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predilection
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  • ...her predilection for a special window at which she always sat in the early evening,   (source)
  • Marilla's astonishment could not have been greater if Matthew had expressed a predilection for standing on his head.   (source)
  • Always, Edgar's father was more interested in what the dogs chose to do, a predilection he'd acquired from his own father.†   (source)
  • On his spice shelves was a compendium of the world's predilections and in his cooler a comprehensive survey of birds and beasts hanging from hooks by their feet.†   (source)
  • His northern European characters displaced to Egypt exhibit every sort of kink, sexual and otherwise, from the old sailor with a glass eye and a predilection for young boys to the incestuous Ludwig and Liza Pursewarden to nearly everyone's inability to be faithful to spouse or lover.†   (source)
  • But without warning, a long way into the woods, he began to berate her with humiliating invective and revolting remarks about her morals and sexual predilections.†   (source)
  • From the first day of his rule Arcadio revealed his predilection for decrees.†   (source)
  • Sadly, neither economic development nor the rise of education and a middle class seems to have affected the predilection for aborting female fetuses.†   (source)
  • Clyde uttered the names of people dancing past and Edgar commented on their lives and careers and personal predilections.†   (source)
  • It was an illusion, of course, generated by Clevinger's predilection for staring fixedly at one side of a question and never seeing the other side at all.†   (source)
  • He laid out all of Seabiscuit's predilections and weaknesses in great detail.†   (source)
  • Gwen always had good stories, many of which concerned the illicit predilections of the town's citizens.†   (source)
  • Both ofus were unassailable proof that each of the tribes of Europe had imported their own separate fevers, predilections, and reveries into the capricious, turbulent consciousness of America.†   (source)
  • Which of course would send me into hoots of laughter were it not so benighted a viewpoint, so that even though I concede to Hobbs that Rothschild and Warburg are certainly Hebraic names I attempt to tell him that greed is not a racial but a human predilection and then I proceed to tick off such names as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Frick, Mellon, Harriman, Huntington, Whitney, Duke, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.†   (source)
  • When he was excited he talked aloud to himself, imitating his mother's predilection for lofty subjects and paradox.†   (source)
  • That year in New Jersey lives in my mind as though it were the year during which, having an unsuspected predilection for it, I first contracted some dread, chronic disease, the unfailing symptom of which is a kind of blind fever, a pounding in the skull and fire in the bowels.†   (source)
  • A predilection that he reinforces by his rather excessive reliance on the close-up?†   (source)
  • Home for nineteen hours and you've already indulged your predilection for ablutionary excesses, hah!†   (source)
  • Every one of them imagined the scene, each according to his own predilections—Sula underneath some white man—and it filled them with choking disgust.†   (source)
  • Until comparatively recently in its history, Maycomb County was so cut off from the rest of the nation that some of its citizens, unaware of the South's political predilections over the past ninety years, still voted Republican.†   (source)
  • It explained the young lady to me, also the predilection my aunt had for him.†   (source)
  • You have a predilection for good sailors?†   (source)
  • At the age of twelve, before I had had one full year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering.†   (source)
  • Tommy murmured as the next verse began, hinting at the jumpy lady's further predilections.†   (source)
  • 'I have not so much as the slightest predilection left.†   (source)
  • He used to have a predilection for Bacchus.†   (source)
  • Why should not such a predilection be encouraged!†   (source)
  • But certain cows will show a fondness for a particular pair of hands, sometimes carrying this predilection so far as to refuse to stand at all except to their favourite, the pail of a stranger being unceremoniously kicked over.†   (source)
  • He shows decided bacchanalian predilections at one time, and at another is tearful and sensitive, but at any moment he is liable to paroxysms of such rage that I assure you, prince, I am quite alarmed.†   (source)
  • Their old relations of confidence seemed suddenly to have ended, and the antagonisms of sex to sex were left without any counter-poising predilections.†   (source)
  • Obscurely awaited, immanent and concealed, it rouses to such a paroxysm, at the moment when at last it makes itself felt, those other pleasures which we find in the tender glance, in the kiss of her who is by our side, that it seems to us, more than anything else, a sort of transport of gratitude for the kindness of heart of our companion and for her touching predilection of ourselves, which we measure by the benefits, by the happiness that she showers upon us.†   (source)
  • He elbowed through the crowd in the buvette; then remembering a predilection of Nicole's he snatched up an edge of a fortuneteller's tent and peered within.†   (source)
  • All that the agent needed to do was to deftly and by degrees prepare the public for the great change, and have them established in predilections toward neatness against the time when the stove should appear upon the stage.†   (source)
  • Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the debatable land between predilection and love; where no profundities have been reached; no reflections have set in, awkwardly inquiring, "Whither does this new current tend to carry me?†   (source)
  • And Swann was, perhaps, even more touched by the spectacle of her addressing him thus, in front of Forcheville, not only in these tender words of predilection, but also with certain criticisms, such as: "I feel sure you haven't written yet to your friends, about dining with them on Sunday.†   (source)
  • she had given it up in order to come to me in the Champs-Elysees; I acquired more confidence in the vitality, in the future of a friendship which could remain so much alive amid the torpor, the solitude, the decay of our surroundings; and while she dropped pellets of snow down my neck, I smiled lovingly at what seemed to me at once a predilection that she shewed for me in thus tolerating me as her travelling companion in this new, this wintry land, and a sort of loyalty to me which she preserved through evil times.†   (source)
  • Perhaps the nearest approach to the latter that Hetty had manifested was to be seen in the sensitiveness which had caused her to detect March's predilection for her sister, for, among Judith's many admirers, this was the only instance in which the dull mind of the girl had been quickened into an observation of the circumstances.†   (source)
  • The king, however, who sought distraction, while traveling as fast as possible—for he was anxious to be in Paris by the twenty-third—stopped from time to time to fly the magpie, a pastime for which the taste had been formerly inspired in him by de Luynes, and for which he had always preserved a great predilection.†   (source)
  • To please her, as if she were still living, he adopted her predilections, her ideas; he bought patent leather boots and took to wearing white cravats.†   (source)
  • This at any rate was the duty with which she found herself confronted—from the moment she admitted to herself that her old friend had still an uneradicated predilection for her society.†   (source)
  • He departed for Calais, and having reached that place in safety, it might have been supposed that he went to Dover; but instead he took the diligence to Dunkirk, and thence travelled to Brussels, for which place he had a former predilection.†   (source)
  • If, heretofore, I had been none of the warmest of partisans I began now, at this season of peril and adversity, to be pretty acutely sensible with which party my predilections lay; nor was it without something like regret and shame that, according to a reasonable calculation of chances, I saw my own prospect of retaining office to be better than those of my democratic brethren.†   (source)
  • "They have their gifts, I suppose, like other men," observed Pathfinder, with a view to preserve the peace, which was evidently in some danger of being broken by the obstinate predilection of each of the disputants in favor of his own calling; "and when a man has his gift from Providence, it is commonly idle to endeavor to bear up against it.†   (source)
  • But I admit that this gratification arose from my own weakness: it is because I am unable to see at once all that is around me, that I am allowed thus to select and separate the objects of my predilection from among so many others.†   (source)
  • But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.†   (source)
  • It affected her moreover as a peaceful interlude, as a hush of the drum and fife in a career which she had little warrant as yet for regarding as agitated, but which nevertheless she was constantly picturing to herself by the light of her hopes, her fears, her fancies, her ambitions, her predilections, and which reflected these subjective accidents in a manner sufficiently dramatic.†   (source)
  • Natural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science.†   (source)
  • It must be owned, that if an interest displayed in his success could have bribed the Disinherited Knight, the part of the lists before which he paused had merited his predilection.†   (source)
  • So very conspicuous was his zeal, indeed, as to have entirely gotten the better of all his ordinary predilections.†   (source)
  • Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers, was the spot where he displayed his pride, the Capharnaum was the refuge where, egoistically concentrating himself, Homais delighted in the exercise of his predilections, so that Justin's thoughtlessness seemed to him a monstrous piece of irreverence, and, redder than the currants, he repeated— "Yes, from the Capharnaum!†   (source)
  • "I marvel, worthy Cedric," said the Abbot, as their discourse proceeded, "that, great as your predilection is for your own manly language, you do not receive the Norman-French into your favour, so far at least as the mystery of wood-craft and hunting is concerned.†   (source)
  • It is a part of the essence of judicial power to attend to private interests, and to fix itself with predilection on minute objects submitted to its observation; another essential quality of judicial power is never to volunteer its assistance to the oppressed, but always to be at the disposal of the humblest of those who solicit it; their complaint, however feeble they may themselves be, will force itself upon the ear of justice and claim redress, for this is inherent in the very constitution of the courts of justice.†   (source)
  • All the monarchs of the Norman race had shown the most marked predilection for their Norman subjects; the laws of the chase, and many others equally unknown to the milder and more free spirit of the Saxon constitution, had been fixed upon the necks of the subjugated inhabitants, to add weight, as it were, to the feudal chains with which they were loaded.†   (source)
  • Irving, too, soon adopted a bolder tone, and despite his English predilections, he refused an offer of a hundred guineas for an article for the /Quarterly Review/, made by Gifford in 1828, on the ground that "the /Review/ has been so persistently hostile to our country that I cannot draw a pen in its service."†   (source)
  • Are there not aversions, predilections, rivalships, and desires of unjust acquisitions, that affect nations as well as kings?†   (source)
  • And even where this had not been done, it would be natural that the judges, as men, should feel a strong predilection to the claims of their own government.†   (source)
  • All this will be done; and in a spirit of interested and suspicious scrutiny, without that knowledge of national circumstances and reasons of state, which is essential to a right judgment, and with that strong predilection in favor of local objects, which can hardly fail to mislead the decision.†   (source)
  • To the People of the State of New York: RESUMING the subject of the last paper, I proceed to inquire whether the federal government or the State governments will have the advantage with regard to the predilection and support of the people.†   (source)
  • The House of Representatives being to be elected immediately by the people, the Senate by the State legislatures, the President by electors chosen for that purpose by the people, there would be little probability of a common interest to cement these different branches in a predilection for any particular class of electors.†   (source)
  • The State government will have the advantage of the Federal government, whether we compare them in respect to the immediate dependence of the one on the other; to the weight of personal influence which each side will possess; to the powers respectively vested in them; to the predilection and probable support of the people; to the disposition and faculty of resisting and frustrating the measures of each other.†   (source)
  • If the plan of taking one State as a model for the whole had been thought of in the convention, it is to be presumed that the adoption of it in that body would have been rendered difficult by the predilection of each representation in favor of its own government; and it must be uncertain which of the States would have been taken as the model.†   (source)
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