"Fickle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... matter of controversy. It is too big a question to deal with here. Napoleon said himself that "Everything in the life of man is subject to calculation; the good and evil must be equally balanced." Other true sayings of his indicate that he, at any rate, was a student of human life, and knew how fickle fortune is under certain conditions. "Reprisals," he declared, "are but a sad resource"; and again, no doubt dwelling on his own misfortunes, but with vivid truth all the same, he declares that "The allies gained by victory ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Sterne, situated at the termination of the village. Two females, elegantly attired in mourning, were parading the garden; immediately I saw them I thought of the beautiful Eliza; she to whom the fickle Yorick swore eternal attachment, and then "lit up his heart at the shrine of another," ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... to give Joan de Esquivel, the master-of-camp, sufficient to do. He was acting as governor there and had but little security from the natives, who, being a Mahometan people, and by nature easily persuaded and fickle, are restless, and ready for disturbances and wars. Daily and in different parts the natives were being incited and aroused to rebellion; and although the master-of-camp and his captains were endeavoring to punish and pacify them, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... Plevna behind him, 'full of horrors.' He is dead now, but his son and all princes who live by the sword would do well to peruse and reperuse the accounts of the tragical scenes that the victors left upon the battle-field when they departed to receive the ovations of the fickle populace. The Roumanians feted their victorious allies, to whom it must be admitted that we have here done ample justice in all their proceedings. But they were the same Russians who, under Peter the Great, were reported to have stolen the boots ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... delayed us greatly, for as we crawled further northward, we were reaching the limit of the south-east trades, which, at that time of the year, were very fickle and shifty. Not a single sail of any description had we seen, though we kept a keen lookout night and day; for, after being ten days out from Apamama, I began to feel anxious about our position and would have liked to have spoken a ship, fearing that the ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... great thaw came, and the fickle climate proceeded to show what it could do. When the thaw had been going on for a day and a night a terrific winter hurricane broke over the forest. Trees were shattered as if their trunks had been shot through by huge cannon balls. Here and there long windrows were piled up, and ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Would you cast a loving Woman hence? Thou, Fickle One, prepare for penitence! Full many a golden ducat shall you pay To drown the memory of ...
— The Rubaiyat of a Bachelor • Helen Rowland
... a great deal of honour to board with us; huffs and dings at such a rate, because we will not spend the little we have left to get him the title and estate of Lord Strutt; and then forsooth, we shall have the honour to be his woollen-drapers.** Besides, Esquire South will be Esquire South still; fickle, proud, and ungrateful. If he behaves himself so when he depends on us for his daily bread, can any man say what he will do when he is ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... droop not: Fortune at your time of life, Although a female moderately fickle, Will hardly leave you (as she's not your wife) For any length of days in such a pickle. To strive, too, with our fate were such a strife As if the corn-sheaf should oppose the sickle: Men are the sport of circumstances, when The circumstances seem ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... particular moments favor one of two antagonists relatively to the other; but in the long run it was substantially the same for all. In this respect all were on an equal footing; and the supply, if fickle at times, was practically inexhaustible. Barring accidents, vessels were able to keep the sea as long as their provisions and water lasted. This period may be reckoned as generally three months, while by watchful administration it might at times ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... out to do a thing I have usually run the full course. I am not sure that it is natural perseverance in my case, but fear that I am more often ashamed to be considered fickle. So I sculled on to the Wavecrest and prepared to ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... which his flight above the Atlantic, his race with the torpedo-boat-destroyers across the North Sea, and his sensational display during the military man[oe]uvres on Salisbury Plain, impressed his name and personality firmly upon the fickle mind of the public, and explains the tremendous excitement caused by his inexplicable disappearance during the great aviation meeting at Attercliffe, near London, towards ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... amid the usual March weather in the District of Columbia, like the fickle April in unkinder latitudes: smile and scowl. But as the President kissed the book there was a sudden parting of the clouds, and a sunburst broke in all its splendor. This is testified to by the newspaper ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... too long needed the touch of fresh and holy Earth. Too long has our love of picture and poem, and of all that the glorious impulse to create in beauty achieves, been fickle as the wind; based on discordant fancies and distorted tradition. Symbolism in art, at present means only an arbitrary and puerile substitution of one object or caprice for another. The most successful poetic simile ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... he answered. "Everything depends upon the weather; and what is more fickle than that?—outside the limits of the trade-winds and the monsoons, I mean, of course. If we are unlucky enough to meet with a long spell of calms on the Line—well, that means a long passage. But give me as much wind as I can show all plain sail to, and no farther ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... That the King, who not long ago did say of Bristoll, that he was a man able in three years to get himself a fortune in any kingdom in the world, and lose all again in three months, do now hug him, and commend his parts every where, above all the world. How fickle is this man [the King], and how unhappy we like to be! That he fears some furious courses will be taken against the Duke of York; and that he hath heard that it was designed, if they cannot carry matters against the Chancellor, to impeach the Duke of York himself, which God forbid! That Sir ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... conviction that he ought to go. He was in the habit of making his decisions rapidly. This habit sometimes led him into embarrassing mistakes, and once in a great while resulted in humiliating reversals of opinion, so that people who did not know him thought he was fickle and changeable. In the present case, Philip acted with his customary quickness, and knew very well ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... saw his God in every thing, every event, every place. His concept of God was his life-motif. This concept evolved slowly, painfully, throughout the centuries. The ancient Hebrew patriarchs saw it as a variable God, changeful, fickle, now violently angry, now humbly repentant, now making contracts with mankind, now petulantly destroying His own handiwork. He was a God who could order the slaughter of innocent babes, as in the book of Samuel; or He was a tender, merciful Father, as in the Psalms. He could harden hearts, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... "You think her fickle, I don't," says Margaret gravely. "You have misjudged her all along. I believe she loves me. I believe," slowly, "she has ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... former class are readily restored to health by proper treatment, for they are willing to make an effort for the recovery of their manly powers. There is not complete loss of sexual desire, yet their disappointment is so great that they may entertain suicidal thoughts. They are moody, fickle, discontented, excitable, and remarkably impulsive. With proper treatment, they regain tone of body, vigor of mind, an increase of sexual desire, and become more attentive to business affairs, and less indifferent to the gentler sex. With the restoration of the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... means covers the possible field. Its limitations are measured only by the ability of the "team," and the popularity that demands this or that style of dance, as the fickle ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... up at the cross roads in every county; banners stretched across Broadway announcing the date. On the Saturday before the meeting circulars announcing it and a parade were dropped over the city from an air ship. Every business house was beautifully dressed in suffrage colors. Mayor D. D. Fickle gave an address of welcome. The principal speaker was Dr. B. O. Aylesworth of Colorado. The parade was viewed by more than 50,000 people and Pathe made films of it. The convention was widely noticed by the press. Eleven new societies were added to the State association. Mrs. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... little girl is better than most of them, not a foolish mischief-maker, I hope." She saw through the situation with a quick understanding of what Adrienne might suffer should Rene prove permanently fickle. The thought of it aroused all her natural honesty and serious nobleness of character, which lay deep under the almost hoydenish levity usually observable in her manner. Crude as her sense of life's ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... head a little. "It is true," he said, "the goddess of victory is very fickle. The future therefore consoles those who have ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... "'Woman is fickle.' said Francis I.; 'woman is like a wave of the sea,' said Shakespeare; both the great king and the great poet ought to have ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... thus experiencing the vicissitudes of fortune, his beautiful sister suffered little less from the caprice of that fickle goddess. Placed as she was, one would have thought she had been secure from all the temptations, hurries, and dangers of the world, and that nothing but the death or inconstancy of monsieur du Plessis could have ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Hath won for him coeval youth With the immaculate prime of Truth; While we, who make pretence At living on, and wake and eat and sleep, And life's stale trick by repetition keep, Our fickle permanence (A poor leaf-shadow on a brook, whose play Of busy idlesse ceases with our day) Is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... could not find two-bits to wager on the race; small, indeed, the piccaninny who was not wise enough in the sophisticated ways of games of chance to lay a copper with a comrade or to join a pool by means of which he and his fellows were enabled to participate in more important methods of wooing fickle Fortune. ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the righteousness of Christ, when, and unto whom, God shall impute it for justice; Psalm xxxvi. In the margin it is said to be like the mountain of God; to wit, called Mount Zion, or that Moriah on which the temple was built, and upon which it stood; all other bottoms are fickle, all other righteousnesses are so feeble, short, narrow, yea, so full of imperfections; for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, Christ did for us in the similitude of sinful- flesh. But what could ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... "And equally as fickle," added the Princess composedly, taking a fan of feathers near her and waving it to and fro. "Man's idea of love is to take all he can get from a woman, and give her nothing in return but ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... that,' he continued. 'Why, Doll and I love for a week, and then forget each other's names in a twelvemonth, when Poll comes along, and so on. And neither of us is any the worse, believe me. We're one as fickle as the other, so ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... fortune! all men call thee fickle: If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him That is renown'd for faith? Be fickle, fortune; For then, I hope, thou wilt not keep him long But send ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... floating bed Swims on the mighty river's fickle flow, A white dove's nest; and there at hazard led By the faint winds, and wandering to and fro, The cot comes down; beneath his quiet head The gulfs are moving, and each threatening wave Appears to rock the child ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... and some other of his small tracts. Item, Lanfranci Balbi Decisionum et Observationum centuriae 5. The life of Pomponius Atticus, etc., 30 pence. A Guide to heaven from the world, 6 pence. For The 2'd pacquet of Advices to the men of Shaftsburie, 2 shills. sterl. For Madame Fickle a comoedy, 18 pence. For Johnstons History of King James the 6'th minority, 12 pence. Midletons Appendix to the Scots Church Historie, etc., 2 shills: sterl. Burnets Memoires of the 2 Dukes of Hamilton ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... been but a fickle adorer—'tis the way of men, my dear, for he must have found some new flame while his mother and the Colonel were both at the Bath. They have proof positive of his riding out of town at sundown, but whither he goes is unknown, for he takes not so much as a groom ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... active, or fickle perhaps, and Mr. Yeats has already almost ceased to be a quite modern poet. He, like Mr. Gosse, formed his technique in the nineteenth century, and the twentieth century is casting about with feverish ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... pail to the sand as if casting all thought of fickle woman from him and ran off down the beach toward the cabin, deigning not to hear Jean as ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... would do the honor of shoveling him under. The Duke of Wellington refused to have his iron fence mended, because it had been broken by an infuriated populace in some hour of political excitement, and he left it in ruins that men might learn what a fickle thing is human favor. "But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting to them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto the children's children of such as keep His covenant, and to those who remember His commandments to do them." ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... 1777. DEAR SIR, I love to receive letters very well; much better than I love to write them. I make but a poor figure at composition. My head is much too fickle. My thoughts are running after bird's eggs, play and trifles, till I get vexed with myself. Mamma has a troublesome task to keep me a studying. I own I am ashamed of myself. I have but just entered the third volume of Rollin's History, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... yourself," replied his friend. "I may as well tell you the worst at once. They say that her wedding-dress is prepared. Jean Maret's gold, and the importunities of old Gaspar, have been too much, fancy, for her fickle resolution." ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... attendants at the chateau had treated with indifference and contempt. And so, Madame Henrietta once more returned to the Louvre, with her heart more swollen with bitter recollections than her daughter's, whose disposition was fickle and forgetful, with triumph and delight. She knew but too well this brilliant reception was paid to the happy mother of a king restored to his throne, a throne second to none in Europe, while the worse than indifferent reception she had before met with was paid to her, the ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... public life. By repelling worthy men from your legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of candidates for the suffrage, who, in their very act, disgrace your Institutions and your people's choice. It has rendered you so fickle, and so given to change, that your inconstancy has passed into a proverb; for you no sooner set up an idol firmly, than you are sure to pull it down and dash it into fragments: and this, because directly you reward a benefactor, or a public ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... by the soil and air of their own country. [163] I do not reckon among the people of Germany those who occupy the Decumate lands, [164] although inhabiting between the Rhine and Danube. Some of the most fickle of the Gauls, rendered daring through indigence, seized upon this district of uncertain property. Afterwards, our boundary line being advanced, and a chain of fortified posts established, it became a skirt of the empire, and part ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... about a month after our passage through Maurissa Strait that, as we were working to windward against a light and fickle breeze, land was sighted about three points on the weather bow. The time was close upon eight bells in the afternoon watch, and the land sighted was a mere dot of faintest blue showing just clear of the horizon. I had been anticipating its appearance at any moment since I had worked ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... sake of the surface. His people are not splashes of appearance, but living minds. Jenny and Emmy in this book are realities inside and out; they are imaginative creatures so complete that one can think with ease of Jenny ten years hence or of Emmy as a baby. The fickle Alf is one of the most perfect Cockneys—a type so easy to caricature and so hard to get true—in fiction. If there exists a better writing of vulgar lovemaking, so base, so honest, so touchingly mean and so touchingly full of the craving for happiness than this that we have here in the ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... did not last, for, as the settlers became more firmly fixed in the land, the Indians, fickle and changeable, grew jealous and resented their intrusion, and refused to sell corn, hoping by this means to ...
— The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith • E. Boyd Smith
... simple loss of gold; For fortune is a fickle, changing thing, Whose favors do not hold; But he whose sometime wealth has taken wing, Finds ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... is foolish," muttered the bailiff to himself, as he strode away. "He's a idiot, that's what he is! and so be all men that loses their wits a-sighing after a girl. Vain, deceitful, fickle creatures, the girls be when they're young; but once let them get a hold on you, your ring on their finger, and they turn into vixenish, snarling women! Luke's a sight best off ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... of its tribes, and to determine the export of the produce of the interior." He held the streams that fed Tanganyika to be the ultimate sources of the Nile; and believed that the glory of their discovery would be his. Fortune, however, the most fickle of goddesses, thought fit to deprive him of this ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... St. Mark will discipline her imagination till she shall conceit the Neapolitan a Moor and an infidel. Just San Teodoro, forgive me! But thou canst remember the time, my friends, when the penance of the church was not without service on thine own fickle tastes and truant practices." ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... receive your proffered proof of sincerity, and hope to find you unlike your fickle nation. Come, tell the news which sanctions this long ramble of yours. These are dark days, and it becomes every man to look well to his own safety, and likewise watch his ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... it back. But every disease has a crisis; and when a lounge through the streets became at once useless and inconvenient—when the novelty of being cut by all my noble friends, and of being seduously followed by that generation who, unlike the fickle world, reserve their tipstaff attentions for the day of adversity, had lost its zest, and I was thinking whether time was to be better fought off by a plunge to the bottom of the Thames, or by the muzzle of one of Manton's hair- triggers—I was saved by a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... unnoticed feed it; and surely, one day the rock is rent, the light is pouring in, and we are free! It is often a matter of anguish that, strive as we may, it is impossible to remember what helping hand it was that sowed for us. Our fickle memory seems to convict us of ingratitude, and yet we know how far that sin is from us; and how, if those sowers could but be revealed to us, we would fall upon their ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... Some fickle creatures boast a soul True as a needle to the pole, Their humour yet so various— They manifest their whole life through The needle's deviations too, Their ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... scorn your love, But the false chief covets the warrior's gifts. False to his promise the fox will prove, And fickle as snow in Wo-ka-da-wee, [37] That slips into brooks when the gray cloud lifts, Or the red sun looks through the ragged rifts. Mah-pi-ya Duta will listen to me There are fairer birds in the bush than she, And ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... Nothing however, is more fickle than such a resolution of the people. When a crowd is once in the humour to cheer, it is just the same as when it begins to hiss. It ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... the rest be spied, Though huge, yet quick, for she's now here, now there; Nay, look about you, and she's everywhere: Yet ever with the rest, and still in chase. Right so, Inconstancy fills every place; And yet so strange a fickle-natured hound, Look for her, and she's nowhere to be found. Weakness is no fair dog unto the eye, And yet she hath her proper quality; But there's Presumption, when he heat hath got, He drowns the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Ah! fickle fair! amid the scene That giddy pleasure may prepare, A pensive thought shall intervene, And touch your wand'ring ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... four divisions had its own wall, pierced by arched gates. Those were necessary. No more turbulent and fickle population lived in the known world—not even in Alexandria. Whenever an earthquake shook down blocks of buildings—and that happened nearly as frequently as the hysterical racial riots—the Romans rebuilt with a view to making communications easier from the citadel, where ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... of the regular followers of the negro king; and, but a short while ago, carried muskets and formed part of his military array, ready to kill or capture his enemies at his nod, or even his friends if bidden. But fortune is fickle to such heroes, and their more favoured companions had just been directed to capture them and deliver them ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... Christmas. Claudia deprecated such haste; and Eugene willingly acquiesced in her wish to put off the date of their own union. He thought that being engaged to Claudia was a pleasant state of existence, and why hasten to change it? Besides, as he suggested, they were not people of fickle mind, like Kate and Haddington (for, of course, Claudia had told him of Haddington's proposal to herself—it is believed ladies always do tell these incidents), and could afford to wait. Eugene went to the wedding. He was strongly opposed to such foolish things as standing ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... reverse, Emerentius," she replied, complainingly. "It surely was not sensible for me, a young lady from such a genteel family, and so spoiled, to marry an officer whom the king ennobled upon the battle-field, and who possessed nothing but his captain's pay—a fickle man, and a ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... had fully appreciated the awkwardness of his situation, and had kept a rigid silence since the returned Californian resumed possession of his wife. The minute after Mr. Frump's identity had been established, Matthew could have hugged him with ecstasy. But, having lost the widow, his fickle mind straightway began to discover in her a great many excellencies that he had never seen before. Therefore, when he submitted his hand to the grip of Mr. Frump, his face expressed a strangely ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... women could be fair, and yet not fond, Or that their love were firm, not fickle still, I would not marvel that they make men bond By service long to purchase their good will; But when I see how frail those creatures are, I muse that men ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Thus that sectarian spirit which Photius had kindled continued to smoulder on like a spark beneath the ashes, and spread itself wider and wider, as well among the worst sort of the clergy as among the fickle and discontented population. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... of the Round Table was one who was a mixture of good and bad, as indeed most people are. His name was Sir Ivaine; brave, kind-hearted, and merry; but at the same time fickle, sometimes forgetful of his promises, and inclined to make ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... through her glass with keen delight Observes the brisk beginnings of the fight; To some propitious, but to me unkind, With candour owns the bias of her mind, And asks of Fortune the severe decree T' enrich the happy Skew,[17] to ruin me. The fickle Goddess heard one-half the prayer, The rest was melted into empty air; For while she smiled complacent on the Skew,[18] On me she shed some trifling favours too. Sure Granville's luck exceeds all other men's Led through a sad variety of tens;[19] The rest have sometimes ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... To-morrow's dawn must see her yours or his. You have her oath. To you or to death she is affianced. If she should hesitate in her election, do not you hesitate. Woman's will is fickle; her scruples of conscience will be readily overcome; she will not heed her vows—but let her not escape you. Cast off all your weakness. You are young, and not as I am, age-enfeebled. Be firm, and," added he, with a look of terrible ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... out With his whilom pet Babe, little GLADDY, Looked on him with anger and doubt, And conspired to destroy him, poor laddie! It seems that the once-admired "kid" Was a Turk, and a rogue, and a pickle, Who wouldn't do what he was bid, But was talkative, tricky, and fickle. Rum ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Dec. 20, 1890 • Various
... a fitting opportunity for an ambitious and courageous woman who, though she might not find full measure of happiness and love which only comes with respect, yet would meet with adventure, would dare fate and hazard chance with fickle fortune. The prospect to her mind was more pleasing than to be the wife of a gentleman farmer and grow fat and matronly—the other chance ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... night, fair coquette of the skies, Thou, who with fickle, sweet inconstancy Receives the smile from the admiring sun, And straight transmits it to the sordid earth,— How many cycles of the silent past Hast thou beheld the rise and fall of man, His proud ascendency and swift decline; His zenith and his pitiful decay; E'er he emerged from out the dismal ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... tints had not changed, after the pricked and labored surface had seemed about to quicken in the heat, to assume the vibratility of living skin,—even at the last hour all the labor of the workers proved to have been wasted; for the fickle substance rebelled against their efforts, producing only crinklings grotesque as those upon the rind of a withered fruit, or granulations like those upon the skin of a dead bird from which the feathers have been rudely plucked. And Pu ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... captain's voice was low and sweet, and the lady's nature was vain and fickle, and the prospect of marrying an English lord was very enticing, and so it came about that at last she yielded, and she told him how she was expecting young Wallace that very night at seven o'clock, and she promised to put a light in the window when ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Fish are very fickle in their tastes. What will be good bait one day will absolutely fail the next and sometimes even in an hour this same thing will take place. Why this is so no one has been able to explain satisfactorily, but that it is a fact no fisherman will deny. We should therefore have as great a variety ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... mistress, fickle she, Yet dear beyond all dearth of speech; Child of the winds of land and sea She charms me with the charm of each— Full soft and sweet she sings and then She sings wild songs ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... style of the period. In 1770 she was at the climax of prosperity. "Galas, masquerades, and festivals, all equally splendid, succeeded one another throughout the season" (Clinch); but after her sky-rocket ascent came the fall: fickle Fashion deserted her, and finally the house and its contents were announced in the Gazette for sale. The Pantheon had proved too formidable a rival. In 1785 the property was in Chancery, and Mrs. Cornelys died in the Fleet Prison ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... much, and she feared that the Earl's mind had been too much cramped, and his feelings too much chilled, for such softening on his part as could alone, as it seemed, prevent Louis from being estranged, and left to his naturally fickle and indolent disposition. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wonderful afternoons when she deigned to be good! Sometimes, wearied with walks about the open country, and bored, as might have been expected of a frivolous, fickle character like hers, with the monotony of the landscape of orange-trees and palms, she would take refuge in her parlor, and sit down at the piano! With the hushed awe of a pious worshipper, Rafael would ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... hit the truth. Madame de Serizy, who was regarded as one of the most fickle of fashionable women, had had an attachment of ten years' standing for the Marquis d'Aiglemont. Since the Marquis' departure for the colonies, she had gone wild about Lucien, and had won him from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, knowing nothing—like the Paris world ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... Pharisee; "let us hasten: for this generosity in the heathen is unwonted; and fickle-mindedness has ever been an attribute ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that Patty would never have given Mark Wilson a second thought had he not taken her to drive on that afternoon in early May. The drive, too, would have quickly fled from her somewhat fickle memory had it not been for the kiss. The kiss was, indeed, a decisive factor in the situation, and had shed a rosy, if somewhat fictitious light of romance over the past three weeks. Perhaps even the kiss, had it never ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and the short is, that I was sent to school, where I learned to read and spell, making great progress in the Single and Mother's Carritch. No, what is more, few could fickle me in the Bible, being mostly able to spell it all over, save the second of Ezra and the seventh of Nehemiah, which the Dominie himself could never read through twice in the same way, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... for Spring; on his fickle wing Let the blossoms and buds be borne; He woos them amain with his treacherous rain, And he scatters them ere the morn. An inconstant elf, he knows not himself, Nor his own changing mind an hour, He'll smile in your face, and, with wry grimace, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... he lay again in the forest, and he was devoutly glad that he had saved the painted robe. The climate of the great valley is fickle, and it rapidly turned colder again. Raw winds whistled through the woods, and he had difficulty in finding a sheltered place where, even with the aid of the robe, he could keep warm. He selected at last a tiny glen, well grown with tall bushes on every side, heaped ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from that thou art; Some steadfast refuge from a fickle heart; Still to be thou, and yet no thing of scorn, To find no stay here, and yet not forlorn?— O riddle of life that is An ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... your hair round your mamma's neck, and give me one good long kiss, and I won't talk any more in that way about your lover. After all, some young men are not so fickle as others; but even if he's the ficklest, there is consolation. The love of an inconstant man is ten times more ardent than that of a faithful man—that is, while ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... sister, with the result that while Brock was never alone with his prudent wife, he was seldom far from the side of the adorable lieutenant. As if precociously providing for an ultimate alibi, the fickle Tootles began to show unmistakable signs of aversion for her temporary parent. Mrs. Rodney, being an old-fashioned mother, could not reconcile herself to this unfilial attitude, and gravely confided to her husband that ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... that had not seen the light for many along day. And there were picnics, and sailing parties, and dances galore, some of which I attended, but heard of more. It seemed to me that my lady was tiring of the doctor's compliments, and had transferred her fickle favour to young Mr. Fitzhugh, who was much more worthy, by the way. As for me, I had troubles enough then, and had become used in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... without a shudder. Many persons are still living, of the first respectability, who well remember my quitting this country, though very young, on the budding of a brilliant career. Had those prospects been followed up they would have placed me beyond the caprice of fickle fortune. But the dazzling lustre of crown favours and princely patronage outweighed the slow, though more solid hopes of self-achieved independence. I certainly was then almost a child, and my vanity, perhaps, of the honour of being useful to two such ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... logical way of life for one in my position; that my birth, the chances that brought you (whose fate is so like mine) and me together, my relations with Marianina and my handsome housekeeper, and perhaps I might say with Madame de l'Estorade, all point to the possession of a fickle star, and that my present affair is only ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... nearly reached the north end of the island when the fickle wind changed, and a heavy gale right ahead sprang up. Though the "Young Crusader" behaved well, the captain was unwilling to expose her, with so many people on board, to its fury; and the mouth of a harbour being clearly made out, he determined to run in and take shelter ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... double-minded, half-hearted; undecided, unresolved, undetermined; shilly-shally; fidgety, tremulous; hesitating &c. v.; off one's balance; at a loss &c. (uncertain) 475. vacillating &c. v.; unsteady &c. (changeable) 149; unsteadfast[obs3], fickle, without ballast; capricious &c. 608; volatile, frothy; light, lightsome, light-minded; giddy; fast and loose. weak, feeble-minded, frail; timid, wimpish, wimpy &c. 860; cowardly &c. 862; dough-faced [U.S.]; facile; pliant ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... though she all unworthy were Of the Heav'ns Rule; yet, very sooth to say, In all things else she beares the greatest sway: Which makes me loath this state of life so tickle, And love of things so vaine to cast away; Whose flowring pride, so fading and so fickle, Short Time shall soon cut down with his ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... landing they were no longer fighting, but amused themselves with stories about women, and in the antechamber, with stories about the court. On the landing d'Artagnan blushed; in the antechamber he trembled. His warm and fickle imagination, which in Gascony had rendered formidable to young chambermaids, and even sometimes their mistresses, had never dreamed, even in moments of delirium, of half the amorous wonders or a quarter of the feats of gallantry which were here set forth in connection ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of view of the Church, which is of a more human nature. This is fallible and fickle, but, though perpetually changing, it will last as long as there are weak human beings. The light of cloudless divine revelation is far too pure and radiant for poor, weak man. But the Church interposes as mediator, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... to be joked about a widow, a fine dashing woman, as he privately informed me. I had supposed the pleasure he betrayed on these occasions resulted from the usual fondness of old bachelors for being teased about getting married, and about flirting, and being fickle and false-hearted. I am assured, however, that Master Simon had really persuaded himself the widow had a kindness for him; in consequence of which he had been at some extraordinary expense in new clothes, and had actually got Frank Bracebridge to order ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... he! Can I mistake the clustered curls Upon his hated hyacinthine head? Have they not wiled from me the fickle heart Of perjured BANDOLINA! There, he stands Before my window, where a winsome form, Rotating slow with measured self-display, Has caught ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... acclamations of the ever-fickle mob, hailing him as its deliverer, Louis XII rode triumphantly into Milan on October 6, attended by a little host of princes, including the Prince of Savoy, the Dukes of Montferrat and Ferrara, and the Marquis ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... prairies, Like a whirlwind through the forest, Leaving empty lands behind them! Not the Mexicans and Spaniards, Indolent and proud hidalgos, Dwelling in their haciendas, Dreaming, talking of tomorrow, While their cattle graze around them, And their fickle revolutions Change the rulers, not the people! Other folk are these who follow When the wild-bees come to warn us; These are hive and honey makers, These are busy, banded people, Roaming far to swarm and settle, Working every day for harvest, Fighting hard for peace and order, Worshipping ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... appear to have ever fully understood the cause of the Queen's feelings towards the prince; nor does he appear to have shared her utter distrust and dislike of him. As far as one can judge, the prince appears to have been fickle, inconsiderate, and flighty rather than deliberately bad. He sometimes did things which made him seem like a madman. Such a person would not be charmed into a healthier condition of mind and temper by the knowledge daily thrust upon him that his own father and mother, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... made preparations for the sacrament. Weather has been fickle, sometimes snow, then rain, but always blowy ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... am not, out of mere boredom, endeavouring to stop my ears against popular platitude, but rather, in a spirit of real earnestness, to point out to the mob how it has been cruel to George. I do not despair of success. I think I shall make converts. The mob is really very fickle and sometimes cheers ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... I saw at Dives' sons': now bear they the beggar's staff. Such are riches; as is the twinkling of an eye: of friends they are most fickle. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... and brooding over the words, the looks, the smiles, the scenes which had promised me a store of future happiness—such as would probably have been the case, as far as we can be happy in this world, had I fixed my affections upon a true and honest, instead of a fickle and vain, woman; had I built my house upon a rock, instead of one upon the sand—which, as pointed out by the Scriptures, had been washed away, and had disappeared for ever! Bramble and Bessy in vain attempted to gain from me the cause of my dejection; I believe ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Jack was a spectator and not an actor. For the present his work was done, and he had time now to ponder upon his ups and downs, hardly able to believe that at last he was really on his homeward journey. He felt far more confident in the care of bluff Captain Hillgrove than in that of the fickle Peruvians. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... candle into the garden last thing before bed-time, to observe if the lawn showed earthworms; the finding of black slugs was considered to be rather fatal, and the hooting of owls a decidedly bad omen. The goddess of the English climate, however, is such a fickle deity that there is never the least dependence to be placed on weather prophecies. She always seems to prefer to give a surprise. On the day before the performance it rained; evening closed in with a stormy sky, and every probability of waking next morning ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... a light and wanton maid: Not one whom fickle Love betrayed, For indolence was her undoer. Fair, frivolous, and very poor, She scorned the thought of toil, in youth, And chose the path that leads ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... who has not been taught to look upon it as an act of enormous wickedness. In the sixteenth century, Queen Catherine was an obstacle to the establishment of the kingdom, an incentive to treasonable hopes. In the nineteenth, she is an outraged and injured wife, the victim of a false husband's fickle appetite. The story is a long and painful one, and on its personal side need not concern us here further than as it illustrates the private character of Henry. Into the public bearing of it I must enter at some length, in order to explain the interest with which the nation threw itself into the ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... dare Be what now I am, nor care More to be what I have been. It is true that I was seen Once your slave: for who, indeed, Can the fickle wheel control? But in nobleness of soul The best blood of all your breed ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... possessed with notions infinitely more atrocious? I for my part would much rather have men say of me that there never was a Plutarch at all, nor is now, than to say that Plutarch is a man inconstant, fickle, easily moved to anger, revengeful for trifling ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... course for Crete, where most of them, and especially Cimon, had alliances of old or recent date, and friends not a few, whereby they deemed that there they might tarry with Iphigenia in security. But Fortune, that had accorded Cimon so gladsome a capture of the lady, suddenly proved fickle, and converted the boundless joy of the enamoured gallant into woeful and bitter lamentation. 'Twas not yet full four hours since Cimon had parted from the Rhodians, when with the approach of night, that night from which ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the second Emperor said so sadly when he was a prisoner in Germany: "In France one must never be unfortunate." What was then left for her to do in that volcano, that land which swallows all greatness and glory, amid that fickle people who change their opinions and passions as an actress changes her dress? Where Napoleon, with all his genius, had made a complete failure, could a young, ignorant woman be reasonably expected to succeed in the face ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... he say?" she murmured aloud as she went down, with Jock frisking and barking before her. "What will he think of me when he gets my letter? He will believe me fickle; he will believe that I have another lover. That is certain. Well, I must allow him to believe it. We have parted, and we must now, alas! remain apart for ever. Probably he will seek from my father the truth concerning my disappearance from Glencardine. Dad will tell him, no doubt. And then—then, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... attend to your 'life work,' young woman?" he asked, with mock severity, and she seemed a little shamefaced; but when the waiter brought the luncheon, he found all three of them on the floor, and Elizabeth not at all pleased with the fickle Carlotta's preference for the house which Tom had built with the blocks. But nothing could disturb Tom's good nature these days, for he realized that Elizabeth was growing fonder of the child each day, and with it all she seemed happier and more feminine. About a week after the sittings commenced, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... they joyfully received him in exchange for Joseph. But the dashing commander was not of the stuff of which kings should be made; still less was he the man to found and consolidate a new dynasty, and reduce to order a fickle and divided nation. Strong-handed, but weak-headed,—a capital man of action, but valueless at the council-board,—Murat's place was at the head of charging squadrons. There he was a host in himself; in the cabinet ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... of the creature should not be raised on some self-glorifying pinnacle merely because the fickle variable heart at lasts learns the exercise of Fidelity. Do we not see a very ordinary dog practising this same fidelity as he waits, so eager that he trembles, outside his master's door, having put on one side every desire save his desire to his master whom, not seeing, he continues to await; ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... how fickle Fortune the great ULYSSES treats, Gives him victories in war-time, in peace heaps up defeats. His Southern laurels linger a coronet of praise; But a friendly Senate withers ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... for her gratification. His yacht should be made a floating bower for her delight. During those six months of the year which, and which only, the provoking circumstances of his position would enable him to devote to joy and love, her will should be his law. He did not think himself to be fickle. He would never want another Kate. He would leave her with sorrow. He would return to her with ecstasy. Everybody around him should treat her with the respect due to an empress. But it would be very expedient that she should be called Mrs. Neville instead of Lady Scroope. Could things not be so arranged ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... oft did Israel prove By turns thine anger and thy love! There in a glass our hearts may see How fickle and how ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... of success produced an abrupt change in the fickle minds of the Barbarians. Their extreme bravery disappeared; they wished to conquer, but with the smallest possible risk. According to Spendius they ought to maintain carefully the position that they held, and starve out the Punic army. But the Carthaginians began to dig wells, ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... losing his temper in argument. He shared in the laxity of morals common to his age; but was a man of deep affections as well as strong passions, fondly attached to his children and friends, while the profound and lasting grief with which he lamented his dead wife amazed his more fickle contemporaries. Singularly refined and sensitive by nature, he shrank instinctively from bloodshed, and had a horror of all violent actions. In this he differed greatly from his elder brother Galeazzo Maria, who was a monster of lust ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... nymph! Doomed for a time to bear The badge which none but fickle lives should wear. How oft the envious tongue creates the dart That cleaves the saintly soul and breaks the heart: How oft the hasty ear full credence gives To words in which no grain of truth survives: Were Juno just, her heart would now delight Turning thy dappled wings to ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... a good many things. Now the fact is, women are not fickle. When they lose what they value most, they find it impossible to re place it. But men console themselves with the first good thing ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... philosophical air and demeanour, though with real kindness and desire to show sympathy, "thou art either entangled by worldly scruples, leading thee to disdain the wholesome art of healing, or thou art, like thy brother, the victim of the fickle sex." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was Kate, and piquant; she presumed upon her youth, upon her age. She was a child when you expected her to be a woman, and a woman where you looked for the child. No dream of romance was romantic enough to hold her fickle soul constant to it—to satisfy the hopes of her heart. Every man she met was a prince; yet was he, too, bare and poor and mean compared with The Man to come. The child in her was gauche and crude, sitting in judgment—as cynical, as critical a spectator ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... would be better to rent," said Mr. Fairfield. "Suppose my fickle daughter should change her mind, and after a visit in the city decide that she prefers it for ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... been developed in Plautus' time, but this much is certain: the comedian was on the stage lively, energetic and constantly spurred on by the fear of punishment from the dominus gregis and the violent disapproval of a fickle, tempestuous and withal exacting public. Polybius[68] relates that the visit of a troupe of Greek actors to Rome was a failure because of their over-staid deportment, until, learning the desires of the volatile Italians, they improvised a ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... landing-place, a captivating damsel, who, like Virgil's Galatea, flies to be pursued; and the inexperienced youth, after ascending another flight of stairs, is, on the second-floor, ushered into a brothel. Cloyed or disgusted there, he is again induced to try the humour of the fickle goddess, and repairs once more to the gaming-table, till, having lost all his money, he is under the necessity of descending to the entresol to pawn his watch, before he can even procure a lodging ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... exalt the power of the people, and of aristocrat for those who maintained the privileges of the nobles, came into use, and the most extreme democrats were called Jacobins, from an old convent of Jacobin friars, where they used to meet. The mob of Paris, always eager, fickle, and often blood-thirsty, were excited to the last degree by the debates; and, full of the remembrance of the insolence and cruelty of the nobles, sometimes rose and hunted down persons whom they deemed aristocrats, hanging them to the iron rods by which lamps were ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... undertaken, and yet year after year new magazines were launched on the market with full anticipation of success. This certainly indicates a widespread demand for this class of literature and if the kind offered did not happen to suit the taste, the fickle public was constantly deserting ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... nation—every fourth head—as available for war. This process for David's case would have yielded perhaps about 1,100,000 fighting men throughout Palestine. But this unwieldy pospolite was far from meeting David's secret anxieties. He had remarked the fickle and insurrectionary state of the people. Even against himself how easy had it been found to organize a sudden rebellion, and to conceal it so prosperously that he and his whole court saved themselves from ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... dead or in your arms. Yes, I may have loved the Marquis de Montauran when I thought him a hero, but now I feel only a pitying friendship for him; I see him shorn of all his glory by a fickle love ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... "thou wouldst inspire hearts with ardor needing inspiration more than mine; and to me thou givest hope, and confidence, and strength. Too long have I slept and dreamed," his countenance darkened, and his voice was sadder; "fickle in purpose, uncertain in accomplishment; permitting my youth to moulder 'neath the blasting atmosphere of tyranny. Yet will I now atone for the neglected past. Atone! aye, banish it from the minds of men. My country hath a claim, a double claim upon me; she calls upon me, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... mind, and expressing herself well and in few but careful words; easily finding a way out of a difficulty, and choosing her line of conduct in the most embarrassing circumstances; light-minded and fickle; unstable, paying no attention if the same thing were said several times over. For this reason," continued the doctor, "I was obliged to alter what I had to say from time to time, keeping her but a short time to one subject, to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... brought about by the despotism of the queen, who could not tolerate the empire founded and established over the heart of the brilliant Lupin by the beautiful Euphemie Plissoud, for she herself laid permanent claim to his fickle fervors. ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... remembered that for years before the illness which left him, so to speak, at her mercy, he had loved and been faithful to her. There are letters which seem to show that Mathilde had the defects of those qualities of buxom light-heartedness, of eternal sunshine, which had kept a fickle Heine so faithful. Sometimes, one gathers, she as little realized the tragedy of Heine's suffering as she understood his writings. As such a woman must, she often left Heine very lonely; and seemed to feel more for her ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... place without the consent of the bride's relatives, and soon proved an ill-starred one, the young wife's fickle affection turning into a strong repulsion for her husband, whom she intrigued to have sent out of ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... flutter of a permanent nature in any other woman's heart—that is, not until I was sure that Araminta was lost to me forever. After a decent period of mourning I might have used my twinkle for permanent effect, but at that moment my only idea was to show Araminta that if one could be fickle, two could be twice as fickle. Harry had the same course of treatment in store for Fiametta, and we both made a strong bid for the company of Mary Brown, who, it must be confessed, was a charming girl, and stood second in the affections of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... delight, The swiftest Winged Minutes take their flight, And thus Gods Love to Mankind did dispence, The sacred Wedlock, which did then commence: Not founded as some Criticks say, by chance; But Heaven it self, did this blest State advance. Not subject to the various Revolutions, Of fickle fading human Institutions. A Married Life was first contriv'd above, To be an Emblem of Eternal Love; And after by Divine indulgence sent, To be the Crown of Man, and Wife's content; Yet black Mouthed ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... the while, Stanley broke Lennox and Argyle; Though there the western mountaineer Rushed with bare bosom on the spear, And flung the feeble targe aside, And with both hands the broadsword plied. 'Twas vain: but Fortune, on the right, With fickle smile cheered Scotland's fight. Then fell that spotless banner white, The Howard's lion fell; Yet still Lord Marmion's falcon flew With wavering flight, while fiercer grew Around the battle-yell. The Border slogan rent the sky! A Home! a Gordon! ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... the Missouri and Mississippi from the westward are notoriously fickle and changeable. Within a very few years, some of them have changed their course so that farms are divided into two parts, or are nearly wiped out by the wandering streams. In at least one instance, artful men have ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... a golden shower, and the doves, fickle as all flighty things are, deserted Merrihew ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... knots of angry disputants were seen in the streets and public places, for the most part clamouring against Pericles, and demanding to be led against the invader, while some few argued for the more prudent course. But Pericles, who knew the fickle temper of the multitude, turned a deaf ear to all this uproar, and steadily refused to summon an assembly, lest some hasty resolution should be passed, which would lead to useless loss of life. In order, however, to relieve the public ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... easel, branding it myself in twenty places with his name, and for whom I had engineered a good position next to mine in the Life School—when I saw Ewing hugging Fanchette on the stairs, on the very landing sacred to my embraces, I knew that Paragot was right, and that Fanchette was just a fickle, naughty little model like the others. But if Paragot had not taken her measure before my eyes at Fontainebleau and made a figured drawing so to speak of her heart and soul, shewing their exiguous dimensions, I might have cast myself ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... various parts of the city, which looked like one vast funeral pyre. Only the brick chimneys of the houses remained standing blackened and charred. Smoke and occasional flame would burst out here and there as the fickle eddies of wind, influenced, no doubt, by the heat, whirled around as if in sport over the scene of man's discomfitures. On the hillside stood a solitary house almost untouched, which, had there been any reason for its being held sacred, might well have served ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... themselves. But their combined influence is enormous, so much so that almost any cause to which they devote themselves will in the long run succeed; unless, indeed, their attention is diverted to some other need, for it may be suggested that they are somewhat fickle of purpose. For example, their success in the antislavery movement makes the American history of the nineteenth century; in the prohibition movement they were, in the middle decades of that century, almost entirely successful, and while apparently there was a set-back in the twenty ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... of '73 meant little to the people of this fair commonwealth; they had so little then to lose, and they had lost so much. The town of S—-, toward which these weary travelers turned their steps, was stretching out its hands to clasp Opportunity and Prosperity as those fickle commodities rebounded from the vain-glorious North; the smile was creeping back into the haggard face of the Southland; the dollars were jingling now because they were no longer lonely. The bitterness of life was ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... life are many. Fortune is fickle and but few young people can hope to command perpetual leisure even should their bad judgment make such a thing desirable. There can never be real independence of thought and action apart from one's conscious ability to cope with others on equal terms in any human emergency. The young man who ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... of indications, it was manifest that the winter of the tropical year was at hand. The steady easterly breezes, which, with occasional variations of south-easterly, had hitherto prevailed, were succeeded by violent and fickle winds, blowing sometimes from a dozen different and opposite points of the compass in the course of twenty-four hours. The brief and sudden showers which we had had at intervals for some time past gradually became more heavy and frequent. At length, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... Twins excel in wisdom, born to rule a mighty State, Fair Draupadi, ever faithful, wins the smiles of fickle Fate! ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... fickle state Since man on earth unparalleled! The rarer thy example stands, By how much from the top of wondrous glory, Strongest of mortal men, To lowest pitch of abject fortune ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... Favours, hung thy Nose With Rings of Gold and Pearl, till all grew Foes By secret Envy at thy growing State: I lost my safety when I made thee Great. There's not the least Injustice to you shewn; You must be ruin'd to secure my Throne. Office is but a fickle Grace, the Badge Bestow'd by fits, and snatch'd away in Rage; And sure that Livery which I give my Slaves I may take from 'em when my Portsmouth raves. Thou art a Creature of my own Creation; Then swallow this without Capitulation. If you with feigned ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... didn't mean it!' said the repentant captain, hastening after. 'I do love her best—indeed I do—and I don't love you at all! I am not so fickle as that! I merely just for the moment admired you as a sweet little craft, and that's how I came to do it. You know, Miss Garland,' he continued earnestly, and still running after, ''tis like this: when you come ashore after having been shut up in a ship for eighteen months, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... wise to submit to the honours paid me; at the same time I could not tell at what moment the feelings of the fickle mob might change, and perhaps they might carry me to the lanterne instead of the man I had rescued. I made the best of my position, and kept bowing to the mob right and left, expressing my admiration ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... The fickle lover, rousing from his remorseful reverie, became the man of action. His boat was freighted, in part, with military stores, proof positive of warlike designs. This objective evidence must not come to the knowledge of judge or militia-man. Burr seized an axe, and calling one of the boatmen to his ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... benefit to be wrought amongst the natives, and I regret most deeply the total failure of the school instituted at York, and the partial failure of that at Guilford, both of which at FIRST promised so well. The fickle disposition of these people, in youth as in older years, incapacitate them from any long continued exertions, whether of learning or labour, whilst from the roving lives of the parents in search of food, the children, if received into the schools, must ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... before it apprehends Christ by faith. Nor can it truly hope for eternal life, unless it be pacified before. For a doubting conscience flees from God, despairs and cannot hope. However, hope of eternal life must be certain. Now, in order that it may not be fickle, but certain, we must believe that we have eternal life, not by our works or merits, but from pure ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... Asia Minor and northern Greece. A part of them remained in Galatia. predominating in the mixed population formed out of the Greek, Roman and Jewish people. They were quick-tempered, impulsive, hospitable and fickle people. They were quick to receive impressions and equally quick to give them up. They received Paul with enthusiastic joy, and were then suddenly turned from ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... are aggrieved at being in subordinate positions, or who have been passed over in the distribution of posts, others who are anxious that their side should be defeated in order that they may have a chance of displaying their ability and talents, fickle turncoats who always want to have a foot in each boat. Officials of these several kinds," he continues, "should be secretly approached and bound to one's interests by means of rich presents. In this way you will be able to ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... this stranger without having to blush for it, easy to give him the name and the rights of a husband! She could even appear faithful while really guilty; she could seem constant, though really fickle; and she could, under a veil of mystery, at once reconcile her honour, her ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Generous, Great, and Good, But never to be understood; Fickle as the Wind, still changing, After every Female ranging, Panting, trembling, sighing, dying, But addicted much to Lying: When the Siren Songs repeats, Equal Measures still it beats; Who-e'er shall wear it, it will smart her, And who-e'er takes ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... how 'tis given, What knows he of its worth? 'Tis either fire of heaven Or earthiness of earth. And if the lips are fickle That kiss, they'll never know If tears begin to trickle ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... neither supply fails. While the Opera receives large sums to pay for gorgeous scenery and dresses, the Franais is paid for devoting three nights in the week to the classical school: a real loss to the theatre at times when the fickle public would gladly crowd the house to applaud the success of the hour. The Minister of State interferes as seldom as possible with the management; but when he speaks, his word is law. This was queerly shown in a dispute ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... with a mere handful. He complained bitterly afterwards of those who had led him to make the proposal he did, especially of Regulus, who had failed to support him in the proposal that he himself had suggested. But Regulus is a fickle fellow, rash to a degree, yet a great ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... people are to give support to his undertakings if they are convinced that he has their best welfare as his goal. There is no public confidence equal to that of the American public, once it is obtained. It is fickle, of course, as are all publics, but fickle only toward the man who ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... brought intelligence that all the rest of the multitude were in the power of the enemy, overcome with fear, they said they would consult the people. An assembly of the people was immediately called, when, as all the most fickle of the inhabitants were desirous of a change of measures and a new alliance, and those whose friends were cut off by the enemy without the city, had their minds bound as if they had given hostages, while a few rather silently approved of a constant fidelity than ventured ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius |
