"Idiosyncrasy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... glorified the blood that was being shed as a cleansing stream of Condy's Fluid? The truth is, apart from his thoughts about literature, Mr. Gosse thinks much as the leader-writers tell him. He is sensitive to beauty of style and to idiosyncrasy of character, but he lacks philosophy and that tragic sense that gives the deepest sympathy. That, we fancy, is why we would rather read him on Catherine Trotter, the precursor of the bluestockings, than on any ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Alice overlooked this idiosyncrasy upon my part; that was before I achieved what Alice terms a national reputation by my discovery of a satellite to the star Gamma in the tail of the constellation Leo. Alice does not stop to consider that our neighbors have never read the royal octavo volume I wrote upon the subject of that discovery; ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... appreciable part in my life's economy. I believe that to some people tobacco is downright poison; to some, life and health; to the vast majority, including myself, neither one thing nor the other, but simply a comfort or an instrument, or a mere nothing, according to idiosyncrasy. ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... frost and snow as pupae, bursting their cerements in the sunshine, to live their brief life and perpetuate their race; others eke out a half dormant existence as minute larvae, others pass the winter in the egg state. In fact, each species has its idiosyncrasy. [Footnote: Here, perhaps, I may explode that myth and "enormous gooseberry" of the mild winter or early spring, headed in the newspaper every year as "Extraordinary Mildness of the Season": "We are credibly informed that, owing to the mildness of the ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... Quatorze were still promenading in royal splendour the gardens of Versailles, and Monsieur de Colbert busy with the direction of maritime affairs. You must admit that in a banker of the nineteenth century it was a quaint idiosyncrasy. Luckily, in the counting-house (it occupied part of the ground floor of the Delestang town residence, in a silent, shady street) the accounts were kept in modern money, so that I never had any difficulty in making ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... nearly like his long-studied original as Julio Romano's painting was like Raphael's; and all this with the unquestioning conviction that he is talking from his own consciousness in his own natural way. So far as tones and expressions and habits which belonged to the idiosyncrasy of the original are borrowed by the student of his life, it is a misfortune for the borrower. But to share the inmost consciousness of a noble thinker, to scan one's self in the white light of a pure and radiant soul,—this is indeed the highest ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Idiom Arlo Bates in his book "On Writing English" has some very forcible remarks. Says he, "An idiom is the personal—-if the word may be allowed—-the personal idiosyncrasy of a language. It is a method of speech wherein the genius of the race making the language shows itself as differing from that of all other peoples. What style is to the man, that is idiom to the race. It is the crystalization ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... their tastes and experiences are opposed to success—they had no difficulty in abandoning a decaying school, and in throwing all their freshness of mind and subtlety of observation into the department which precisely suited their idiosyncrasy. The spread of education among female readers and writers has undoubtedly aided them. And thus the rise of feminine novelists has operated as a formidable contingent of fresh troops that has joined the camp of Manners, to which alliance it may ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... The mother's idiosyncrasy was always to do "the correct thing." The fear of not doing it, or the dread of having done it unknowingly, was constantly before her—the bugbear that troubled her daily. Perhaps the daughter inherited the mother's dread, and her fear of doing or saying something that ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... kindliness. This was partly instinct and partly the result of cultivation. She would shrink, with uncontrollable disgust, from any of the lower classes with whom she came unavoidably in contact. A slight breach of the conventions earned her distrust of one of her own caste. As this personal idiosyncrasy fell in line with the de Laney pride, it was approved by the head of the family. Under encouragement ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... mightiest men, who unite all greatness, or whether we are to study the works of inferior men, who present us with the greatness which we particularly like? That question often comes before me when I see a strong idiosyncrasy in a student, and he asks me what he should study. Shall I send him to a true master, who does not present the quality in a prominent way in which that student delights, or send him to a man with whom he has direct sympathy? It is a hard question. For very curious results have sometimes ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... judgment. And this wide possibility of contradiction is particularly to be recognized when the differing ideas or beliefs have arisen not within the same individual mind but in different minds, and are therefore colored by personal or partisan interest and warped by idiosyncrasy of mental constitution. The contradictions of, or rather among, ideas and beliefs, with which we are now concerned, are more extensive and more varied than mere logical duels; they are also less definite, less precise. In reality ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... man, emotions that jar with physical impulses, inexplicable pains and diseases. And not only have we to remember that we are dealing with disharmonies that may at the very best be only patched together, but we are dealing with matters in which the element of idiosyncrasy is essential, insisting upon an incalculable flexibility in any rule we make, unless we are to take types and indeed whole classes of personality and write them down as absolutely bad and fit only for suppression and ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... phrase, have 'formed their style,' by the imitation of accepted models, and who have, therefore, possessed it only by right of appropriation. Boswell has a discussion as to the writers who may have served Johnson in this capacity. But, in fact, Johnson, like all other men of strong idiosyncrasy, formed his style as he formed his legs. The peculiarities of his limbs were in some degree the result of conscious efforts in walking, swimming, and 'buffeting with his books.' This development was doubtless more fully determined ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Bluff. That is to say, when he had two courses open to him, A and B, he pretended he was going to take B, and so got us guessing that he would try A. Then he took B after all. So I reckoned that his camouflage must correspond to this little idiosyncrasy. Being a Boche agent, he wouldn't pretend to be a hearty patriot, an honest old blood-and-bones Tory. That would be only the Single Bluff. I considered that he would be a pacifist, cunning enough just to keep inside the law, but ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... terms of peace must not even be mentioned among ourselves, he will find people ready to disagree with him, and to support the weight of his sarcasm and his reproof. I am one of those people. Bellicose by disposition, I nevertheless like to know what I am fighting for. This is perhaps an idiosyncrasy, but many persons share it, and they are not to be ignored. It may be argued that Mr. Asquith has defined what we are fighting for. He has not. He has only defined part of what we are fighting for. His reference to the overthrow ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... is possible, if not certain, that some of their disciples' composition may be of higher value. The spirit of God may have wrought within the apostles generally with greater power and clearness than in other teachers; but its operation is conditioned not merely by outward factors but by individual idiosyncrasy; so that one who had not seen the Lord and was therefore not an apostle proper, may have apprehended his mind better than an immediate disciple. Paul stood above the primitive apostles in the extent to which he fathomed the pregnant sayings ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... the place of the [Greek: potnia meter] appeared the beauty, who isolated herself in the consciousness of her charms and in the perfection of her varied culture, and exhibited herself to the public admiration. The tendency to idiosyncrasy often approached wilfulness, caprice and whimsicality, and opposition to the national moral sense. A Diogenes in a tub became possible; the soulless but graceful frivolity of an Alcibiades charmed, even though it was externally condemned; a Socrates completed ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... and demonstratorships. These are usually open to women in practice as well as in theory, though much depends on the personal idiosyncrasy of the head of the department, and on the importance of the post and the salary offered. But since it is, unhappily, often easy to secure an able woman for the same stipend as that which must be offered to an inexperienced man, fresh from college, difficulties are not, as a rule, placed ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... rejects; but I have sometimes imagined that I have held the clue as they have lost themselves in their own labyrinth. I know that many, and some of great celebrity, have sympathised with the feelings which inspired these volumes; nor, while I have elucidated the idiosyncrasy of genius, have I less studied the habits and characteristics of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... sickened her at once, and she knew she would have at once divined it. He did not hold himself very well, but was inclined to stoop and to keep his head low, as if he were in the habit of looking much on the ground. The idiosyncrasy was rather ugly, and suggested melancholy to her, the melancholy of a man given to over-much meditation and afraid to face the radiant ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the latter, then flicked the ashes from his cigar. "I didn't tell them, but I could have done so, that it wasn't an idiosyncrasy, but sense, that made you wear elbow sleeves all the time. An arm and wrist and hand like yours have no ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... being to free himself from a narrow subjectivity and to give scope to his wide human sympathies and to his passion for perfection of utterance. It seemed to him that a plausible originality might degenerate into mere idiosyncrasy, and that universality of appeal should be a musician's highest goal. When he resigned his post and came before the public with his first large work, a concerto for pianoforte and orchestra, the gain made in increased power and resources was evident. The ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of the Cathedral into the civil and social and domestic life of London? Would the Mauritian gospel of human brotherhood and social service—in short, the programme of the Christian Social Union—win the workers to the side of orthodoxy? These questions were answered according to the idiosyncrasy or bias of those to whom they were addressed, and they were not settled when, twenty-seven years later, Holland returned from St. Paul's to Oxford. Indeed, several answers were possible. On one point only there was an absolute agreement ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... dusty boots are a scandal and an offence in the eyes of the gentle burghers, who accordingly never issue out of their town walls. They have forgotten the use of ordinary appliances of country life, such as thick boots and walking-sticks; you will not see them hereabouts. Unaware of this idiosyncrasy, I used to carry a stick on my way through the streets into the surroundings, but left it at home on learning that I was regarded as a kind of perambulating earthquake. The spectacle of a man clattering through the streets on horseback, such as one often sees at ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... predisposed. Gastric derangement from indigestible or peculiar articles of food, intestinal toxins, and the ingestion of certain drugs are often provocative. The so-called "shell-fish" group of foods play an important etiological part in some cases. Idiosyncrasy to certain articles of food is also responsible in occasional instances. Various rheumatic and nervous disorders are not infrequently associated with it, and are doubtless of etiological significance. ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... Braves, if the General and Admiral improve the opportunity properly; not by a great deal of slaughter, that is quite unnecessary, but by promptitude, and striking a blow at the right moment. The Chinese do not care much about being killed, but they hate being frightened, and the knowledge of this idiosyncrasy of theirs is the key of the position. I have just written a letter to my friends the Imperial Commissioners here, which will, I think, shake their nerves considerably, and bring them to a manageable ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... moderate merit. A tone of exaggeration, an imagination exuberant and unrestrained, a preference for glitter over solid excellence, a love of far-fetched conceits, characterize the Shahnameh; and, though we may fairly ascribe something of this to the idiosyncrasy of the poet, still, after we have made all due allowance upon this score, the conviction presses upon us that there was a childish and grotesque character in the great mass of the old Persian poetry, which marks it as the creation of moderate rather than of high intellectual ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... no means his best. This neglect will appear the more singular to anyone who has observed how apt is the person whom I have called the "average reader of culture" to be drawn to the perusal of an author's works by some attractive idiosyncrasy in the author's private life or character. Lamb is a staring instance of this attraction. How we all love Lamb, to be sure! Though he rejected it and called out upon it, "gentle" remains Lamb's constant epithet. And, curiously enough, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... two things I always avoid in my dress—possibly an idiosyncrasy of my bachelor existence. These tabooed articles are red neckties and tan shoes. And not only were the shoes the porter lifted from the floor of a gorgeous shade of yellow, but the scarf which was run through the turned over collar was a gaudy red. It took a full minute for the real ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... at least twenty years in a district where people dine at one o'clock, and dining after dark is regarded as a wild idiosyncrasy of earls, can appreciate ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... was soon made. She knew every idiosyncrasy of the hooks and buttons of her well-worn afternoon frock. It was dark blue, of some clinging material that fell naturally into graceful lines, and was relieved at the throat and wrists by embroidered bands always immaculate. The damp sea breeze had ruffled her hair into rebellion ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... buffalo, which it was our delight, moccasined and tomahawked, to ride down with those whoops that announce the scenting of blood. He neither laughed nor sneered, as the Olympians would have done; but possessed of a serious idiosyncrasy, he would contribute such lots of valuable suggestion as to the pursuit of this particular sort of big game that, as it seemed to us, his mature age and eminent position could scarce have been attained without a practical ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... time to ponder over my own lot and that of other people. Write to me when you feel the wish or need to do so. I will reply to the best of my ability. If I am very taciturn about my own affairs, it springs from an idiosyncrasy that I cannot overcome. To make sure of my meaning I have read my letter through once more, and find that it does not express all I wanted to say. Never mind, it is true in the main. Only try to understand that I do not wish to sit in judgment upon you, only to throw ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... publications this was appealing to the very man who secretly encouraged them.. Although Madame Necker had plenty of wits, she, bred in the mountains of Switzerland, had no conception of such an idiosyncrasy as that of M. de Maurepas, a man who saw in an outspoken expression of feeling only an opportunity of discovering the vulnerable point. As soon as he knew M. Necker's susceptibility he flattered himself that, by irritating it, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... sustain stronger expressions of opinion than any which I have given. But he went on to say, that it would be a sad thing, if no fools could get to heaven,—nor any unamiable, narrow-minded, sour, and stupid people. Now, said he, with great force of reason, religion does not alter idiosyncrasy. When a fool becomes a Christian, he will be a foolish Christian; a narrow-minded man will be a narrow-minded Christian; a stupid man, a stupid Christian. And though a malignant man will have his malignity much diminished, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... "There are four million Murnans, friendly people who consider a white skin no more than a personal idiosyncrasy. Aaron's what his folks call a Chentelmaan, too. He'll ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... We left her with a mind harassed by uncertain plans, disappointed hopes, and humbled pride—we find her with a mind strengthened by good purposes, holy aspirations, and prayers for humility. Still, we left her and find her Winifred Gwynne. She has not lost her idiosyncrasy. ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Its instructiveness is immense to those who examine the conditions that prepared the Revolution. Rameau is not the [Greek: akolastos] of Aristotle, nor the creature of [Greek: aponoia] described by Theophrastus—the castaway by individual idiosyncrasy, the reprobate by accident. The men whom he represented, the courtiers, the financiers, the merchants, the shopkeepers, were immoral by formula and depraved on principle. Vice was a doctrine to them, and wretchlessness of unclean living was reduced to a system ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... effort to enlighten him. She looked at him thoughtfully, and said, slowly, "I begin to hold the clew to your idiosyncrasy. You have attached yourself to the modern doctrine of a struggle for existence, and look on life ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... lairds, pretenders and usurpers—how anarchy, violence, and barbarism reigned in that land; yet, when he is dealing with a similar state of things in Ireland, he uniformly takes it as proof of an incurable national idiosyncrasy, and too often generalises from a few cases. For example, in speaking of Shane O'Neill, who killed his half-brother, Matthew Kelly, Baron of Dungannon, in order to secure the succession for himself, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... Mr. "Q." has, doubtless from some idiosyncrasy, since developed a faculty of seeing lights where other ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... almost those identical words to the Malincourt temperament, of which he had recognized the share she had inherited. And she realized that her guardian and Miles Herrick had been equally discerning. Though differing in its effect upon each of them, consequent upon individual idiosyncrasy, the fact remained that she and Garth were both "breaking" beneath the strain which destiny ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the Boston hotels, the prominent book on the parlor table is "Webster's Unabridged Dictionary." You may be left in doubt about the Bostonian's character, but need not doubt his capacity to parse a sentence, or spell without any resemblance of blunder the word "idiosyncrasy." ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... invincible. Through all the fine, divaricating ways of the new life, it grew ever more evident, there were for every one certain persons, mysteriously and indescribably in the key of one's self, whose mere presence gave pleasure, whose mere existence was interest, whose idiosyncrasy blended with accident to make a completing and predominant harmony for their predestined lovers. They were the essential thing in life. Without them the fine brave show of the rejuvenated world was a caparisoned steed without a rider, a bowl without a flower, a theater ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... affected superiority in regard to the word "opera"—), just as the word "spirit" is a misunderstanding in the New Testament.—He was not enough of a psychologist for drama; he instinctively avoided a psychological plot—but how?—by always putting idiosyncrasy in its place.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Very modern—eh? Very Parisian! very decadent!{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} Incidentally, the plots that Wagner knows how to unravel with the help of dramatic inventions, are of quite another kind. For example, ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... a week—for two weeks—for three weeks. At the end of that time my friends had grown accustomed to this idiosyncrasy and were making bets on how long I would last. I didn't go round where they were much. I was as lonesome as a stray dog in a strange alley. I had carefully cultivated a large line of drinking acquaintances and I hardly knew ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... denominations. Mr. Howes extends the "ribbed" variety to all values but, as we have pointed out in earlier chapters, it is extremely unlikely that any such variety as a real ribbed paper was used, the ribbed lines being simply due to some idiosyncrasy of manufacture. ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... way; and each way be the best possible for the thing expressed. It all depends on the man; the make-up of his mind; the way he sees things; the results he aims to attain,—all of them controlled more or less by temperament and idiosyncrasy. What would produce a perfect work for one man would not do at all for another. The works of the great masters offer the most marked contrasts of ideal and of treatment, and painters have varied greatly in their manner of some painting ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... true of a large portion of Mr. Browning's work. A curious, an erudite artist, certainly, he is to some extent an experimenter in rhyme or metre, often hazardous. But in spite of the dramatic rudeness which is sometimes of the idiosyncrasy, the true and native colour of his multitudinous dramatis personae, or monologists, Mr. Symons is right in [46] laying emphasis on the grace, the finished skill, the music, native and ever ready to the poet himself—tender, ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... every moment of the time Saul was elate and busy, providing for me in every possible way, devising comforts that exceeded my imagination, remembering every idiosyncrasy that I had given expression to in his hearing. Under the guard of the United States mail, we left Fort Leavenworth. Meotona, the yellow savage, went with us. Oh, the delight of those days! it comes to me now, and I almost forget that I am alone on the Big Blue, and that those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... idiosyncrasy of mine," answered Von Stein, showing his teeth. "Before anything is done I must, in order to aid the receptivity of your mind, go a little further with the explanation of certain things which I mentioned the other day. I promise not to bore you. More than that, Mr. Parker, I promise ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... in great part idiosyncrasy; and that I must not trust to my own feelings, in this respect, as representative of the modern landscape instinct: yet I know it is not idiosyncrasy, in so far as there may be proved to be indeed an increase of the absolute ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless. He who daily hears and reads well-framed sentences, will naturally more or less tend to use similar ones. And where there exists any mental idiosyncrasy—where there is a deficient verbal memory, or an inadequate sense of logical dependence, or but little perception of order, or a lack of constructive ingenuity; no amount of instruction will remedy the defect. Nevertheless, some practical result ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... waiting to have a button sewed on, or something like that, and ask him softly what it was he could do for him. If the customer offered him his appreciation of the case in hand, he would let his head droop lower, and in a yet deeper bass deplore the doubt of the ladies as an idiosyncrasy of their sex. He would make the customer feel that he was a favorite customer whose rights to a perfect fidelity of word and deed must by no means be tampered with, and he would have the button sewed on or the rip sewed up at once, and refuse to charge anything, ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... experience, and an even temper, and a little sympathy as well, to sum up the animal in hand—its special aptitudes, its limitations, its disposition, and that something in addition, which he called a "kink," and would probably have described as its idiosyncrasy if he had known the word. There was as much individual difference among dogs as there is in boys; but if the breed was right, and you went the right way about it, you could hardly fail to get a good servant. If a dog was not properly broken, if its trainer had not made the most of it, he was ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... the accent of Madame Grambeau was barely detectable, and her phraseology was that of a well-translated book—correct, but not idiomatic, and bearing about it the idiosyncrasy of the language from which it was derived. She was evidently a person of culture and native power of intellect combined, and her finely-moulded face, as well as every gesture and tone, indicated ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... striving very hard not to offend him, for in some ways he was as sensitive as Wetherell himself. Even Coniston folk had laughed at the idiosyncrasy which Jethro had of dressing his wife in brilliant colors, and the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Dombey and Son, even to the comic part of it. It shows an advance in art and unity; it does not show an advance in genius and creation. In some cases, in fact, I cannot help feeling that it shows a falling off. It may be a personal idiosyncrasy, but there is only one comic character really prominent in Dickens, upon whom Dickens has really lavished the wealth of his invention, and who does not amuse me at all, and that character is Captain Cuttle. But three great exceptions must be made to any such disparagement ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... soul increasing its sufferings, and giving force to its errors; all the purpose of life degenerating into instinct; and the web of his work wrought, at last, of beauties too subtle to be understood, his liberty, with vices too singular to be forgiven—all useless, because magnificent idiosyncrasy had become solitude, or contention, in the midst of a reckless populace, instead of submitting itself in loyal harmony to the Art-laws of an understanding nation. And the life passed away in darkness; and its ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... few masses. But the leader knows by experience that only when symbols have done their work is there a handle he can use to move a crowd. In the symbol emotion is discharged at a common target, and the idiosyncrasy of real ideas blotted out. No wonder he hates what he calls destructive criticism, sometimes called by free spirits the elimination of buncombe. "Above all things," says Bagehot, "our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... in good health, the use of one headache powder will in all probability do no harm, but the dose should not be repeated without a doctor's authority. Many deaths have occurred from their continued use, or because of an idiosyncrasy on the part of the taker, but it is their abuse more than their use which has brought upon them such almost universal condemnation. Therefore, while the physician may advocate their use, do not ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... no longer be overpowered by a sense of his own identity; he will more probably lose identity altogether. The worst of a public school is that a sort of common character is substituted for individual character. The master, of course, can't attend to the separate development of each boy's idiosyncrasy. All minds are thrown into one great mould, and come out of it more or less in the same form. An Etonian may be clever or stupid, but, as either, he remains emphatically Etonian. A public school ripens talent, but its tendency is to stifle ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chatty didn't leave him slightly humiliated. If it was bad enough to have grinned through a horse-collar it was very bad indeed to have grinned in vain. Well, he would try no more grinning or at least no more horse-collars. The only success worth one's powder was success in the line of one's idiosyncrasy. Consistency was in itself distinction, and what was talent but the art of being completely whatever it was that one happened to be? One's things were characteristic or they were nothing. I look back rather fondly on ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... the season: you never see him sport the Sunday patent-leathers of the "snob," who on week-a-days proceeds on eight-and-sixpenny high-lows: you never see him shambling along in boots a world too wide, nor hobbling about a crippled victim to the malevolence of Crispin. The idiosyncrasy of his foot has always been attended to; he has worn well-fitting boots every day of his life, and he walks as if he knew not whether he had boots on or not. As for stocks, saving that he be a military man, he wears them not; they want that easy negligence, attainable only by the graceful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... and cannot enter the milk. With certain persons some varieties of fruit invariably cause indigestion. Lactation does not correct such an individual peculiarity, and a nursing mother who knows she possesses it will act accordingly. Occasionally those who have no such idiosyncrasy worry after they have eaten something which contains an acid because they have heard it will do harm. In such cases it is the mental state of the woman which disturbs her milk and upsets the baby. With the exception of those who have such an idiosyncrasy and those inclined ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... servant exposed to every form of open and insidious abuse from those who are prejudiced against his person or his birthplace, who are jealous of his success, envious of his position, hostile to his politics, dwarfed by his reputation, or hate him by the divine right of idiosyncrasy, always liable, too, to questioning comment from well-meaning friends who happen to be suspicious or sensitive in their political or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... characters has two constant qualities: objectivity and justice. The author has not merged the sharp outlines of humanity into the background of his own idiosyncrasy. Ibsen's characters speak and act as though they had suddenly stepped from another world and were still haunted by a breath of their strange doom; the people of Shaw are often eloquent exponents of a theory of character and society which would ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... fact, was it an idiosyncrasy, as I have known those who by combing their hair can elicit sparks with a crackling as from a cat's back rubbed. It is very possible that the sleeve might be silk, tightened either on a very hairy arm, or else on woollen, and by shaking it might ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... succeeding one another. My eyes are not shut, nor do I look different. I have always seen them. I was alarmed about them once, and went to a doctor; but he said he could not explain it—it was probably a nervous idiosyncrasy: and I felt all the better for my habit having ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Another interesting idiosyncrasy of the Italian hotelkeeper is that he invariably swears to you his town is the only honest town in Italy, but begs you to beware of the next town which, he assures you with his hand on the place where his heart would be if he had a heart, is full of thieves and liars and counterfeit money and ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... never heard her surname—came straight into the bedroom, and beheld the scene with astonishment in her dark twinkling eyes. She was usually dressed in black, because people said that black suited her, and because black was never out of fashion; black was an expression of her idiosyncrasy. She showed a certain elegance, and by comparison with the extreme disorder of Madame Foucault and the deshabille of Sophia her appearance, all fresh from a modish restaurant, was brilliant; it gave her an advantage over the other two—that moral advantage ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... in their separateness, and through that separateness Christianity was born. A modern book on Liberty has maintained that from the freedom of individual men to persist in idiosyncrasies the world may be enriched. Why should we not apply this argument to the idiosyncrasy of a nation, and pause in our haste to hoot it down? There is still a great function for the steadfastness of the Jew: not that he should shut out the utmost illumination which knowledge can throw on his national history, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... contrary, his regard was quick, if not alert, and while it did not convey actual malice or ill-will, it roused in the spectator an uncomfortable feeling, not altogether easy to analyze. He wore his iron gray locks quite long, and to this distinguishing idiosyncrasy, as well as to his invariable custom of taking his dog with him wherever he went, was due the interest always shown in him by street urchins. On account of his whimsicalities, he had acquired the epithet of Uncle David ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... present the same features; but it is just the differences in degree between the same feature in this civilization and in that—it is just these differences which together constitute and illustrate the idiosyncrasy of each. It seems to me that the brains and the imagination of America shone superlatively in the conception and ordering of its vast organizations of human beings, and of machinery, and of the two combined. By them ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... And to his practical mind the toiling of thought amid uncertainties seemed worse than useless. The question has, indeed, been raised, whether he did not make changes in the ancient creed of China [2], but I cannot believe that he did so consciously and designedly. Had his idiosyncrasy been different, we might have had expositions of the ancient views on some points, the effect of which would have been more beneficial than the indefiniteness in which they are now left, and it ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... been inspired by her voices and her visions to take up arms for the salvation of her country, Joan of Arc would probably have lived and ended her obscure life in some place of holy retreat. An all-absorbing love for all things sacred was her ruling idiosyncrasy. From her childhood her delight was to hear the church bells, the music of anthems, the sacred notes of the organ. Never did she miss attending the Church festivals. When within hail of a church it was her wont, however hurried the march, to enter, attended by any of the soldiers whom ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... was liable to change of view, let who would be the teacher. Runciman no more took his style from Fuseli, than Fuseli from Runciman, and the unquestionable resemblance between their works was only the natural result of a similarity of idiosyncrasy. They both worked hard together, making painstaking copies of the great masters. 'Runciman I am sure you will like,' Fuseli wrote home, 'he is one of the best of us here.' No doubt Fuseli found him quite a kindred spirit—mad as himself about heroic art—given ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Lincoln met and passed through one of the most important crises of his life. There was so much of idiosyncrasy in it that it has been, and will continue to be for years to come, the occasion of endless gossip in Sangamon County and elsewhere. Because it was not precisely like the experience of other people, who are married and given in marriage ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Nothing for it then but to cool off his thin and unprotected legs and toes in the snows of Canada. "The white North hath his" heart. Our winter is his summer. There is nothing in his anatomy to explain this idiosyncrasy. His physical construction closely resembles that of his insessorial brethren, most of whom go when he comes. He has no discoverable provision against cold. Adaptation to environment does not seem to cover ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... opinion of a book. Books were written to read; if one read them what more could be expected? To be questioned in detail regarding the contents of a volume seemed to her as great an outrage as being searched for smuggled laces at the Custom House. The club had always respected this idiosyncrasy of Mrs. Plinth's. Such opinions as she had were imposing and substantial: her mind, like her house, was furnished with monumental "pieces" that were not meant to be disarranged; and it was one of the unwritten rules of ...
— Xingu - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... quite as clearly to mind, when the Reader was revelling more even than was his wont, in the fun of this representation of the trial-scene, he suddenly seemed to open up the revelation of an entirely new phase in Mr. Winkle's idiosyncrasy. Under the badgering of Mr. Skimpin's irritating examination, as to whether he was or was not a particular friend of Mr. Pickwick the defendant, the usually placable Pickwickian's patience upon this occasion appeared gradually and at last utterly to ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... is an idiosyncrasy in their otherwise generous character. Of course there are mean boys, hard-hearted boys, cowardly boys; but Boyhood is more generous, open, tender-hearted, daring, than Manhood, yet its cruelty stands out a distinguishing trait. An old French teacher, loving children, wanting in dignity, ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... an opinion that the obvious thing to do with a horse is to ride it; with a cake, to eat it; with a sixpence to spend it.' A few boyish persons carry this further, and think that the natural thing to do with a book is to read it. The mere reading of a rare book is a puerility, an idiosyncrasy of adolescence; it is the ownership of the book which is the matter of distinction. The collector of coins does not accumulate his treasures for the purpose of ultimately spending them in the marketplace. ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... are so constituted that they suspect the existence of a snake under every blade of grass. It is not a happy disposition either for the person who is possessed with this idiosyncrasy, or in its reflex action upon others. True charity thinketh no evil. It is far better to be over sanguine in our charitable estimate of other men's motives, even if we do sometimes ultimately find that our estimate was wrong, than to be constantly living in an atmosphere of ...
— Churchwardens' Manual - their duties, powers, rights, and privilages • George Henry
... shock his lordship recognized the sound as one which he and the marshal had heard more than once at this hour, and, after discussion, had attributed to an idiosyncrasy of water under ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... sort of aggregation to which men and women will refer themselves is determined partly by the strength and idiosyncrasy of the individual imagination, and partly by the reek of ideas that chances to be in the air at the time. Men and women may vary greatly both in their innate and their acquired disposition towards this sort of larger body or that, to which their social reference can be made. The "natural" social ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of Audrey, were we?' he replied, with a slight change of expression. 'I think it is the Ross idiosyncrasy to wander hopelessly from any given subject; I imagined that we were suggesting an impossible wife for your humble servant. Far be it from me to deny myself comfort in the shape of feminine cousins ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a comprehensive and general view, makes this an estimate of its humanity, as accurate as it is possible, under the circumstances, to that particular spirit. The soul here separates itself from its own idiosyncrasy, or individuality, and considers its own being, not as appertaining solely to itself, but as a portion of the universal Ego. All important good resolutions of character are brought about at these crises of life; and thus ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... If a sort of idiosyncrasy against letters did not hold me back I should have told you long ago what pleasure your charming letter from Paris gave me, and what a sincere part I have taken in your late successes, dear enchantress. But you must know all that ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... never intended. In your condition of mind, having discharged the coin upon the floor of the bin, a mental idiosyncrasy of ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... marked effect upon the circulation. The pulse-rate is usually quickened, and the force of the heart-beats increased in varying degrees, dependent upon the pitch, intensity and timbre of the sounds, and the idiosyncrasy of the individual.[188:2] ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... thinks you are some one else. A pleasant, unaffected man to talk to. Somewhat dazed, however, in effect. Curious manner of speech, of which evidently he is unconscious, partly native English accent, partly temperamental idiosyncrasy. A very simple eccentric, what in the eighteenth century was called "an ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... a pivotal girl. Her pivotality may be a nervous idiosyncrasy, or it may be the effect of tight lacing; perhaps she has to keep turning and twisting that way to get breath. But attribute the worst motive: say it is to make people look at her! Well, Burnamy has ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... calamity, rallies all the reserved forces of a splendid manhood to meet the shock, and, like a good ship, lifting itself from the trough of the swelling sea, mounts the wave and rides on. It was a curious idiosyncrasy that led this man, when fortune and reason were swept away at a stroke, to fall back upon this imaginary imperialism. The nature that could thus, when the real fabric of life was wrecked, construct such another by the exercise of a disordered imagination, must have been originally of a gentle ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... been unfortunate in life who has not many friends, and friends whom he holds in deep affection, among the adherents of opinions most entirely antagonistic to his own. Hazlet's repulsiveness was due to a very mistaken education, developing a very foolish idiosyncrasy, and especially to the pernicious system of encouraging sentiments and expressions which in a boy's mind could not be other than sickly exotics. He had to be taught his own hypocrisy by the painful progress of events, and, above all, he had to learn that religious ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... of idiosyncrasy, and with it of friction. Kept below much of the time by inclement weather, we are crowded and jumbled incessantly together; you jostle against the shoulders of one, you rub elbows with another, you clamber ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... the matter can be fairly considered and candidly interpreted, it must be evident that Judge Pyncheon could not have come unfairly to his end. This mode of death had been an idiosyncrasy with his family, for generations past; not often occurring, indeed, but, when it does occur, usually attacking individuals about the Judge's time of life, and generally in the tension of some mental crisis, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... for fear of a repetition, on a larger scale, of the Cheltenham disaster, she thought that it might be possible to find a capable land-agent who would give him some kind of training and put up with his idiosyncrasy for the sake of a ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... the very plain difference between them in this respect. Aldebaran has been called "rose-red," and it would be an interesting occupation for an amateur to determine, with the aid of some proper color scale, the precise hue of this star, and of the many other stars which exhibit chromatic idiosyncrasy. Aldebaran is further interesting as being a standard first-magnitude star. With the four-inch glass we see without difficulty the tenth-magnitude companion following Aldebaran at a distance of 114", p. 35 deg.. There is an ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... directed to the remarkable variations observed in different patients. Sometimes the virulent character of the disease can only be accounted for by an idiosyncrasy of the patient. Constitutional symptoms, particularly pyrexia and anaemia, are most often met with in young women. Patients over forty years of age have greater difficulty in overcoming the infection than younger adults. Malarial and other infections, and the conditions attending ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... consideration too far: Hood is a central figure in the group and the period, and the tendency of the time may be almost as much due to him as he to the tendency. Mainly, we have to fall back upon his own idiosyncrasy: he was born with a boundlessly whimsical perception, which he trained into an inimitable sleight-of-hand in the twisting of notions and of words; circumstances favored his writing for fugitive publications and ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... explained, and I afterwards found out (every man having his hobby) that the idiosyncrasy of this officer's disposition had led him to the practice of neutralising the males of any species of bird or beast, in order to render them more ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... his house that morning, had walked till he saw a taxi-cab. Leaning back therein, with hat thrown off, he caused himself to be driven rapidly, at random. This was one of his habits when his mind was not at ease—an expensive idiosyncrasy, ill-afforded by a pocket that had holes. The swift motion and titillation by the perpetual close shaving of other vehicles were sedative to him. He needed sedatives this morning. To wake in his own bed without the least remembering how he had got ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Kendal's reserve the trial that it had once been. After having become habituated to it as a necessary idiosyncrasy, she had become rather proud of his lofty inaccessibility. Besides, her brother's visit, her recovery, and the renewed hope and joy in this promising child, had not been without effect in rousing him from his apathy. He was less inclined to shun his fellow-creatures, had become friendly with the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... talking about himself, and I liked him the better for it. Without pressing for a more particular account, I led the conversation to treat of the different countries he had visited, referring, by the way, to some principal objects of attraction. Here I touched an idiosyncrasy of ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... of culture, of station, of idiosyncrasy there may be, these are but surface and accidental. We are all alike in this, that we 'have sinned, and come short of the glory of God'; and our Great Physician, in His great remedy, insists upon treating us all as patients, and not as this, that, or the other, kind of patients. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... bedroom was at the top of the house, and it was a long way; but they got him there in course of time. He asked them frequently on the road for a little drop of something to drink. It seemed an idiosyncrasy. The youngest gentleman in company proposed a draught of water. Mr Pecksniff called him ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... in and flutters the social dovecote, we do not know in what light to regard her, or why we are supposed to sympathize with her. The fact that she is eccentric, and that she talks of "letting in fresh air," combines with our previous knowledge of the author's idiosyncrasy to assure us that she is his heroine; but so far as the evidence actually before us goes, we have no means of forming even the vaguest provisional judgment as to her true character. This is almost certainly a mistake in art. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... physiologist's demand, that in the education of girls, as well as of boys, the machinery and methods of instruction shall be carefully adjusted to their organization. If it were possible, they should be adjusted to the organization of each individual. None doubt the importance of age, acquirement, idiosyncrasy, and probable career in life, as factors in classification. Sex goes deeper than any or all of these. To neglect this is to neglect the chief factor of the problem. Rightly interpreted and followed, it will yield the grandest results. Disregarded, it ...
— Sex in Education - or, A Fair Chance for Girls • Edward H. Clarke
... sourer soil, centuries of unequal yet not inglorious conflict, a separate race of kings, a body of separate traditions, and a peculiar crisis of reformation issuing in peculiar forms of religious worship, confirmed and strengthened the national idiosyncrasy. If a difference between the races be allowed, it is sufficient for the present purpose. That allowed, and Scot and Southern being fecund in literary genius, it becomes an interesting inquiry to what extent the great literary men of the one race have ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... I so persistently paint the poverty, the imperfections of Russian life, and delve into the remotest depths, the most retired holes and corners, of our Empire for my subjects? The answer is that there is nothing else to be done when an author's idiosyncrasy happens to incline him that way. So again we find ourselves in a retired ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... furthermore, believe that, within their own scope and province, they may at least be serviceable in training and developing the understanding. Not to dwell longer on this little eccentricity of opinion, which is simply one of idiosyncrasy, let us follow the author into some of the more congenial sections of his dissertation. The following passage, on 'The three essential qualities of an author,' seems not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... idiosyncrasy in the matter forbids me to do so. I do acknowledge that Mrs. Gamp, Micawber, Pecksniff, and others have become household words in every house, as though they were human beings; but to my judgment they are not human beings, nor are any of the characters human which Dickens ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope |
