"Penchant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... compte, c'est l'aversion et la brutalite des Noirs libres pour ceux de leur espece. Parviennent-ils a se procurer des esclaves? ils les traitent avec une barbarie dont rien ne peut approcher; ils les nourrissent plus mal encore que ne font les Blancs, et les surchargent de travail: heureusement leur penchant a la faineantise et a l'ivrognerie, les tient dans un etat de mediocrite dont ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... until I had been there for eight or nine months. I asked for an excuse to leave school early in the first term; it was denied me. I tried to sell my trunk for $7, so that I might run away. I had a penchant for running away from disagreeable surroundings. I was offered $6, but for the sake of the difference of $1 ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... eyes, moist now with the pressure of his emotions, and while he was wiping them, Mrs. McKaye and her daughters exchanged frightened glances. Elizabeth's penchant for ill-timed humor disappeared; she stood, alert and awed, biting her lip. Jane's eyebrows went up in quick warning to her mother, who paled and flushed alternately. The latter understood now why Andrew Daney had taken the precaution to warn her against ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... affection of one who had a right to assume in her an honor equal to his own deserved only to be hated with even righteous hatred. She saw the scrawled note which she knew Percy had not seen, but what did it signify? An eccentric old lady's penchant for match making? Perhaps she was even more guilty than the girl in attempting to lead Percy to see in Adelaide more than he ought. She might even take an old flirt's delight in the mere number of conquests ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... forget that in my boyhood days I had a strong penchant for military parade. I remember well the respect always shown to Revolutionary veterans, who survived to the period of my boyhood. At every meeting, political or otherwise, where these soldiers appeared to share in the assemblage of citizens, they were received ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... supper dishes, and no normal boy enjoys that ceremony. By making passes over the dishes I should have been exorcising the spooks of cube root, and that would have been worth some personal sacrifice. What a boon it would have been for the home folks too! They could have indulged their penchant for literary exercises, sitting in the parlor making out certificates for me to carry to my teacher next day, and so all the rough places in the home would have been made smooth. But the crowning achievement would have been my graduation from college. ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... japonica-domish flubdubs. He revels in all those knock-kneed, antique, or crooked and twisted words we used all of us to puzzle our brains over in the days of our youth, and grammar lessons and rhetoric exercises. He has a penchant as strong as cheap boarding-house butter, for mystification, and a free delivery of hard words, perfectly and unequivocally wonderful. We listened one long hour by the clock of Rumford Hall, one night, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... thought it necessary to give a separate and distinct reply to the theory of Mr. Congreve, that Roman Imperialism was the type of all good government, and a desirable precedent for ourselves. Those who feel any penchant for the notion, I should strongly recommend to read the answer of Professor G. Smith, in the Oxford Essays for 1856, which is as complete and crushing as that gentleman's performances usually are. But in order to convey to the ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... "No, no, much greater men than either you or I have waited longer for him before now; let him take his time, let him take his time." This was nobly said of the fine old Scotchman; and although Cockburn and I are blood relations, and I have a particular penchant for my lineage, I cannot help remarking that his manner denoted a great want of feeling. I suppose he was pitched upon by Castlereagh as a proper tool ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... more serious studies Levinsohn diverted himself occasionally with lighter composition, in which many an antiquated custom served as the butt for his biting satire. In his youth he had a penchant for poetry, and his poem on the flight, or expulsion, of the French from Russia was complimented by the Government. His muse dealt with ephemeral themes, but his bons mots are current among his countrymen to this day. A novel sort of plagiarism was the fashion of the time. Authors attributed their ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... more in the nature of sub-headings to the subjects in our list, and offer a more restricted field of collecting. Indeed I am in some doubt as to whether the large-paper collector should be included here, for his penchant is as far removed from true book-collecting as is that of the specialist in bindings. His hobby can have nothing to do with literature, since it is only the external characteristics of a book which appeal to him. He may be 'wise in his generation,' but ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... out," admitted the landlord, and the young man bestowed on Brophy an expansive grin which was a comment on the latter's well-known penchant for gimleting in search of information. "Will say, however, that she's a widder—grass if I ain't much mistook—believes that a woman is equal to a man and should have all a man's privileges about going around by her lonesome if ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... contemplation of our Constitution. "Those miserable islanders do not know, and will not know until their whole wretched system comes to its inevitable destruction, whether they are living under a Monarchy or a Republic, a Democracy or an Oligarchy." A wit with a penchant for the vernacular might well reply, "That's the spirit!" It is this that will last, while what delights and soothes the well-balanced mind of the clear-thinking Academicians of the Constitutional Law flaunts and goes down an unregarded ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... one on the Farm. There was no prejudice against cards or chess or any other game so far as I know, but no one cared for any form of amusement that separated two or four from all the others. I imagine that even courting, the divine solitude of two, must have been handicapped by this persistent penchant for ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... break into the room just in time to see the conclusion of a scuffle. Jimmy's clothes are white with dust. "Johnny, did you throw chalk at Jimmy?" "No, sir," says Johnny, and then under his breath to placate God's penchant for truth, "I threw the chalk-eraser." Once in Portland, Maine, I ordered iced tea at an hotel. The waitress brought me a glass of yellowish liquid with a two-inch collar of foam at the top. No tea I had ever seen outside of a prohibition state looked like ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... obtained by three or four loose planks stretching across the open festering gutters. As a natural result, small pox and cholera commit yearly ravages amongst the populace. Another great evil against good sanitation, exists in the shallowness of their graves. The Japanese have also a penchant ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... and we were silent for a while. Later he asked me diffidently not to mention to any one his penchant ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... les filles sont si accoutumees a porter les mains en arriere en cette dace ronde, qu'elles y trainent tout le corps, & luy donnent vn ply courbe en arriere, ayant les bras a demy tournez: si bien que la plupart ont le ventre communement grand, enfle & avance, & vn peu penchant sur le deuant. On y dance fort peu souuent vn a vn, c'est a dire vn homme seul auec vne femme ou fille.... On n'y dancoit que trois sortes de bransles, communement se tournant les espaules l'vn a l'autre, & le dos d'vn chascun visant dans le rond de la dance, ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... have assured me that they never pass by one, even in the midst of a crowded town, without experiencing sensations which they can scarcely define, but which are highly pleasurable. I have a decided penchant for forges, especially rural ones placed in some quaint quiet spot—a dingle, for example, which is a poetical place, or at a meeting of four roads, which is still more so; for how many a superstition—and superstition is the soul of poetry—is connected with these cross ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... and at Pretoria as firmly as he had done at Kimberley and Buluwayo, the latter townships would have come to occupy the same secondary importance in his thoughts as that which Cape Colony had assumed. Mr. Rhodes may have had a penchant for old clothes, but he certainly preferred new countries to ones already explored. To give Rhodes his due, he was not the money-grubbing man one would think, judging by his companions. He was constantly planning, constantly dreaming of wider areas to conquer and to civilise. The possession ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... well; but Godfrey's singular penchant for Jesuits, and especially for the chief Catholic intriguer in England, was probably the ultimate cause of his death, whether inflicted by his own hand or ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... to speak of the fever which had taken possession of him, almost against his will. And now, he reflected bitterly, with this velvet fop of a count looming up as a possible rival, with his savoir faire, and his absurd penchant for literature and art, what chance had he, a plain Briton, against such odds?—unless, as he profoundly believed, the chap was a crook. He ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... listening to the murmur of the wind, as it sighed among the boughs of the trees in the adjacent forest of Ardennes. His mind was dwelling upon the events of the evening-the fierce demeanor of the knight-his insolent defiance-and his marked penchant for the lovely and sole heiress of the honors of the house of Du Bois. The hall was silent, not a sound broke the solemn stillness. The lamps gave forth a flickering light, and the vapor of the spilled wine poured up from the steaming table, and diffused itself throughout the room. Suddenly ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... stepping half a pace backwards, I came in with a left and right as fast as a rapid double-hit could be delivered, with both blows upon his impudent mouth. In an instant he was on his back, with his heels in the air; and, as I prepared to operate upon his backer, or upon any bystander who might have a penchant for fighting, the crowd gave way, and immediately devoted themselves to their companion, who lay upon the ground in stupid astonishment, with his fingers down his throat searching for a tooth; his eyes were fixed upon my hands to discover the weapon with which he had been wounded. His friends began ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... private favourites of Don Juan;—for (Let deeper sages the true cause determine) He had a kind of inclination, or Weakness, for what most people deem mere vermin, Live animals: an old maid of threescore For cats and birds more penchant ne'er displayed, Although he was not old, nor even ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... which, he recalled sadly, not even a Geoffrey could coax a glittering drop. Yes—he was at Baldpate Inn. He remembered—the climb with the dazed Quimby up the snowy road, the plaint of the lovelorn haberdasher, the vagaries of the professor with a penchant for blondes, the mysterious click of the door-latch on the floor above. And last of all—strange that it should have been last—a girl in blue corduroy somewhat darker than her eyes, who wept ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... by his side, and they passed out of Waterloo station. The journey to Bond Street remained in Milburgh's memory like a horrible dream. He was not used to travelling on omnibuses, being something of a sybarite who spared nothing to ensure his own comfort. Ling Chu on the contrary had a penchant for buses and ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... 1864 in Laclede, Missouri, and is tall, wiry and strong. Every inch of his six feet is of fighting material. He is a man of action and has a penchant for utilizing the services of young men rather than staid old officers of experience. Pershing is a real military man, and has been notably absent from such things as banquets and other functions where by talking he might get into ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... momentous thing in a prospective engineer's life. It should be approached with all caution, and with due regard for the nature of the life he would lead after graduating from school. If he have a penchant for outdoor life, then the choice, in a way, is easy. He should select mining or civil engineering as his particular vocation. If he be of those who prefer to remain more or less indoors in the practice of his profession, mechanical or electrical ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... is very handsome, there is no question about that; she has been an acknowledged beauty ever since she came out. I think I can catch a glimpse of her yonder among the trees; I see a white dress and a scarlet shawl. Geraldine always had a penchant ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... is laid at the country-house of Count Almaviva. Figaro, the Count's valet, and Susanna, the Countess's maid, are to be married that day; but Figaro, who is well aware that the Count has a penchant for his fiancee, is on his guard against machinations in that quarter. Enter the page Cherubino, an ardent youth who is devotedly attached to his mistress. He has been caught by the Count flirting with Barberina, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... she had not enjoyed the social opportunities which she needed and longed for. He felt sorry for her. At the same time he was inclined to feel that perhaps now another type of woman would be better for him socially. If he had a harder type, one with keener artistic perceptions and a penchant for just the right social touch or note, how much better he would do! He came home bringing a Perugino, brilliant examples of Luini, Previtali, and Pinturrichio (this last a portrait of Caesar Borgia), which he picked up in Italy, to say nothing of two red ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... every conceivable trick: had walked on the stage in one of Wilson's scenes; had started a quarrel with an usher in the audience—everything that ingenuity could conceive he had practised on his friend. Bok had known this penchant of Field's, and when he insisted on taking the bag of oranges into the theatre, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... this garden calls up," said Nina, who like many essentially simple and direct people, had a strong dash of sentiment and a strong penchant for being her own emotional pint-stoup on the traditional subjects and occasions. "I remember so well coming here in a new pink frock when I was a little girl. It wasn't so new when ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... his American career. Scheffer was interested in America, for the radicals with whom he associated were well aware that there might come a time when they would have to seek hastily some hospitable clime where to think was not a crime. And indeed, it is but natural that those with a penchant for heresy should locate a friendly shore, just as professional criminals study the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... of sin. The same intention underlies the effort, occasionally made, to persuade men that, seeing they are such as God created them, it is not for them to repine at being what they are, nor to "take too serious a view" of any "penchant for {151} revolt"—another delightful phrase—they may discover within themselves; as a recent writer has it, "The responsibility of its presence and action does not rest with us, nor are we justified in insulting God who made us, by repenting of what He has done. We ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... recouvert de ses depots quelques autres filons tout formes. Quant a celles des matieres de ces filons, qui ne paroissent pas etre marines (et c'est de beaucoup la plus grande quantite), j'ai toujours plus de penchant d'en attribuer une partie a l'operation des feux souterreins, a mesure que je vois diminuer la probabilite de les assigner entierement a l'eau. Mais quoi-qu'il en soit, ces gangues ne font pas de meme date que ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... way; but the moment I find myself within two miles of my fair one, as the towers of my home rise upon my sight, so rises the passion in my bosom; and what I supposed I had reasoned away to a mere dwarfish penchant, becomes at ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... fiancee—an heiress of the Dorsetshire Lee-Haileys, and rather a pretty-faced, silly person, with a penchant for French novels and sulphonal tabloids. I always shall believe that she liked the handsome Dragoon best, and took advantage of the Doctor's being—under the cloud of acquittal by a British Jury, to give him what the dear Irish call 'the back of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... and the moments of intense excitement when, with locked arms and heads close together, they drew surreptitiously away from their fellows for secret conclave. When presently Greaser Tunxton, a solitary youngster who ranked high among the polers and high markers with a curious penchant for chemistry, began to be seen in their company, the ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... creatures of his own. And that there was a crowd of foolish prigs and pedants in Rome to take note of these so trivial things, and to be more irked by them than by all the realities of his power:—a lean hungry Cassius; an envious brusque detractor Casca; a Brutus with a penchant for being considered a philosopher, after a rather maiden-auntish sort of conception of the part,—and for being considered a true descendant of his well-known ancestor: a cold soul much fired with the ignis fatuus ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... thirty or more, and as Mark was present, Juno seized the opportunity for ascertaining, if possible, his real opinion of Helen Lennox, joking him first about his having taken her to ride so soon, and insinuating that he must have a penchant for every ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... chosen," Godensky went on, "happens to be a protege of mine. I made him—gave him his first case, his first success; and have employed him more than once since. Odd, what a penchant Mr. Dundas seems to have for men in whom I, too, have confidence! Last night, it was Girard. To-day, ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... and all through the hours of darkness our ears were assailed by an almost continuous succession of such hair-raising shrieks and howls, roars and bellowings, as thoroughly convinced me that North Island was no sort of dwelling-place for human beings with a penchant for peace and quietness. Furthermore, there was a moon, that night, well advanced in her second quarter, and at frequent intervals during a particularly restless night I caught glimpses of shadowy forms moving ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... indeed, very curious and interesting, the literary fate of Charles Lamb. Jocular Bishops, archly toying Rural Deans, Rectors with a "penchant" for anecdote, scholarly Canons with a weakness for Rum Punch, are all inclined to speak as if in some odd way he was of their own very tribe. He had absolutely nothing in common with them, except ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... to prowling. There are people who have a penchant for cities—more than that, a talent for them, a gift of sensing them, of feeling their rhythm and pulse-beats, as others have a highly developed music sense, or color reaction. It is a thing that cannot be acquired. In Fanny Brandeis there was this abnormal response to the color and tone ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... grimace, embarrasse, double entendre, equivoque, ecclaircissement, suitte, beveue, facon, penchant, coup ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... of the actress in Laura had fostered in her a curious penchant toward melodrama. She had a taste for the magnificent. She revelled in these great musical "effects" upon her organ, the grandiose easily appealed to her, while as for herself, the role of the "grande dame," with this wonderful house for background and environment, came to be for her, quite ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... The penchant for pedigrees and genealogical registers, made up from a mixture of genealogico-historical and ethnologico-statistical elements, is a characteristic feature of Judaism; along with the thing the word YX also first came into use during the later times. Compendious histories are written in the form ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... momentary. Recovering himself, he laid a large hand on the priest's shoulder, and, his face assuming its wonted smile, said in his usual low tone, "Amigo, it seems that you have a penchant for spreading gossip. Think you I am ignorant of the fact that because of it Rome spewed you out for a meddlesome pest? Do you deceive yourself that Cartagena will open her ears to your garbled reports? The hag, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... before shopkeepers' daughters; he believed himself a moderate tenor and sang verses of sentimental imbecility; he took in several weekly papers of unpromising title for the chief purpose of deciphering cryptograms, in which pursuit he had singular success. Add to these characteristics a penchant for cheap jewellery, and Oliver Peak ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... now became narrower and overhung with wandering branches and creepers. The brambles seemed to have a special penchant for Mrs. Hading's flying ends of tulle and lace, and she spent most of her time disengaging herself while Druro went ahead, pushing branches out of the way. Poor Marice! Her feet ached in their high-heeled shoes, and her French toilette was created ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... account,' the shame of having fancied herself so important, rendered her ill-humour still more painful and deplorable. It was vain to consult her about the arrangements, she would not care about anything, except that by some remarkable effect of her perverse condition, she had been seized with a penchant for maize colour and blue for the bridesmaids, and was deeply offended when Albinia represented that they would look like a procession of macaws, and her aunt declared that Sophy herself would be the most sacrificed by such ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quite at home. You're right, it is getting sharp and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see signs of frost, the first of the season, in the morning. We're up here knocking about a little, partly to hunt, but mostly because I've a penchant, that is, a weakness for exploring out-of-the-way places. Stackpole, did you say your name was?—well, mine's Cuthbert Reynolds, this is my friend, Eli Perkins, and, you seem to know Owen, so I won't try to introduce him. Have you had supper—if ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... Tony. "How goes it? Lookin' a bit white about the gills, aren't you, eh?... Whew! Merriton, old chap, that's my ribs, if you don't mind. I've no penchant for your bayonet-like elbow to go prodding ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... Quand il passa prs de moi, il me regarda un moment avec angoisse. Le malheureux avait envie de me demander si je ne les avais pas vues. Mais il n'osa pas.... A ce moment le portier lui criait du haut de l'escalier, en se penchant: ...
— Le Petit Chose (part 1) - Histoire d'un Enfant • Alphonse Daudet
... out of the commission looking extraordinarily epate. Questioned, he averred that his penchant for inventing forcepumps had prejudiced ces messieurs in his disfavour; and shook his poor old head and sniffed hopelessly. Mexique exited in a placidly cheerful condition, shrugging his ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... as prolific of generals as the Transvaal, but in Christian De Wet she had one of the ablest as well as one of the most fearless leaders in the Republican ranks. Before he was enlisted to fight for his country De Wet was a farmer, who had a penchant for dealing in potatoes, and his only military training was secured when he was one of the sixty Boer volunteers who ascended the slopes of Majuba Hill in 1881. There was nothing of the military in his appearance; in fact, Christian ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... might be picked out. Of the two I am inclined to think that this play shows more natural genius in the writer for its style, than the pretty pastoral of Amyntas, which has sometimes been preferred to it. The same penchant for comedy appears in Down with Knavery, a very free and lively adaptation of the Plutus of Aristophanes. There is no doubt that Randolph's work gives the impression of considerable power. At the same time it ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... she appear, with a hydra's tail, like Sin in Milton's Paradise Lost, wind herself round me, her beautiful face gradually changing into that of a skeleton. I cried out with terror, and awoke to sleep no more, and effectually cured by my dream of the penchant which I ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... for its vigorous and varied rascality; Simpson's Ranges became notorious as the most reckless gambling-field in the country. Card-playing was the recreation the diggers most indulged in here, if we except a decided penchant for Chow-baiting. Done found that already the gambling propensity had impressed itself on the lead, and the luckiest man on Simpson's was a short, fat, complacent Yankee, who refused to handle pick or shovel because, ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... buried him overside. It was positively uncanny, the heathen ceremonies those grey ones pulled off in burying their grey brother. And I was only fifteen, alii kapo over them by blood of heathenness and right of hereditary heathen rule, with a penchant for Jules Verne and shortly to sail for England for my education! So one learns. Small wonder my father was a philosopher, in his own lifetime spanning the history of man from human sacrifice and idol worship, through the religions of man's upward striving, to the ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... to note that the problem is not unique to the United States. In the Soviet Union, which counts itself as the world's prime investigator of space, there is likewise an element of citizenry which finds itself puzzled over the U.S.S.R.'s penchant ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... country, but his peculiar ideas of independence and his abruptness in speaking his mind unfitted him for this work. Glad to be rid of his job, he returned to the country. He knew nothing of administrative or executive life, and aside from the fact that he was a student of history, with a penchant for making historical parallels, there was nothing to show the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Gloria's penchant for premonitions and her bursts of vague supernaturalism were a surprise to Anthony. Either some complex, properly and scientifically inhibited in the early years with her Bilphistic mother, or some inherited hypersensitiveness, made her susceptible to ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... brig with yacht-like lines and carrying Cunningham's patent topsails, the Teutonic skipper cracked on all his ship could stagger under, and thanked heaven when he saw the stranger hull-down; for Bully, with his fidus achates, the almost equally notorious Captain Ben Peese, had a penchant for boarding Dutchmen and asking for a look at their chronometers, and in his absent-minded way, taking these latter ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... had but little opportunity for showing his penchant for Lucilla, and the young girl's father was not thinking of her, but imagined there might be some business venture in which the young man ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... I've always had a penchant for china. My mother-in-law thinks I'm extravagant, and sometimes I think she is right. You never saw my Capodimonte ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... insane enough to think Lionel in love with her," thought his friend, remembering gay Mrs. Wingfield's gossip, and that her name had been coupled with Trevalyon's; it was only that she was a foolish little woman, and let society see that she had a penchant for Captain Trevalyon. At that time the Duke was alive to bear the title and represent the estate in Wiltshire, the Scottish moors and shooting box, with the town house in London; very useful in that way, so his Duchess told herself, and in truth, only ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... off into pointed pinnacles; if this one had been finished a spire of thirty feet would have surmounted the tower, itself two hundred and fifty feet high. Hitherto the northern architect and the Italian architect are governed by the same instinct, and gratify the same penchant; but while the northern artist, frankly Gothic, embroiders his tower with delicate moldings, and complex flower-work, and a stone lacework infinitely multiplied and intersected, the southern artist, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... you talking about! It's perfect babble; it's nonsense! If you really believe you have a penchant for sturdy and rather grubby worthiness unadorned you are mistaken. The inclination you have is merely for a pretty face and figure. I know you. If I don't, who does! You're rather a fastidious young man, even finicky, and very, very much accustomed to the best ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... "round full arms," and "the skin of her face was white and clean, except where it flushed into a most charming pink upon her smooth, cool cheeks." For while "Landy Rivers" was at college he had been seized with the penchant for writing short stories, and had worshiped at the shrines of Maupassant and Kipling, and when a man is craft mad enough to worship Maupassant truly and know him well, when he has that tingling for technique in his fingers, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... place in the public eye for a decade than any of his colleagues the world over; students were privileged to study a first work by an eminent musician, whose laurels had been won in a very different field; curiosity lovers had their penchant gratified to the full. The popular interest in the affair was disclosed by the fact that never before in the season had the audience at the Metropolitan been so numerous or brilliant; naturally the presence of the admired composer whetted interest and heightened ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... into a tearless grave. She had once been handsome; but her beauty, like her son's, was severe and disagreeable. There is, however, such a class of beauty, and it is principally successful with men who have a penchant for overcoming difficulties, because it is well known that the fact of conciliating or subduing it is justly considered no ordinary achievement. A great number of our old maids may trace their solitude and their celibacy ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... tall, straight, lissom, in her tight-fitting ulster; her piquante-looking heather cap perched on chestnut curls, and setting off as handsome a face as I have ever seen. And I have seen and admired many, for I don't deny that I've a strong penchant for pretty women, and this was the pick of the basket. It was rather a bore to be put on to her in the way of business; but why should I not get a little pleasure out of it if I could? I need not be disagreeable; it might help matters and pass the time pleasantly, even if in the end I ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... print, professing to furnish a list of wealthy tax-payers, the list contained four lawyers, and only one was a barrister. The instance proves little, for a lawyer may be very rich and yet pay no taxes. The assessors may fight shy of his bell-pull as they go their rounds, because of his penchant to find flaws in their actions and bring them official discredit in an apparently laborious task, but in reality ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... his uncle, who discusses the question of the school with the Duchess. Lord Arthur is in favour of Eton, as he wishes Guy to be a wet Bob and captain the cricket eleven; whereas the Duchess, having a penchant for yellow stockings, favours Christ's Hospital. In the end they compromise, and the boy is sent to a small private school in Bermondsey, where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... think, warrant the inference which he draws from it or alter the situation as I have described it. For morality, to be genuine, must be a choice; the good must know its alternative or it is not good. Only those who already have a penchant for sin will be corrupted by imaginative sympathy with passion; a character that cannot resist such an influence is already undermined. Life itself is the great temptation; how can one who cannot look with equanimity ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker |
