If properly checked in time, evil propensities may be eradicated; but this should not extend to anything but serious defects; otherwise, the intuitive perceptions which all children possess will construe the act into "spying" and "informing," which should never be resorted to in the case of children, nor, indeed, in any case.

That tramp ought to have been followed, arrested, and shut up where his vicious propensities would have been under wholesome restraint for a while.

I take it he is a colonel by this time," looking expressively at the baronet; "and who is fitter to be a colonel or a general, than a man who is not afraid of gunpowder?" "Colonels must have been scarce in your youth, sir," cried John, who had rather a mischievous propensity to start the old man on his hobby.

It is quite as dangerous to give up your faculties to the guidance of the author you are perusing, as it is unprofitable to be captiously scrutinizing every syllable he may happen to advance; and Sir Edward was, if anything, a little inclined to the dangerous propensity.

With all these feminine propensities, she is very amiable, and her case is indeed singularly cruel and unjust.

It will, I trust, not be deemed out of place to consider for a moment the warlike propensities and qualities of the negro.

This unhappy propensity renders us insensible of our neighbor's necessities.

Every parliamentary sketch of the time satirizes his habit of turning round towards his supporters at given periods to ask for their applause; his trick of emphasizing his points by perpetually striking the box before him; and his inveterate propensity to indulge in hackneyed quotation.

Insensibly, however, perhaps in despite of his struggle to overcome his amorous propensities, the Chevalier violated the conditions of the truce.

Oh, Miss Woodley, pity the agonies of my heart, my heart by nature sincere, when such are the fatal propensities it cherishes that I must submit to the grossest falsehoods rather than reveal the truth!

Besides the selfish propensities, there dwell in man an equally original, but intrinsically weaker, impulse toward association, which instinctively leads him to seek the society of his fellows without reflection on the advantages to be expected therefrom, and a moderate degree of benevolence.

His parents circumstances not being sufficient to bestow a liberal education upon him, colonel Strangeways, who was himself a man of taste and literature, took notice of the early capacity of Creech, and being willing to indulge his violent propensity to learning, placed him at Wadham College in Oxford, in the 16th year of his age, anno 1675, being then put under the tuition of two of the fellows.

But Dr. Burney knew nothing of their existence; and in another quarter her literary propensities met with serious discouragement.

The duty of allotting the apartments generally devolves upon the head clerk, or chief assistant; but as, from the locomotive propensities of the population, he has a very extensive acquaintance, and knows not how soon some of them may be arriving, he billets the unknown in the most out-of-the-way rooms; for the run upon all the decent hotels is so great, that courtesy is scarce needed to insure custom.

There is a singular propensity in us all to throw the burthen of our own blunders on the shoulders of other folk.

We might go through all the characters which we have mentioned, and through fifty more in the same way; for it is the constant manner of Shakespeare to represent the human mind as lying, not under the absolute dominion of one despotic propensity, but under a mixed government, in which a hundred powers balance each other.

This occupation could not have been very favourable to his poetical propensity.

On this account vast numbers of young men, whose martial propensities are not too vehement for calculation, considering the extraction of saltpetre as more safe than the use of it, have seriously devoted themselves to the business.

The miserly propensities of the deacon were not so engrossing that he did not comprehend the wisdom of making sufficient outlay to secure the execution of his main object; and among other things of this nature, the schooner had sailed with a very large supply of wood, as has just been stated.

If there be a radical propensity in our nature to do that which is wrong, there is, on the other hand, a counteracting power within it, or an impulse by means of the action of the divine Spirit upon our minds, which urges us to do that which is right.

These legislators remind me of one of Swift's female attendants, who, in spite of the literary taste he endeavoured to inspire her with, never could be divested of her original housewifely propensities, but would quit the most curious anecdote, as he expresses it, "to go seek an old rag in a closet."

He is a child who needs to be put in leading-strings the moment he comes over the side, lest he give way to an unconquerable propensity of his to fry gold watches and devour bank-notes, à la sandwich, with his bread and butter.

These barbarous propensities have long been the theme of French satyrists; and though I do not pretend to infer that they are national, yet certainly the revolution has produced instances of ferocity not to be paralleled in any country that ever had been civilized, and still less in one that had not.

MODERN COOKERY stands so greatly indebted to the gastronomic propensities of our French neighbours, that many of their terms are adopted and applied by English artists to the same as well as similar preparations of their own.

It lulls to sleep the combative and destructive propensities, and henceso far as a material agent may operateit exercises a humanizing and refining influence.