"Capricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the national hands, and garrisoned by the spirit of the empire. It still stood, but it stood dismantled; there were evident breaches in its walls, and the fugitives of Opposition, rallying with the hope of success, advanced again to the storm, headed by their great leader, and sustained by the capricious and fluctuating multitude. The premier was harassed by the incessant toil of defence—a toil in which he had scarcely a sharer, and which exposed him to the most remorseless hostility. Yet, if the historian ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... halls were thronged with princes and nobles, and even monarchs frequented its fetes and partook of its festivities. The industrious inhabitants even now spare no pains to render the abode pleasant, but the capricious taste of the age lures the traveller to other springs, where still pleasanter haunts invite their presence. Germany abounds with watering-places, which are usually rendered agreeable by a judicious disposition of walks, and by other similar temptations. In nothing ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Marten was one of the noble assertors of English liberty who dared to oppose a weak, but cruel and capricious tyrant. If ever a monarch was a tyrant and despot, it was the first Charles. No American citizen who thinks that Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington were praiseworthy for the resistance which they offered to the aggressions of ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... previous drops have made. It is like a little puzzle game where you manoeuvre a weighted capsule among pegs toward a narrow opening. "Pigs in clover," they sometimes call it, but who knows why? The conduct of raindrops on a smoking-car window is capricious and odd, but we must pass on. That topic alone would serve for several hundred words, but ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... longer take Clara upon his knee and stroke her brown hair and joke with her about her fits of good and ill humour. Sidney knew well enough what was in his friend's mind, and, though with no sense of constraint, he felt that this handsome, keen-eyed, capricious girl was destined to be his wife. He liked Clara; she always attracted him and interested him; but her faults were too obvious to escape any eye, and the older she grew, the more was he impressed and troubled by them. The thought ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... embroidered with flora, fauna, and grotesques. She always thus visited her husband at breakfast, picking bits off his plate like a bird, and proving to him that her chief preoccupation was ever his well-being and the satisfaction of his capricious tastes. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... inestimable service to man for his progressive advancement, such as the powers of the imagination, wonder, curiosity, an undefined sense of beauty, a tendency to imitation, and the love of excitement or novelty, could hardly fail to lead to capricious changes of customs and fashions. I have alluded to this point, because a recent writer (73. 'The Spectator,' Dec. 4th, 1869, p. 1430.) has oddly fixed on Caprice "as one of the most remarkable and typical differences between savages ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... much appreciated, and these, too, are very plaintive with frequent scales in them and certain notes held long at the end of each bar where the chorus join in. These sustained notes have modulations in them with infinitesimal fractions of tones. Ululations with long, nasal, interminable notes and capricious variations at the fancy of the singer, but based on some popular theme are also ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... carried within them when they are laid; and for this reason, also, it presents the very singular peculiarity of being inherited only on the mother's side. There is not a single one of all the apparently capricious and unaccountable phenomena presented by the Pebrine, but has received its explanation from the fact that the disease is the result of the presence of the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... serve very well to promote the Purposes of European & Asiatick grandeur, in Countries where the Mystery of Iniquity is carried to the highest Pitch, & Millions are tame enough to believe that they are born for no other Purpose than to be subservient to the capricious Will of a single Great Man or a few! It requires Council & sound Judgment to render our Country secure in a flourishing Condition.—If Men of Wisdom & Knowledge, of Moderation & Temperance, of Patience Fortitude & Perseverance, ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... and capricious creature, is, oftentimes so easily offended that if the maid rise from her before the milk is all withdrawn, the chances are that she will not again stand quietly at that milking; or, if the vessel used ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... suppose. Nor had the temporary withdrawal to America been favourable to an immediate resumption by his readers of their old and intimate relations. This also is to be added, that the excitement by which a popular reputation is kept up to the highest selling mark, will always be subject to lulls too capricious for explanation. But whatever the causes, here was the undeniable fact of a grave depreciation of sale in his writings, unaccompanied by any falling off either in themselves or in the writer's reputation. It was very ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... sunrise and sunset, and has for his heritage the high brave temper of the warrior, with the melancholy of the poet. The dweller on tawny sands, where the waves beat lazily on summer afternoons and where wild winds howl in storm, is of like necessity capricious and melancholy. The minor key, in which Poe thought all true poetry is written, is struck in these his earlier novels. Let the day be ever so beautiful, the air ever so clear, the shadows give back a sensitive, luminous darkness that reveals ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... where his own law was administered in his own language. Even a Mohammedan in dispute with a Christian would sometimes consent to bring the matter before the Bishops' Court rather than enforce his right to obtain the dilatory and capricious decision ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye. Then, ... there are individual hepaticas, or individual families among them, that are sweet scented. The gift seems as capricious as the gift of genius in families. You cannot tell which the fragrant ones are till you try them. Sometimes it is the large white ones, sometimes the large purple ones, sometimes the small pink ones. The odor is faint, and recalls that of the sweet violets. A correspondent, who seems to have carefully ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... near relative of Pericles, who, after the death of Cleinias at the battle of Coroneia (447), became his guardian. Thus early deprived of his father's control, possessed of great personal beauty and the heir to great wealth, which was increased by his marriage, he showed himself self-willed, capricious and passionate, and indulged in the wildest freaks and most insolent behaviour. Nor did the instructors of his early manhood supply the corrective which his boyhood lacked. From Protagoras, Prodicus and others he learnt to laugh ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... limited to particular provinces. But when we look into the facts established by the study of the geographical distribution of animals and plants it seems utterly hopeless to attempt to understand the strange and apparently capricious relations which they exhibit. One would be inclined to suppose a priori that every country must be naturally peopled by those animals that are fittest to live and thrive in it. And yet how, on this hypothesis, are we to account for ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... interpretation. Papias judged rightly that any doctrinal statement of Andrew or Peter or John, or any anecdote of the Saviour which could be traced distinctly to their authority, would be far more valuable to elucidate his