite diversity, the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... a son, a twelve year old son, who should have left behind the noise and follies of childhood, and have become old enough to be an intelligent and agreeable companion. Now Rolf fulfilled these conditions; and moreover displayed a decided predilection for Uncle Titus, who began to feel a most paternal interest spring up in his heart towards the lad. So gladly did he feel it, that as he strode through the garden, in the light of the shining, starry host, he broke ...
— Uncle Titus and His Visit to the Country • Johanna Spyri

... Hull, who were neighbours, and, I fancy, tenants of Williamson's, were once met by him walking together, when W. exclaimed "I say, if I'd my way you two should be made bishops." Dr. Raffles very quickly replied, "Ah, Williamson, you ought to be an archbishop!" alluding to his well-known predilection for vault building. He once invited a party of gentlemen to dine with him. The guests were shown into a bare room with a deal table on trestles in the middle, with common forms on each side. Williamson, with the utmost gravity, bade his friends take their seats, placing ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian

... brother and intimate?' But quoth he, 'Woe to you! my folk did I dwell amongst them would some day unlove me and the while I abide far from them will never reprove me; not indeed would they remember my affection nor would they desire my predilection; and so satisfied with my solitude am I that an I saw my family I should start away as in fear of them, and were my parent quickened anew and longed for my society verily I would take flight from them.' " Replied the Fowl-let, "In good sooth, O my brother, truth thou hast pronounced ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... Aylesbury; and the peer, in {202} acknowledgment of the faithful services of his trusted dependent, placed young Whitelocke at Lochee's Military Academy, near Chelsea. There he remained till 1777, when, the Earl's friendly disposition remaining in full force, and the youth's predilection for a military career continuing unabated, an ensigncy was procured him, through Lord Aylesbury's intervention, in the 14th regiment of Foot."—Risen from the Ranks, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various

... surface at least, one of political and religious reaction; and reaction often assumes the aspect of progress, nay, in some cases is identical with progress. Most of the poets, dramatists, and other writers of the Romantic School were, either by affinity or predilection, legitimists and neo-Catholics. Gothic art, mediaeval sentiment, the ancient monarchy and the ancient creed, were blended in their programme with the abrogation of the "unities," and a greater license ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... in Evan's mind. It must have been some relation to the garden-grubs that had infested Jim Japers' vineyard, for it showed a predilection for fresh air and outside work. Two incidents—the firing by the cashier of a clerk ahead of Nelson, and the receiving of a letter from A. P. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... representative institutions, in which, under certain restrictions, the will of the majority was supreme, while, nevertheless, the largest individual freedom, and the utmost liberty of individual initiative were retained. The framers showed the American predilection for a written constitution or civil compact; and, what was more important, they also showed the common-sense American spirit that led them to adopt the scheme of government which should in the simplest way best serve their needs, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... of all is the presence of several large, ill-defined, or unsettled terms, of which there are still plenty in our department. A not unfrequent case is a combination of the several defects each perhaps in a small degree. A tinge of predilection or party, a double or triple complication of doctrines, and one or two hazy terms, will make a debate that is pretty sure to end as it began. Thus it is that a question, plausible to appearance, may contain within it capacities ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... keep him quiet till dinner-time. I was on one of the carronades, busy with the sun's lower limb, bringing it into contact with the horizon, when the boy's lower limbs brought him into contact with the baboon, who, having, as well as the boy, a strong predilection for bread-and-butter, and a stronger arm to take it withal, thought proper to help himself to that to which the boy had already been helped. In short, he snatched the bread-and-butter, and made short work of it, for it was in his pouch in ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... who, it seems, if all tales were told, was not a bit better than the dragon that he slew; or for what other reason I know not, yet there is no doubt of the fact, that in all ages English vintners have had a particular predilection for green dragons; and that name was so commonly attached to a public-house, in those days, that it had not at all struck Wilton Brown that the Green Dragon to which Lord Sherbrooke ordered the horses to be led, was that very identical ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James

... the West (Morocco); the next was Sultan of Bornou; and the third and youngest was Sultan of Aghadez in remote times. But how remote, it is impossible for En-Noor to tell, and, of course, for me to relate. I was much amazed by the predilection of En-Noor (who is not absolutely a white man) for black people. He praised Overweg, because he was getting brown and black. As for me, his highness was almost inclined to express his disgust for the whiteness of my skin. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... farther on Boy's canoe came up with those of Gun and Forday. The latter was a venerable-looking old man, in spite of his wretched semi-European semi-native clothing and a very strong predilection for rum, of which he consumed a great quantity, although his manners and conversation betrayed ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... 1827. The Midsummer Fairies itself was one of the authors own favorite works, and certainly deserved to be so, as far as dainty elegance of motive and of execution is concerned: but the conception was a little too ingeniously remote for the public to ratify the author's predilection. The Hero and Leander will be at once recognized as modelled on the style of Elizabethan narrative poems: indeed Marlow treated the very same subject, and his poem, left uncompleted, was finished by Chapman. Hood's ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... sought great enterprises, Philip would avoid them. The Emperor never recoiled before threats; the son was reserved, cautious, suspicious of all men, and capable of sacrificing a realm from hesitation and timidity. The father had a genius for action, the son a predilection for repose. Charles took "all men's opinions, but reserved his judgment," and acted on it, when matured, with irresistible energy; Philip was led by others, was vacillating in forming decisions, and irresolute ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the world a man of an uprighter heart than my father, and I may say that he was stampt in the very mold of virtue. Yet my duels and love-intrigues did not hinder the good man from doing all he could to tye to the Church, the soul in the world perhaps the least ecclesiastical. His predilection for his eldest son, and the view of the archbishoprick of Paris for me, were the true causes of his acting thus; though he neither believed it, nor felt it. I dare say that he thought, nay would have sworn, that he was led in all this by no other motive than the spiritual good of ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... woman, ere I venture to ask her to be mine. I am heartily tired of my present life; it is a lonely stupid way of living; living! I don't live, I merely vegetate! I have no taste for dissipation; neither have I any great predilection for field sports. ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French

... I am quite sorry it is so very bad a work; the arrangement detestable, the materials trifling, his reflections humane but silly. He disposes all under reigns of Roman emperors and English kings, whether they did any thing or nothing at Leicester. I am sorry I have such predilection for the histories of particular counties and towns: there certainly does not exist a ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... college education. His college education was in most cases expected to result in an entrance to the clerical profession, but the law had by this time begun to have a more distinct claim upon attention, and the medical profession had always demanded those who could show a positive predilection for it.[1] The doctor, however, did not learn his science under any organized educational system, but by personal association and study with an older practitioner, a system which naturally lessened the likelihood ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder

... living fairly intoxicates one, and every bird's throat is swelling with happy music, who but a Calvinist would croak dismal prophecies? In Ireland, old crones tell marvellous tales about the hawthorns, and the banshees which have a predilection for them. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... his younger days;—not, indeed, the Continental radicalism held by a party in England;—but was an independent kind of warrior, fighting under his own banner, and always rather with the weapons of a man of letters than those of a politician. For the business aspect of politics he never showed any predilection from first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... again and again ask you outright, both to praise those actions of mine in warmer terms than you perhaps feel, and in that respect to neglect the laws of history. I ask you, too, in regard to the personal predilection, on which you wrote in a certain introductory chapter in the most gratifying and explicit terms—and by which you shew that you were as incapable of being diverted as Xenophon's Hercules by Pleasure—not to go against ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... confess there is some apparent cause for doubt, in consequence of the coloring given by the worthy Diedrich to his descriptions of the Hollow; who, in this instance, has departed a little from his usually sober if not severe style; beguiled, very probably, by his predilection for the haunts of his youth, and by a certain lurking taint of romance whenever any thing connected with the Dutch was to be described. I shall endeavor to make up for this amiable error on the part of my ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... pleasantly, 'We have only come to hold the fair.' He foresees also that the resolution of the States-General, as to convoy, will not be such as to engage France to revoke or mitigate her last edict of navigation. One of the first Houses of Amsterdam, and whose predilection for England is known, has sold L60,000 of English funds. This has revived the idea of a declaration from Spain, and has depressed the English funds at Amsterdam from three to four per cent. There is a shower ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various

... gardener and a coachman. While few but the rich had such ample staffs as this, none but the poor were devoid of domestics, and the ratio of servitors to the gross population was large. The repugnance of white laborers toward menial employment, furthermore, conspired with the traditional predilection of householders for negroes in a lasting tenure for their intimate services and gave the slaves a virtual monopoly of this calling. A census of Charleston in 1848,[94] for example, enumerated 5272 slave domestics as compared with 113 white and 27 free colored servants. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... priestly than when he was most tender. And the tenderness of Raoul towards her was that of some saint-like nature towards the acolyte whom it attracted upwards. He had once, just before Enguerrand's death, spoken to Isaura with a touching candour as to his own predilection for a monastic life. "The worldly avocations that open useful and honourable careers for others have no charm for me. I care not for riches nor power, nor honours nor fame. The austerities of the conventual life ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... statement alleged to have been made by Fletcher Christian a few years later, the genuineness of which, however, is open to serious question. If it could be accepted, Christian acquitted his commander of having contributed to the mutiny by harsh conduct. He ascribed the occurrence "to the strong predilection we had contracted for living in Tahiti, where, exclusive of the happy disposition of the inhabitants, the mildness of the climate, and the fertility of the soil, we had formed certain tender connections which banished the remembrance of old England from ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... voice which implies the right to command. He had the thick hand, stubbed fingers, with bristled pads between their joints, square, broad thumb-nails, and sturdy limbs, which mark a constitution made to use in rough out-door work. He had the never-failing predilection for showy switch-tailed horses that step high, and sidle about, and act as if they were going to do something fearful the next minute, in the face of awed and admiring multitudes gathered at mighty musters or imposing cattle-shows. He ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various

... made her a convert to the settled life of civilization. I had known such a woman, older, but with the same characteristics, the same struggles, temptations, and suffering the same restriction of her life and movements by the prejudice in her veins—the prejudice of racial predilection. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... remarks, and am convinced that if ever the poem is published the same objections will be made in much stronger terms. But, as it was intended to be a poem on Ariosto's plan, that is to say on no plan at all, and, as is usual in similar cases, having a predilection for the worst passages, I shall retain those parts, though I cannot venture to defend them. Under these circumstances I regret that you decline the publication, on my own account, as I think the book would have done better in your hands; the pecuniary part, you know, I have nothing ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... country, consists in trumping up "Dispensaries," "Colleges of Health," and other advertising charitable clap-traps, which use the poor as decoy-ducks for the rich, and the proprietors of which have a strong predilection for the title of "Professor." These names, therefore, have come to be of little or no value as evidence of the good character, still less of the high pretensions of those who invoke their authority. Nor does it follow, even when a chair is founded in connection ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Mr. Sidney Colvin[16] denies that "a predilection for classic subjects . . . can make a writer that which we understand by the word classical as distinguished from that which we understand by the word romantic. The distinction lies deeper, and is a distinction much less of subject than of treatment. . . In classical writing every idea ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... of the most gifted men of our time, whose eloquence was as great as his acumen and who gave great proofs of his vast erudition, had applied himself with a strange predilection to call attention to all the difficulties on this subject which I have just touched in general, I found a fine field for exercise in considering the question with him in detail. I acknowledge that M. Bayle (for it is ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... plan contemplated the total annihilation of the white population of Charleston. Nursing for many dark years the bitter wrongs of himself and race had filled him, without doubt, with a mad spirit of revenge, and had so given him a decided predilection for shedding the blood of his oppressors. But if he intended to kill them to satisfy a desire for vengeance, he intended to do so also on broader ground. The conspirators, he argued, had no choice in the matter, but were compelled to adopt a policy ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke

... any doubt as to the strong predilection in Darwin's mind for geological studies, both during and after the memorable voyage, there is equally little difficulty in perceiving the school of geological thought which, in spite of the warnings of Sedgwick and Henslow, had obtained complete ascendancy over his mind. He writes in ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin

... hard plaster, answering to the Italian gesso duro.... Such as it is, this painted relief is the most magnificent monument of Mycenaean plastic art that has come down to our time. The rendering of the bull, for which the artists of the period showed so great a predilection, is full of life and spirit. It combines in a high degree naturalism with grandeur, and it is no exaggeration to say that no figure of a bull, at once so powerful and so true, was produced by later classical art.'[*] Plate XIII. shows that ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie

... To which all gravitates. One finds no rest Elsewhere than here. There may be other cities That please us for a while, but Rome alone Completely satisfies. It becomes to all A second native land by predilection, And not ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... fate of Miss Fischer. Many admired her, but that many were not included in the general public, that has no pronounced predilection for club men or club women. Fortunately—and it is a great pleasure to announce it—in her latest venture at Wallack's Theater, a new old comedy, and a clever one, by Stanislaus Stange, called "The School for Husbands," Miss ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various

... of Alan Massey however a new era began. Alan was apt to leave transformation of one sort or another in his wake. It was not merely his money magic though he wielded that magnificently as was his habit and predilection, spent Mexican dollars with a superb disregard of their value which won from the natives a respect akin to awe and wrought miracles wherever the golden flow touched. But there was more than money magic to Alan Massey's performance in ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... method. On the other hand, there is an easy eclecticism that adopts all forms with equal facility and betrays the decadence or the sterility of the time. I recall the fact that the city was in process of reconstruction when it was destroyed. Its unskilful repairs disclose a certain predilection for that cheap kind of elegance which among us, has taken the place of art. Stucco tricks off and disfigures everything. Reality is sacrificed to appearance, and genuine elegance to that kind of showy avarice which assumes a false look of profusion. In many places, the flutings ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... 'some lessons in the noble art' is too credulous,[75] and the statement that Thurtell's house 'on the Ipswich Road was a favourite rendezvous for the Fancy' is unsupported by evidence. Old Alderman Thurtell owned the house in question, and we find no evidence that he encouraged his son's predilection for prize-fighting. In The Romany Rye he gives his friend the jockey as his authority for the ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... predilection of these belles from their exterior, a stranger would, nine times out of ten, be led into a palpable error. He might naturally conclude them to be attached to a republican system, since they have, in general, adopted the Athenian ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... Pencroft, naturally, had some predilection for the retreat which he had discovered, but he well understood that another must be found. The Chimneys had been already visited by the sea, under circumstances which are known, and it would not do to be exposed ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... infer that Russian realism has its roots in a special spiritual predilection, we must not nevertheless forget the historical conditions which prepared the way for it and made its logical development easy. Russian literature, called on to struggle against tremendous obstacles, could hardly have gone astray in the domain of ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... small-sword every day of my life for ten years to suffer myself to be shot at like a rabbit in the end—ho, really!" He laughed aloud. "You have challenged me, I think, Sir Terence. Because I feared the predilection you have discovered, I was careful to wait until the challenge came from you. The choice of weapons lies, I think, with me. I shall instruct my ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini

... of his, and he has been at the pains to modernise some of the Canterbury Tales. Those persons who look upon Mr. Wordsworth as a merely puerile writer, must be rather at a loss to account for his strong predilection for such geniuses as Dante and Michael Angelo. We do not think our author has any very cordial sympathy with Shakespear. How should he? Shakespear was the least of an egotist of any body in the world. He does not much relish the variety and scope of dramatic composition. ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... character of the Andalusians in general, we shall find little to surprise us in this predilection for the Gitanos. They are an indolent frivolous people, fond of dancing and song, and sensual amusements. They live under the most glorious sun and benign heaven in Europe, and their country is by nature rich and fertile, yet in no province of Spain is there more beggary and misery; the greater ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... the tales unfortunately suffer from a hackneyed use of situations, materials, and ideas, suggestive of the hack writer. Gorki's cheap sentiment, and maudlin pity, often result in clap-trap and padding which are foreign to the artist proper. But this is the effect of his predilection for individuals of ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald

... produces. It is by these works and not by his creative pictures that his ranks among the greatest names of painting. These might be compared with the very finest portraits by Raphael and Holbein, and the precedence would remain a question of personal predilection; since nothing reasoned, no distinguishable superiority over Duerer in vision or execution could be urged for either. Rather, if mere capacity were regarded, he must have the palm; nor did either of his compeers light upon a happier subject than was Duerer's when he represented ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... they went, by arrangement, to church together; after which—on the inspiration of the moment the arrangement had not included it—they proceeded to Mrs. Jordan's lodging in the region of Maida Vale. She had raved to her friend about her service of predilection; she was excessively "high," and had more than once wished to introduce the girl to the same comfort and privilege. There was a thick brown fog and Maida Vale tasted of acrid smoke; but they had been sitting among chants and incense and wonderful music, during which, though the effect ...
— In the Cage • Henry James

... belief, desire, imagination, predilection, caprice, humor, inclination, supposition, conceit, idea, liking, vagary, conception, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... knowledge, overmasters opposing circumstances. He can neglect the prickles and assume the rose of his position. He stands scornfully erect amid the grovelling influences that would pull him down. It may perhaps be, also, that here and there a boy, with a strong native predilection to refinement, shall be eclectic, and, with the water-lily's instinct, select from coarse contiguities only that which will nourish a delicate soul. But human nature in its infancy is usually a very susceptible material. It grows as it is trained. It will be rude, if it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... may be called the most popular in Russia, it appears from the decided predilection with which Russian writers of history devote their pens to subjects anterior to the reign of Peter I, that they consider the comparatively greater liberty which is allowed them in their researches into the history of this earlier period as a decided advantage. Karamzin had proved by the picture ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson

... England, and conducted the Courier and Enquirer with great success for many years. The Times is now the most reputable of the great New York dailies, and Mr. Raymond has made it influential both at home and abroad. He has retained, amidst his social and political successes, a predilection for "Bohemia," and became an indefatigable correspondent. I rode out with him sometimes, and heard, with interest, his accounts of the Italian war, whither he also went in furtherance of journalism. Among our quill cavalry-men ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... has always excited my suspicion; I find the same warmth for Lessing raised almost to heat in Gervinus—yea, on the whole, no great German writer is so popular among little German writers as Lessing is; but for all that, they deserve no thanks for their predilection; for what is it, in sooth, that they praise in Lessing? At one moment it is his catholicity— the fact that he was critic and poet, archaeologist and philosopher, dramatist and theologian. Anon, "it is the unity ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... struck with quiet certainty the vein that was his by nature in poetry; and this has broadened almost continually, yielding richer results, which have been worked out with an increasing refinement of skill. His predilection is for the picturesque; for romance combined with simplicity, purity, and tenderness of feeling, touched by fancy and by occasional lights of humor so reserved and dainty that they never disturb the pictorial ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... supposed attachment of Ravenswood to Lucy, he was so far from considering the pain he might give to the former, by thus dallying with his affections, that he even did not think upon the risk of involving his own daughter in the perils of an unfortunate passion; as if her predilection, which could not escape his attention, were like the flame of a taper which might be lighted or extinguished at pleasure. But Providence had prepared a dreadful requital for this keen observer of human passions, who had spent his life in securing ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... until your term was up? Ruth. Why am I here—thirty years of loneliness? Because I know women, the good and the bad; and because I could not have the good, I would not take the bad. The woman I wanted was another man's wife. So here I am, king of all I survey, with a predilection for poker, a scorched liver, and a piano-player. But you! Ruth is your lawful wife. Not to go to her is wickeder than if I had run away with my friend's wife. You're a queer lad. With your pencil you see into the hearts of all; and without your ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... the very heart of their home life seemed to locate itself in this room, and so every day additional memories and associations wove themselves about the objects it contained. Rachel, young as she was, showed a marked predilection for it, loving it better than all other rooms. From the dawn of intelligence she had been fascinated by the two guns and the brass powder-flasks that hung high over the chimney-place; her first climbings and tumblings had been performed on the three steps that led to the kitchen; and ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... the words of the celebrated dictum: Saltavit et placuit. He sang and wept, so they sought to deprecate him as if there were something reprehensible in an artist's pleasing the public. This notion might seem to have some basis in view of the taste that is affected to-day—a predilection for all that is shocking and displeasing in all the arts, including poetry. Sorcieres's epigram—the ugly is beautiful and the beautiful ugly—has become a programme. People are no longer content with merely admiring atrocities, they even ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... says the Rev. J. Fountagne, "as I have been told, was an enthusiast in music, and cultivated most of all the friendship of musical men, especially of Handel, who visited him often, and had a great predilection for his society. This leads me to relate an anecdote which I have on the best authority. While Marylebone Gardens were flourishing, the enchanting music of Handel, and probably of Arne, was often heard from the orchestra there. One evening, as my grandfather and Handel were walking together and ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... admitted him to examination in August, 1785, less than a year from his admission.[9] He passed with no distinction, being forty-second in rank, but above his friend des Mazis, who was fifty-sixth. His appointment, therefore, was due to an entire absence of rivalry, the young nobility having no predilection for the arduous duties of service in the artillery. He was eligible merely because he had passed the legal age, and had given evidence of sufficient acquisitions. In an oft-quoted description,[10] purporting ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... working out of their respective talents, both these composers show their well-schooled musicianship, according to all the learning of the contrapuntal schools—but with very important differences. Haendel had all his life a predilection for diatonic tonality, and it is very rarely indeed that he deals with the chromatic at all, and never with the enharmonic. All the music in which he best expressed himself was written for voices, and as a master of vocal effect he still holds a distinguished position, particularly in ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... win notoriety, was losing one-half his fortune gambling at the Casino and was calmly letting that girl devour the other half,—she gave him some reputation. He would speak to her; they were old friends; nothing wrong—eh, father? It would not be hard to persuade her. This Pepita had a predilection for anything that was unusual; she was rather—romantic. He would explain to her who the great artist was, enhancing the honor of acting as ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... perhaps, at the different intervals of some rather lengthy, mimetic masque of love, to which the theatrical dress of that day was appropriate; [65] for the mannered Italian, or Italianised, artists, including the much-prized, native Janet, with his favourite water- green backgrounds, aware of the poet's predilection, had given to all alike the same brown eyes and tender eyelids and golden hair and somewhat ambered paleness, varying only the curious artifices of the dress—knots, and nets, and golden spider-work, ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... That Bonaparte had a special predilection for the canaille. I don't mean this for you, D'Hubert. You are one of us, though you have ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... Ireland. On his return to the latter country, he found that the spoilers had quarrelled over the spoil. Raymond le Gros contrived to ingratiate himself with the soldiers, and they demanded that the command should be transferred from Hervey de Montmarisco, Strongbow's uncle, to the object of their predilection. The Earl was obliged to comply. Their object was simply to plunder. The new general gratified them; and after a raid on the unfortunate inhabitants of Offaly and Munster, they collected their booty at Lismore, intending to convey it by water ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... appearance of men who lived by regular and laborious handicraft, preferred the insulated bliss of an unshared potation, and became more taciturn under its influence. Nearly all, in short, evinced a predilection for the Good Creature in some of its various shapes, for this is a vice to which, as Fast Day sermons of a hundred years ago will testify, we have a long hereditary claim. The only guests to whom Robin's sympathies inclined him were two or three sheepish countrymen, who ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... called Jane Annie. He found more success, however, in The Professor's Love-Story in 1895; and in 1897 the popularity of his dramatized version of The Little Minister probably confirmed him in a predilection for drama, evident already in some of his first sketches in the Nottingham Journal. In 1900 Mr Bourchier produced The Wedding Guest, which was printed as a supplement to the Fortnightly Review in December of the same year. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... see you know something of the predilection of villagers for their apothecary,—how the young people wonder that he always cures everybody; and how the old people could not live without him; and how the poor folks take him for a sort of magician; and how he ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... head—not, in this instance, as to Fanny's predilection for Mr. Saul, though in discussing that matter with his own wife he had shaken his head very often, but he shook it now with reference to the proposed change. He was very well where he was. And although Clavering was better than Humbleton, it was not so much better as to induce him ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope

... observation is as incontestable as your very charming amiability. With a sagacious eye you observed my predilection for the silent "compatriot," apparently rather sombre, but of excellent composition at bottom. [A box of caviare, which Madame Rubinstein had sent to Liszt.] Doubtless the advantages which appertain to it in its own right were peculiarly ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... variously-sized, rounded, sharply-defined patches, usually scattered irregularly over the general surface, with special predilection for the elbows and knees. They are covered more or less abundantly with whitish, silvery or mother-of-pearl colored imbricated scales. The patches are always dry, and itching is, as a rule, slight, ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... as we know, he showed his early predilection for religious music; and his oratorios "The Redemption," "Mors et Vita," and several masses have been given with varying success. Perhaps one of the greatest points ever made in Gounod's favour by a critic ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... eighty years, and all this time Isaac is Iying on his death-bed; after being long dead for us, he suddenly appears again, but only to die. And hand in hand with the chronology there goes the general predilection of the Priestly Code for numbers and names, which displays itself even in Genesis, though not nearly so marked there as in the later books of the Pentateuch. Oral folklore can very well contain round numbers, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... little definite in the memory of the Arethusa. The Commissary was not, I think, a practiced literary man; no sooner, at least, had he taken pen in hand and embarked on the composition of the proces-verbal, than he became distinctly more uncivil, and began to show a predilection for that simplest of all forms of repartee: "You lie." Several times the Arethusa let it pass, and then suddenly flared up, refused to accept more insults or to answer further questions, defied the Commissary to do his worst, and promised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... require His flock at the hands of their pastors, He will undoubtedly require from them a stricter account of that part of his flock for which he has always shown a particular predilection, that is, for children. It was to children that He gave the special honor of being the first to shed their blood for His name's sake. He has given them to us as a model of humility, which we should imitate: "Unless you become like little children, you shall not ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... as a Herefordshire Marcher is pretty certain; and his one indisputable book of general literature, the De Nugis Curialium, exhibits many—perhaps all—of the qualifications required: a sharp judgment united with a distinct predilection for the marvellous, an unquestionable piety combined with man-of-the-worldliness, and a toleration of human infirmities. It is hardly necessary to point out the critical incompetence of those who say that a satirist like Map could not have written ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... closed "Comus" with the drawing inside, and came to sit down again, looking up into the eyes of her "beautiful mamma." And even the commonplace question of dress soon became interesting to her, for her artistic predilection followed her even there, and no lover ever gloried in his mistress's charms, no painter ever delighted to deck his model, more than Olive loved to adorn and to admire the still exquisite beauty of her mother. It stood to her in the place of all attractions in herself—in fact, she rarely thought ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)

... time, ever since '68, to throw off the Spanish yoke. He was a great admirer of England, English institutions, and the English form of government, which, despite all its imperfections, he considered to be the most admirable form of government in existence. It was this predilection for things English that had induced him to send his son Carlos over to England, some nine years prior to the date of the opening of this story, to be educated at Dulwich, first of all in the preparatory school and afterwards in the College. And it was during the latter period ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... poverty and distress. His faults were, that he was over-generous and over-fond of amusements, especially of the chase. The nickname of "Bahram-Gur," by which he is known to the Orientals, marks this last-named predilection, transferring to him, as it does, the name of the animal which was the especial object of his pursuit. But he was almost equally fond of dancing and of games. Still it does not appear that his inclination for amusements rendered him neglectful of public affairs, or at all ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... Roman foreign colony. For two years past she had been a widow, her husband having died at Rome whither he had come to nurse a complaint of the lungs. Thenceforward free, and sufficiently well off, she had remained in the city by taste, having a marked predilection for art, and painting a little, herself. In the Via Principe Amadeo, in the new Viminal district, she had purchased a little palazzo, and transformed a large apartment on its second floor into a studio hung with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... This predilection for military life received no small encouragement from the occasional visit of some young Caesar, whose uniform had been tarnished in the experiences of one campaign, and who returned to his former associates to indulge in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... and instead of labouring after discernment as a preliminary to intervention, letting our zeal burst forth according to a capricious selection, first determined accidentally and afterwards justified by personal predilection. Not only John Gilpin and his wife, or Edwin and Angelina, seem to be of opinion that their preference or dislike of Russians, Servians, or Greeks, consequent, perhaps, on hotel adventures, has something to do with the merits of the Eastern Question; even in ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... not have called it by so fine a name. In fact, in its earlier stages he seemed to himself to be merely pushing to the point of mania a strong predilection for personal cleanliness. He was first of all possessed, recklessly, ruinously, by a passion for immaculate shirts. He had telegraphed to Spinks to send down all of his linen that he could lay his hands on; meanwhile he had supplied deficiencies at the local haberdashers. At Mrs. Downey's there ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... has shown any remarkable predilection for duty, the reader will not be surprised at his requesting from Captain Wilson a few days on shore, previous to his going on board of the Aurora. Captain Wilson allowed the same licence to Gascoigne, as they had both been cooped up for some time on board of a transport. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... unwounded out of it, as he had out of the dangers and battles which he had confronted, and who had goodness and honesty written on his face and breathing from his lips, for which qualities our brave lad had always an instinctive sympathy and predilection. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... people be the best way of gaining them. Gentlemen in this respect will be led to their choice of means by their complexions and their habits. Those who understand the military art, will of course have some predilection for it. Those who wield the thunder of the state, may have more confidence in the efficacy of arms. But I confess, possibly for want of this knowledge, my opinion is much more in favor of prudent management, than of force; considering force not as an odious, but ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... too, as well as the terrible, Miss Caroline and the cook had a strong predilection, and had wept their poor eyes out over "Thaddeus of Warsaw" and the "Scottish Chiefs." Fortified by the examples drawn from those instructive volumes, Becky was firmly convinced that her young mistress would meet with a great lord some day or other, or be carried off, like Cinderella, ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... lectures on the history of music from the earliest times and in all countries; and published a talented work on Music and Education, of which very favourable reviews appeared at the time.[1] Mainzer had a peculiar predilection for Scotland: its scenery, its history, its music, all supplied food for his various tastes. With a poetic appreciation of the beauties of nature, he desired no greater pleasure than to wander in perfect freedom among our lochs and hills; and his descriptions of Edinburgh, the Highlands, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various

... chairs behind, the orchestra and its canopy, the window-heads, the surmountings of the entrance screen, the gas pendants, and scores of other things, have all a strong fondness for circularity; and the same predilection is manifested outside; the large lamps there being quite round and fixed upon circular columns. The pews in the chapel are very strong, have receding backs, and make sitting in them rather a pleasing, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... always really frightened. Her hands really trembled. The Archbishop was to ask her with tempered indignation how much longer she intended to nullify the labours of his ablest colleague, how much longer her selfish predilection for celibacy was to wreck the life and paralyse the powers of a broken-hearted man. Her cruelty was placed before her in glowing colours. She was observed to waver, to falter. A tear was seen in spite of her marvellous ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... man. The presence of women always disconcerted him, and made him feel awkward and boorish. He had been too much of a student in higher art to acquire the smaller art of the drawing-room. He felt ill at ease in society, and seemed to have a fatal predilection for saying the wrong thing, and suffered the torture afterwards of remembering what the right thing would ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr

... may more than once have noticed our predilection for illustrating the castellated antiquities of Britain in our pages. We have a threefold object in this choice: first, the architectural investigation of these structures is of untiring interest; the events of their histories are so many links in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 553, June 23, 1832 • Various

... sentiment, although all the while conscious of a certain charm in his companion's graceful skepticism. He had in his truthfulness and independence hitherto always been quite free from that feeble admiration of cynicism which attacks the intellectually weak and immature, and his present predilection may have been due more to her charming personality. She was not at all like his sisters; she had none of Clementina's cold abstraction, and none of Euphemia's sharp and demonstrative effusiveness. And in his secret consciousness of her flattering foreknowledge of him, with her assurance ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte

... were with the Whigs; but he was not weak enough to let any predilection be a burden to his interests. Where was the best opening for him? The Tories—I still prefer the name, as being without definite meaning; the direct falsehood implied in the title of Conservative amounts almost to a libel—the Tories were in; but from the fact of being in, were always liable ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... not. But to return to Clementi. He published his first three sonatas (Op. 2, Nos. 1-3) in 1770, the year in which Beethoven was born; and the influence which he exerted over that master was considerable. In Beethoven's library were to be found many sonatas of Clementi, and the master's predilection for them is well known. The world seldom renders full justice to men who prepared the way for greater than themselves; Pachelbel, Boehm, and Buxtehude, the immediate predecessors of Bach, and, again, Emanuel Bach, to whom Haydn was so indebted, and ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... agreed, ignoring the non-committal quality of this remark, "and if you get a citizen who is a not inconsiderable property holder, a gentleman, and a college graduate,—a man who, by study and predilection, is qualified to bring about improved conditions in the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... The predilection for the clerical profession seems to prevail here, as it does throughout Italy; I could almost say that every fifteenth person we meet either is a clergyman or intends to become one. Children of ten or twelve years already run about in the black ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer

... weeks since I saw you—and it seems a lifetime—I have forgotten to mention one important item of news. Every properly appointed settlement along this coast has its cemetery. This place boasts two. With your predilection for epitaphs you would be content. The prevailing mode appears to be clasped hands under a bristling crown; but all the same that sort of thing makes a more "cheerful" graveyard than those gloomily beautiful monuments with their hopeless "[Greek: chairete]" ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... own furious partizans;—as if the same appeals might not have been made by Bonner and Gardiner under Philip and Mary! Why should I speak of the inhuman sophism that, because it is silly in my neighbour to break his egg at the broad end when the Squire and the Vicar have declared their predilection for the narrow end, therefore it is right for the Squire and the Vicar to hang and quarter him for his silliness:—for it ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... acquaintance with Mr. Frend led him to study the philosophy of Hartley, and he became one of his disciples. Perhaps the love of Coleridge for his college, "the ever honoured Jesus," might have had some share in the cause of his early predilection in favour of Hartley. He too was the son of a clergyman, was admitted to Jesus at the age of fifteen, and became a fellow in 1705. According to the account given of him by his biographer, Coleridge in several ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... the south-west monsoon and the arrival of the north-eastern. In the early part of the month the wind visits nearly every point of the compass, but shows a marked predilection for the north, generally veering from N.E. at night and early morning, to N.W. at noon; calms are frequent and precede gentle showers, and clouds form round the lower range of hills. By degrees as the sun advances in its southern declination, and warms the lower half of the great African ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... in this declaration of hostility to bank issues and interest-bearing bonds, nor in this demand for government paper money, for these prejudices and this predilection had given rise to the "Ohio idea," by force of which George H. Pendleton had hoped to achieve the presidency in 1868. These same notions had been the essence of the platforms of the Greenback party in the ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck

... have met Parson Leggy, striding along with a couple of varmint terriers at his heels, and young Cyril Gilbraith, whom he was teaching to tie flies and fear God, beside him; or Jim Mason, postman by profession, poacher by predilection, honest man and sportsman by nature, hurrying along with the mail-bags on his shoulder, a rabbit in his pocket, and the faithful Betsy a yard behind. Besides these you might have hit upon a quiet shepherd and a wise-faced dog; Squire Sylvester, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... sometimes whatever provisions his patients could afford him; but of such extensive practice in that way, that Mrs. Williams has told me, his walk was from Hounsditch to Marybone. It appears from Johnson's diary that their acquaintance commenced about the year 1746; and such was Johnson's predilection for him, and fanciful estimation of his moderate abilities, that I have heard him say he should not be satisfied, though attended by all the College of Physicians, unless he had Mr. Levet with him. Ever since I was acquainted with Dr. Johnson, and many years before, as I have been assured by ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... enthusiasm, is often little more than the abandonment of a personality to a mood of intoxicating ebullience; while the humour of the Shakespeare story lies in a sense of the way in which a national predilection will override ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the same week, it was raging in the unconnected and far-distant districts of Behar and Dacca." (Bengal Reports, p. 125.) Again (p. 9), that in Bengal "it at once raged simultaneously in various and remote quarters, without displaying a predilection for any one tract or district more than for another; or any thing like regularity of succesion in the chain of its operations." In support of what is stated in these extracts, the fullest details are given as to dates and places; and at page 9 of those Reports, a curious ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... This predilection sometimes led him into strange difficulties, especially in medicine, where he loved to use all the "terms of art." Technical expression had a fatal fascination for him, especially when he did not understand them. I remember ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... like other gentlemen of his age and cloth, had the Baboo's predilection for a well-worn quotation. "As to that I cannot say," he said portentously. "''Tis whispered in Heaven, 'tis muttered in Hell' that the encumbrances are very heavy—mortgages and debts—. The good Major had a long family, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... male—that love occupies a larger space in her thoughts, and is more essential to her happiness, and that therefore she ought to be the wooing party; that otherwise the male is a shy and dubitant creature—that he has often a selfish predilection for the single state—that he often pretends to misunderstand tender glances and delicate hints—that, in short, he must be resolutely pursued and captured. They add, moreover, that unless the Gy can secure the An of her choice, and one ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of tremendous importance to the boy. He sat with clenched fists and burning cheeks, sensing for the first time one of the highest types of joy that comes to human beings, that of finding one's predilection in the work by which one earns one's daily bread. The sense of clean-cut aim to his life was like balm and tonic to the boy's nerves. Something deeper than a New York or a New England influence was speaking in Jim now. For the first time, his Anglo-Saxon race, his ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow

... novelty of their affections for the House of Hanover. I am ready to hope for everything from their new-born zeal, and from the future steadiness of their allegiance, but hitherto they have no claim to your favour. To honour them with a determined predilection and confidence, in exclusion of your English subjects, who placed your family, and, in spite of treachery and rebellion, have supported it, upon the throne, is a mistake too gross even for the unsuspecting generosity of youth. In this error we see a capital violation of the most ...
— English Satires • Various



Words linked to "Predilection" :   taste, predisposition, liking, preference, weakness



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