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Prepossession   Listen
noun
Prepossession  n.  
1.
Preoccupation; prior possession.
2.
Preoccupation of the mind by an opinion, or impression, already formed; preconceived opinion; previous impression; bias; generally, but not always, used in a favorable sense; as, the prepossessions of childhood. "The prejudices and prepossessions of the country."
Synonyms: Bent; bias; inclination; preoccupancy; prejudgment. See Bent.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Prepossession" Quotes from Famous Books



... instances of each of these methods in the examination of the literary evidence on which miracles are believed. The first, the prepossession concerning the philosophical impossibility of miracles, is seen in Spinoza; the second, the impossibility of using testimony as a proof of them, in Hume; the third, the question whether they were attested by eyewitnesses, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... Andrea's prepossession for Marianna was crossed by the captivating charm which Gambara could not fail to exert over every genuine artist. The composer was now forty; but although his high brow was bald and lined with a few parallel, but not deep, wrinkles; in spite, too, of hollow temples where the blue veins ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... 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 obscure nor less ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... 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 exchange ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... they fought for him. He was regarded as a leader among them when still at Oxford. Yet his early writings show no trace of such a prepossession; they are wholly void of offence, without even a suggestion of coarseness, as pure indeed as his talk. Nevertheless, as soon as his name came up among men in town, the accusation of abnormal viciousness was either made or hinted. Everyone spoke as if there were ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... to foreign commerce, nor to the opulence which can arise from that; but defence is of much more importance than opulence. The Act of Navigation is perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England."[10] It became a dominant prepossession of British statesmen, even among Smith's converts, in the conduct of foreign relations, that the military power of the state lay in the vast resources of native seamen, employed in its merchant ships. Even the wealth ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... 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 ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... 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

... feel—I know what you think of me—and how much you hate and despise me. But Heaven is witness to all my struggles—nor would I, even to myself, acknowledge the shameless prepossession, till forced by a ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald

... no greater effect upon her generous nature than to increase the responsibility of fulfilling the condition upon which the inheritance was to be received and held. If she had not been under the effect of an early prepossession in favour of Walter, she might have doubted the sincerity of his statement, as it came from his own mouth. Suspicion attached to every word of it; but after the communication made by Paul, it was scarcely possible for her to resist ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various

... 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 ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... comradery which cold milk establishes between man and man in Spain. As yet tea is a novelty in that country, though the young English queen, universally loved and honored, has made it the fashion in high life. Still it is hard to overcome such a prepossession as that of hot milk in tea, and in some places you cannot get it cold ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells

... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon

... means of their dress and equipage, soon found admittance at court. Faustus regarded the Prince with the eyes of a man whose heart was already prepossessed in his favour; and to carry this prepossession even to conviction, nothing more was necessary than the noble exterior of the Prince himself. He was, or appeared to be, frank and open; endeavoured to please and to win all hearts without appearing to do so; was familiar without laying aside his dignity, and possessed that ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... that broke through this bondage of classical superstition. And he owed this felicity, as he did some others, to his want of what is called the advantage of a learned education. Thus uninfluenced by the weight of early prepossession, he struck at once into the road of nature and common sense: and without designing, without knowing it, hath left us in his historical plays, with all their anomalies, an exacter resemblance of the Athenian stage, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... muscles brought 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 tight-fitting knickerbockers ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... which the Man on the Beach looked gravely down upon them. If they had intended to impress him by any suggestion of a gay, brilliant, and sensuous world beyond in their own persons, they had failed, and they knew it. Keenly alive as they had always been to external prepossession, they felt that they looked forlorn and ludicrous, and that the situation lay in his hands. The elderly lady again burst into tears of genuine distress, Maria colored over her cheek-bones, and Dick stared at ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... time before Pembroke could shake this prepossession of a sincere humility from Miss Beaufort's mind. But after having set in every possible light the terms with which his friend had spoken of her, he at length convinced her of what her heart so earnestly wished to believe—that the love of Sobieski ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... which he shewed by casting down 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 ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... scarcely to be wondered at that this handsome, capable girl should call forth any man's admiration. Gifford himself was indeed beginning to fall desperately in love with her, but this naturally made Henshaw's rather obvious prepossession none the less disagreeable to him. This, then, he reflected, was the explanation of what Miss Morriston had hinted at, what she had described as his objectionable excess of politeness at their meeting ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... virtue &c. is because no such pernicious notions are the ingredients of their education; which 'tis a sign are infinitely absurd, when so many of the gentry and nobility can, notwithstanding their prepossession, get clear of them." Now the very same argument lies against religion, morality, honour, and honesty, which are, it seems, but prejudices of education, and too many get clear of them. The middle sort of people have other things to mind than the factions of the age. He always assigneth ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... 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

... 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

... safeguard and defence Against the weight of meanness, selfish cares, 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] ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... 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 critical power to ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... that her family tacitly recognized it, and frequently appealed to him with the introduction, "Friddy says you can tell us," or "You and Friddy had better arrange it between you." Even the dreaded introduction of his sister was an agreeable surprise, owing to Lady Elfrida's frank and sympathetic prepossession, which Jenny could not resist. In a few moments they were walking together in serious and apparently confidential conversation. For to Peter's wonder it was the "Lady Elfrida" side of the English girl's nature that seemed to have attracted ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... word, the scheme hit so exactly with my temper, that is to say, with 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 farther than my own island. "Why, Sir," says he, "you don't want to be left there again, I hope?"—"Why," ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... Knag had 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 that ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... he has framed from my writings, and 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 echo his bold 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 ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... 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 writers of ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... above account, but in order to 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 ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... 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 to do but ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... 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 learning anything, and still more so of enlightening Law upon ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... which is weak, indeed, to-day, but which may, perchance, be stronger to-morrow. Yet such doubts, if they come, will not be due so much to any defect in the actual experiment as to the inexorable strength of prepossession which holds me back from adopting a conclusion which contravenes the habitual and ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... himself, neither have I doubted that a part of his Privy 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

... characterize, in a general way, "the feel after truth" exhibited in the 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 bottom, that ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... in it, will not accomplish his purpose by 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 St. Mark, his ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... of misunderstandings, as I have already mentioned in the Introduction, was to be found in the general disfavor with which American pacifist tendencies were regarded in Germany. Nine-tenths of the American nation are pacifists, either through their education and sentimental prepossession in favor of the principle, or out of a sense of commercial expediency. People in the United States did not understand that the German people, owing to their tragic history, are compelled to cultivate ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... no part of his education, and his attachment to it (where any attachment to it exists at all) is, too often, not the preference of sober reason, but merely the result of early prejudice and groundless prepossession. He was born in a Christian country, of course he is a Christian; his father was a member of the church of England, so is he. When such is the hereditary religion handed down from generation to generation, it cannot surprise us to observe young men of sense and ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... his views on foreign affairs. "Our true alliance," he had told them, "is not with the Latin peoples, but with men who speak our tongue, with our brothers in America, and with our kinsmen in Germany and Scandinavia." This prepossession, notable in one who came afterwards to be regarded as the closest friend of France among English politicians, shaped his action when the crash came. It tempted him to the German side, but contact with Prussian militarism showed where ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... profoundly. For, when consulted in regard to the repulsed converts, he displayed a loftiness of view and a breadth of tolerance which Maimonides himself could not equal. In similar circumstances Maimonides, it seems, in intervening, yielded a little to personal prepossession. "Let us beware," wrote Rashi, "let us beware of alienating those who have returned to us by repulsing them. They became Christians only through fear of death; and as soon as the danger disappeared, they hastened to ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber

... thousand, or even ten thousand pounds, it would have been different. In the course of a few years I might have been able to produce an equivalent to it, and—but this fortune has raised her above my hopes; even if she had a prepossession in my favour, it would be dishonest to take ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... 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 ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... we continued 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 public feeling, in spite of the support that he was receiving. Leland, we ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve

... Romeo and 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 favour with the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... unregarded from his button-hole while he was gathering up the trout. There it had lain till Winsome, who had seen it fall, accidentally set her foot on it and stamped it into the grass. This indicates, like a hand on a dial, the stage of her prepossession. A day before she had nothing regarded a flower given to Ralph Peden; and in a little while, when the long curve has at last been turned, she will not regard it, though a hundred women give ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... means intrinsically entitled. I will therefore examine what you have advanced, from a hope of being able to do away any impression left on the minds of such as may be liable to confound with argument a strong prepossession for your Lordship's talents, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... disadvantage: they lose in one way what they gain in another; and although many of them become eminent in public life, few, very few, comparatively with the numbers who enter the arena, become great. They are respected, heard, and admired, by virtue of a class-prepossession in their favour; yet, after all, they must select from the ranks of the aristocracy of talent their firmest and best supporters, to whom they may delegate the heavy responsibilities of business, and lift from their own shoulders the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... 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, together, without fancy, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... are less easily converted from the original prejudice—or prepossession. So am I. I have learned to place the utmost confidence in the first impression. In my own case it is invariably correct, and if for any reason whatever I suffer any later characterization to take its place, I am always ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... still more ancient standing law of the 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

... that 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... make bold, at last, to pull off the mask, and declare sincerely the true motive that induced me to interpolate a few lines into some of the authors quoted by me in my Essay on Milton, which was this: Knowing the prepossession in favour of Milton, how deeply it was rooted in many, I was willing to make trial, if the partial admirers of that author would admit a translation of his own words to pass for his sense, or exhibit his meaning; which I thought they would not: nor ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... doubt 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; ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... cognizance of murder. If the business before them was great and various, they were wont to divide themselves into committees, to each of which the several causes were assigned by lot, so that no man knowing the cause he was to adjudge could be assailed with the imputation of dishonest or partial prepossession. After duly hearing both parties, they gave their judgment with proverbial gravity and silence. The institution of the ballot (a subsequent custom) afforded secrecy to their award—a proceeding necessary amid the jealousy and power of factions, to preserve ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... fingers, begins to retail his quintessential thoughts and his sophistical arguments.... He opens his mouth only to contradict. 'It seems to me,' he gracefully says, 'that the truth is exactly the contrary of what you say,' or 'I cannot agree with your opinion,' or even 'that used to be my prepossession, as it is ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... other hand, there was a prepossession, quite as unreasoning, for Hallock. There was absolutely nothing in the chief clerk to inspire liking, or even common business confidence; on the contrary, while Hallock attended to his duties and carried out his superior's instructions ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... said that the Indian is hospitable, I have said that he is kind and considerate, for these are involved with the other. He has much of native delicacy and politeness; and though, from deep-seated prepossession, he denies the woman equal footing with himself; and, though through misconception of woman's true purpose and mission in the world, or through failing to apprehend that higher, greater, more palpable helpfulness she brings to man (all these, because self-dictated, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie

... his look, and he several times struck 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 all I have heard from Junot—he is a real friend—Josephine!—and I 600 leagues ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... 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 reign they took a direct ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various

... Camilla. I really believe myself that my prepossession in Flodoardo's favour is merely an accidental fancy, of which I shall easily get the better. No, no; I am not in love with Flodoardo—of that you may rest assured. I even think that I rather feel an antipathy towards him, since you have shown me the possibility of his making me prove ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis

... of the petite in her which appealed to him—for a little man cannot endure to be laughed at for his size, even in secret—or perhaps it was only the intuitive response to a something which in his prepossession he only vaguely sensed, but Rufus Hardy felt his heart go out to her in a moment and his voice sank once more to the caressing fulness which ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge

... 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 ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... Spruggins was the favourite at once, 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 and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... a very lucky cheat for me, Sir Jacob; for it gave you a prepossession in my favour under so advantageous a character, that I could never ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... 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 attentions, and a frankness ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Lisa—crowded with a 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

... 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 ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... from me. In fact, they do but dance to the "medium's" piping; and should he suggest that they are methylated, the chances are that not a few would cheerfully acquiesce in this description of themselves. In short, it is only the prepossession, the pathetic prejudice, in favour of visitors from other worlds that leads at all to the thought of "spirits," drawing such a red herring across the track that the average observer, who is nothing if not unobservant, has all his ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... 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 reflexion on the temper, the character, and the education of women, makes the mind revolt ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More

... 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 ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... for man, under the prepossession of a mistaken philosophical theory, to assume the whole brute creation to be without consciousness. When Descartes had learned something of the mechanism of the human body, and had placed the human soul—hospes comesque corporis—in the little ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... 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 ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... neighbouring nations had paid to England during the reign of his predecessor," p. 29. Yet this philosopher observes afterwards, on the military character of Prince Henry, at p. 63, that "had he lived, he had probably promoted the glory; perhaps not the felicity, of his people. The unhappy prepossession of men in favour of ambition, &c., engages them into such pursuits as destroy their own peace, and that of the rest of mankind." This is true philosophy, however politicians may comment, and however the military may command the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... 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 foothold 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 ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Farrar. But he had an ingenuous pride in reading the large remainder of the Society's lists of names, and pointing out the fact that there was not one among them which he had ever heard. It was equivalent to saying, 'All these people care for me as a poet. No social interest, no personal prepossession, has attracted them to my work.' And when the unknown name was not only appended to a list; when it formed the signature of a paper—excellent or indifferent as might be—but in either case bearing witness to a careful ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... choice of this queen, after the death of his second wife, (the Egyptian Tentcheta, mother of Psamtik the heir to the throne,) had followed his prepossession in favor of the Greek nation and defied ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... this narrow way of thinking, which, in matters of the greatest moment are hardly shook off: and which we only think true, because we were made to believe so, before we were capable to distinguish between truth and falsehood. But there was one prepossession which I confess to have parted with, much to my regret: I mean the opinion of that native honesty and simplicity of manners, which I had always imagined to be inherent in country-people. I soon observed it was with them and us, as they say of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... 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 ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne

... some act', it is clear that the fact of the Devil's bodily presence at the 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 ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray

... Captain Mertoun, that domestic fractions should be promulgated on our first meeting, and feel much prepossession for your ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... 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 for many miles to its utmost speed, appeared to reel from fatigue, and the rider, ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... of Greek women. The leaders of German poetry, Goethe and Schiller, both attained the summit of their art in the imitation of classical models."[14] Still the ground recovered from the Middle Age was never again entirely lost; and in spite of this classical prepossession, Goethe and Schiller, even in the last years of the century, vied with one another in the composition of romantic ballads, like the former's "Der Erlkonig," "Der Fischer," "Der Todtentanz," and "Der Zauberlehrling," and the latter's "Ritter Toggenburg," "Der Kampf mit dem Drachen," and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... 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 ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... 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 course; and France and ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... 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 ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... 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, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... whose life 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. Do our friends appear to us as they appear ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... A curious prepossession of the African mind, curious and yet general, in a land where population is the one want, and where issue is held the greatest blessing, is the imaginary necessity of limiting the family. Perhaps this form of infanticide is a policy derived from ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... hours, when 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 ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey

... The prepossession the queen has taken in my favour is truly extraordinary, for it seems as if her real view was, as Mr. Smelt hinted, to attach me to her person. She has been long, she told Mrs. Delany, looking out for one to supply the place of Mrs. Haggerdorn, whose ill health forces her ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... could be accomplished only by the absolute and irretrievable defeat of these 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 ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... whom this illustrious hypocrite 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 the effect of the piece, while they ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne



Words linked to "Prepossession" :   parti pris, preconception, condition, preconceived notion, sentiment, preconceived opinion, thought, view, preconceived idea, opinion, status, persuasion, prepossess



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