"Propinquity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life, and the teachers who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world which is called religion. Hence all original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and true. Poets, according to the circumstances ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... none to observe? At the sound of a footstep he merely turned his eyes in the direction whence it came; one of his sergeants, looking a giant in stature in the false perspective of the fog, approached, and when clearly defined and reduced to his true dimensions by propinquity, saluted ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... approach us through the aid and interpretation of the senses, why may not the loved be brought near without that aid, through the more subtile and more potent attraction of sympathy? I do not mean nearness in the sense of memory or imagination, but that actual propinquity of spirit which I suppose implied in the recognition of Presence. Nor do I refer to any volition which is dependent on the known action of the brain, but to a hidden faculty, the germ perhaps of some higher faculty, now folded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... commonwealth; it contains all the elements of self-existence; it is quite a little commune, so far as social life is concerned. There is a hereditary blacksmith, washerman, potter, barber, and writer. The dhobee, or washerman, can always be known by the propinquity of his donkeys, diminutive animals which he uses to transport his bundle of unsavoury dirty clothes to the pool or tank where the linen is washed. On great country roads you may often see strings ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... when I heard, in my native town, a Republican mayor publicly proclaim that "municipal ownership was a fixed American policy." And in that day I found myself picking up in the world. No longer did the pathologist study me, while the really decent fellows did not mind in the least the propinquity of myself and their sisters in the public eye. My political and sociological ideas were ascribed to the vagaries of youth, and good-natured elderly men patronized me and told me that I would grow up some day and become an unusually intelligent member of ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... her languishing airs, her "Book of Beauty" style, bored him more than anyone in Bath House, and he had begun to suspect that her attentions were due not more to vanity than to a desire to find favour with Lord Hunsdon. But she was seldom far from Anne Percy, whose propinquity he could enjoy even if debarred communion. And Lady Mary frequently made Anne the theme of her remarks, in entertaining the poet; whose covert admiration she too detected and encouraged, although not without resentment. Miss Percy ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... cheerfully'—whatever that may mean. Blue Bonnet loves figures of speech. Her comparisons are really very amusing sometimes. I hardly know what to make of her sudden tolerance of this girl; whether it is a case of propinquity, duty, or over-generousness on Blue Bonnet's part. At any rate, she seems to have espoused the cause ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... the hazards of hotel life throwing them one day together. He was already on speaking or nodding terms with most of the distinguished men whom he could address in a common language. This had come about by the simple means of propinquity on the terrace or in the semicircular hall. He soon saw, however, that no diligence in frequenting these places of reunion would help him with the stately stranger whose interest he desired to win. The gentleman took ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... sentry posts required will depend on the assumed propinquity or distance of the enemy, strength of obstacles, ease with which sentry posts can be re-enforced and other local conditions. Normally by day this should be one sentinel for each platoon and at night three double sentinels for each platoon. There must be sentries ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... many of them are formed thoughtlessly, or before we really knew either ourselves or our friends. They never meant very much to us. Most boyish friendships as a rule do not last long, because they are not based on the qualities which wear well. Schoolboy comradeships are usually due to propinquity rather than to character. They are the fruit of accident rather than of affinity of soul. Boys grow out of these as they grow out of their clothes. Now and again they suffer from growing pains, but it is ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... of apprehension was apparent when, at the top of the companion-way, Wolf Larsen invited him below. But he reassured himself with a glance down at his host—a big man himself but dwarfed by the propinquity of the giant. So all hesitancy vanished, and the pair descended into the cabin. In the meantime, his two men, as was the wont of visiting sailors, had gone forward into the forecastle ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Palestine differed in many ways from that in Mesopotamia, but in none more markedly than in the benefits derived from the propinquity of Egypt. Occasional leaves were granted to Cairo and Alexandria and they afforded the relaxation of a complete change of surroundings. I have never seen Cairo gayer. Shepherd's Hotel was open and crowded—and the dances as pleasant as ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... of a traitor had brought him down to—to what? Armand would not have dared at this moment to look back at that hideous, vulgar hackney coach wherein that proud, reckless adventurer, who had defied Fate and mocked Death, sat, in chains, beside a loathsome creature whose very propinquity was an outrage. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... her, enthusiastic young Sanford Hunt, inarticulate, but longing for a chance to attach himself to some master. Weintraub and Todd had desks on either side of her; they had that great romantic virtue, propinquity. But Sanford Hunt she had noticed, in his corner across the room, because he glanced about with such ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of the land; but the arms of the sentry on her forecastle glinted in the moonbeams as he paced his lonely watch, and sung out, as the bell struck twice, his accustomed long-drawn cry of 'All's well!' Just beyond her, in saucy propinquity, lay a slaver, bound for the coast of Africa—a beautiful, graceful craft. Still farther out the crew of a clumsy French brig were chanting the evening hymn to the Virgin. Ships from every civilized country lay anchored, in picturesque groups, in all directions, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... and bend to external control. The vocal and musical medium is, and must always remain, alien, to the spatial. What makes terms correspond and refer to one another is a relation eternally disparate from the relation of propinquity or derivation between existences. Yet when sounds were attached to an event or emotion, the sounds became symbols for that disparate fact. The net of vocal relations caught that natural object as a cobweb might catch a fly, without destroying or changing it. The object's ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... on, "but you must remember that I am one of reflective disposition; Nature has endowed me with some of the gifts of my great ancestors, philosophers famed the world over. It seems very clear to me that, if I had not come, from sheer force of affectionate propinquity you would have married ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... house was lit in every chamber. The windows that pierced the tall gables threw beams of light into the darkness, and the open door poured out a yellow flood. At the time we came on it first we were unaware of our propinquity to it, and this mansion looming on us suddenly through the vapours teemed a cantrip of witchcraft, a dwelling's ghost, grey, eerie, full of frights, a phantom of the mind rather than a habitable home. We paused in a dumb astonishment to look at it lying there in the darkness, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... therefore, and there is always amusement. So the only housework which the boy san does really willingly, is to dust the door, polish the handle, wipe the threshold;—anything in fact which brings him into the propinquity of the keyhole. What he observes or overhears, he exchanges with another boy san; and the hall porter or the head waiter generally serves as Chief Intelligence Bureau, and is always in ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... could send him to the Tower. So at the point of Sir Julian's sword—metaphorically—he was forced to go to the King and straighten matters as best he could. This the great Duke did, with the most exquisite urbanity. He knew well the King's humour, and the most propitious moment in it, and propinquity played him fair, and there vibrated in his Majesty's ear the dulcet tones of George Villiers magnetic ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Sandakan town and harbour; founded by Mr. Pryer. Destroyed by fire. Formerly used as a blockade station by Germans trading with Sulu. Capture of the blockade runner Sultana by the Spaniards. Rich virgin soil and fever. Owing to propinquity of Hongkong and Singapore, North Borneo cannot become an emporium for eastern trade. Its mineralogical resources not yet ascertained. Gold, coal, and other minerals known to exist. Gold on the Segama river. Rich in timber. 'Billian' or iron-wood; camphor. Timber Companies. ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... dream his feet were in them; ten years' probation seemed to vanish at the sight!—we wept! He spoke—could we believe our ears? "Marvel of marvels!" despite the propinquity of the Bluchers, despite their wide-spreading contamination, his voice was unaltered. We were puzzled! we were like the first farourite when "he has a leg," or, "a LEG has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... story would show that mere friendly propinquity may constitute a danger. Last summer an honest, straightforward girl from a small lake town in northern Michigan was working in a Chicago cafe, sending every week more than half of her wages of seven dollars to her mother ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... stinking, malodorous spit, saliva spit, expectorate thievishness, kleptomania belch, eructate sticky, adhesive house, domicile eye, optic walker, pedestrian talkative, loquacious talkative, garrulous wisdom, sapience bodily, corporeal name, appellation finger, digit show, ostentation nearness, propinquity wash, lave handwriting, chirography waves, undulations shady, umbrageous fat, corpulent muddy, turbid widow, relict horseback, equestrian weight, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... does not speak with much confidence, as to the degree of propinquity which existed betwixt Mr. Matthew M'Kail minister of Bothwell and Mr. Hugh M'Kail, the young licentiate who was executed at Edinburgh, 22d Dec, 1666, for being concerned in the insurrection at Pentland. But Colonel Wallace, who commanded the insurgents on that unfortunate ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... came seldom to London, and then only as a task, remaining always a stranger and a convinced provincial; putting up for years at the same hotel where his father had gone before him; faithful for long to the same restaurant, the same church, and the same theatre, chosen simply for propinquity; steadfastly refusing to dine out. He had a circle of his own, indeed, at home; few men were more beloved in Edinburgh, where he breathed an air that pleased him; and wherever he went, in railway carriages or hotel smoking-rooms, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he was softly persuasive, he had used to herself a tone even more intimate and ingratiating. He and she had a secret; they were conspirators together: which fact was both disconcerting and delicious. She recalled their propinquity in the lobby; the remembered syllables which he had uttered mingled with the faint scent of his broadcloth, the whiteness of his wristbands, the gleam of his studs, the droop of his moustaches, the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... then, are the instruments with which the legislator has to work; he must, therefore, be able to gauge their relative values. These depend primarily and simply on four things—intensity, duration, certainty or uncertainty, propinquity or remoteness. Secondarily, on fecundity, the consequent probable multiplication of the like sensations; and purity, the improbability of consequent contrary sensations. Finally, on extent—the number of persons pleasurably or painfully affected. All these ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... combined education, amusement, and repose which human intelligence has yet invented. It was so in Greece, and it is so now. The theater occasionally is good for you. But let the play you go to see be high-grade. Inferior performances on the stage will destroy your taste as surely as will the continued propinquity of poor pictures. The same ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... by four years, we were old friends, and had prearranged our vacation to renew our intimacy, which the force of circumstances had interrupted since we were students together at Harvard. Russell had been a Freshman when I was a Senior, but as we happened to room in the same entry, this propinquity had resulted in warm mutual liking. I had been out of college for eight years, had studied law, and was the managing clerk of a large law firm, and in receipt of what I then thought a tremendous salary. Russell ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... company manners. She sat delicately, on the extreme edge of a chair, by the side of, not facing, her plate of bread, cheese and pickles; approached them; mopped up, so to speak, a mouthful and a gulp; then receded into mere nodding propinquity. Her supper was a series of moppings-up. Me she kept much in her eye, and to my remarks ejaculated "Aw, my dear soul!" or "Did yu ever?" I said with feeble wit, in order to grease the conversation, that stout and bitter, being called mother-in-law, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... as a great shock to me, Phyllis," said he, when he had seated himself, not too close to her. He did not wish her to fancy that he was desirous of having a subtle influence of propinquity as an ally. "A ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... to be most cordial, as befits those of neighbors between whom the strongest ties of friendship and commercial intimacy exist, as the natural and growing consequence of our similarity of institutions and geographical propinquity. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... both pleasure and improvement in Emily Morton's society. It has often been said that the English East-India ships are noted for quarrelling and making love. The quarrels may be accounted for on the same principle as the love-making, viz., propinquity; the same proximity producing hostility in whose sterner natures, that, in others of a gentler cast, produces its opposite feeling. We sailed, and it is scarcely necessary to tell the reader how much the tedium of so long a ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... parents, who gave them food only, and the wretched pallets on which they slept with their grandmother in the barn, where their brothers also slept, curled up in the hay like animals. Neither father nor mother paid any heed to this propinquity. ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... afternoon, aided by the scents and colors and propinquity, he did his very best to make gradual love to her, and for some unaccountable hideously annoying reason felt every moment more aloof. It almost seemed at last as if he were guarding something of fine and free that was being assailed. His dual self ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... been doing, and what they had amassed - I think they mentioned nine hundred crowns. They had companions in the neighbourhood, some of whom they were expecting; they took no notice of me, and conversed in their own dialect; I did not approve of their propinquity, and ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... here long?" he asked, sipping his beer. He felt dimly that that imitation of love which must immediately take place demanded some sort of psychic propinquity, a more intimate acquaintance, and on that account, despite his impatience, began the usual conversation, which is carried on by almost all men—when alone with prostitutes, and which compels the latter to lie almost mechanically, to lie without ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... envious eyes, meditating some attack, some interruption, some excuse for an interpolation, but her courage had failed her and she had not dared to approach. The Duke had known nothing of the hovering propinquity of Mrs. Bonteen, but Madame Goesler had seen and had ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... and repellent minds were necessarily brought to bear upon the same matters of public concern. Both, unfortunately, lived in Boston and were likely any day to come face to face round the corner of some or other narrow street of that small town. That reciprocal exasperation engendered by reasonable propinquity, so essential to the life of altercations, was therefore a perpetual stimulus to both men, confirming each in his obstinate opinion of the other as a malicious and dangerous enemy of all that men hold dear. Thus it was that ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... this from the customs which prevailed under the sanction of the "holy bonds of matrimony"! When sexual intercourse became a self-indulgence, like the eating of candy, or the drinking of liquor; a thing of the body, and the body alone; a thing determined by physical propinquity, by the sight and contact of the flesh, the dressing and undressing ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the inevitable end of these things he never thought. He was like a schoolboy in love for the first time. His desires led him no further than the mystic joy of her presence, the sweet, passionless content of propinquity. For the time the rest lay somewhere in a world of golden promise. The sole right that he burned to claim was the right to have her continually by his side in the moments when he was freed from his work, and even with the prospect of the following night before him, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... look expectantly ahead for a change in the straight line of the track, laughing happily to himself at her involuntary apology. Their comradeship seemed to have entered upon a stage in which mere propinquity was sufficient to give content without the aid of conversation, and a deep serenity of mood had now replaced the wavering uncertainties of his earlier emotions. This atmosphere of harmony and understanding remained unbroken until they stood ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... by the Pentland Firth to the distant western island of Icolmkill. On the other hand, that St. Colme's Inch, in the Firth of Forth, is the island alluded to, is, as I have already said, perfectly certain, from its propinquity to the seat of war, and the point of landing of the new Scandinavian host, namely, Kinghorn; the old town of Wester Kinghorn lying only about three or four miles below Inchcolm, and the present town of the same name, or Eastern Kinghorn, being ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... of propinquity, joined to reasons of self-love and a real passion which had no means of satisfaction except by marriage, led Paul on to an irrational love, which he had, however, the good sense to keep to himself. He even endeavored to study Mademoiselle Evangelista as a man ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... example, men who have made fortunes for themselves, and have added to the world's stock, by work in the gold-fields, have been in many cases labourers, directing their own efforts by their own intelligence. But some men have been exceptional in one or other of two ways—either in propinquity to the scene of action, or (and this is the more common case) in handihood, determination, and courage. It is not every one who has it in him to go in search of gold ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... a certain fierce justice of heart. He has a mind, and when he opens it at all, he opens it freely to her. Jane becomes attached to her "master," as Pamela-like she calls him, and it is not difficult to see that solitude and propinquity are taking effect upon him also. An odd circumstance heightens the dawning romance. Jane is awoke one night by that strange discordant laugh close to her ear— then a noise as if hands feeling along the wall. She rises—opens her door, finds the passage full of smoke, is guided by it to her master's ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... on the creek—which, by the way, Florry had christened "Penguin Castle," in consequence of its propinquity to the colony of queer sea-fowl—Mr Meldrum and Mr Lathrope, with Frank Harness, who was also of the shooting party as well as two men to help in carrying back home the fruits of the sport, all pursued their way in company up the valley in ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... handling and naming of things, they were living together, the five of them, in an air in which an ugly effect of "blurting out" might easily be produced. He came back with his friend on each occasion to the blest miracle of renewed propinquity, which had a double virtue in that favouring air. He breathed on it as if he could scarcely believe it, yet the time had passed, in spite of this privilege, without his quite committing himself, for her ear, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... him as a strange old man who interested him despite himself. There was pity, but nothing filial in his feelings. For filial love only grows out of propinquity and a firm respect which must keep pace with the growing demands of ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... came and went,—eight wonderfully happy weeks to Debby and her friend; for "propinquity" had worked more wonders than poor Mrs. Carroll knew, as the only one she saw or guessed was the utter captivation of Joe Leavenworth. He had become "himself" to such an extent that a change of identity ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... speak of the rector of St Blank's without using his three names) was independent in the matter of fortune, and so dowered with nature's best gifts that he could have almost any woman for the asking whom he should desire. But the Baroness believed much in propinquity; and she brought the rector and Alice together as often as possible, and coached the girl in coquettish arts when alone with her, and credited her with witticisms and bon-mots which she had never uttered, when talking of her to the ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... enemy. So I applied, stating the facts, to the Chief Constable, who, with a promptitude and a courtesy which I desire to acknowledge, sent a sergeant to interview me. Struggling against that sense of general and undefined guilt which the propinquity of a police officer always inspires and striving to assume an air of frank and confident honesty, I approached the sergeant and learnt from him that, this being a prohibited area, the Chief Constable could not give the required permission to travel without the express authority of the HOME ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... do become partners on Berande," he said, at the same time experiencing a feeling of fright at the prospect that was tangled with a contradictory feeling of charm, "either I'll fall in love with you, or you with me. Propinquity is dangerous, you know. In fact, it is propinquity that usually gives the facer ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... says Mr. Ellins. "Undisturbed propinquity—a love charm that was old when the world was young. And if Marjorie is managing the campaign, it's all ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... year and a half he had lived in the dingy house above the shop in Bridge Street. He had for eighteen months enjoyed that propinquity, that familiar intercourse, which is all that is necessary to make many an ugly woman beautiful in the eyes of the man in enjoyment of her society. It is small wonder then, if the poor Manchester man exaggerated ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... a certain forceful magic about the combined influences of propinquity and sea air, as these are enjoyed by the idle passengers upon a great ocean liner. They do, I think, tend to advance intimacy and accelerate the various stages of intercourse leading thereto, and therefrom, as nothing ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... on the 11th of September 1762, in the manse of Bothwell, in Lanarkshire. Her father, Dr James Baillie, was descended from the old family of Baillie of Lamington, and was consequently entitled to claim propinquity with the distinguished Principal Robert Baillie, and the family of Baillie of Jerviswood, so celebrated for its Christian patriotism. The mother of Joanna likewise belonged to an honourable house: she was a descendant of the Hunters of Hunterston; and her two brothers attained a wide reputation ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of his desire and the fulfillment of his revenge, though steadfastly foreseen by Joe Noy from the moment when first he set foot in London and began his search, now for a moment overwhelmed him at the prospect of their extreme propinquity. Had anything been needed to strengthen his determination on the threshold of a meeting with Joan's destroyer, it was the startling vision of Joan herself from which he had just departed. No event had brought the magnitude of his loss more cruelly to the core of his heart than the sudden splendid ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... spring "Maternally more noble; nor them claim "That from a brother's blood my sire is free: "By merits solely you the cause adjudge. "These only none to Ajax, that his sire, "And Peleus brethren were, e'er grant. The prize "Desert, and not propinquity of blood, "Should gain. If kindred, then the hero's heir "Demands it: Peleus still survives, his sire; "And Pyrrhus is his son. Where Ajax' right? "To Phthia, or to Scyros be it borne. "Nor less is ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... world; So few great souls, love ordered, well begun, In answer to the fertile mother need! So few who seem The image of the Maker's mortal dream; So many born of mere propinquity - Of lustful habit, or of accident. Their mothers felt No mighty, all-compelling wish to see Their bosoms garden-places Abloom with flower faces; No tidal wave swept o'er them with its flood; No thrill of flesh or heart; no leap ...
— Poems of Purpose • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... past and stretch out my hands to fondle the idea of perfect companionship. Our thoughts seem to be a reverberation of the same thunderous roll, and while they are not identical, they are of the same breadth and elevation. The conditions of propinquity are responsible; and as love did not come to me, I had to do as Mahomet did with ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... very silent, save for the faintly regular respiration of the girl who bent near his shoulder. Her breath was fragrant upon his cheek. The consciousness of her propinquity almost stifled him.... One fears that Maitland prolonged the counterfeit study of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... you distinguish between meum and tuum? Prove that their values vary inversely as the propinquity of the owners. ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... gulf cannot. When paying his half-guinea the simple visitor imagines that the difference between the price of his seat and that of a place in the pit is to a great extent based upon an advantage of nearness—although it appears that some managers do not think that propinquity involves a gain. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... and wrists were well-shaped, though scarred and roughened by the rasp of the hot straw. The warmth of the sun seemed to cling to his brown face; a joyous vitality emanated from him, and he had mental gifts. She felt lightly thrilled by his propinquity. ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... might be wolves along the track—the country was not wanting in them; or, more to be feared, there might be a panther lurking along some great overhanging forest bough. There was need to be vigilant. Either of these savages would make his propinquity known, at a short distance, to the senses of an animal so timid as the horse. Or, it might be, that a worse beast still—always worst of all when he emulates the nature of the beast—man!—might be lurking upon the track! If so, the nature of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... was love which gave her strength—love, not for him, but for that other man whose influence he was now convinced had always been paramount, and who with renewed propinquity had resumed his domination. ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... my men," cried the captain, "right wheel;" and setting his men an example, he did gallop with what speed he might from the propinquity of the wall. As for myself, I was in some sort relieved by the knowledge that the noble mansion still continued in possession of the Viscount Lessingholm; and comforting myself with the assurance ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... mocking incongruity in the fact that a creature so leaping with life should have, for chief outlet, the narrow mental channel of the excellent couple between whom she was now being borne to the Gaines garden-party? All her friendships were the result of propinquity or of early association, and fate had held her imprisoned in a circle of well-to-do mediocrity, peopled by just such figures as those of the kindly and prosperous Dressels. Effie Dressel, the daughter of a cousin of ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... but a weariness which I can neither fathom nor explain in my own will keep my blood from warming at the sound of his voice through the door. Being still his wife, I shall have to sew and mend and cook for him. That is the penalty of prairie life; there is no escape from propinquity. ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... herded together, for one day, perhaps two, and a night or so, and then death would obliterate the petty annoyances, the womanly blushes caused by this sordid propinquity. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... irreg., be away, be absent, be distant, with separative abl. /adpropinquo:, -a:re, draw near, approach (propinquity), with dative[A] /contineo:, -e:re, hold together, hem in, keep (contain) /disce:do:, -ere, depart, go away, leave, with separative abl. /egeo:, -e:re, lack, need, be without, with separative abl. /interficio:, -ere, kill ...
— Latin for Beginners • Benjamin Leonard D'Ooge
... his decease, the funeral rites were celebrated. A dispute between the Spaniards, Germans, and Netherlanders in the army arose, each claiming precedence in the ceremony, on account of superior national propinquity to the illustrious deceased. All were, in truth, equally near to him, for different reasons, and it was arranged that all should share equally in the obsequies. The corpse disembowelled and embalmed, was laid upon a couch ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... natural that in her ill condition my dragon should seek medical aid, and I paid no further attention to the propinquity of this unpleasant visitor than I could help—sitting quietly by my shaded lamp, absorbed in the Psalter, in ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... had ever paid the least attention to the looks of children. For the absence of human companionship in bestial forms; the loss of green fields, free to her as to the winds of heaven, and of country sounds and odours; and an almost constant sense of oppression from the propinquity of one or another whom she had cause to fear, were speedily working sad effects upon her. The little colour she had died out of her cheek. Her face grew thin, and her blue eyes looked wistful and large out of their sulken cells. Not often ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the Church comes back to Italy." And, indeed, it was not until sixty years afterwards, under Pope Gregory XI., that Italy regained possession of the Holy See; and historians called this long absence the Babylonish captivity. Philip lost no time in profiting by his propinquity to make the full weight of his power felt by Clement V. He claimed from him the fulfilment of the fourth promise Bertrand de Goth had made in order to become pope, which was the condemnation of Boniface VIII.; and he ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... realised that a man might firmly believe in Affinity, and, through a chain of unfortunate circumstances, become the victim of Propinquity. He had known of such instances and was now face to face ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... what you are saying," she replied, moving on briskly in the direction of home. "You happen to be drawn towards me now—by force of propinquity, perhaps; or because you were good enough to worry ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... and distraction, to leave even such inefficient protection as the saloon afforded them, so great was their horror and repugnance at the idea of being brought once more, even though it might be for ever so short a time, into the presence and propinquity of the mutineers. And when at length they emerged from the saloon, and, standing upon the wet and slippery deck, glanced first aloft at the splintered spars, the tattered remains of the sails, and the ends and bights of rope streaming in the wind, then at the great tongues of flame and ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... was not accident nor a lazy concurrence with propinquity that kept Johnny Byrd at ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... his dealings with her. This was a matter which need not have troubled him, for Nature has a way of taking into her own keeping the bearing of young men toward young women when the two are thrown much into each other's company. Propinquity is a tremendous force in the life of humanity. It has caused as many love affairs as the kicking of other men's dogs has caused street fights—which numbers into infinity. Consequently, while Bob worried much and selected a number of widely ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... propinquity goaded my adolescent hunger into an infatuation for her,—I thought I was in love with her,—though I never quite reconciled myself to the cowlikeness with ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... to the tidal influence of each of the bodies on the other. Suns, in consequence of their enormous masses and dimensions and the peculiarities of their constitution, are exceedingly dangerous to one another at close quarters. Propinquity awakes in them a mutually destructive tendency. Consisting of matter in the gaseous, or perhaps, in some cases, liquid, state, their tidal pull upon each other if brought close together might burst them asunder, and the photospheric envelope being destroyed the internal incandescent mass would ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... the two well-broke setters crouching at our feet, and the three guns strapped neatly to the side rails of the wagons. Harry next mounted the box. Tim touched his hat and jumped up to his side, and off we rattled at a merry trot, wheeling around the rival tavern which stood in close propinquity to Tom's; then turning short again to the left hand, along a broken stony road, with several high and long hills, and very awkward bridges in the valleys, to the north-westward ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... frontier either," returned Recklow with emphasis. "You cannot trust the Swiss on this border. Over ninety per cent. of them are German-Swiss, speak German exclusively along the Alsatian border. They are, I think, loyal Swiss, but their origin, propinquity, customs and all their affiliations incline them toward ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... of the steam trains flying in opposite directions are scarcely less agitating to the nerves than their transits through the tunnels. The velocity of their course, the propinquity or apparent identity of the iron orbits along which these meteors move, call forth the involuntary but fearful thought of a possible collision, with all its horrible consequences. The period of suspense, however, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... was arguing, toward coffee, "we might have gone on caring forever—if we hadn't been separated. Propinquity feeds ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... secure in his conquering of the air—of Marta's sudden severance from the habit of a lifetime—of Jo's faith in her—of Kurt wrestling with his conflict between love and conventions. "Does he care, really, as much as he thinks he does," she wondered, "or is it just the lure of—propinquity? How shall I find out? Oh, there is too much on my mind! How careless and how like Hebby to leave his priceless ring about. What would he think if he knew the thief was next ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... wounded, at the girl's soft hands. When Harry had first confided in her, she had been certain that no nice girl could long resist him, if only she, Harry's mother, gave opportunities and held the lists. It would not be necessary for her to take any active steps. Mere propinquity would do it. Then, when Tatham stumbled prematurely into his proposal, Victoria might have intervened to help, but for Lydia's handling of the situation. She had refused the natural place offered her in Harry's life—the place of lover and wife. ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... pointed out the difficulty against which commercial aviation has to contend in regard to the geographical features and position of the United Kingdom. Its comparatively small size, the propinquity of industrial centres, our efficient day and night express railway services, especially those running north and south, lessen the value of aircraft's superior speed and militate against the operation of successful internal air services. ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... quantity of shot and powder to little purpose, we were making up our minds to attack a rock covered with gulls, when a large seal rose within reach of our oars, but sunk again the moment it discovered our propinquity. In a few minutes afterwards, it bounced, head first, to the top of the water, five-and-twenty or thirty yards from the boat; and R—— and I having granted P—— the preference of first shot, he gave the seal's full face the fuller benefit of a double charge of duck-shot. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... how she would take the dismal news. Would she become hysterical and go all to pieces? Would the prospect of a week of propinquity be too much for her, even though thick walls intervened to put them into separate worlds? Or, worst of all, would she reveal an uncomfortable spirit of bravado, rashly casting discretion to the winds in order to show him that she was not the ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... bell-tower, the thirteenth-century traceries, and the rich old glass. It is guarded by a high wall from the adjoining castle-walls, as if the castle still feared there were something dangerously infectious in the mere propinquity of ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... MORE IS INCLUDED, and that propinquity of descent—the only known cause of the similarity of organic beings— is the bond, hidden as it is by various degrees of modification, which is partially revealed to us by ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams, and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse, and despair of pardon; as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence!—the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged!—and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed!—he did not err!—there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... hides in the main the secrets of its series, and betrays only an illogical succession of events. Minds cruder than the average see only a jumble of happenings in the life they look upon, and group them, if at all, by propinquity in time, rather than by any deeper law of relation. Such a mind had Dame Quickly, the loquacious Hostess in Shakespeare's "Henry IV." Consider the famous speech in which she accuses Falstaff of breach of promise ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... that a brilliant mind on parade might be amusing, but that, like its duller fellows, it retired to barracks and found contentment in the same humdrum existence as they. The birth of eternal, enduring love was but a matter of propinquity. Sitting on the front doorstep of an afternoon talking and strolling down to the drugstore every evening for soda-water, Darby and Joan discovered that existence apart was worse than death. And so ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... work and earn a man's wage. We do stay starved women, even if that fact doesn't appear on the surface. We cannot have the things of romance as well as our livelihood. And by the very nature of the average business woman's life she is often in love with someone in her office—from propinquity if for no other reason. She must. Don't you see? They're practically the only men she really comes to know or who come to know her, and she just can't stab her heart ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... frequent, were not nearly as aggressive as their Southern neighbors. Attachment to slavery in the Cotton States had become a passion, springing from self-interest, but stronger than self-interest; while in the Border States the slaveholders were affected by propinquity to free communities, and the calculations of self-interest were softened by their surroundings; which shows, like many another chapter in history, that in the mighty impulses which guide the destinies ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... "It's propinquity," she laughed. "You haven't seen any other woman for days and weeks. Wait until you are strong enough to come down ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... spiritual life which will earliest appear. One does not need to look far for the answer. Children are always affectionate; they manifest the possibilities of love. True, this affection is rooted in physiological experience, based on relations to the mother and on daily propinquity to the rest of the family, but it is that which may be colored by devotion, elevated by unselfish service, and may become the first great, ideal loyalty of the child's life. Little boys will fight and girls will quarrel more readily over the question of the merits of their ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... described it. Every man felt the same. I have often mentioned it to my comrades. Say what you like, said I, but slay my mother if ever since the old man strangled himself, things did not seem, as it were, in their natural propinquity. 'Twas ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... King. Then in a moment he was calm again, only for that inward glow of rage. "People don't really love each other until after marriage. Love is born of propinquity and thrives on usage and custom. You only think you love this girl. It's after two people have been through a good deal together that ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... touched his respect for her; but though, perhaps, he had never understood it so, he had never felt very enthusiastically concerning her. Truly, Priscilla Gower and enthusiasm were not in accordance with each other. Chance had thrown them together when both were very young, and propinquity did the rest. Propinquity is the strongest of agents in a love affair, and in Denis Oglethorpe's love affair, propinquity had accomplished what nothing else would have been likely to have done. The desperate young scribbler of twenty years had been the ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... separation from Mamie gave him what might be called a stake in the affair. The brief and rare glimpses which he got of her nowadays made it absolutely impossible for him to conduct his wooing on a business-like basis. A diffident man cannot possibly achieve any success in odd moments. Constant propinquity is his only hope. ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... stockholder in the Pacific Railroad. The most enthusiastic lover of the sea must abjure his predilections, when brought to the ordeal of the steamer Champion. Crowded like rabbits in a hutch or captives in the Libby into such indecent propinquity with his kind that the third day out makes him a misanthrope,—fed on the putrid remains of the last trip's commissariat, turkeys which drop out of their skins while the cook is larding them in the galley, beef which maybe eaten as spoon-meat, and tea apparently made with bilge-water,—sleeping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... immediate scene,—having, for example, noted the customers waiting at the counter of the First National Bank, diagonally opposite,—something almost invariably impelled his glance upward to the sign of a painless dentist, immediately above the First National,—a propinquity which had caused a wag (one of the Montgomery's customers) to express the hope that the dentist was more painless than the bank ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... irresistibly. She was sure of herself now. The passions of women are often calmed by the presence of their lover. Passion is so largely mental in them that it reaches heights in the imagination that reality seldom justifies and mere propinquity quells. For this reason they often are recklessly unfair to men, who are made on ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... of the tent before the large camp fire. At the other fire the rest of the party were playing cards and laughing, but Clarence no longer cared to join them. He was quite tranquil in the maternal propinquity of his hostess, albeit a little uneasy as to his reticence ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... He had laughed the possibility to scorn, in other days, holding the passion to be the sober child of propinquity, sympathy, consonance of ideas, similar tastes, and pursuits, and fanned into flame, after due time to kindle, by the ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... event, a great step forward, would have definitely taken place. He would have been received at Ventirose as a friend. He would be no longer a mere nodding acquaintance, owing even that meagre relationship to the haphazard of propinquity. The ice-broken, if you will, but still present in abundance—would have been gently thawed away. One era had passed; but then a ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... of whom were more to her than Imogen could be, but they lived at a distance and Imogen close at hand. Propinquity plays a large part in friendship as well as love. Imogen had no other intimate, but she knew too little of Isabel's other interests to be made uncomfortable about them, and was quite happy in her position as nearest and closest confidante ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... and might have caused him a fit of apoplexy. And surely, as it was, the lovers were not lost to each other. To wed is often fatal to romance; but it is expecting too much to suppose that lovers will reason that too much propinquity is often worse than obstacle. The road between them was a good one—the letter-carrier made three trips a week, and an irascible parent could not stop dreams, nor veto telepathy, even if he did pass a law that one short visit ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... lookout was what he hoped to elicit by the remark which he wished to make. He desired greatly to know whether Miss Roberta March looked upon him in the light of a lover, or in that of an intimate acquaintance, whose present intimacy depended a good deal upon the propinquity of Midbranch and the Green Sulphur Springs. He had endeavored to produce upon her mind the latter impression. If he ever wished her to regard him as a lover he could do this in the easiest and most ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... the favoring chances of solitude, propinquity, and daily opportunity. Seldom away from Clara for a day together, he was in condition to take advantage of any of those moods which lay woman open to courtship, such as gratitude for attentions, a disgust with loneliness, a desire for something to love. It was a ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... having been cut off on the ground that they did nothing to earn them, she offered her services as his paid secretary. "Propinquity" did its work and she was soon in a position to offer him the privilege of an experimental kiss, thus incidentally justifying the dreadful title of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... fire, and the magician sat down by it. He placed the little boy before him, and poured ink into the hollow of the boy's hand, and bid him look into it steadily. I think the mother rather quailed, at seeing her child in such propinquity with "the Enemy;" but recovered herself on being exhorted to defy the devil and all his works. And the thing was not entirely without danger from another quarter; for it was understood the Pasha had directed a special edict ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... friendships on good comradeship, not on maudlin emotion, nor on propinquity. The right kind of girl and boy friendships may give joy for a lifetime; the wrong kind ...
— Manners And Conduct In School And Out • Anonymous
... the vines Miss Sally's tongue was not idle. Her talk was as fresh, as quaint, as original as herself, and yet so practical and to the purpose of Courtland's visit as to excuse his delight in it and her own fascinating propinquity. Whether she stopped to take a nail from between her pretty lips when she spoke to him, or whether holding on perilously with one hand to the trellis while she gesticulated with the hammer, pointing out the divisions of the plantation from her coign ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... wonder, considering the propinquity of the candle to his visual organs—Homer's infant likeness commenced the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... trust in him, were a part of the magic light which the new idealism had shed over the old social structure. His was, in short, a love large enough to include other emotions: a widening rather than a contraction of the emotional range. Youth and propinquity have before now broken down stronger defences; but Fulvia's situation was an unspoken appeal to her lover's forbearance. The sense that her safety depended on him kept his sentimental impulses in check and made the happiness of the moment seem, in its exquisite ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... are often made by propinquity, neighbourhood, adjacent homes, and constant meetings in the ordinary round ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... Service!) She was boring him terribly before they reached Brook Green. She took leave with a deportment correct but acquired at an age too late. Still, he had liked to see her home in the taxi. She was young, and she was an object pleasing to the eye. He realised that he was not accustomed to the propinquity of young women. What would his cronies at the Club say to the escapade?... Odd, excessively odd, that the girl should be Sissie's partner, in a business enterprise of so odd a character!... The next thing was to meet Eve after the escapade. Should ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... how much propinquity adds fuel to love's fire. Unknown, even to himself, Roger's passion had been gradually rising towards flood-tide. Man being by nature a contradictory animal, the attitude assumed by his mother and cousin towards the woman who was to be his wife had ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... nothing unusual in the attitude of any person in the box; both were preoccupied with the discussion upon which they had just been engaged. Patricia's eyes were already fixed on the stage, and evidently her entire attention was devoted to it. She appeared to have forgotten the propinquity of other persons. ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... Hainault. In no other was the party of the Calvinists so powerful, and the spirit of rebellion for which the province of Hainault had always made itself conspicuous, seemed to dwell here as in its native place. The propinquity of France, to which, as well by language as by manners, this town appeared to belong, rather than to the Netherlands, had from the first led to its being governed with great mildness and forbearance, which, however, only ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... young rascals, and that they were beguiling the tedious moments of the sentry-go by pulling a chaplain's leg. They confessed it to me months afterwards in France. However, I was unsuspecting and had come submissive into the great war. I said that if they would remove their bayonets from propinquity to my person—because the sight of them was causing me a fresh attack of the pains that had racked me all day—I would go with them to the guardroom. At this they said, "Well, Sir, we'll let you pass. We'll ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... sacrifice himself to the greed of the Tresslyns. But Mr. Thorpe refused to listen to this new and apparently unprejudiced argument. He was firm in his determination to clip Anne's claws; he would take no chances with youth, ultimate propinquity, and the wiles of a ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... take a long sea-voyage may perhaps be useful. First and foremost, unless provided with a companion whom he well knows and can trust, he must have a cabin to himself. There are many men with whom one can be on excellent terms when not compelled to be perpetually with them, but whom the propinquity of the same cabin would render simply intolerable. It would not even be particularly agreeable to be awakened during a hardly captured wink of sleep by the question "Is it not awful?" that, however, would be a minor inconvenience. No one, I am sure, will repent paying ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... love for her seemed changed to hate, and she tremblingly averted her gaze. At this juncture, the door opened, and the grocer and his wife entered the room. The former started, on seeing Amabel and the supposed preacher in such close propinquity, and a painful suspicion of the truth crossed his mind. He was not, however, kept long in suspense. Throwing off his wig, and letting his own fair ringlets fall over his shoulders, the earl tore open his cassock, and disclosed his ordinary rich attire. At ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... is better than love for a steady diet. Suspicion, jealousy, prejudice and strife follow in the wake of love; and disgrace, murder and suicide lurk just around the corner from where love coos. Love is a matter of propinquity; it makes demands, asks for proofs, requires a token. But friendship seeks no ownership—it only hopes to serve, and it grows by giving. Do not say, please, that this applies also to love. Love bestows only that it may receive, and a one-sided passion turns to hate in a night, and then demands ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... the table d'hote. There are ten people besides ourselves, and not a commonplace or colorless character among them. My left-hand neighbor is a somewhat slangy young gentleman in a suit of chequered clothes, who carves the meats, being at the head of the table; and my happy propinquity secures me the honor of selection by the young gentleman as the recipient of his observations: a toughish round of beef which he is called upon to carve evokes from him an aside to the effect that it is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... insisting very especially (among other things) upon the idea that the principle source of error in all human investigations lay in the liability of the understanding to under-rate or to over-value the importance of an object, through mere mis-admeasurement of its propinquity. "To estimate properly, for example," he said, "the influence to be exercised on mankind at large by the thorough diffusion of Democracy, the distance of the epoch at which such diffusion may possibly be accomplished should not fail to form an item ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... observe a curious mark of propinquity which the poet notices, with respect to the hands of the father and daughter. Lord Byron, we suspect, is indebted for the first hint of this to Ali Pacha, who, by the bye, is the original of Lambro; for, when his lordship was introduced, with his friend Hobhouse, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... nearness &c adj.; proximity, propinquity; vicinity, vicinage; neighborhood, adjacency; contiguity &c 199. short distance, short step, short cut; earshot, close quarters, stone's throw; bow shot, gun shot, pistol shot; hair's breadth, span. purlieus, neighborhood, vicinage, environs, alentours [Fr.], suburbs, confines, banlieue^, borderland; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... entered the class of moral philosophy under Adam Smith at Glasgow. Perhaps his father had thought that in the more sedate capital of the West, and in close propinquity to Auchinleck, there would be less scope for the long career of eccentricities upon which he was now to enter. If such, however, had been the intention, it was destined to a rude awakening. All his life Bozzy affected the company of players, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... and the very reaction from acute suspicion had drawn her towards him. Repentance for an unmerited blame is much nearer akin to love than any depths of pity. Then to repentance was added gratitude, to gratitude admiration, and to all three propinquity. Blessed be propinquity! If Hymen ever raises an altar to his most devoted hand-maid it will be to the dear goddess Propinquity! Yes! these days ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... beyond measure. And consequently, at the end of ten minutes, Tristram found himself in irons in the lazarette, condemned to pass the night with two drunken men, whose snores were almost comforting in the pitchy darkness; for, as he told himself, human propinquity, if not exactly sympathy, is the first step towards it. He had been listening to this snoring for four hours, when a hatchway above him was lifted, and a lantern shone down into the lazarette. It was carried ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a charming picture of this habit of propinquity of the bee-stand to the human habitation. He describes (La Vie des Abeilles, 14) the old man who taught him to love bees when he was a boy in Flanders, an old man whose entire happiness "consistait aux beautes d'un jardin et parmi ces beautes la mieux aimee et la plus visitees etait un roucher, ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... the deserted hall, where profound silence reigned. Clear was the night and starry. As the Prophet turned to close the door he perceived the busy crab, and the thought of his beloved grandmother, sinking now to rest on the second floor all unconscious of the propinquity of the scorpion, the contiguity of the serpent, filled his expressive eyes with tears. He shut the door, stood in the hall and listened. He heard a chair crack, the ticking of a clock. There was no other sound, and he felt certain that Mr. Ferdinand and Gustavus had heeded his ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... heard? Well, it all happened so quickly, they were married in Vienna in 1815, and—well, you know Propinquity is the Devil's middle name, too—they were divorced in 1905 after a brief married life of only ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... matter-of-fact! Her eagerness to have Marion come into the mining-claim scheme had not been altogether a friendly desire for companionship, as she pretended. Deep in the back of her mind was the matchmaker's belief that propinquity would prove a mighty factor in bringing these two together in marriage. If they did marry, that would throw Marion's timber land with Fred's and give Fred a good bit more than he would have with his own claim alone, which was another reason ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... far as I can judge, Mary and Mr. Will Axworthy are quits. If he has had a good time in her society, she has had an equally good time in his, and he does not enjoy her letters so much as he did her propinquity." ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... Propinquity is a great incentive to pleasant conversation, for there are few people that can talk the pretty nothings and sparkling witticisms, whereof parlor conversation properly consists, across space to people stranded against the opposite wall. Therefore let the hostess, who would have ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... no sums for the purpose, he was not unwilling that they should live by plunder. And perhaps his real intention was to extort from Rome the means of paying his troops by the mere exhibition of the danger arising from their propinquity while they remained unpaid. Upon the whole we are warranted in supposing that Bourbon and Frundsberg would hardly have ventured on the course they took if they had not had reason to believe that it would not much displease their master. And Charles was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... and partly black, the two parts on the borders of white and black are more akin as regards their position than any other two white parts, but are less akin in quality; so two angels who are on the boundary of two orders are more akin in propinquity of nature than one of them is akin to the others of its own order, but less akin in their fitness for similar offices, which fitness, indeed, extends to a definite ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... sense, had very little to do with these movements and conflicts; the impulse was supposed to be religion because religion dwells in the most interior region of a man's soul. But the craving for freedom also proceeds from an interior place; and so does the lust for tyranny. Propinquity was mistaken for identity, and anything which was felt but could not be reasoned about assumed a religious aspect to the subject of it, and all the artillery of Heaven and Hell, and the vocabulary thereof, were pressed into service to ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... given under the bond of marriage. You know how men and women live long lives together though completely sundered in heart, and how others though separated in life walk side by side in the spirit. As this is so, why do you fear to see or know too much of me? Propinquity does ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... break down his coldness even against his judgement. Though unsophisticated in the usual sense, she was not incomplete; and it would have denoted deficiency of womanhood if she had not instinctively known what an argument lies in propinquity. Nothing else would serve her, she knew, if this failed. It was wrong to hope in what was of the nature of strategy, she said to herself: yet that sort of hope she could not extinguish. His last representation had now been made, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... disappointed. Laurence, if he referred to Lilith again, did so in the same casual, indifferent way as before, nor did he ever terminate any of his dreamy and seaward-gazing meditations in order to open converse with her, even with such inducement as solitary propinquity ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... attic window to put one in sympathetic relations with cathedral spires! At this height we and they, for a part of their flight upward, at least, were on a common level—and we all know what confidences come about from the accident of propinquity. They seemed to assure us as never before when sitting at their feet, the difficulties they had overcome in climbing heavenward. Every stone that looked down upon the city wore ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... whom I Have Met," she says: "The dog who really loves his master delights in mere propinquity, likes to lie down on the floor resting against his feet, better than on a cushion a yard away, and after a warm interchange of caresses for two or three minutes asks no more, and subsides into perfect contentment. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... woman within at that moment. Susan's sight of her passing figure earlier in the evening, not five minutes after the sick boy's exclamation, "Mother, I do feel so bad!" persuaded the matron that an evil influence was certainly exercised by Eustacia's propinquity. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... thing troubled him a little. Rude, plain Jennie was in love with him. Daily intercourse with a youngster half as attractive as Mose would have had the same effect upon her, for she was at that age when propinquity makes sentiment inevitable. She could scarcely keep her eyes from him during hours in camp, and on the drive she rode with him four times as long as he wished for. She bothered him, and yet she was so good and generous he could not rebuff her; ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... be English, the sailor spoke in that language when presenting to them the two roses that he carried in his hand. They were merely flowers, like all others, grown in a land like other lands, but the frame of the thousand-year-old wall, the propinquity of the alcoves and drinking shops of a house built by Pansa in the time of the first Caesars, gave them the interest of roses two thousand years old, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... in New York; it's a necessity. But to those of us to whom life is pretty much of a compromise anyway, there is something in mere propinquity to wealth that is like smelling into a tumbler with its sides still wet from some rare old chartreuse. It isn't filling, but ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... filtered into her blood. Her hands dropped to her sides, and her face, very rosy, became so wonderfully beautiful that Blizzard almost groaned aloud. Something told him that his morning was over, his morning filled with the happiness of propinquity and stolen looks, with the happiness that is half ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... are in equilibrium, motionless, poised the one against the other, counter-balancing and neutralizing each other, so that Matter is called jada, unconscious, "dead". But in the presence of Purusha all is changed. When Purusha is in propinquity to Matter, then there is a change in Matter—not outside, ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... linger, but climbed to the place assigned him, glad to escape the company of the woman who at that moment he almost hated. In his unreflecting passion for Cressy he had always evaded the thought of this relationship or propinquity; the mother had recalled it to him in a way that imperilled even his passion for the daughter; his mind was wholly preoccupied with the idiotic, exasperating, and utterly hopeless position that had been forced upon him. In the bitterness ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... people—its past glories, its persistent ubiquitous potency, despite ubiquitous persecution. He sees himself the appointed scion of a Chosen Race, the only race to which God has ever spoken, and perhaps the charm of acquired Cyprus is its propinquity to Palestine, the only soil on which God has ever deigned ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... actual operation, resulting as it does in a simulacrum of companionship. The employee may have a genuine friendship for her employer, and a pleasure in her companionship, or she may not have, and the unnaturalness of the situation comes from the insistence that she has, merely because of the propinquity. ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... a flash of lightning, downward he darted and seized the snake by the back. The voracious crab held on, not liking to lose his prey, till he found himself borne upwards from the ground, and in unpleasant propinquity to the frigate bird's sharp beak. He must have felt that if he did not let go at once, he would be dashed to pieces; still, as a miser clutches his bags of gold, did Mr Crab the snake. Fortunately for him, the frigate bird had flown seaward, so that when he did let go, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... touch the humid leaves, drawing a terrible pleasure from the contact. Afterward, though he never suspected it, desire for him became a consuming passion, and I remember on one occasion, when on a holiday, I occupied the same bed with him, the excitement of his propinquity brought on such a formidable attack of heart palpitation that my father called in the family physician on our return home. Needless to say my heart was found quite sound. The desire still remains after all these years, and nothing excites me more even now than the memory of my father ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... early. The girls were not as obtrusive as they had been. Miss Jessie Stevens did not bother him by coming up every five minutes to see what he thought of her dictation, as she had been wont to do. He was rather glad of this; it saved him importunate glances and words, and the propinquity of girlish forms, which had been more trying still. But what was the cause of the change? It was evident that the girls regarded him as belonging to Miss Conklin. He disliked the assumption; his ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... a great deal to do with our affection for books. Propinquity, they say, leads very frequently to marriage, and if a book happens to be near and if it is any kind of book at all, there is a great temptation to develop an affection for it. All I can say is that I think that "Sesame and Lilies" is a good ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... most of them are used in that way. Whether as a sacrifice to the fiery god Quetzalcoatl, or whether from a fondness lor human flesh, no one has yet been able to determine. In fact, with all their propinquity to this place, there is little known about them. Few who have visited their towns have had Gode's luck to get away again. No man of these parts ever ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... the sky is "machine ruled;" the pillars and tracery of the ruined chapel are architectural impossibilities; while at the very first snort, the slumbering figure of Guy Fawkes must roll inevitably into the well towards the brink of which he lies in dangerous propinquity. These illustrations provoked the ire of the publisher and the remonstrances of the author, both of which were disregarded with strict impartiality. In 1842, Harrison Ainsworth retired from the conduct of the "Miscellany," and ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... in their time-and-space order. When we interpret the arrangement of numbers found there on a nominalistic basis, as is done when the axis- and angle-relationships of crystals are reduced to a mere propinquity of the atoms distributed like a grid in space, or when the difference in angle of the position of the various colours in the spectrum is reduced to mere differences in frequency of the electromagnetic oscillations in a hypothetical ether - then we bar the way to the comprehension ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs |
