One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called "weasel words. "
What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?
At least one indication of unbelief is the tendency to measure life's challenges against our own adequacy instead of God's promises. To enter our Sabbath rest, we must put an end to self-reliance - trusting in our own abilities to overcome difficulties, rise above challenges, escape tragedies, or achieve personal greatness.
The eternal sound of the sea on every side has a tendency to wear away the edge of human thought and perception.
The ultimate tendency of liberalism is vegetarianism.
Whether in conversation we generally agree or disagree with others is largely a matter of habit: the one tendency makes as much sense as the other.
To refuse everything, to say, even when there is something which really should be done, "Ah, that's no longer feminist," is a pessimistic, even masochistic tendency in women, the result of having been habituated to inertia, to pessimism.
When belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in heaven's name to what?
My natural tendency is to complicate everything--and then to spray words and ideas onto everything afterwards. I've had to develop the habit of keeping things simple.
I think I had a tendency to get stuck inside my head and go to some very dark places in my mind, and get stuck there. I couldn't see a way to get out.
The tendency of all strong governments has always been to suppress liberty, partly in order to ease the processes of rule, partly from sheer disbelief in innovation.
We often hear the teachers of all creeds lamenting the difficulty of keeping up in the minds of believers a lively apprehension of the truth which they nominally recognize, so that it may penetrate the feelings, and acquire a real mastery over the conduct. . . . When it has come to be a hereditary creed, and to be received passively, not actively. . . there is a progressive tendency to forget all of the belief except the formularies. . . until it almost ceases to connect itself at all with the inner life of the human being.
People who only listen to preachers have a tendency to put them on a pedestal, but those who live with preachers recognize that they are just common men.
The main challenge that television presents is that I have a tendency to say things with a great deal of precision and accuracy. Often a description of that sort, which will work in a book because people can read it slowly - they can turn the pages back and so on - doesn't really work on TV because it interrupts the flow of the moving image.
As women, we have more of a tendency to be people-pleasers, and I know a lot of women who are not vocal about what makes them happy.