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adjective
Wont  adj.  Using or doing customarily; accustomed; habituated; used. "As he was wont to go." "If the ox were wont to push with his horn."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Wont" Quotes from Famous Books



... enormous wealth and dominion of the Spanish prince,[302] who found his interest to lie in the discord and misfortunes of his neighbors. Surely such an example would not be without significance to princes and princesses who, like Catharine, were wont occasionally to court the heretics on account of their power, and whose loyalty to the papal church could scarcely be supposed, even by the most charitable, to rest on any firmer foundation than self-interest. Nor was the lesson thrown away. Catharine and ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... and like young people he was wont To take some trouble with his toilet, but This morning rather spent less time upon 't; Aside his very mirror soon was put; His curls fell negligently o'er his front, His clothes were not curbed to their usual cut, His very neckcloth's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... usde to stand, On which the lordly faulcon wont to towre, There now is but an heap of lyme and sand For the shriche-owle to build her balefull bowre: 130 And where the nightingale wont forth to powre Her restles plaints, to comfort wakefull lovers, There now haunt yelling mewes and ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... scrupulously just and straightforward in his dealings with all men, and, if a seaman proved himself to be capable and willing, he had nothing to fear from "Bill Bowles," as this individual was in his more genial moods wont to style himself; if, however, on the other hand, a man proved lazy, or incapable of executing the duties he had undertaken to perform, let him "look ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood

... shaky condition for fear of Zeppelins. She lived in perpetual terror of bombs or German spies, and always slept with half her clothing on, in case she should be forced to get up in a hurry and flee for her life. On this particular Saturday afternoon Mrs. Fisher, as was her wont, washed the pavement of the nave, and then took her broom and her duster into the side chapel. Nobody sat there as a rule, so she did not give it very much attention. She flicked the duster over the monument, hastily swept the floor ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... the 14th of February, on which young people of both sexes were wont (the custom seems gradually dying out) to send love-missives to one another; it is uncertain who the Valentine was that is associated with the day, or whether it was with any of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... A hint to withdraw. [T.S.] This is said to have been the mode in which the governors of a Dutch province were wont to give intimation to those who intermeddled with state affairs, that they would do wisely to withdraw themselves from ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... I was wont to observe with peculiar attention, when on picket at night during the siege; namely, the operations of the Signal Corps. In the night time they used lighted lanterns in the transmission of intelligence, and they had a ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... plan was so contagious that I was not long in finding that farmers in all directions were beginning to go to their labors with much less food in their stomachs than had been their wont, and in all cases with added power ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... was by almost such passage made; And whiteness had o'erspread that hemisphere, Blackness the other part; when to the left I saw Beatrice turn'd, and on the sun Gazing, as never eagle fix'd his ken. As from the first a second beam is wont To issue, and reflected upwards rise, E'en as a pilgrim bent on his return, So of her act, that through the eyesight pass'd Into my fancy, mine was form'd; and straight, Beyond our mortal wont, I fix'd mine eyes ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... self-confidence. He looked about eighteen; his comely countenance, with its air of robust health and habitual exhilaration, told of a boyhood passed amid free and joyous circumstances. It was the face of a young English plutocrat, with more of intellect than such visages are wont to betray; the native vigour of his temperament had probably assimilated something of the modern spirit. 'I'm glad,' he continued, 'that they haven't stuck him in a toga, or any humbug of that sort. The old fellow looks baggy, but so ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... thine open arms Departed joy and pain wert wont to gather! How oft the children, with their ruddy charms, Hung here, around this throne, where sat the father! Perchance my love, amid the childish band, Grateful for gifts the Holy Christmas gave her, Here meekly kissed ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... it has been decided to give the title of "The Ancestral Footstep," possesses a freshness and spontaneity recalling the peculiar fascination of those chalk or pencil outlines with which great masters in the graphic art have been wont to arrest their fleeting glimpses of ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... ordering it to bleat forth the story of its wrongs from the guilty stomach of the thief, and to redden his face with shame for having denied his crime! St. Serf's memory survives here in the well called after him, with its plentiful supply of water. As lately as 1760 the parishioners were wont to be drawn by a lurking superstition to drink of it on Lammas Day, leaving in it white stones, spoons, or rags, which they brought as remembrancers, just as devout Mohammedans still leave their prayer rags attached to the grating of the Mosque El-Aksa, at Jerusalem, or the lower branches ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... monument to commemorate the victory of the Germans over the French, in 1871, lifts its spire above the city, with three rows of cannon captured in France in its recesses. Close at hand, too, are the shady walks in the "Tiergarten" (Park), where all Berlin is wont to enjoy itself on Sundays. When we turn eastwards, we have to pass through a great colonnade, the Brandenburg Gate, with Doric pillars supporting the four-horsed chariot of the goddess of victory in beaten copper. Here the German ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... flushed with the unwonted excitement, attracted universal homage. Around stood several bishops, peers, and peeresses; the hall was filled with spectators, while outside the crowd surged and swayed as crowds are wont to do. For a few moments the two women spoke together; then the strict rules of etiquette were overcome by the enthusiasm of the assembly and a murmur of applause, followed by a ringing English cheer, went up. This cheer was repeated by the crowd outside, again and ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... matter, my dear?' came more sympathizingly than Mr. Falkirk's wont. It was even a little ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... three pounds for a man. Give a gorilla a brain weighing fifty ounces, and he would be a Methodist Presiding Elder. Give him a brain the same size of Edison's, say fifty-seven ounces, and instead of spending life in hunting for snakes and heaving cocoanuts at monkeys as respectable gorillas are wont, he would be weighing the world in scales of his own invention and making, and measuring the distances ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... a small room like to that of any scribe, for on the tables were palettes, pens of reed, ink in alabaster vases, and sheets of papyrus pinned upon boards. The walls were painted, not as I was wont to paint the Books of the Dead, but after the fashion of an earlier time, such as I have seen in certain ancient tombs, with pictures of wild fowl rising from the swamps and of trees and plants as they grow. Against the walls hung racks in which were papyrus rolls, and on ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... the occasion of Gabe's spring trip he encountered a statuesque blonde person where Effie had been wont ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... has learned to take a broad and manly view of the Profession which his own erudition adorns. In his temporary retirement he paid homage to literature; and literature, as is her wont, rewards her worshiper by extending his vision and emancipating his mind. A more intimate acquaintance with the transactions and passions of the past, a disinterested and unbiased survey of the lives and triumphs of his illustrious predecessors, has prepared our present Chief Justice for his ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... men have given me the name of "the mistress," for this reason, because invocated [1] I am wont to attend at the banquet. I know that buffoons [2] say that this is absurdly said, but I affirm that it is rightly said. For at the banquet the lover, when he throws the dice, invokes hia mistress.[3] Is she then invocated, or is she not? She is, most clearly. But, i' faith, ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus

... Paynims. The Princess is very fair to behold, with mixed wine in one hand, and a fiddle and a harp in the other; and in her treasury, innumerable pleasures and toys to gain the custom of everybody, and retain them in her father's service. Yea, many were wont to escape to this pleasant street to drown their grief for losses and debts they had incurred in the others. It was exceedingly crowded, especially with young people; whilst the Princess is careful to please everyone, and to have an arrow ready for ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... up the bank, And waly, waly down the brae, And waly, waly yon burn-side, Where I and my love wont to gae. I lean'd my back unto an aik, And thought it was a trusty tree, But first it bow'd, and syne it brak, Sae my true love did ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various

... and the question was asked without a minute being allowed for consideration. It was in this wise. The two were sitting together after dinner on the lawn, and Mrs Baggett had brought them their coffee. It was her wont to wait upon them with this delicacy, though she did not appear either at breakfast or at dinner, except on remarkable occasions. She now had some little word to say, meant to be conciliatory and comforting, and remarked ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope

... Yogolotes together with the other chiefs by means of presents, kind words, and mild treatment, to descend to the plain, or to live quietly in settlements in their natural habitat, submissive to his Majesty, paying their tribute, and abandoning the barbarities that they have been wont to practice on their own children and those of the lowlands; and if they accept the faith and are quiet and pacified: we receive permission to distribute and apportion them in encomiendas—assigning one-third to the royal treasury, and another third to the soldiers engaged in the conquest, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various

... which Fil-en-Quatre opened cautiously, when they found themselves in the big salon, a spacious, luxuriantly-furnished room, where many of the notables of Paris, both social and political, were wont ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux

... his watch upon his modesty that he was wont utterly to avoid the unguarded sight of naked persons, lest like David he should be snared by unlawful desire, for David's eyes, as we read, made havoc of his soul. Therefore this prince made a covenant with his eyes that they should never look ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman

... six members were chosen by large landowners, one (Dr. Ziliotto, the mayor) by the town of Zadar and one by the Zadar chamber of commerce. Out of the eighty-six communes of Dalmatia, Zadar was the solitary one that was Autonomist. Some very few Autonomists were wont to say that they aspired to union with Italy, but it was generally thought that most of them agreed with Dr. Ziliotto when he said in the Landtag in 1906: "We, separated from Italy by the whole Adriatic—we a few thousand men, scattered, with no territorial links, among a population ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... of the advantage of occasionally writing compositions, as Benjamin was wont to write, and another fact illustrating this point has just come to our notice. It is an incident belonging to the history of the Boston Young Men's Temperance Society. In addition to its being a temperance organization, it was ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer

... party held the country as absolutely as ever. He issued a decree confiscating the property of all Liberals who did not lay down their arms, and allowed the regency, which was composed of three clerical leaders,—General Almonte, of whom Marshal Bazaine was wont to say that he meant well, but il se prend trop au serieux, General Salas, a conservative old fossil unearthed for the occasion, and Archbishop Labastida,—to foreshadow an era of ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... Stephen Richford, a dull, heavy-looking man with a thick lip and a suggestion of shiftiness in his small eyes. Altogether he bore a strong resemblance to a prize-fighter. He was quiet and a little moody, as was his wont, so that most of Beatrice's conversation was directed to her neighbour on the other side, Colonel Berrington, a brilliant soldier ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... complain as much of the frequency of my letters now, as you were wont to do of their rarity. I think this is the fourth within as many moons. I feel anxious to hear from you, even more than usual, because your last indicated that you were unwell. At present, I am on the invalid regimen myself. The Carnival—that is, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... he's a jingle, torn 'Cause he went wrong—poor Rover! But I'm real pretty. Wont you take Me ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... lower deep, we, if we have a heart for outer sorrows, can forget ourselves in it. Evan had just been accusing the heavens of conspiracy to disgrace him. Those patient heavens had listened, as is their wont. They had viewed and had not been disordered by his mental frenzies. It is certainly hard that they do not come down to us, and condescend to tell us what they mean, and be dumb-foundered by the perspicuity of our arguments ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... maketh that there been no fayeryes. For ther as wont to walken was an elf, Ther walketh now ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... violent remedies were applied, if remedies they indeed were. My health was restored at length, against my own expectation and that of all around me. But, when I first again beheld the reflection of my own face, I thought it was the visage of a ghost. I was wont to be flattered by all, but particularly by my husband, for the fineness of my complexion—it was now totally gone, and, what is more extraordinary, it has never returned. I have observed that the few who now ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... productions are very small compared with his sentimental. It might perhaps have been expected that his mind would assume a gloomy and cynical complexion. His personal infirmity, with which, in his childhood, even his mother was wont to taunt him, might well have begotten a severity similar to that of Pope. The pressure of friends and creditors led him, while a mere stripling, to form an uncongenial alliance with a stern puritan, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... these bewitched Umkulus, men, women and children, appeared, and when the three priests mocked them, as was their wont, and the guards, some of whom were their own relatives, sought to beat them away with sticks, threw themselves upon the ground and burst into weeping. Rachel, who was camped at a little distance with Noie, in a reed tent that the guard ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... As wont in those bloody wars, the poor prisoner was immediately carried by an escort into the presence of the Caliph, who put the alternative in his power of either, on the instant, renouncing his religion, or submitting ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... Heaven alone knew how winningly he could talk! with all the sound logic of a close reasoner, all the enthusiasm of youth and self-confidence, all the persuasiveness of profound conviction singular to successful men. Duncan had been wont to say of him that Kellogg could talk the hind-leg off of a mule. He recalled this now with a sour grin: "That ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... by the light of his own judgement? We do not adopt the language of a class by the mere adoption of such words exclusively, as that class would use, or at least understand; but likewise by following the order, in which the words of such men are wont to succeed each other. Now this order, in the intercourse of uneducated men, is distinguished from the diction of their superiors in knowledge and power, by the greater disjunction and separation in the component parts of that, whatever it be, which they wish to communicate. ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... the loaves and fishes do not condescend to jump into one's mouth all dressed as they ought to be. Therefore—and this is the zenith of the 'Geelong Advertiser's' practical correspondent—be not perplexed, if the loaves and fishes wont pop fast enough into your mouth particularly; let Mahomed's example be instantly followed: go yourself to the loaves and fishes, and you will actually find that they are subject to the same laws of matter and motion as everything ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello

... him naught. They harmed him most who stood afar, and thrust at him with spears to sate their rage. There was among them no sword so good but had Sir Gawain held it, and smote with it three such blows as he was oft wont to deal with his own, it had broken, or bent, and profited them no whit. But of those things which had stood him in good stead many a time before, when he was hard beset, his good steed, and his sword, the which was a very haven, of these ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston

... he grown ashamed on't?" said Lambourne, "Why, he was wont to boast of it, and say he liked as well to see a roasted heretic as ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... his dearest ones—even they seemed estranged. If they leaned over him or took his hand, his impulse was to withdraw from the caress. And when his wife looked lovingly at him, there was a something in her eyes, where once he was wont to turn for comfort in every extremity, that he could ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... well, and keep on quiet, and have some time to read and learn out of work-hours; but the more he sees I can do, the more he loads on. He says that though I don't say anything, he sees I've got the devil in me, and he means to bring it out; and one of these days it will come out in a way that he wont like, or I'm mistaken." ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... out the sun. The wind had at last blown a hole in the clouds, and through that at once, as is his wont, and the wont of a greater light ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... you; would you had eat your last! Is this the thanks I have for all my pains? Confusion light upon you all for me. Where he had wont to give a score of crowns, Doth he now foist me with a Portague? Well, I will be revenged upon this Banister. I'll to his creditors, buy all the debts he owes, As seeming that I do it for good will. I am sure to have them at an easy rate, And when tis done, in christendom he stays not, But I'll ...
— Cromwell • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]

... This magic shell, From the white bosom of a syren fell, As once she wandered by the tide that laves Sicilia's sands of gold. It bears Upon its shining side the mystic notes Of those entrancing airs,[1] The genii of the deep were wont to swell, When heaven's eternal orbs their midnight music rolled! Oh! seek it, wheresoe'er it floats; And, if the power Of thrilling numbers to thy soul ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... bound, however, on the occurrence of a war, to change its customary trade, and to cease supplying a belligerent with articles of trade which such belligerent was wont to receive from her, although the goods may afford him the means of carrying on the war. So if a nation has been accustomed to lend money to another for interest, and the latter should become engaged in war with a third power, the neutral would not break her neutrality if she should ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... with Crimean medals, and he was redolent of the odor of Whitehall. He received Hugh Ritson's papers with a curious mixture of easy courtesy and cold dignity—a sort of combination of the different manners in which he was wont to bow to a secretary of state and condemn a convict to the chain ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... the prudence of friends at home forced him back to England before the beginning of the terrible year of '93. With his return closed that first survey of its inheritance, which most serious souls are wont to make in the fervid prime of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... with them. The burden will grow heavier and heavier, till times change in a way disagreeable to us.... I was troubled to perceive the darkness of their imaginations, and, in some pressure of spirits, said the love of ease and gain are the motives, in general, of keeping slaves; and men are wont to take hold of weak arguments to support a ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... not omit the fact that the father of Benjamin was a good singer and a good player of the violin. After the labors of the day were over, and the frugal supper eaten, and the table cleared, and the room put in order for the evening, he was wont to sing and play for the entertainment of his family. He was sure of a good audience every night, if his performance opened before the younger children retired. There is no doubt that this custom exerted a molding influence upon the household, ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer

... trace in this prince, who had been nursed, so to speak, in the lap of war, of that manly and warlike courage which had been so much admired. He no longer rode on horseback; he did not show himself amongst his people, as his predecessors had been wont to do; he was only to be seen shut up with a few favorites in a little painted boat which went up and down the Saone he no longer took his meals without a balustrade, which did not allow him to ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... chirped their mating songs and flirted from morning till night in bough and air, and the jays and ravens fluffed themselves in the sun, and the snowbirds, little black and white beauties that were wont to whisk about like so many flashing gems, became fewer and fewer, until they were gone altogether. The poplar buds swelled more and more in their joy, until they split like over-fat peas, and the ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood

... out the light. Possibly the eyes of the sleeper vaguely perceived the passage of a shadow; possibly Gothon, with her big, awkward figure, made a board in the floor creak. Fougas partially awoke, heard the rustling of a dress, dreamed it one of those adventures which were wont to spice garrison life under the first empire, and held out his arms blindly, calling Clementine. Gothon, on finding herself seized by the hair and shoulders, responded by such a masculine blow that the enemy supposed himself attacked by a man. The blow was returned with interest; further ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... listened, half with fondness and half with scepticism, to Waldershare dilating, according to his wont, on the high character and qualities of Imogene, whom he persisted in believing he was preparing for a great career. "How it will come about I cannot say," he would remark; "but it will come. If my legitimate sovereign were on the throne, and I in the possession of my estates, ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... flat in Whitehall Gardens and thither he repaired to change for dinner. He was half dressed when the evening paper arrived and he glanced as was his wont first at the news' page and then at the advertisement column. He looked down the column marked "Personal" without expecting to find anything of particular interest to himself, but saw that which made him drop the paper and fly round the ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace

... glory of Elizabeth's reign was to be the work of playwrights; yet before she died the genius of Marlowe had blazed and been quenched, Hamlet had appeared on the boards, Jonson's "learned sock" had achieved fame; the men whose names we are wont to associate with the "Mermaid" had most of them already begun their career, even if they had not yet passed the stage of merely adapting, doctoring, and "writing up" for managers the stock-plays in their repertory. The Drama, proving itself the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... sepulchres were anciently affected in cadaverous and corrupted burials; and the rigid Jews were wont to garnish the sepulchres of the righteous. Ulysses, in Hecuba, cared not how meanly he lived, so he might find a noble tomb after death.$ Great princes affected great monuments; and the fair and larger urns contained no vulgar ashes, which makes ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... the big bluff Squire came riding up, as was his wont, to where Mary stood by her garden, and ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... was wont to say; and, as Anne Lisbeth repeated these words inwardly to herself, she suddenly remembered her strange dream, in which the women had clung to her, shrieking, "Hold on—hold on!" how the world had sunk; how her sleeves had given way, and she had fallen from the grasp of her child, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen

... do those who remain upon this earth, whence these others have departed. Do men and women still re-marry in the world, Allan, as in my day they were wont to do?" ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... was wont to exhibit, nightly, a melancholy proof of early infamy. Here might be seen a prolonged succession of juvenile voluptuaries, females, many of them under fourteen years of age, offering themselves to indiscriminate ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... appreciation of wealth which we are wont to call plain living and high thinking, the moral idea of philanthropy, the aesthetic values and hygienic implications of the right kind of simplicity must not be omitted from the educational idea of thrift. ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... of the neighborhood. The sterner sex had owned to heart-burnings in connection with her, for Mildred could flirt and receive any amount of attention without giving her heart in return. She was wont to laugh at love affairs, and had often told Hilda that the prince to whom alone she would give her affections ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... speak; she put her arm round the trembling figure, holding her as she was wont to hold Patty, and with the same protective instinct. The embrace was electric in its effect and set altogether new currents of emotion in circulation. Something in Lois Boynton's perturbed mind seemed to beat its wings against the barriers that had heretofore opposed it, and, freeing ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Jonson was honoured with degrees by both universities, though when and under what circumstances is not known. It has been said that he narrowly escaped the honour of knighthood, which the satirists of the day averred King James was wont to lavish with an indiscriminate hand. Worse men were made knights in his day ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson

... to preach, and when he modestly doubted his ability, Bucer was wont to reply, If thou hast not fine wheat bread, yet give the poor people barley bread, or whatsoever else the Lord hath committed unto thee. Dr. Ridley, that worthy bishop of London, and glorious martyr of Christ, first called him to take the degree ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox

... of Thame was on the spot by the queen's order; and the city guard were under arms to prevent disturbance. Ridley appeared first, walking between the mayor and one of the aldermen. He was dressed in a furred black gown, "such as he was wont to wear being bishop," a furred velvet tippet about his neck, and a velvet cap. He had trimmed his beard, and had washed himself from head to foot; a man evidently nice in his appearance, a gentleman, and liking to be known as such. The way led under the windows of Bocardo, and he looked up; but ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... private gale that blew every evening in our canyon, for ten minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour, had swiftly blown itself out; in the hours that followed, not a sigh of wind had shaken the treetops; and our barrack, for all its breaches, was less fresh that morning than of wont. But I had no sooner reached the window than I forgot all else in the sight that met my eyes, and I made but two bounds into my clothes, and down the crazy plank to ...
— The Sea Fogs • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in de midel, and two ridin behind. De colud folks wuz wulkin, gwine down town to be sold. When I fust seen em comin I got scared an started to run but de white man said, "stop, boy, we is not gwine a hurt you." I staid wid dat boss docta sumpin like a yer, an den wont back to my Ole Boss. I'd a been up thar wid im yet but he kep telin me I wuz free. But I diden no whut he mean by sich talk. Wen my Ole Boss sole out up thar, he brung me wid him on ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... covered field, where champions bold Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair Defied the best of Panim chivalry To mortal combat, or ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... well as of a Christian, to combat obstacles. This same Eliza, of whom I have told you, has really made more impression on my heart than I was aware of, or than the sex, take them as they rise, are wont to do. But she is besieged by a priest—a likely lad though. I know not how it is, but they are commonly successful with the girls, even the gayest of them. This one, too, has the interest of all her friends, as I am told. I called yesterday at General Richman's, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... addressed thus: "Because thou becamest the vessel of the Evil One,[130] deceiving the innocent, cursed art thou above all cattle and above every beast of the field. Thou shalt be robbed of the food thou wast wont to eat, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. Upon thy breast and thy belly shalt thou go, and of thy hands and thy feet thou shalt be deprived. Thou shalt not remain in possession of thy ears, nor ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... Lord of Session, sober in mien as Scotchmen are wont to be, sat at midnight and roared over his claret in the mad orgies of the Hell-fire Club; here the pawky, penetrating lawyer, shrewd both from calling and character, played the reckless game of a correspondence with the stage Court of St. Germains; yonder mettle beauty sailed along on her ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... forests, but I avoided and parried. Thrice he leapt and thrice I did this; yes, even when I saw an opening and might have cut him down. Almost I struck, then could not. The Chancas watched me, wondering what game I played who was not wont to fight in this fashion, and I also wondered, who still knew not what to do. Something I must do, or presently I should be slain, since soon my guard would fail and Deleroy's ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... wont to covet the things that we cannot have; but we are happier when we love the things that grow because they must. A patch of lusty pigweeds, growing and crowding in luxuriant abandon, may be a better and more worthy ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey

... Brevet Major-General United States Army, died September 2, 1874, aged 51 years." Hundreds of citizens, women and children viewed the remains, and hundreds more, owing to the crowd, were unable to look upon the face of the dead, which, although emaciated by disease, bore the soldierly impress it was wont to bear in life. The arrangements at the house were under the ...
— Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 • W. W. Howe

... have. The most genial fellow in the world, he was cursed with too much brains and imagination and a thirst which required quenching around pay-day. Also, he had that beastly habit of command which is inseparable from a born leader; when he held a first mate's berth, he was wont to try to "run the ship" and, on occasions, ladle out suggestions to his skipper. Thus, in time, he had acquired a reputation for being unreliable and a wind-bag, with the result that skippers were ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... well below her father's house. He walked down along the banks of the little stream that ran past it, until he reached a thorn bush that grew within a few yards of the spring. Under this he sat, anxiously hoping that Susan might come to fill her evening pail, as he knew she was wont to do. A thick flowery branch of the hawthorn, for it was the latter end of May, hung down from the trunk, and served as a screen through which he could observe her should she ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... Tindal renders it a troubled heart;[4] but I think there is more in it. I take it, therefore, to be a heart disabled, as to former actions, even as a man whose bones are broken is disabled, as to his way of running, leaping, wrestling, or ought else, which vainly he was wont to do; wherefore, that which was called a broken heart in the text, he calls his broken bones, in verse the eighth: 'Cause me,' saith he, 'to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice' (Psa 51:8). And why is the breaking of the heart compared to the breaking ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... them, and he soon grew to avoid these comrades of his youth. It was therefore after a purely accidental encounter with one of them, and as he was passing into the Campo Sant' Angelo, head down, and supporting himself with an inexplicable sense of infirmity upon the cane he was wont so jauntily to flourish, that he heard himself addressed with, "I say, master!" He looked up, and beheld the fat madman who patrols that campo, and who has the license of his affliction to utter insolences to whomsoever he will, leaning against the door of a tobacconist's shop, ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... they torture themselves with distracting and amazing Fears, that they shall come to want before they dy; Yea, they even say with Jonas, in Chap. 2.4. I am cast out of the sight of God; He wont look after me! But it is the Devil that is the Author of all such Melancholly Suggestions in the minds of men. It is a thought that often raises a Feaver in the Hearts of Married Persons, when Charges grow upon them; God will never be able in the way of my Calling, to feed and cloath all my Little ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather

... cheer lest she should excite suspicion in her parents, and at the end of two days she appears in public. Meanwhile the knight has taken his departure; he fights in the war, conquers the king's enemy, wins many cities, triumphs in many battles, returns to the court, sees his lady where he was wont to see her, and it is agreed that he shall demand her in marriage of her parents as the reward of his services; the king is unwilling to give her, as he knows not who he is, but nevertheless, whether carried off or in whatever other way ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... assume a greyish-yellow tint, showing that the sap which has hitherto nourished their leaves has ceased to flow,—stopped by the burning heat, which has dried-up every particle of moisture from which they are wont to obtain nourishment. At this season even the animals take their departure; here and there the alligator and anaconda alone remain, in a torpid state, buried in the clay of the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... gesture that showed how completely absent her mind was from the room in which she sat. Then her hand fell idle, and she became very still, a crumpled, tragic, hopeless look rounding the shoulders that were wont to hold themselves ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber

... arrival in London the envoys were lodged and hospitably entertained—although not at the City's expense—in Clothworkers' Hall,(1638) and on the 29th June were received in audience by the queen at Greenwich. After much hesitation, as was her wont, she at last consented to take the Netherlands under her protection and to despatch troops to their assistance, but only on condition that the States gave security for expenses to ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... stock—the pervading principle, and the clink of the guinea and the rustling of the bank note stirred their blood as the clank of armed men and the sound of the flapping banner with its three golden hawks flaming in the sun, was wont to set the hearts of the race of Boissey, of Dofferleigh and of de la Molle, beating to that tune to which England marched on to ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... still called him William, but down town he was Bill. He knew everybody in town, and everybody in town knew him. There was a time when he had been on intimate terms with so distinguished a person as Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene. He will tell you to this day how he was wont to dandle her on his knee. Bill was one of those individuals of whom it is said: "He means well." In other words, he was a do-nothing, a ne'er-do-well. He had been comparatively rich once, but he had meant well with his money. One grand splurge, and it was all over. Herculaneum ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath

... of twenty-eight years who drank nothing but water, scorned all enjoyment in eating, and only laughed forcedly under compulsion. At last, disturbed by the continued taciturnity of their host, they rose from the table sooner than their wont, and prepared to take leave. Before their departure, Arbillot the notary, passed his arm familiarly through that of Julien and led him into an adjoining room, which served as ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... pressing her pretty white cap close to her ears; and her lips trembled, as was their wont, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... siege of Potidaea; at Delium in 424; and at Amphipolis in 422. Thus to do the hoplite, carrying a great weight of arms, at forty-seven, he needed to have some constitution; and indeed he had;—furthermore, he played the part with distinguished bravery—though wont to fall at times into inconvenient fits of abstraction. Beyond all this, for the outside of the man, we may say that he was of fascinating, extreme and satyr-like ugliness and enormous sense of humor; that he was a perpetual joke to the comic poets, and to ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... Alexandria by ship, coach, or horse could be sure of a welcome. The old port was noted for her taverns. They were numerous and good. At the taverns the gentlemen of the town were wont to gather for an oyster supper, a turtle feast, or a cockfight. The Masonic brothers sought these places for their banquets, and often for their meetings. Here stagecoaches drew up with bustle and excitement to put out the mail, change the horses, set down and take up the passengers, ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... yielding but still fine form, she had quite as much difficulty as her father in recognizing the young, gay, gallant, brilliant, and handsome Gaetano Grimaldi that her imagination had conceived from the verbal descriptions she had so often heard, and from her fancy was still wont to draw as he was painted in the affectionate descriptions of her father. When he suddenly and affectionately offered a kiss, the color flushed her face, for no man but he to whom she owed her being had ever before taken that liberty; but, after an instant of virgin embarrassment, she laughed, ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... even decent painting in the whole picture; but as connoisseurs have considered it a Claude, as it has been put in our Gallery for a Claude, and as people admire it every day for a Claude, I may at least presume it has those qualities of Claude in it which are wont to excite the public admiration, though it possesses none of those which sometimes give him claim to it; and I have so reasoned, and shall continue to reason upon it, especially with respect to facts of form, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... was, as he said, quite right, for that day Celia Graeme had wandered down towards the edge of the huge line of cliffs in a different direction to that which it was her wont to take. ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn

... in pairs along the circuitous stairway to the entrance, where the thick darkness might be felt. With lighted torches they turned from the sunshine and entered upon the pioneer wagon tracks imbedded in the soil for two miles. Hither the early settlers were wont to convey their salt barrels and other stores for safe ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... Lindon began to stutter and stammer, and to grow red in the face, as is his wont when at all excited. 'W—what do you mean by ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... Maltravers was disturbed from his slumber by De Montaigne, who, arriving, as was often his wont, at an early hour from his villa, had found Ernest's ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... I have much skill in music, and can sing to the guitar as fairly as most of the young men of Venice. What if I were to find my way to the damsel—what if I play and sing beneath her father's palace? I have disguises, and am wont to practice in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various

... still beside the Anio, we drive for about seven miles, until we reach the ancient Varia, now Vico Varo, mentioned by Horace as the small market town to which his five tenant-farmers were wont to repair for agricultural or municipal business. (Ep. I, xiv, 3.) Here, then, we are in the poet's country, and must be guided by the landmarks in his verse. Just beyond Vico Varo the Anio is joined by the Licenza. This is Horace's Digentia, the ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell

... Don Hernan, so our cousin Hilda is about to show you the secrets of her prison tower," he exclaimed, in a facetious tone. "Take care that she does not shut you up, as enchantresses of old were wont to do their captive knights, and never again set you free. However, to prevent such a catastrophe, I'll accompany you. Let me mount first, and show you the way, or you might chance to knock your head against ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... attention for an hour. Many good talkers are unhappy unless they have the privilege of exercising their gifts. Not so he. Sometimes he had almost to be compelled to begin. On such occasions one of his intimates was wont to quote from Boswell: 'Leave him to me, ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent

... of the first princesses of this new era. Manufactories will be the new palaces, and manufacturers the new princes. Instead of the sword, money will rule the world, and men will bow down before manufacturers and merchants as they are wont to do before generals. Therefore I say you are right in refusing Prince Saldem's offer, for I promise you, you shall be a princess, even without the title, and the great and noble shall bow as low before your riches as if they were ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... a flat ledge which overlooks the desert, and which is the observatory whither countless generations of mountain-sheep have been wont to resort to survey the strange world beneath them—with what purpose and what feelings, it remains for some imaginative writer of animal-stories to inform us. From the ledge to the valley below the trail is free from obstructions, and broader, more beaten, and less devious than above, ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller

... a splinter, and had gone to a dressing station. The news from B Battery aroused much more interest. An 8-inch shell had landed right on top of their dug-out mess. No one was inside at the time, but three officers, who were wont to sleep there, had had every article of kit destroyed. One subaltern who, in spite of the PREPARE FOR ATTACK notification, had put on pyjamas, was left with exactly what he stood up in—viz., pyjamas, ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... cheekbones jutting above depressed cheeks that fell to his narrow, pointed chin, his blue eyes crackling far under the brow, high and narrow and shaded with ruffling gray hair, still plenteous. His ordinary aspect was severe, almost saturnine; but he was wont to destroy this effect with his thin-lipped smile that broke winningly over small white teeth and surprisingly hinted an alert young man behind these flickering shadows of age. When he sat he sat gracefully ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... my life!' and out poured one of those torrents of fierce passion which had been slowly but surely the death of his wife. Mary had never heard one in the full tide before, but she stood firm; there were none of the tears, auch as, in her mother, had been wont to exasperate him further, but with pale cheeks, compressed lips, and hands locked together, her heart was one silent entreaty that it might be forgiven him above. Thus she stood while the storm of anger raged, and when at last it had exhausted itself, he said, in a lower ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... harpies, satyrs, bridled geese, horned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts, and other such-like counterfeited pictures at discretion, to excite people unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious caskets were carefully preserved and kept many rich jewels and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergris, amomon, musk, civet, with several kinds of precious stones, and other ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... town. But hearken, lordings, in conclusioun; Your liking is, that I shall tell a tale Now I have drunk a draught of corny ale, By God, I hope I shall you tell a thing That shall by reason be to your liking; For though myself be a full vicious man, A moral tale yet I you telle can, Which I am wont to preache, for to win. Now hold your peace, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... the last fine days of the season—Claude took Christine out with him, leaving little Jacques in the charge of the doorkeeper, a kind old woman, as was their wont when they wanted to go out together. That day the young painter was possessed by a sudden whim to ramble about and revisit in Christine's company the nooks beloved in other days; and behind this desire of his there lurked ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... the spiritual man. He had become irritable, peevish, and ill-natured; he had lost, by degrees, every generous sentiment. As a young man he had been remarkable for his liberality in pecuniary matters. He had been wont to part freely with his money. Inconsistent as it may seem, notwithstanding his heavy losses through his partners, and his fearful expenditure, he was as greedy of gain as though he were stinting himself of every farthing, and secretly hoarding up his chests of gold. He would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... interest herself in her old studies; took up her Italian, and read Dante with her father, who was a good deal more painstaking in his explanations of obscure idioms and irregular verbs for the benefit of Mrs. Granger with a jointure of three thousand per annum, than he had been wont to show himself for the behoof of Miss Lovel without a sixpence. She drew a great deal; but somehow these favourite pursuits had lost something of their charm. They could not fill her life; it seemed blank and empty in ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... hardly as she had once admitted Winton—she had to be very careful. But her great trouble was with her father. Though she longed to see him, she literally dreaded their meeting. He first came—as he had been wont to come when she was a tiny girl—at the hour when he thought the fellow to whom she now belonged would most likely be out. Her heart beat, when she saw him under the trellis. She opened the door herself, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... in Brent's second year at the Bible Seminary that he was compelled to go through the ordeal he so much dreaded, that of filling a city pulpit. The Dexterites had been wont to complain that since the advent among them of the theological school their churches had been turned into recitation-rooms for the raw students; but of "old Tom Brent's boy," as they still called him, they could never make this complaint. So, as humanity loves to grumble, the congregations ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... nature. But what would the waking be? Not all the power of the revived past could shut out the anticipation of the dreadful difference to be disclosed, the moment she should open those sleeping eyes. To what a frightfully farther distance was that soul now removed, whose return I had been wont to watch, as from the depths of the unknown world! That was strange; this was terrible. Instead of the dawn of rosy intelligence I had now to look for the fading of the loveliness as she woke, till her face withered into the bewildered and ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... vastness is left, than I felt while gazing at the illimitable swells of land that stretch away towards France. The country is said to be in the mountains of the Ardennes, and once there was the forest through which the "Boar of Ardennes" was wont to roam; but of forest there is now none; and if there be a mountain, Spa must stand on its boundless summit. High and broken hills do certainly appear, but, as a whole, it is merely an ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... my part I am ... somewhat cotive of belief. The evidences I have represented are natural, viz., slight, and frivolous, such as poor old women were wont to be hang'd upon." The play may be found in all editions of Shadwell's works. I have used the rare privately printed volume in which, under the title of The Poetry of Witchcraft (Brixton Hill, 1853), J. O. Halliwell ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... polishing, such snipping and weeding and trowelling and other small gardening, such making and mending and folding and airing, such diverse arrangements, and above all such severe study! For Mrs J. R., who had never been wont to do too much at home as Miss B. W., was under the constant necessity of referring for advice and support to a sage volume entitled The Complete British Family Housewife, which she would sit consulting, with her elbows on the table and her temples on her hands, like some ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... out like a thief's. I touch, I stroke these dresses, which are wont to touch Marie. I turn again to the blue-veiled bed. On a whatnot there are books, and their titles invite me; for where her thoughts dwell, the things which occupy her mind—but I leave them. I ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... coasts of Judea, beyond Jordan, into the place where John at first baptized, and there He abode, and great multitudes followed Him, and He healed them there, and as He was wont He taught them again" (vide St. Matt. xix. 1; St. John x. ...
— Little Gidding and its inmates in the Time of King Charles I. - with an account of the Harmonies • J. E. Acland

... and protestations concerning his faithful adherence to the doctrine of the Augsburg Confession must be more or less discounted, appears, apart from other considerations, from his own admission that he was wont to dissimulate in these and other matters; from his private letters, in which he favorably refers to the symbolical interpretation of the words of institution; from his communication to Philip ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... Rivehs an I am worited abot his soul because he is a gud boy an neveh was no whars in all his borned days an an i hear now he is gettin bad down thataway on Misipy riveh where thas all Bad Peple an i wisht yud prey fer him so's he wont get bad. Mrs. ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... passion for reasoning: and philosophy, insomuch that the very palace, it is reported, was filled with dust by the concourse of the students in mathematics who were working their problems there. Some few days after, it was the time of one of the Syracusan sacrifices, and when the priest, as he was wont, prayed for the long and safe continuance of the tyranny, Dionysius, it is said, as he stood by, cried out, "Leave off praying for evil upon us." This sensibly vexed Philistus and his party, who conjectured, that if Plato, upon such ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... and all the more if he happens to be rich and distinguished, and eligible for her daughter." He stopped suddenly in his smile, remembering Demorest's lifelong secret. But to his surprise his companion's face, instead of darkening as it was wont to do at any such allusion, brightened suddenly with a singular excitement as he answered dryly, "Ah well, if the girl is pretty, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte

... was my wont, to see Blanche. She was radiant: she was wild with spirits: a saucy triumph blazed in her blue eyes. She talked, she rattled in her childish way. She uttered, in the course of her rhapsody, a hint—an intimation—so terrible that the truth flashed across me in a ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... her arms round her husband's neck and kissed him. Thorward returned the kiss with the vigour of a man who is wont to give back more ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... groping around those rooms day in and day out! What mattered it if she sat by the open window, as she had been wont to do? She could not see her lover strolling under the maple-trees, even though she heard his voice and knew he ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... for our mutual destruction." At the west end of the Acropolis, by which alone it was accessible, stood the Propylaea, its gate as well as its defence. Through this gate the periodical processions of the Panathenaic jubilee were wont to move, and the marks of chariot wheels are still visible on the stone floor of its entrance. It was of the Doric order, and its right wing was supported by six fluted columns, each five feet in diameter, twenty-nine in height, and seven in their intercolumniation. Of the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... summon La Mettrie, who would forthwith prove the irrefutability of materialism in a series of wild paradoxes, shout with laughter, suddenly shudder and cross himself on upsetting the salt, and eventually pursue his majesty with his buffooneries into a place where even royal persons are wont to be left alone. At other times Frederick would amuse himself by first cutting down the pension of Poellnitz, who was at the moment a Lutheran, and then writing long and serious letters to him suggesting ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... mentioned in the Histories, and the various catastrophes he wrought are charitably ascribed to the action of earthquakes, thunderbolts and other admitted forces. He himself, with his lamentable absence of literary style, was wont to declare that while confessedly weak in analogies he was strong in holocausts. In the end he drove the sublime emperor from his capital and into the Outer Lands; with true refinement the annalists ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah

... entered, unannounced (as had been my wont in our familiar intercourse), the quiet sitting-room in which I expected to find mother and child. But Lilian was there alone, seated by the open window, her hands crossed and drooping on her knee, her eye fixed upon the darkening summer skies, in which the evening star had just stolen ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and said thus: Sir Launcelot, I see and feel daily that thy love beginneth to slake, for thou hast no joy to be in my presence, but ever thou art out of this court, and quarrels and matters thou hast nowadays for ladies and gentlewomen more than ever thou wert wont to have aforehand. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... could but imperfectly define the image of the cracked and dusty window pane on the opposite wall. Mother Rigby, meanwhile, with one brown arm akimbo and the other stretched towards the figure, loomed grimly amid the obscurity with such port and expression as when she was wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her victims and stand at the bedside to enjoy their agony. In fear and trembling did this poor scarecrow puff. But its efforts, it must be acknowledged, served an excellent purpose; for, with each ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in his chair, as was his wont, and, as he spoke, allowed the corners of his mouth to take that little satirical downward pull which his friends disliked, "I'll do my duty. I'll give Honore the details as to diet; no physic; but my prescription to you is, Get up and ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... told me not to tell," continued Phinney, "and I shan't tell nobody but you, Sol. I know you wont t mention it. The minister says that Olive's hard up as she can be. All she's got in the world is the little furniture and store stuff in her house. The store stuff don't amount to nothin', but the furniture belonged ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the king of Arcadia, returned sad at heart to her own land. Only as comrades, as those against whose skill in the chase she was wont to pit her own skill, had she looked upon men. But Meleager, the hero who loved her and her fair honour more than life itself, and whose love had made him haste in all his gallant strength and youthful beauty to the land of the Shades, was one to touch her as ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... everything being pretty easy on deck and the ship breasting the gale like a duck, but Mr Fosset's face, I noticed, looked grave and he answered the other in a more serious fashion than his general wont, his mouth working nervously in the pale moonlight that lent him a more pallid air as the words dropped from his lips, making his countenance, indeed, almost like that ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... country, with the comfortable prospect of eating it still in the shape of a pension after their sires are dead. Papa (ex uno disce omnes) living as quietly as he can; not exactly enviably it is true, being now and then seen to cast an uneasy and furtive glance behind, even as an animal is wont, who has lost by some mischance a very sightly appendage; as quietly however as he can, and as dignifiedly, a great admirer of every genteel thing and genteel personage, the Duke in particular, whose "Despatches," bound in red ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... the labour went, Straining to beat the welkin-climbing toil Of the huge rain-clouds, heavy with their floods. Sleep, like enchantress old, soon sided with The crawling clouds, and flung benumbing spells On man and horse. The youth that guided home The ponderous load of sheaves, higher than wont, Daring the slumberous lightning, with a start Awoke, by falling full against the wheel, That circled slow after the sleepy horse. Yet none would yield to soft-suggesting sleep, Or leave the last few shocks; for the wild rain Would catch thereby the skirts of ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... growing dark and a few heavy drops of rain began to fall, but in a minute or two they ceased. Frank, contrary to his usual wont, was silent. There was something undiscovered in Madge, a region which he had not visited and perhaps could not enter. She discerned in an instant what she had done, and in an instant repented. He had taken so much pains with a long piece ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... Stood, as it chanced, in discontent, And eyed with a look that was almost sinister The Revd. Joshua Fall, the minister. And the Squire, it happened, was riding by, With an angry look in his bloodshot eye, Growling, as was his wont, and grunting At the wasted toil of a bad day's hunting; And he stopped his horse on its homeward way To hear what the gipsy had ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... slumbering in front of the tea-table, in the mellow light of a duplex lamp, after her wont. She was standing at the open ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... contrition of my heart, when lo! I heard from a neighboring house a voice, as of boy or girl (I could not tell which), chanting and oft repeating, "Take up and read; take up and read." Instantly my countenance altered, and I began to think most intently whether any were wont in any kind of play to sing such words, nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So, checking the torrent of my tears, I arose; interpreting it to be no other than a command from God, to open the book and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... changed and if he wont he will. That will be enough and anyway all that will not be sent away where there ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... time. Solitude is a dear jewel for men whose days are spent in the tedious this-and-that of trade. Roger was a glutton for his midnight musings. To such tried companions as Robert Burton and George Herbert he was wont to exonerate his spirit. It used to amuse him to think of Burton, the lonely Oxford scholar, writing that vast book to "rectify" his ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley

... shall I meet thee, Summer, wont to fill My heart with gladness, when thy pleasant tide First came, and on the Coomb's romantic side Was heard the distant cuckoo's hollow bill! Fresh flowers shall fringe the margin of the stream, As with the songs of joyance and of hope The hedge-rows shall ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... Kid in lower tones than he was wont to use. Perhaps the strange hush which always precedes the dawn, or perhaps the sorrow that pervaded all hearts on account of Bud's absence had an influence on Kid ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker

... she was about. She was quite alive to the fact that different men require different manners in a young woman; and as she had adapted herself to Mr. Morton at Washington, so could she at Rufford adapt herself to Lord Rufford. At the present moment the lord was in love with her as much as he was wont to be in love. "Doesn't it seem an immense time since we came here yesterday?" she said to him. "There has been ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... merciless exactions of the press-gang Trade did not, however, prove the submissive thing that was wont to stand at its doors and cry: "Will you buy? will you buy?" or to bow prospective customers into its rich emporiums with unctuous rubbing of hands and sauve words. Trade knew its power and determined to use it. "Look you! my Lords Commissioners," cried Trade, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... difficult," thought the king to himself, and departed, resolving to trample the cat's tail to pieces rather than not succeed in walking upon it. He went immediately to the palace of his fair mistress and the cat; the animal came in front of him, arching its back in anger as it was wont to do. The king lifted up his foot, thinking nothing would be so easy as to tread on the tail, but he found himself mistaken. Minon—that was the creature's name—twisted itself round so sharply that the king only hurt his own foot by stamping ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... number of his boon-companions, by name Ishak bin Ibrahim al-Nadim al-Mausili,[FN135] who was the most accomplished of the folk of his time in smiting upon the lute; and of the Commander of the Faithful's love for him, he set apart for him a palace of the choicest of his palaces, wherein he was wont to instruct hand-maidens in the arts of singing and of lute playing. If any slave-girl became, by his instruction, clever in the craft, he carried her before the Caliph, who bade her perform upon the lute; and if she pleased him, he would order her to the Harim; else would he restore her ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton



Words linked to "Wont" :   custom, tradition, wont to



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