"Predisposed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their domestic and unaffected hour, had apparently many qualities to conciliate and to charm. When the good news arrived of her father's safety, and safety achieved in a manner so flattering to a daughter's pride, it came upon a heart predisposed to warmth and kindness and all her feelings opened. The tears stood in her beautiful eyes, and they were tears not only of tenderness but gratitude. Fortunately Lord de Mowbray was at the moment absent, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... confined as he had been kept by her predecessor. Alberoni was the only person admitted to their privacy. This second marriage of the King of Spain, entirely brought about by Madame des Ursins, was very distasteful to the Spaniards, who detested that personage most warmly, and were in consequence predisposed to look unfavourably upon anyone she favoured. It is true, the new Queen, on arriving, drove out Madame des Ursins, but this showed her to be possessed of as much power as the woman she displaced, and when she began to exercise that power in other directions the popular dislike to her was ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... case, predisposed by the action of the drug, you have experienced the rush of these forces in undiluted strength. They wholly obliterate in you the sense of humour, fancy, imagination,—all that makes for cheerfulness and ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... was not predisposed to think well or kindly of Mrs Hurtle. Since he had first known Mrs Hurtle's name, when Paul Montague had told the story of his engagement on his return from America, Roger had regarded her as a ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... colds had predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time. Classes were broken up, rules relaxed. The few who continued well were allowed almost unlimited license; because the medical ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a shoot in the jungles of Upper Burma, men who were old school friends and were doing a leisurely tour to Japan and America, men of his own profession who had leave to dispose of; all or any of these might arrive with a servant and a portmanteau. Whoever it was, Hartley was predisposed to give him a welcome. He had come just when he was wanted, and he hurried in, a light of pleasure ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... The subdued light, the absence of shadows, the massive shafts, springing grey-white out of the jetlike ground, the fantastic trees, the absence of a sky, the deathly silence, the knowledge that he was underground—the combination of all these things predisposed Maskull's mind to mysticism, and he prepared himself with some anxiety to hear Corpang's explanation of the land and its wonders. He already began to grasp that the reality of the outside world and the reality of this world were two quite ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... ideas, his amazing observations in physiology and anatomy, and his natural classification of the animal kingdom, induced a positive tendency of thought, an a posteriori method of observation, which awakened the intelligence and predisposed it to a more rational and scientific evolution. His geocentric ideas of cosmogony, his logical forms, the human architecture of the world, his conception of the Being who was the end and cause of motion in all things, were indeed ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... comprehend why Republicans of New York should be thought predisposed to find fault with Hayes. Without their votes he could not have become the candidate. "Even the member from Richmond was, I believe, in the end prevailed upon, after much difficulty, to confer his unique and delicate vote also." New York congressmen, with few exceptions, heartily ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Elleney, who was "tasty," and possessed of a wonderful light hand, turned her talent for millinery to account, and soon Mrs. McNally was able to add trimmed hats and ready-made dresses to the other departments of her flourishing concern. Predisposed as she was by nature to like any helpless young creature, she had rapidly grown to appreciate the girl's talents, and was now genuinely fond of her, though it must be owned that her daughters occasionably grumbled, and that the real ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... into the chamber of her mistress. There she reminded him of all that Vaninka, haughty but generous, had allowed his sister to do for him. The few glasses of brandy Ivan had already swallowed had predisposed him to gratitude (the drunkenness of the Russian is essentially tender). Ivan protested his devotion so warmly that Annouschka hesitated no longer, and, raising the lid of the chest, showed him the corpse of Foedor. At ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... was highly desirable, and the solemn act took place on the 6th of July 1654 at the castle of Upsala, in the presence of the estates and the great dignitaries of the realm. Many were the causes which predisposed her to what was, after all, anything but an act of self-renunciation. First of all she could not fail to remark the increasing discontent with her arbitrary and wasteful ways. Within ten years she had created 17 counts, 46 barons and 428 lesser nobles; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... predisposed him; he felt a little contrite, too—he remembered how her voice had suddenly dragged and fallen flat at his abrupt farewell.... She was disappointed in his reception of her offers of peace—she had been incapable of appreciating the attitude his sophistication was ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... seaside in search of health, bringing with them their trains of mimes and