text than the capricious interpretations which he found in current books. If his critical judgment had corresponded to his intention, the work ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... the sun's rays had struck it obliquely, the shadow thrown would have brought out the high mountains, which would have been clearly detached. The eye might have gazed into the crater's gaping abysses, and followed the capricious fissures which wound through the immense plains. But all relief was as yet leveled in intense brilliancy. They could scarcely distinguish those large spots which give the moon the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... left the ground soft in places, so that in creek valleys stretches of corduroy sometimes had to be laid down. The high waters made even the lesser fords difficult and dangerous, and all knew that between them and the Platte ran several strong and capricious rivers, making in general to the southeast and necessarily transected by the great ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... have a capricious and variable appetite as regards their ordinary feed but evince a strong desire to lick and eat substances for which healthy cattle show no inclination. Alkaline and saline-tasting substances are especially attractive to cattle having a depraved ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... lived. It was their dinner-hour, and Rebecca was in the kitchen. He was thus able to take his mother quietly into the parlor, and then prepare his wife for the interview. She had fortunately drunk but little at that early hour, and she was less sullen and capricious ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... hero being a dauntless warrior seeking vengeance or a noble youth seeking happiness, he is a Christian saint in quest of peace; and instead of the perils of the way being overcome by physical force or the favor of some capricious pagan deity, they are averted by the ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... that one, thus gloriously free from the ordinary restraining influences of human society, should have found in his own character so little mental ballast. His moods were capricious and uncertain, his passions violent, his impulses sudden and inconsistent. The mortal enemy of the morning had become a trusted ally before the night. The friend he loved to-day he loathed to-morrow. Scheme after scheme formed ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... knew women well; knew how rare are the good ones; knew the prize he had won, and valued it—yes, he was sure he always valued it as it deserved. What was the use? Had she not far better have been like the others—petulant, wilful, capricious, covetous of admiration, careless of affection, weak-headed, shallow-hearted, and desirous only of that which could not possibly be her own? Such were most of the women amongst whom he had been thrown in his youth; ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... Their existence depended on war They chose to compel no man's conscience Torturing, hanging, embowelling of men, women, and children Universal suffrage was not dreamed of at that day Waiting the pleasure of a capricious and despotic woman Who the ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... whole day, quiet, kind, and attentive—at once a little matron and a tender, bashful girl. The three who had known her longest expected every moment to see some whimsical vagary of her capricious spirit burst forth. But they waited in vain for it. Undine remained as mild and gentle as an angel. The holy father could not take his eyes from her, and he said repeatedly to the bridegroom: "The goodness of heaven, sir, has intrusted a treasure to you yesterday through me, unworthy as I ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... a veil, torn asunder here and there by dazzling phrases which stood out from the darkness with the clarity of sculpture. It was only a flash: sometimes others would come in quick succession: each lit up other corners of the night. But usually, the capricious force haying once shown itself unexpectedly, would disappear again for several days into its mysterious retreats, leaving ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Red King was not only grievous, it was arbitrary, capricious, cruel, and without semblance of law. The austerity of the Conqueror had been conspicuous; equally conspicuous was the debauchery of his son. The Conqueror had been faithful and conscientious in seeing that vacancies in the Church were filled ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... sense of duty, not of pleasure. Virgil and Horace he learned to construe accurately; but is said to have taken no deep interest in their poetry. The tenderness and meek beauty of the first, the humour and sagacity and capricious pathos of the last, the matchless elegance of both, would of course escape his inexperienced perception; while the matter of their writings must have appeared frigid and shallow to a mind so susceptible. He loved rather to meditate on the splendour ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... first degree of happiness would be to be Mlle. Gunegonde, and the second to contemplate her throughout life. Mlle. Moiseney believed that it would be the first degree of superhuman felicity to be Mlle. Moriaz, the second to pass one's life near this queen, who, arbitrary and capricious though she might be, was most thoughtful of the happiness of her subjects, and to be able to say: "It was I that hatched the egg whence arose this phoenix; I did something for this marvel; I taught her English and music." She had boundless admiration for her queen, amounting actually to idolatry. ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... place were scattered modeling stands, water tanks mounted upon rude tripods, casts, and the usual lumber of a sculptor's studio; while upon the walls were stuck pictures, sketches, and reproductions in all sorts of capricious groupings. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... converse—you have to answer everything the other insufficient person says. Not life, for it is wrong to kill one's self; and as for the natural end of living, that does not come by one's choice; on the contrary, it is the most capricious ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Lord, Your Excellency, Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your Honourable Worship—from the present minute until the Grand Race-Week is finished, at all hours of the morning, evening, day, and night, shall the town reverberate, at capricious intervals, to the brays of this ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... dwellings began to dot the country: brown cottages, with clinging vines; villas, arial and cloud-tinted, with pointed roofs and capricious windows; huts, in which some poor wretch from his bed of straw looked out upon the wasteful luxury of his neighbor, and, loathing his bitter crust and turbid water, saw feasts spread in the open air, where tropic fruits and beaded wine mocked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... left the tribe of great anthropoids in which he had been raised, it was torn by continual strife and discord. Terkoz proved a cruel and capricious king, so that, one by one, many of the older and weaker apes, upon whom he was particularly prone to vent his brutish nature, took their families and sought the quiet and safety ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... venerable sires. Cadenus is a subject fit, Grown old in politics and wit, Caress'd by ministers of state, Of half mankind the dread and hate. Whate'er vexations love attend, She needs no rivals apprehend. Her sex, with universal voice, Must laugh at her capricious choice. Cadenus many things had writ: Vanessa much esteem'd his wit, And call'd for his poetic works: Meantime the boy in secret lurks; And, while the book was in her hand, The urchin from his private stand Took aim, and shot with all his strength ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... surgeons in the hospitals do not work harmoniously with Miss Dix. They are jealous of her power, impatient of her authority, find fault with her nurses, and accuse her of being arbitrary, opinionated, severe and capricious. Many to rid themselves of her entirely, have obtained permission of Surgeon-General Hammond to employ Sisters of Charity in their hospitals, a proceeding not to Miss Dix's liking. Knowing by observation that many of the surgeons are wholly unfit for their office, that too often ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... should fear him, when he could not speak their language. He wanted to see the city-what sort of people were in it-if they bore any analogy to their good old forefathers in France; and whether they had inherited the same capricious feelings as the descendants of the same generation on the other side of the water. There could be no harm in that; and although he knew something of French socialism, he was ignorant of Carolina's peculiar institutions, ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... son of the Organist Ignaz Laemml, introduces himself to Dal Segno, the celebrated Italian singing-master as the Bohemian singer Howora. He obtains lessons from the capricious old man, who however fails to recognize in him the long-absent son of his old enemy. Cornelia, Dal Segno's daughter however is not so slow in recognizing the friend of her childhood, who loves her and has all her love, as we presently learn. Franz has only taken ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... between Oxford and Cambridge. Both are situated on slightly rising ground, with broad green meadows and a flat, fenny country stretching around them. The winding and muddy Cam, holding the city in its arm, might be easily taken for the fond but still more capricious Isis, tho both of them are insignificant streams; and Jesus' College Green and Midsummer Common at Cambridge, correspond to Christ Church Meadows and those bordering the Cherwell at Oxford. At a little distance, the profile of Cambridge is almost precisely like that of Oxford, while glorious ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... production as a whole we are not, of course, concerned. He lies indeed somewhat off our track; the pastoral influence in his work is capricious. It will be sufficient to note that the influence, where it exists, is external; it is nowhere the outcome of Christian allegory, nor does it arise out of the nature of the subject as such titles as the Pastores ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... is named for it, you know. But of course this gay gink of a Sandy had to come buttin' in. Too bad the Honorable Bertie had partook so free. He'd have looked the part all right when it come to rescuin' beauty in distress. But Fortune bein' a lady and naturally capricious, she hands the stunt over to ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... That did beset her in her path serene, Veiling her beauty with their envious shrouds, Hiding her glorious, most majestic mien. There was a depth of silence in the night— A mist of melancholy in the air— And the capricious beams of Dian's light Gave something mystic to the scene most fair. I gave my cousin Dante's divine "Inferno," Imploring her to read il primo canto. "Lo giorno s'andava," she drawled; but, tired of plodding, Directly fell asleep, and pretty soon—was nodding!! "Cousin, sweet ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... attention was bestowed upon the form of the stonework, which was made lighter and richly moulded (bar-tracery), rather than upon that of the openings (Fig. 111). Then the circular and geometric patterns employed were abandoned for more flowing and capricious designs (Flamboyant tracery, Fig. 112) or (in England) for more rigid and rectangular arrangements (Perpendicular, Fig. 134). It will be shown later that the periods and styles of Gothic architecture are more easily identified by the tracery ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... or the papyrus that they wrapped round mummies. Personally, Beatrix is one of those blondes beside whom Eve the fair would seem a Negress. She is slender and straight and white as a church taper; her face is long and pointed; the skin is capricious, to-day like cambric, to-morrow darkened with little speckles beneath its surface, as if her blood had left a deposit of dust there during the night. Her forehead is magnificent, though rather daring. The pupils of her eyes are ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... separation of her own from the political power, she sought, in turn, to subordinate the latter; and secular rulers were obliged to resist her encroachments to save themselves. The kings had no fixed revenue adequate to government, and were the sport of the capricious elements within their own realms. But the Crusades brought all these fragments into closer relations, and broke the power of the feudal lords. The king gained what the barons lost; and with these ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of Approaching the Study of Freight Charges.—In studying freight charges we may, if we choose, start with the intricate tariffs of railroads, as they now stand, and try to find some principle which, if applied, would bring order out of the mass of capricious and inconsistent rates. Such a rule will ultimately be needed, but it can best be obtained by examining at the outset the transportation which is done by simple means and under active competition. It will be found (1) that basic principles apply to all transportation ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... increase his splendor but rather diminished his power. Being of this mind he used to become angry at those who did him honor if in any case it seemed that they had voted him less than he deserved. So capricious was he that no one could easily ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... came home to Castlewood for his last vacation he found his old pupil shot up into this capricious beauty; her brother, a handsome, high-spirited, brave lad, generous and frank and kind to everybody, save perhaps Beatrix, with whom he was perpetually at war, and not from his, but her, fault; adoring his mother, whose joy he was. And Lady Castlewood was no whit less gracious ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Fiddy was a sick, capricious, caressed darling in a cambric cap and silk shawl, on whom fond friends were waiting lovingly: whom nobody in the world, not even the doctor, the parish clerk, or the housekeeper at Larks' Hall, ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... should have done had it not been for your generous welcome. I lost all in Scotland, and it would now be impossible for me to go to France. An attempt on my part to escape would result in my arrest. Fortune certainly has turned her capricious back upon me, with the one exception that she ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... which remains the same as it was under primitive forest conditions, much more complex trains of behavior are required than are provided by man's native equipment. To satisfy the hunger of the contemporary citizens of New York or London requires the transformation of capricious instinctive responses into systematic and controlled processes of habit and thought. The elaborate systems of agriculture, transportation, and exchange which are necessary in the satisfaction of the simplest wants of men in ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... down. Their hours for slaughter are six to six, and they seldom overstep them. They knock off for meals—unfashionably early, it is true, but it would be petty to complain. Like good employers, they seldom expose our lives to danger for more than eight hours a day. They are a little capricious, perhaps, in the use of the white flag. At the beginning of the siege our "Lady Anne" killed or wounded some of "Long Tom's" gunners and damaged the gun. Whereupon the Boers hoisted the white flag over him till the place was cleared and he was put to rights again. Then they drew it down and ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... the capricious gentleman what we intended to do, and pacified him by promising that he should have his share in ready money before night, if he desired it; and I will do Mike the justice of saying that he did, most emphatically, and other men would have acted in ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... soon enough endeavoured to get the mastery of those headstrong passions which ran away with his understanding. And when he had once taken upon him the charge of rector, he began to govern by the dictates of his own capricious humour, even before the face of Xavier, ere he departed from the Indies for Japan; and the Father, who easily perceived that the government of Gomez was not in the least conformable to the spirit of their Institute, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... few were philosophical or gifted with intellectual courage. Yet he had, what was possessed by his contemporaries, a faint and intermittent thirst for knowledge, of which he himself hardly knew the meaning." Henry was shrewd, tenacious of purpose, capricious and versatile. In spite of his unrestrained indulgences and his monstrous claims of power, which, be it remembered, he was able to enforce, and notwithstanding any other vices or faults that may be truthfully ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... capricious and meandering course of these studies, perhaps you will remember Mistigris, Schinner's pupil, one of the heroes of "A Start in Life" (Scenes from Private Life), and his brief apparitions in other Scenes. ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... making the aunt, an essentially just woman, blame herself for hasty judgment, had drawn her and her elder niece closer together than had yet been the case. And no doubt there was a substratum of resemblance in their natures, deeper and more real than the curious capricious likeness which had struck Marmaduke so oddly—which was indeed perhaps but a casual coming to the surface of a ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... more than justice if I say that to this, my first friendship, I was faithful and devoted. Leo, for his part, was always affectionate, and he had an admiration for Rubens which went a long way with Rubens' master. But he was a little spoiled and capricious, and, like many people of rather small capacities (whether young or old), he was often unintentionally inconsiderate. In those days my affection waited willingly upon his; but I know now that in a quiet amiable way he was selfish. I was blessed ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... sitting on the terrace above the river in the golden light of an afternoon that was fair and warm as May, though by the calendar 'twas March. The capricious climate had changed from austere winter to smiling spring. Skylarks were singing over the fields at Hampstead, and over the plague-pits at Islington, and all London was rejoicing in blue skies and sunshine. Trade was awakening from a death-like sleep. The theatres were closed; but ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... sterility of the land, may be ranked among the causes which conduced to the greatness of the people. The principal mountains of Attica are, the Cape of Sunium, Hymettus, renowned for its honey, and Pentelicus for its marble; the principal streams which water the valleys are the capricious and uncertain rivulets of Cephisus and Ilissus [3],—streams breaking into lesser brooks, deliciously pure and clear. The air is serene—the climate healthful —the seasons temperate. Along the hills ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... smuggler Macquart, whom she loved with a wolfish love, and whom she did not even marry. She had lived thus for fifteen years, with her three children, one the child of her marriage, the other two illegitimate, a capricious and tumultuous existence, disappearing for weeks at a time, and returning all bruised, her arms black and blue. Then Macquart had been killed, shot down like a dog by a gendarme; and the first shock had paralyzed her, so that even then she retained nothing ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... failures. There are perfect and imperfect, complete and deficient expressions. The terms already cited, then, sometimes indicate the successful expression, sometimes the various forms of the failures. But they are employed in the most inconstant and capricious manner, for it often happens that the same word serves, now to proclaim the perfect, now to ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... pretty princess for her own sweet sake alone, to say nothing of the prospect of being king some day, but she wouldn't have one of them. There was not a man in the kingdom nor in any of the surrounding kingdoms who suited her capricious fancy. Princes of haughty mien, princes of gentle manner, handsome princes, ugly princes, tall princes, short princes, fat princes, lean princes, had been introduced at the court, had been encouraged by the king and queen, and had sought to gain her favor. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... delicately lovely that one could not but be glad of the cold that made the water able to please itself by taking such graceful forms. And I wondered over again for the hundredth time what could be the principle which, in the wildest, most lawless, fantastically chaotic, apparently capricious work of nature, always kept it beautiful. The beauty of holiness must be at the heart of it somehow, I thought. Because our God is so free from stain, so loving, so unselfish, so good, so altogether what He wants us to be, so holy, therefore all His works declare Him in beauty; ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... her back to it. He said he was a selfish brute to want to keep her to himself. That speech amused Mrs. Gibson immensely. She had a curious and capricious sense of humor. It made her very adaptable and tided them both over a sharp season ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... favouritism, all foolish and capricious partiality for particular bird or beast; but dear, old, sacred associations, will tell upon all one thinks or feels towards any place or person in this world of ours, near or remote. God forbid we should criticise the Cushat! We desire to speak of him as tenderly as of a ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... surrounded and interpenetrated by another intangible and mysterious world, no more bound by fixed rules than, as they fancied, were the thoughts and passions which coursed through their minds and seemed to exercise an intermittent and capricious rule over their bodies. They attributed to the entities, with which they peopled this dim and dreadful region, an unlimited amount of that power of modifying the course of events of which they themselves possessed ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... to Handel as our greatest English Composer, he refused to take it back even when a capricious ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... thing." Sylvie made a capricious little moue. Her nods and gestures were so much a part of her, so piquant, decisive, and full of expression, when she did not intrench herself behind a ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... once used the word prospecting, which, we believe, is peculiar to this kind of mining. The deposits of gold are so capricious, that the adventurers, in order to lose as little time as possible in removing from place to place, detach one of their number on the hunt for a mine—and this is called prospecting. He sets out with a few provisions, a rifle, a pick and shovel, at all events, with a pan and large knife; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... send our stuff not to one but to several landings, to run the show with a mixed staff of Naval and Military Officers. No, give me deserts or precipices,—anything fixed and solid is better than this capricious, ever-changing sea. The problem is a real puzzler, demanding experience, energy, good temper as well as the power of entering into the point of view of sailors as well as soldiers, and of being (mentally) in at least three places ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... express an opinion on the subject are, at present, agreed that the manifold varieties of animal and vegetable form have not either come into existence by chance, nor result from capricious exertions of creative power; but that they have taken place in a definite order, the statement of which order is what men of science term a natural law. Whether such a law is to be regarded as ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... descended with this into the hold of the ship, and returned without it. Glancing once more nervously about him, he jumped from the deck to the pier—thence to the shore—and as he did so a long dark wave rolled up and broke at his feet. The capricious wind had suddenly arisen,—and a moaning whisper coming from the adjacent hills gave ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... shall tell Boges to keep you twelve days in confinement. Remember this, thoughtless child, and tell our mother, Bartja and I are coming to visit her. Now give me a kiss. You will not? We shall see, capricious little one!" And so saying the king sprang towards his refractory little sister, and seizing both her hands in one of his own, bent back her charming head with the other and kissed her in spite of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... were, and what they felt and thought than by what names they were baptised. The mass of their literature, as it is at present known to us, divides into two broad classes. The one division includes poems on the themes of vagabond existence, the truant life of these capricious students; on spring-time and its rural pleasure; on love in many phases and for divers kinds of women; lastly, on wine and on the dice-box. The other division is devoted to graver topics; to satires ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... to a great size, 20 lb being not unknown; tench are big at 5 lb; barbel have been caught up to 14 lb or rather more; and bream occasionally reach 8 lb, while a fish of over 11 lb is on record. All these fish are capricious feeders, carp and barbel being particularly undependable. In some waters it seems to be impossible to catch the large specimens, and the angler who seeks to gain trophies in either branch of the sport needs both ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... may, influences you more strongly than all the sentiments which are manifested to you." Corinne smiled; "You believe then, my dear Prince," said she, "that my heart is ungrateful, and my imagination capricious. Methinks however that Lord Nelville possesses and displays qualities sufficiently remarkable to render it impossible that I can flatter myself with having discovered them." "He is, I agree," answered Prince Castel-Forte, "proud, generous and intelligent; with much sensibility ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... do that," said Satiety, "but Misfortune, and he is a very capricious person. Though he is a very disagreeable monster, some people seem to court him, but cannot get him to come near them; while to a great many he comes unawares, and catches them, though they fly from ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... feet. "Beautiful being," he cried, "if thou wilt but deign to accept all the devotion of my heart and soul— after Hastur be served—it is thine forever. But, alas! thou art capricious and wayward. Before to-morrow's sun I may lose thee again. Promise, I beseech thee, that however in my ignorance I may offend, thou wilt forgive and ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... on the capricious thing at last,—whether the Inevitability behind him, or the folly exhausting itself, nobody knows; but the "beautiful disdain" left his black back and tossing mane in a moment, and he buckled down to his work with an energy worthy of the cause, and with a good-will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... worship of a secluded and distant object of loyalty: the men who thus flattered knew perfectly well, often by painful experience, what Elizabeth was: able, indeed, high-spirited, successful, but ungrateful to her servants, capricious, vain, ill-tempered, unjust, and in her old age, ugly. And yet the Gloriana of the Faery Queen, the Empress of all nobleness,—Belphoebe, the Princess of all sweetness and beauty,—Britomart, the armed votaress of all purity,—Mercilla, the lady of all compassion ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... printed at Leyden, in the year 1731 Gravina de Imperio Romano, p. 479—544 of his Opuscula. Maffei, Verona Illustrata, p. i. p. 245, &c.] The face of the court corresponded with the forms of the administration. The emperors, if we except those tyrants whose capricious folly violated every law of nature and decency, disdained that pomp and ceremony which might offend their countrymen, but could add nothing to their real power. In all the offices of life, they affected to confound themselves with their subjects, and maintained ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... to make a living at home. The motif of the tale is the unconscious competition of the two friends, of whom Andy is very willing to play "second fiddle," did not character and brains force him to the front. The young squire of Halton is too selfish and capricious to succeed, and in spite of his loyalty to friendship, Andy finds himself driven to take his place both in love and in politics. A host of characters cross the stage, and the scene flits between Meriton and London. The book is so light in touch, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... amused, and wholly coquettish—the smile that maddened and yet entranced him—she brought the mask of reserve to his face and man. At such times he never succeeded in remembering that she was but little more than a child, heart-free, capricious, and wilful. Despairing of changing her mood to the serious one that he loved yet so seldom evoked, he arose and ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... capricious, like all mistresses, but the kindest lady in the world, and generous! Besides, this is a rich house; nothing is counted—nothing at all. This is better than your village," continued Dacka, proud of belonging ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... position, especially as you now seem to have entirely given up your former mode of life. Do you not every day become more convinced of the truth of the little lectures I used to inflict on you? Are not the pleasures of a transient, capricious passion widely different from the happiness produced by rational and true love? I feel sure that you often in your heart thank me for my admonitions. I shall feel quite proud if you do. But, jesting ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... application to historical subjects. In Alfieri's Brutus the First, a far greater stretch of imagination is required from the spectator in order to preserve the unities of time and place than the most capricious changes of scene would have asked. The scene is always in the forum in Rome; the action occurs within twenty-four hours. During this limited time, we see the body of Lucretia borne along in the distance; Brutus harangues the people with ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... house of the Fleming for those diversions with which King Louis XI. diverted himself. History has taken care to transmit to our knowledge the licentious tastes of a monarch who was not averse to debauchery. The old Fleming found, no doubt, both pleasure and profit in lending himself to the capricious pleasures ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... of the world as well as a man of talent, thought she was capricious, and since he was infinitely removed from falling in love with her, or indeed with any other woman, he found it agreeable to talk to her when she was in a good humor, and when she was ungracious he merely kept out of her way. If he ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... business, economy, order, and justice, and wishes sincerely the good of his people; but he is irascible, rude, very limited in his understanding, and religious, bordering on bigotry. He has no mistress, loves his queen, and is too much governed by her. She is capricious like her brother, and governed by him; devoted to pleasure and expense; and not remarkable for any other vices or virtues. Unhappily the King shows a propensity for the pleasures of the table. That for drink has increased lately, or, at least, it ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... what is accomplished, and not lightly over that; for there ever remains ground for serious and anxious thought. Fortune is capricious; the common, the worthless, she oft-times ennobles, while she dishonours with a contemptible issue the most maturely considered schemes. Await the arrival of the princes, then order Gomez to occupy the streets, and hasten ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... to suppose that the cause of defective apprehension is in ourselves, the mystery has been too commonly explained by the very easy process of setting it down as in fact inexplicable, and by resolving the phenomenon into a misgrowth or lusus of the capricious and irregular genius of Shakespeare. The shallow and stupid arrogance of these vulgar and indolent decisions I would fain do my best to expose. I believe the character of Hamlet may be traced to Shakespeare's deep and accurate science in mental philosophy. Indeed, that this ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... general ideas seem to excite one, but the particular forms under which they are presented lose their effect and have to be varied. The sentence mentioned in Tolstoi leaves me now quite cold, but if I came across the same idea elsewhere, expressed differently, then it would excite me. I am very capricious in the small things, and I think women are so more than men. The idea of slipping down a plank formerly produced excitement with me; now it has a less vivid effect, though the idea of loss of breath ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... will is law, which is all right to a certain extent. The teacher must be the judge between right and wrong; but he must be gentle and kind, and raise no false issues between his pupil and himself. Mr. Hamblin is not gentle and kind. He is capricious, ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... force of nature, blind in its strength and capricious in its power, they would not be mistrusted. As it is one can't help it. You will say that this force having been in the person of Flora de Barral captured by Anthony ... Why yes. He had dealt with her masterfully. But man has ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... splendid in it: she, herself, was a noble animal; and she seemed entirely in place where she was. The lions were fond of her, and she of them; but the first part of her performance had shown that they could be capricious. A lion's love is but a lion's love after all—and hers likewise, no doubt! The three seemed as one in their beauty, the woman superbly superior. Meyerbeer, in a far corner, was still on the trail of his sensation. He thought that he might get an article out of it—with the help of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... conscience, ordained by Christ [Himself] in the Gospel, Confession or Absolution ought by no means to be abolished in the Church, especially on account of [tender and] timid consciences and on account of the untrained [and capricious] young people, in order that they may be examined, and ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... had? Has it not scattered doubts that lay like mountains of ice upon man's heart? Has it not swept the heavens clear of clouds that wrapped it in darkness? Has it not delivered men from the dreams of gods angry, gods capricious, gods vengeful, gods indifferent, gods simply mighty and vast and awful and unspeakable? Has it not taught us that love is God, and God is love; and so brought to the whole world the true Gospel, the Gospel of the grace of God? In that Cross ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... opposite. Neither the sovereign nor the minister, indeed, was of a temper to pursue any object with undeviating constancy. Each occasionally yielded to the importunity of the other; and their jarring inclinations and mutual concessions gave to the whole administration a strangely capricious character. Charles sometimes, from levity and indolence, suffered Danby to take steps which Lewis resented as mortal injuries. Danby, on the other hand, rather than relinquish his great place, sometimes stooped to compliances which caused him bitter pain and shame. The King was brought to consent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... shaping Beethoven's ideals. These masters gave an example of solidity and earnestness which is characteristic of their work. Haydn and Mozart, on the other hand, appealed to him in his lighter moods, in the play of fancy, in the capricious and humorous conceits of which he has given such fine examples ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... of a seemingly capricious intermixture of dual and triple rhythm, and is especially noticeable in Spanish and Portuguese music as well as in that of their South American descendants. This distinction, however, may be traced directly ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... arranging, comparing, and studying out the meaning of all the different records of observations made at all the weather stations, cannot be explained in a short article. But I may add that the weather is, after all, not quite so capricious as its accusers have asserted. And it has been found that all storms have certain "habits, movements, and tracks." It is by applying these laws, and drawing conclusions from them, that the prophet of the weather is able to tell ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... menaces into execution by going to the magistrate, without any further deliberation, and giving an account of what she knew concerning this mysterious affair, with certain insinuations against Hornbeck's character, which she represented as peevish and capricious ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the farmer's hand-to-hand grapple with a capricious and at times frustrating Nature. This emphasis is deserved, for the farmer is out upon the frontier of human control of natural forces. Even modern science, great as is its service, cannot protect him from the unexpected and the disappointing. Insects ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... busy one: Georgie in particular never had a moment to himself. The Hurst, so lately a desert, suddenly began to rejoice with joy and singing and broke out into all manner of edifying gaieties. Lucia, capricious queen, quite forgot all the vitriolic things she had said to him, and gave him to understand that he was just as high in favour as ever before, and he was as busy with his duties as ever he had been. Whether he would have fallen into his old place so readily if he had been a free agent, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... often called "a capricious faculty," subject to some law? The question thus asked is too simple, and we must ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... that time, a great favorite in the house. All the old people cared for me especially, and I was kept often in the parlor, and, when I was cold, the children were allowed to sit upon me, but never to abuse me. But this is a capricious, changing, cheating, vain world, and foot stoves are not thought much of nowadays. The churches are warmed all over, so that foot stoves are not needed, and so I never go to church; indeed, in my broken-down state of health, ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... a capricious tyrant, and of the imprudent and unfortunate Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth was born at Greenwich, on the banks of the Thames, September 7, 1533. Her infancy was unfortunate through the unhappy fate of her mother, but she was nevertheless ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... the rest are circular and plain, and not very unlike the columns of our earliest Norman or Saxon churches, though of greater proportionate altitude. The capitals of those in the choir are singularly capricious, with figures, scrolls, &c.; but it is the capriciousness of the gothic verging into Grecian, not of the Norman. On the pendants of the nave are painted various ornaments, each accompanied by a mitre. The eastern has ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... was blithe and bland, he grew radiant, exercised within an inch of his life as a vent for his emotions, and people went home declaring gymnastics to be the crowning triumph of the age; and when Dolly was capricious, Mr. Bopp, became a bewildered weathercock, changing as the wind changed, and dire was ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... quantities or even ordinary quantities of food. Parents observe this habit of little eating and begin to coax and bribe the child to eat more at meal time, and to eat between meals. In this way the child really overeats, the appetite becomes capricious, and the stomach rebels. In a very short time the condition of "loss of appetite" is established as a consequence. Another cause is the drinking of too much milk, and yet another and very common cause is indiscriminate eating of candy, cakes crackers, and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... the unpromising domain those elements of ecclesiastical prestige, knightly valor, artistic and literary resources which enriched and signalized the Italian cities of the Middle Ages. Enlightened, though capricious patronage made this halting-place between Bologna and Venice, Padua and Rome, the nucleus of talent, enterprise, and diplomacy, the fruits whereof are permanent. But there are two hallowed associations which in a remarkable degree consecrated Ferrara and endeared ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... taste, was not perverted by philosophical theory; when the simple was necessarily connected with the beautiful, and the epicurean intellect, sated by repetition, had not begun to seek for stimulants in the fantastic and capricious. The realms of fancy were all untravelled, and its fairest flowers had not been gathered, nor its beauties despoiled, by the rude touch of those who affected to cultivate them. The wing of genius was not bound to the earth by the cold and conventional rules of criticism, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... of transcendental geometry, and also to obey physical laws of startling intricacy. These lovely forms of almighty nature wear the grandeur of mystery, of floral beauty, and of science (immanent science) not always fathomable.[6] They are anything but capricious. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like them; and yet, simply because the sad hand of mortality is upon them, because they are dedicated to death, because on genial days they will have passed into the oblivion ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... queenly qualities and accomplishments, Elizabeth had many unamiable traits and unwomanly ways. She was capricious, treacherous, unscrupulous, ungrateful, and cruel. She seemed almost wholly devoid of a moral or religious sense. Deception and falsehood were her usual weapons in diplomacy. "In the profusion and recklessness of her lies," declares Green, "Elizabeth stood without ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... him. There were some, however, at a distance from the scene of operations, as the good Talavera, for instance, and the count of Tendilla, who saw with much concern the prospect of changing the steady and well-tried hand, which had held the helm for more than thirty years, for the capricious guidance of Philip ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... caught, in its capricious rhythms, the subtle movements of human intercourse he trusted himself to express to other men the natural man within his breast, without fear of misconstruction. He contrived to humanize, in parts, even his government reports. They brought him, year by year, touching letters ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... remarked, slightly piqued. "I am not talking of our present difficulty, Dounia. What Pyotr Petrovitch writes in this letter and what you and I have supposed may be mistaken, but you can't imagine, Dmitri Prokofitch, how moody and, so to say, capricious he is. I never could depend on what he would do when he was only fifteen. And I am sure that he might do something now that nobody else would think of doing... Well, for instance, do you know how a year and a half ago ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... an instrument that he could not distinguish resemblance or difference beyond its field of vision. The result is that he counts among the lines mended by Shakspere those that differ from those in the "Contention" only by a particle or a conjunction. By this "capricious arithmetic," only six lines in the scenes with Jack Cade in the "Second Part of Henry VI." are credited to Shakspere, and we are asked to believe that the man who was to fix the price of bread at "seven half-penny loaves for a penny," to give the ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... full of storms, may come for fresh stores of light, warmth, and electricity, of calm and of courage. The mother represents goodness, providence, law; that is to say, the divinity, under that form of it which is accessible to childhood. If she is herself passionate, she will inculcate in her child a capricious and despotic God, or even several discordant gods. The religion of a child depends on what its mother and its father are, and not on what they say. The inner and unconscious ideal which guides their life is precisely what touches the child; ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... pedestal with our Washington. We now know that he was not only a very selfish, but a very ordinary man—not ordinary, perhaps, in the sense of intellect, for that would be impossible in the case of one who was so long able to maintain his eminent position, and to succeed in his capricious progresses, in spite of inferior means, and a singular deficiency of the heroic faculty. But his ambition was the vulgar ambition, and, if possible, something still inferior. It contemplated his personal wants alone; it lacked all the elevation of purpose which is the great ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... capricious mouthfuls, serving to beguile the boredom of the watch for a brief while; they are substantial repasts, which require several sittings. Such an appetite astonishes me, after I have seen the Crab Spider, that no less ardent ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... a matter of every day's experience, that patients showed a predilection for certain tarantellas, in preference to others, which gave rise to the composition of a great variety of these dances. They were likewise very capricious in their partialities for particular instruments; so that some longed for the shrill notes of the trumpet, others for the softest music produced by the vibration ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... have some chocolates.' He spoke to her as though she were a child and like a child she obeyed him, for she was alarmed that he should exert his capricious prerogative and throw over The Tempest at the ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... very nice of him, I must say. He was as pleased as Punch over it when I was down there. If he's so capricious, I don't see how he ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... for weeks and weeks, he with his hopes a risin' up sometimes like his yeast and then bein' pounded down ag'in like his bread, under the hard knuckles of a woman's capricious cruelty. For I must say that she did, for sech a soft littte creeter, have cold and cruel ways to Abram. (But I s'pose it wuz when she got to thinkin' about the Prince, or some other ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... Minerva's helmet, fierce and bold, Or all of emblem gay that dress'd Capricious goddesses of old? "Thee higher honours yet await:- Haste, then, thy triumphs quick prepare, Thy trophies spread in haughty state, Sweep o'ei the earth, and scoff ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... He was used to Bernard's bitter humor and on the whole thought it advisable that he should see Jim's friends. It was possible he would get a jar, but one could not tell. The old man was capricious and hard to understand. ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... capricious as it is always in this country, pursued its unequal march, with, from time to time, surprises of sunlight and of heat. There were rains of a deluge, grand, healthy squalls which went up from the Bay ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... resolution to follow their vain hopes and desires: weakness that would have been blamable ill the pilot of a ship, how much more in the sovereign commander of such an army, and so many nations. But he, though he had often commended those physicians who did not comply with the capricious appetites of their patients, yet himself could not but yield to the malady and disease of his companions and advisers in the war, rather than use some severity in their cure. Truly who could have said that health was not disordered and a cure not required in the case of men who went up and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... desert is said to be the ruin of a pueblo, or village, though the shape and size of it suggest that it was made for a few persons rather than for a tribe or family. Long ago, the tale runs, this place of horrors was a fair and fertile kingdom, ruled by a beautiful but capricious queen. She ordered her subjects to build her a mansion that should surpass those of her neighbors, the Aztecs, and they worked for years to make one worthy of her, dragging the stones and timbers for miles. Fearing lest age, accident, or illness should forbid her ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... only with her could he relieve his heart when he grew tired of life, of his games or when he was the victim of some cruel injustice. And if it was unpleasant to cry in father's presence, and even dangerous to be capricious, his tears had an unusually pleasant taste in mother's presence and filled his soul with a peculiar serene sadness, which he could find neither in his games nor in laughter, nor even in the reading of the ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... perches of garden) on which to grow any household vegetables. They were landless and starving, the last word in pitiful rags and bare bones. They were in a far greater and more intense degree than the farmers the victims of capricious harvests, whilst their winters were recurrent periods of the most awful and unbelievable distress and hunger and want. The first man to notice their degraded position was Parnell, who, early in the eighties, got a Labourers' Act passed for ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... suitable to Palmet than to me. He wrote a description of Madame de Rouaillout that set Palmet strutting about for an hour. I have no doubt she must be a very beautiful woman, for a Frenchwoman: not regular features; expressive, capricious. Vivian Ducie lays great stress on her eyes and eyebrows, and, I think, her hair. With a Frenchwoman's figure, that is enough to make men crazy. He says her husband deserves—but what will not young men write? It is deeply to be regretted that Englishmen abroad—women the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... word had Kitty for me that evening, but for her father such clinging, coaxing, wheedling ways, and for the Jook such coy, sparkling, artfully-accidental glances, such shy turns of the little head, such dainty capricious airs, that it was delicious to watch her. Koenigin and I sat in a dark corner for the express purpose of admiring her delicate little manoeuvres. As for her father, good stolid man! he was well used to Kitty's freaks, and went on reading his newspaper ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Indo-European race," because it is common to Iranians and Indians of Hindostan.[54] The Libyans ate oxen but not cows.[55] The same was true of the Phoenicians and Egyptians.[56] In some cases the sense of a food taboo is not to be learned. It may have been entirely capricious. Mohammed would not eat lizards, because he thought them the offspring of a metamorphosed clan of Israelites.[57] On the other hand, the protective taboo which forbade killing crocodiles, pythons, cobras, and other animals enemies of man was harmful to his interests, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... she to object to past peccadillos on his part? Then, uncomforted, he sought to reassure himself with the remembrance of her love for him, ardent and beautiful as the sun on the desert, but her image rose on the dark of his mind like a flame, veering and capricious, or as the wind, lingering, caressing, yet ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... is the April Hope Plant (Anchoria Sanguinia), whose delicate leaves begin to show early in the month. Though one of the most fragile of plants in appearance, it is possessed of extraordinary vitality. Were it not for this, it would soon fall a prey to a capricious but rapacious weed known as the April-foolia-Flirtatia Mittifolia, so called from its mitten-shaped leaves. This curious plant when in full bloom shows a heart-shaped flower, so inviting in appearance that unwary people are seized with an ...
— Cupid's Almanac and Guide to Hearticulture for This Year and Next • John Cecil Clay
... refusal, for fear mamma should be grieved and angry (for I knew she wished me to marry him), and I wanted to talk to her first about it: so I gave him what I thought was an evasive, half negative answer; but she says it was as good as an acceptance, and he would think me very capricious if I were to attempt to draw back—and indeed I was so confused and frightened at the moment, I can hardly tell what I said. And next time I saw him, he accosted me in all confidence as his affianced bride, and immediately began to settle matters with mamma. I had not ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... among these savages, and taught by the murder of his comrade on how slight a tenure he held his own life, exposed as he was every moment to the chance of in some way or other provoking their capricious cruelty, Rutherford, it may be thought, must have felt his protracted detention growing ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... pervades it, which smacks of the New World rather than the Old.... 'Aurora Leigh' is a mirror of contemporary life, while its learned and beautiful illustrations make it almost a handbook of literature and the arts.... Although a most uneven production, full of ups and downs, of capricious or prosaic episodes, it nevertheless contains poetry as fine as its author has given us elsewhere, and enough spare inspiration to set up a dozen smaller poets. The flexible verse is noticeably her own, and often handled with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... man, when he gets into the hands of the physician, is a neurasthenic. He has gone just as far as his vitality will take him. His mind is fagged and worn out and will not concentrate. He is nervous, irritable, and wretched. His appetite is capricious, and he sleeps fitfully. For a few days he pulls himself together and plunges into work, but the effort exhausts him and he falls back further than before. He is unhappy and despondent, his viewpoint changes and the future looks uninviting and he loses his courage and his faith in himself. He hides ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... appearance is very capricious, occurred one summer in Worcestershire in considerable numbers; it is strong on the wing and could easily reach the Midlands in fine weather from the south of England, where it is more often seen. Those I saw were flying high over clover fields, apparently ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... they followed the outer path, along a hedge and along a wall. They said nothing; and this silence, which he found it impossible to break, filled Philippe with remorse. At that moment, he experienced a feeling of aversion for that capricious and unreasonable little girl, who had brought about those compromising minutes between them. Unaccustomed to women and always rather shy in their company, he suspected her of some ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... laugh at his friend. He was funny, he was pathetic, so prone to be cast down one moment and the next raised aloft to the skies, according to the whim of the capricious young lady. Many times Pan had ridden and worked with a boy afflicted with a ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... I thought she did, sometimes not; she used to play and shuffle, and she liked too much to be with—him. I would think her capricious—telling me I must not come this evening, and I must not come the other; but I found out they were the evenings when she was expecting him. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood |
