It is true, that if the affection oraptness of the children be extraordinary, then it is good not to cross it; but generally the precept is good, optimum elige, suave et facile illud faciet consuetudo.

I despaired of ever expressing myself with suchaptness or with such fluency.

Now there is no one circumstance in which the distempers of the mind bear a more exact analogy to those which are called bodily, than thataptness which both have to a relapse.

"Jean, if monsieur pleases," replied the newcomer, "Jean Passepartout, a surname which has clung to me because I have a naturalaptness for going out of one business into another.

His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied noaptness in the object.

"I consider one American," said he, "equal to three Canadians in point of sagacity,aptness at resources, self-dependence, and fearlessness of spirit.

Hunt, who first descried them, checked the eagerness of his companions, knowing the unwillingness of these Indians to part with their horses, and theiraptness to hurry them off and conceal them, in case of an alarm.

It was for herself that he loved Tess; her soul, her heart, her substance--not for her skill in the dairy, heraptness as his scholar, and certainly not for her simple formal faith-professions.

She had been jealous of her at college, where she had esteemed herself the better bred of the two; but that opinion had hardly consoled her for Agatha's superior quickness of wit, dexterity of hand, audacity,aptness of resource, capacity for forming or following intricate associations of ideas, and consequent power to dazzle others.

Mr Verloc was not a well-read person; his range of allusive phrases was limited, but there was a peculiaraptness in circumstances which made him think of rats leaving a doomed ship.

The descriptiveaptness of the phrase caught the house, and a mighty burst of laughter followed.

I marvelled at itsaptness, and also that it should have come to me so pat.