flute-players to amuse their leisure. He thought it extremely probable that the Romans of the higher classes were specially predisposed ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... disposed, inclined, favorable; favorably- minded, favorably inclined, favorably disposed; nothing loth; in the vein, in the mood, in the humor, in the mind. ready, forward, earnest, eager; bent upon &c. (desirous) 865; predisposed, propense[obs3]. docile; persuadable, persuasible; suasible[obs3], easily persuaded, facile, easy-going; tractable &c. (pliant) 324; genial, gracious, cordial, cheering, hearty; content &c. (assenting) 488. voluntary, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... than a mere oratorical outburst. Had he been allowed to complete his intention, the future career of Gleeson would not have been connected with mining swindles. For a time Peters and Tony, neither being predisposed in favour of Gleeson, stood by watching the chastisement Palmer Billy meted out, undisturbed by the cries for mercy and the yells of pain which the resounding blows of the raging digger called forth from his victim. It was only when both cries and yells ceased, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... God, arrayed in His highest eternal will, will not do thus; nay, he will hold in reverence the ways and deeds and habits of God's servants, since he judges them fixed not by man, but by God. For, just because things are not pleasing to us and do not go according to our habits, we ought to be predisposed to believe that they are pleasing to God. We ought not to judge anything at all, nor can we, except what is manifest and open sin. And even this the soul enamoured of God and lost to itself does not assume to judge, except in ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... so deep a blush over Fanny's face at that moment as might warrant strong suspicion in a predisposed mind. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... dollars a week to go to the Richmond Theater. There he played a higher order of parts, and played them better, Winning applauses from the easy provincial cities, and taking, as everywhere the ladies by storm. I have never wondered why many actors were strongly predisposed toward the South. There, their social status is nine times as big as with us. The hospitable, lounging, buzzing character of the southerner is entirely consonant with the cosmopolitanism of the stage, and that easy "hang-up-your-hatativeness," ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... or tearing up the sod, or hurling themselves from some height. These symptoms are preceded by vertigo, periodical cephalalgia, and flushing of the face, and are manifested more frequently by those who are already predisposed through trauma to the head, or through typhus or heredity, or after great agitation and prolonged fasting, and often bear no relation to the quantity of alcohol imbibed, which may be small, or to the general physical state; ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... however, more predisposed to certain types of mood than are others. The organization of our nervous system which we get through heredity undoubtedly has much to do with the feeling tone into which we most easily fall. We call this predisposition temperament. On the effects ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... draped with the Italian colours. I regretted to be made so conspicuous, but I could not fail to appreciate the courteous and complimentary desire to do me honour shown by the American artist. It was only natural that I should be most kindly influenced toward him, but without the courtesy which predisposed me in his favour he would equally have won my sympathy by his attractive and artistic lineaments, and his graceful and well-proportioned figure. The play was "Hamlet." This part brought him great fame, and justly; for in addition to the ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... was true for her that I had received plenty of instruction for the mission which she had reserved for me, but in spite of her, now, I was far outside the limit of her power over me. Not that I was predisposed to cross her plans and wishes with an obstinate perversity as of old. I had grown too sensible for that now; but I knew that education always carries an unquestionable independence about with it, which asserts itself firmly, though ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... harmless snake, I find that I respond to the sight in a most absurd manner. Dread and repulsion overcome me. I can hardly restrain myself from killing the snake, even though doing so will frighten the birds I am hunting. I am predisposed to react in a particular way towards a snake. I sustain a particular attitude ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... smaller type underneath, the information that the extracting or filling of molars; crown and bridge work; or the fitting of artificial teeth, would be done by Painless Perkins in a "Particularly Pleasing Way," and that he was "Predisposed to ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... down and predisposed by the treatment he met with, poor boy. They say he drank quarts of iced things at the dinner and ball, and ate nothing. This may be only the effect of the shock, but his head is burning, and there is a disposition to wander. However, he has had his coup de grace, and that may account ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... favorable; favorably- minded, favorably inclined, favorably disposed; nothing loth; in the vein, in the mood, in the humor, in the mind. ready, forward, earnest, eager; bent upon &c (desirous) 865; predisposed, propense^. docile; persuadable, persuasible; suasible^, easily persuaded, facile, easy-going; tractable &c (pliant) 324; genial, gracious, cordial, cheering, hearty; content &c (assenting) 488. voluntary, gratuitous, spontaneous; unasked &c (ask) &c 765; unforced ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... them, however, cherished the most vengeful hostility against these marauders of the mountains. The Blackfeet came to a halt. One of the chiefs advanced singly and unarmed, bearing the pipe of peace. This overture was certainly pacific; but Antoine and the Flathead were predisposed to hostility, and pretended to consider ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... to you from Mr. Murray's, and I may say, from Murray, who, if you are not predisposed in favour of any other publisher, would be happy to treat with you, at a fitting time, for your work. I can safely recommend him as fair, liberal, and attentive, and certainly, in point of reputation, he stands among the first of "the trade." I am sure he would do ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... dangers. The language of the savage is, I suppose, purely positive; the thing has a name, the name has a thing. This indeed is the tradition of language, and to-day even, we, when we hear a name, are predisposed—and sometimes it is a very vicious disposition—to imagine forthwith something answering to the name. We are disposed, as an incurable mental vice, to accumulate intension in terms. If I say to you Wodget or Crump, you find yourself passing over ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... former hesitation, and placed that vice in all its naked deformity and hideous results in plain but burning words before the Bench. Had she been the cleverest advocate she could not have prepared the ground for her case better. This tale of drink predisposed their minds against the defendant. Only the Clerk, wedded to legal forms, fidgeted under this eloquence, and seized the first pause: "But now, how about the assault? Come to that," he said sharply. "I'm coming, sir," said Martha; and she described Smith coming home, stupid ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... the cave of Trophonius are justly ascribed to medicated beverages. Here, the votary if he escaped with life, had his health irreparably injured, and the whole class of artificial dreams and visions, the effect of some powerful narcotic acting upon the body after the mind had been predisposed for a certain ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... reached by a mind not—certainly not—predisposed in that direction, after a careful study and review of all the information within reach bearing upon that eventful day. If, at Gettysburg, the Michigan cavalry brigade won honors that will not perish, it was to Gregg that it owed the opportunity, and his guiding hand it was ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... without delay be exhibited. Their disordered condition is frequently productive of head-disease. Again and again have I clearly traced the origin of the complaint, of which I am now writing, as more immediately resulting from disorder of the digestive apparatus. To a child thus predisposed to water in the head, the healthy state of these organs is not only of first consequence, but any deviation from health to be dreaded, to be immediately attended to, and guarded against in future; and, as there is a great liability to these attacks ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... apologize. Read. I'm as predisposed as I can be toward anything conceived by that little dormouse of a person in ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... time, by this continual cycle, nature provides for the continuance of the race as a species, since she can not do so numerically. Thus divinely predisposed toward such a society is the nature of both the male and the female. For the sexes are at once divided, in that neither of them have powers adequate for all purposes, nay, in some respects even opposite to each other, tho they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... Nature, it was the fault committed by the first ancestors of humanity in the exercise of their moral freedom which condemned their descendants to punishment, and by bequeathing to them an original taint predisposed them to sin. But this predisposition to sin does not condemn man fatally to its committal; he may escape from it by the exercise of his free will; and in the same way he may by personal effort raise himself gradually out of the state of material ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... could not. Never had he felt such enmity against any man. It was like the fury so obviously felt by Cuckoo. The doctor was ashamed to be so unreasonable, and believed for a moment that the poor street-girl had absolutely swayed him, and predisposed him to this animus that surged up over his normal charity and good, clear impulses of ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... which they had moved, though infinitely preferable to those abandoned, were ill-suited to the reception of people already sick or predisposed, from the above-named causes, to sickness; many of them were also deficient in clothing to meet the rigorous weather that followed. Nevertheless, after this violent excitement had passed away, a comparatively good condition of health was enjoyed for the remainder ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... of it I, too, recalled that friendly remark of Mr. Black's. A man who is drowning will catch at a straw. A man who has bought a house with nothing to pay for it is also predisposed to clutch. Our old friend Mr. Black now loomed up as ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... While in that employment, it was represented to Gonzalo that Zavallos had become so exceedingly rich, that he must have purloined a great proportion of the gold which was drawn from the mines. Being predisposed against him by his former conduct in the service of the viceroy, Gonzalo was easily persuaded to believe him guilty, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... was a process of continual repetition. As the Indian picked out the course and the mustangs followed his lead there was nothing for Shefford to do but take his choice between reflection that seemed predisposed toward gloom and an absorption in the beauty, color, wildness, and changing character of ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... only to accelerate their admission by the removal of prejudice. If a bed-ridden meteorologist is told that it rains, he may or he may not receive the fact from the force of testimony; but he will certainly be more predisposed to receive it, if he finds that his weatherglass is falling rather than rising. The fact remains the same, it rains; but the mind—precluded by circumstances from positive personal assurance of such fact, and able only to arrive at truth from exterior evidence—is in a fitter state for belief ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... goal at which the will aims does not consist in a maximum of pleasurable feelings, but in the normal exercise of the vital functions for which the species is predisposed. In the case of man the mode of life is on the whole determined by the nature of the historical unity from which the individual evolves as a member. Here the objective content of life, after which the will strives, ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Sarah had been so long absent from the city, that she had in some measure been banished from the remembrance of the gentleman; but the recollections of Sarah were more vivid. There is a period in the life of every woman when she may be said to be predisposed to love; it is at the happy age when infancy is lost in opening maturity—when the guileless heart beats with those anticipations of life which the truth can never realize—and when the imagination forms images of perfection that are copied after its ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... mouth. That predisposed me in his favor at once! I have always been "cracked" on pretty mouths! I remember that I used to say "Naughty Teddy!" to my own little boy just for the pleasure of seeing him put out his under-lip, when his ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... society. It was the point and impulse thus given to very real grievances and irritation against privilege, that precipitated the French Revolution. Among the English, on the other hand, their public spirit, the connection of large classes with national affairs, and their habit of compromise, had predisposed the leading minds towards cautious views in philosophy and in politics; and at the century's end their inbred distrust of abstract propositions as a basis for social reconstruction received startling confirmation from the tremendous explosion ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... superiority in material resources, and certain solid and undeniable successes obtained at and early stage of the war, such as the capture of New Orleans, were known to be on the same side. Slighter grounds would in most cases have sufficed to persuade minds predisposed by sympathy that this side would win; yet the Southern advocates shuffled and played the cards well enough to induce an opposite conclusion in numerous instances. And no doubt many who began by simply believing that the South would succeed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... natures predisposed to happiness, such happy surprises are prolonged and constantly renewed; and this may be one of the innocent secrets of the intellect. Are there not a thousand ways of interpreting a feeling, even as there are a thousand ways of considering an object? Our mind observes ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... Doughty, which cannot but be intelligible to any one who has the least knowledge of human failings. It is not in the nature of things that either Lady Doughty or her husband could have been greatly predisposed towards the youthful stranger, and Roger was shy and reserved and over-sensitive. He had the misfortune to stand in the place which they must once have ardently hoped that their dead child would have lived ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... direction of the eminent scientist, Professor Huxley, whose diploma I value most highly, I made a number of extended scientific experiments in color breeding in poultry and rabbits, so that when I took up breeding Boston terriers later in life this feature particularly attracted me. I was "predisposed," as a physician says of a case where the infection is certain, hence I offer no apology whatever for the assertion that this chapter is scientifically correct in the rules laid down for the breeding to attain desirable ...
— The Boston Terrier and All About It - A Practical, Scientific, and Up to Date Guide to the Breeding of the American Dog • Edward Axtell
... away; but there was a sweet smile playing about her lips, and a soft dimpling of the cheek that showed her glance had not been unsatisfactory. It was impossible for a girl of the fond age of eighteen, highly predisposed for love and matrimony, not to be pleased ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... at the junction with the main line, and traveling an additional forty miles after such a strenuous day, predisposed the indefatigable Mr. Gollop for a long night's rest. Finding himself again in a modern little city with a first class hotel, and a luxurious bed aided the ministrations of nature, so that it was after ten o'clock in the morning when he whistled his way to his bath and then carefully ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... and as easy as that of the Persian gentleman who skimmed the air, seated on a piece of carpet, predisposed me to sleep. Such volumes of fine and various country air, and such an eight hours' procession of all sorts of natural pictures are not traversed without effect. Sitting in my well-stuffed chair, my elbows on the cushioned arms, the conversation of Lake and the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the "tchitoka," and immediately the crowd of natives rushed toward him. The sky was a little less rainy, the wind indicated a tendency to change, and those signs of calm, coinciding with the arrival of the magician, predisposed the minds of the natives in ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... more insidious, as it professed to take the excellence of the old masters as the attainable object. We believe that we satisfactorily showed that M. Merimee was so predisposed in favour of copal varnish, that in his researches he would make every thing bend, even the most stubborn facts, and most opposing sense of passages quoted by him, to that prejudice. We exposed the numerous, we had almost said wilful, mistranslations from the Latin and Italian—especially the former—with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... subsided, I experienced a feeling of great relief, for here was an extraordinary explanation of my brother's vision of last night. It was certain that the flash of lightning had lit up this ill-starred picture, and that to his predisposed fancy the painted figure had stood forth as an actual embodiment. That such an incident, however startling, should have been able to fling John into a brain-fever, showed that he must already have been in a very low and reduced state, on which excitement would act much more powerfully ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... felt it more difficult to imply it in his behavior. Bessie, on her side, fully possessed with the idea that she knew the lady of his love, was fast throwing off all sense of embarrassment in his kindness to herself; while onlookers, predisposed to believe what they wished, interpreted her growing ease as an infallible sign that his progress with her was both swift ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... but in her affections. She gives refreshment by her sympathies, rather than by her knowledge. "The brain-women," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "never interest us like the heart-women." [205] Men are often so wearied with themselves, that they are rather predisposed to admire qualities and tastes in others different from their own. "If I were suddenly asked," says Mr. Helps, "to give a proof of the goodness of God to us, I think I should say that it is most manifest in the exquisite ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... hold of my Uncle Prosper, and has done me a terrible injury. My uncle is a weak man, and has been predisposed against me from other circumstances. He thinks that I have neglected him, and is willing to believe anything against me. He has stopped my income,—two hundred and fifty pounds a year,—and is going to revenge himself on me by marrying a wife. It is too absurd, ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... ALSO? We do not, indeed, see that a Caucasian foetus at the stage which the African represents is anything like black; neither is a Caucasian child yellow, like the Mongolian. There may, nevertheless, be a character of skin at a certain stage of development which is predisposed to a particular colour when it is presented as the envelope of a mature being. Development being arrested at so immature a stage in the case of the Negro, the skin may take on the colour as an unavoidable consequence of its imperfect organization. It is ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... striven to invent ever so fanciful origins for opinions and belief in his solicitude for the credit of humanity. As it is, he distorts the history of religion only to humanity's discredit. How, if the people were always predisposed to virtue, were priests, sprung of the same people and bred in the same traditions, so invariably and incurably devoted to baseness and hypocrisy? Was the nature of a priest absolutely devoid of what physicians call recuperative force, restoring him to a sound mind, in spite of professional perversion? ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... mind being thus predisposed, four girls in Salem complained of being afflicted in the same manner with those in Boston. The physicians, unable to account for the disorder, attributed it to witchcraft, and an old Indian woman in the neighbourhood was selected as the witch. The attention bestowed on these ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... ordered the gates to be opened, and introduced the greater part of their forces. They then proceeded to the palace, and commanded the priors to retire to their homes; and, on the way thither, one of them was in derision stripped by the soldiers. From this beginning (so much more easily are men predisposed to evil than to good) originated the pillage and destruction of the city; which for a whole day suffered the greatest horrors, neither women nor sacred places being spared; and the soldiery, those engaged for its defense as well as its assailants, plundered all that came within their ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... are insulting, Our priests would see no hidden purpose in your story. They would be predisposed in favor of a Catholic and follower of James. They would give you letters where a commandant would not. It was good ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... defection, and outraged that he should descend to call at Kilgobbin, determined to cast him off for ever, she also resolved upon a project over which she had long meditated, and to which the conversation at her late dinner greatly predisposed her. ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever |
