"Flighty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... take such microscopic views of each other since the railway came within ten miles of us, and are now able to converse on much more general topics than formerly. Not that there isn't still opportunity to lament over the flighty nature of kitchen incumbents, and to look after the domestic interests of all Barton; but I think going to Boston several times a year tends to enlarge the mind, and gives us more subjects of conversation. We are quite up in the sculpture at Mount Auburn, and have our preferences ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... fate of our English Newman Street apostles, and of M. de la M—, the mad priest, and his congregation of mad converts, should be a warning to such of us as are inclined to dabble in religious speculations; for, in them, as in all others, our flighty brains soon lose themselves, and we find our reason speedily lying prostrated at the mercy of our passions; and I think that Madame Sand's novel of Spiridion may do a vast deal of good, and bears a good ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Yes, that would be the best way of all; it couldn't help succeeding. He imagines you as a flighty Parisienne; he is afraid of you; he is more angry with me for loving you than for refusing to carry on his practice. If he could only see you, he would soon ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... great notoriety or fame—and many compare Ralph Waldo to old Carlyle. They cannot trace exactly any great affinity between these two great geniuses of the flash literary school. Carlyle writes vigorously, quaintly enough, but almost always speaks when he says something; on the contrary, our flighty friend Ralph speaks vigorously, yet says nothing! Of all men that have ever stood and delivered in presence of "a reporter," none surely ever led these indefatigable knights of the pen such a wild-goose ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... for Finsbury, examined—Had known the deceased for some years. Had the highest notion of the robustness of his constitution. Would have taken any odds upon it. Deceased, however, within these last three or four weeks had flighty intervals. Talked very much about the fine phrenological development of Sir Robert Peel's skull. Had suspicions of the deceased from that moment. Deceased had been carefully watched, but to no avail. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 9, 1841 • Various
... talk so light and flighty of death before God's Judgment-seat? Nay, he'll neither hop nor run again in this ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... wise judge who, when sudden darkness came on, and people thought the end of the world was at hand, said, 'Bring lights, and let us go on with the case. We cannot be better employed, if the end has come, than in doing our duty.' Flighty impatience of common tasks is not watching for the King, as Paul had to teach the Thessalonians, who were 'shaken' in mind by the thought of the day of the Lord; but the proper attitude of the watchers is 'that ye study to be quiet, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... soary (and flighty) as a rocket to-day, with the unutterable joy of getting that Old Man of the Sea off my back, where he has been roosting more than a year ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... any foolish crotchets, and improper whims into your head, for that would be too impertinent, yet as you knew one another when children, and so forth, it was best to be plain with you at once, because, though such ridiculous nonsense was quite impossible, I hear on all hands you are a bold and flighty young gentleman, and that you have no little opinion ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... things in general, and without sufficient motive to control her natural taste for the variety of naughtiness! Honor had not undertaken the easiest of tasks, but she neither shrank from her enterprise nor ceased to love the fiery little flighty sprite, the pleasing torment of her life—she loved her only less than that model of ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... makes them easier to bring down, and, what is more important still, easier to hold down. The weight of opinion among women is decidedly against the woman who falls in love with an Apollo. She is regarded, at best, as flighty creature, and at worst, as one pushing bad taste to the verge of indecency. Such weaknesses are resigned to women approaching senility, and to the more ignoble variety of women labourers. A shop girl, perhaps, may plausibly fall in love ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... than the men, can read without a smile these doubts of the "steadiness" of that sex? Again, among Quaker women, I have asked the opinion of prominent Friends, as of John G. Whittier, whether it has been the experience of that body that women were more flighty and unsteady than men in their official action; and have been uniformly answered in the negative. And finally, as to benevolent organizations, a good test is given in the fact,—first pointed out, I believe, by that eminently practical philanthropist, Rev. Augustus ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the friar,—"bold baron, old baron, sturdy baron, wordy baron, long baron, strong baron, mighty baron, flighty baron, mazed baron, crazed baron, hacked baron, thwacked baron; cracked, cracked, cracked baron; bone-cracked, sconce-cracked, ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... maintained by pretty high authority; but we are ourselves inclined to adopt the Larig, not only because it appeared to us to contain a greater volume of water, but because it is more in the line of the glen, and, though rough enough, is not so desperately flighty as the Garchary, and does not join it in those great leaps which, however surprising and worthy of admiration they may be in themselves, are not quite consistent with the calm dignity of a river destined to pass close to two universities. Following then the Larig over rocks ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... as flighty critics of French affairs sometimes imply, that has made civil equality the passion of modern France. The root of this passion is an undying memory of the curse that was inflicted on its citizens, morally and materially, by the fiscal inequalities ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... early callers at the hospital. William Dodge is still alive, but delirious. He slept much of the night, but is flighty, making many wild, incoherent speeches. Receiving permission to see him, Sir Donald and ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... Miss Patricia Doyle's pretty flat at 3708 Willing Square. In the small drawing room Patricia—or Patsy, as she preferred to be called—was seated at the piano softly playing the one "piece" the music teacher had succeeded in drilling into her flighty head by virtue of much patience and perseverance. In a thick cushioned morris-chair reclined the motionless form of Uncle John, a chubby little man in a gray suit, whose features were temporarily eclipsed by the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... them, the education of her daughter was the subject of constant discord, requiring the frequent intervention of the old king until he lost his reason. After she went abroad in 1814, she travelled widely, but her English attendants soon retired from her service, and she incurred fresh suspicion by her flighty and undignified conduct. She had no part in the rejoicing for the marriage, or in the mourning for the death, of the Princess Charlotte; and in 1818 a secret commission, afterwards known as the Milan commission, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... "belody" camels from the Delta; tall, wayward Somalis; massive, heavy-limbed Maghrabis—magnificent creatures; a sprinkling of russet-brown Indian camels; and, lest the female element be neglected, a company of flighty "nitties," very full of their own importance. The native drivers were of as many shades as the camels they led, from the pale brown of the town-bred Egyptian to the coal-black Nubian or Donglawi. ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... respect for you—a very great respect indeed, sir. If you have not been a good friend to me yet, you will—I know it, sir; you are not like the other flighty young gentlemen. I have a respect for years, sir—a great respect for years, and honour a middle-aged gentleman. Indeed, sir, it must be a great condescension in you to permit yourself to be only a master's—mate of a frigate, seeing ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... themselves, and Sheffield was pouring out coffee, and a plate of muffins was going round, and Bateman was engaged, saucepan in hand, in the operation of landing his eggs, now boiled, upon the table, when our flighty youth, whose name was White, observed how beautiful the Catholic custom was of making eggs the emblem of the Easter-festival. "It is truly Catholic," said he; "for it is retained in parts of England, you have it in Russia, and in ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... in a month's time. Some accounted it unseemly haste, after the other banns which had come to naught, and some said 'twas better so, and they blamed not Parson Fair for placing such a flighty and jilting maid safe within the pale of wedlock—and they guessed he was thankful enough to find a husband for her, even if 'twas ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he was not so very old, not more than sixty, and old age in itself is not sufficient to make a man surly and to sour his temper. That the Major had had trouble in his family was well known. His wife had been flighty and foolish, and it was believed that she had run away from him; and his only son was a wild lad, who had been employed by Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co., out of regard for the father, and who had disgraced himself beyond forgiveness. Paul recalled vaguely that ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... she didn't withdraw. The latter were brilliant and expressive, and surmounted a delicate aquiline nose, which, though pretty, was perhaps just a trifle too hawk-like. It was the oddest coincidence in the world; the story Vogelstein had taken up treated of a flighty forward little American girl who plants herself in front of a young man in the garden of an hotel. Wasn't the conduct of this young lady a testimony to the truthfulness of the tale, and wasn't Vogelstein himself in the position ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... put his foot into the stirrup and mount him, I've no doubt he won't be the last of the field ma'am. I've tested the chap, and know him pretty well, I think. He is much too lazy, and careless, and flighty a fellow, to make a jog-trot journey, and arrive, as your lawyers do, at the end of their lives! but give him a start and good friends, and an opportunity, and take my word for it, he'll make himself a name that his sons shall ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... back to her hammock and was lying with one arm thrown up across the cushion, her face concealed behind it. She, too, felt miserably misunderstood. Flighty she was, spoiled and impulsive, but beneath it all she had her father's practical strain of hard sense. Mary V had grown older in the past three days. She had faced some bitter possibilities and had done a good deal of sober thinking. She felt now that Johnny was carried away by the fascination ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... against than sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, a wicked man, she cared not. Even if he was a protestant or methodist she could convert him easily if he truly loved her. There were wounds that wanted healing with heartbalm. She was a womanly woman not like other flighty girls unfeminine he had known, those cyclists showing off what they hadn't got and she just yearned to know all, to forgive all if she could make him fall in love with her, make him forget the memory of the past. Then mayhap ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... told you. I saw him speaking to you. He had received some telegram about a horse. He's the most flighty man in the world about such things. I am to write to him before I leave this to-morrow." Then the Duchess did not believe a word of the engagement. She felt at any rate certain that if there was an engagement, Lord Rufford did not ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... Miss Stanleigh," I burst forth, "there can't be any reasonable doubt. Leavitt's mind may be a little flighty—he may have embroidered his story with a few gratuitous details; but Farquharson's books and things—the material evidence of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... environment, awaiting the call to "come up higher." And meantime she strove to gain daily a wider knowledge of the Christ-principle, and its application to the needs and problems of her fellow-men. Her business was the reflection of her Father's business. Other ambition she had none. The weak, transient, flighty, so-called intellectual life which she saw about her sent no call across the calm currents of her thought. Her education was religious in the strictest, deepest sense, for she was ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... "The flighty and skittish wife of Ingild longs to observe the fashions of the Teutons; she prepares the orgy and makes ready ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... fickle, mercurial, volatile, flighty, unstable, inconstant, thoughtless; light-headed, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the old man's constant chatter grew flighty and incoherent. He talked of people and things unknown to Edith, and spoke his mother's name many times. Then he fell asleep. In the morning he seemed very weak, and his ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... possible that proud old man has really fallen seriously in love with that yellow-haired, flighty child?" asked Mrs. Carl Walraven in angry surprise. "He was attentive at Washington, certainly; but I fancied his absurd old eyes were only caught for the moment. If it should prove serious, what a thing it will be for her! and these antediluvians, in their dotage, will ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... was certainly a very amiable rake and a very earnest bigot. "There can be no doubt," says our historian, in his convincing way, "that he often paused in his reckless career, filled with remorse, wrestling with his flighty spirit, to overcome his unseemly sports"; and as to the sincerity of his fanaticism, "to suppose otherwise is to charge a mere youth with a hypocritical cunning worthy of the Borgias in their zenith." Masterly strokes like these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... Montgomery's escapade was a tragedy at every hearth-side. It was immeasurably shocking that a young woman married to a reputable man, and with a child still toddling after her, should have done this grievous thing. To say that she had always been flighty, and that it was what might have been expected of a woman as headstrong as she had been as a girl, was no mollification of the blow to the local conscience, acutely sensitive in all that pertained to the honor and sanctity of the marriage tie. And Jack Holton! That she should have thrown ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... preceding, younger daughter of the Marquis de Casteran; born Beatrix-Maximilienne-Rose de Casteran, about 1808, in the Casteran Castle, department of Orne. After being reared there she became the wife of the Marquis of Rochefide in 1828. She was fair of skin, but a flighty vain coquette, without heart or brains—a second Madame d'Espard, except for her lack of intelligence. About 1832 she left her husband to flee into Italy with the musician, Gennaro Conti, whom she took from her friend, Mademoiselle des Touches. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... and bellicose, Peacemaker and foeman; Czech and Hun, and mixed with those German, Slav, and Roman; Men of middling size and weight, Dwarfs and giants mighty; Men of modest heart and state, Vain men, proud and flighty. ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... that if you are quiet and kind, and not flighty, he will forget all that, and be glad to let you be a sister ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pointed her remarks with a lean, commanding finger: "You take that sail off the launch! It's quiet enough now, but it ain't going to last forever, and I couldn't rest with three flighty lads in a boat with a sail ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Poor Annabel died in two days, and afterward Maggie took the fever. Yes, she has been quite changed since then. She always had moods, as she called them, but not like now. Sometimes I think she is almost flighty." ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... longer was becoming a dark and ugly question. A year or two before, Boulnois had married a beautiful and not unsuccessful actress, to whom he was devoted in his own shy and ponderous style; and the proximity of the household to Champion's had given that flighty celebrity opportunities for behaving in a way that could not but cause painful and rather base excitement. Sir Claude had carried the arts of publicity to perfection; and he seemed to take a crazy pleasure in being equally ostentatious in an intrigue that ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... I cannot express to you the anxiety I have that you will not think me flighty nor inconsiderate in this business. Believe me, that experience, in one instance—you cannot fail to know to what I allude—is too recent to permit my being so hasty in my conclusions as the warmth of my temper might have otherwise prompted. I am also ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... hit? De young gen'l'man ain't j'ined de fambly yit an' already he's settin' hisse'f to run it. All right den. Go on, chile—quit mumblin' up yore words an' please go on an' tell me whut you got to say! But ef you's fixin' to bring up de subjec' of my lettin' ary one of dese yere young flighty-haided, flibbertigibbeted, free-issue nigger gals come to work on dis place, you mout ez well save yore breath now an' yereafter, 'ca'se so long ez Ise able to drag one foot behine t'other I p'intedly does aim to manage ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... moment. Did you see anything in this man that could excite the suspicion that he was at all flighty or insane?" ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... our lesson to the KAISER, Self-anointed Lord of Earth, Left that furious monarch wiser Re our troops' intrinsic worth, Frankly, I had thought you flighty, Callous to the very core; Lovely?—yes, like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... is flighty," replied the other. "Do you notice that he doesn't seem to be as jolly and full of fun as he ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... acquaintances in the village. His mother hated the place and the people. She had married very young—for the sake of money and position—to his dull old father, who nevertheless managed to keep his flighty wife in order by dint of a dumb, continuous stubbornness and tyranny, which would have overborne a stronger nature than Lady Tressady's. She was always struggling to get away from Ferth; he to keep ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Obed. "I was engaged ten years ago, but the girl didn't know her own mind, and she ran off with a man that came along with a photograph saloon. I guess it's just as well, for she was always rather flighty." ...
— In A New World - or, Among The Gold Fields Of Australia • Horatio Alger
... Humphries," said Mrs. Hoel, turning to the postilion, who drove Angelina from Newport, "pray, now, does not this seem strange, that such a young lady as this should be travelling about in such wonderful haste? I believe, by her flighty airs, she is upon no good errand—and I would have her to know, at any rate, that she might have done better than to sneer, in that way, at Mrs. Hoel of Cardiffe, and her Tenby oysters, and her Welsh rabbit. Oh, I'll make her repent her pehaviour ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... different. The stage did not hold then the place in public estimation which it now does. Theatrical people were little known and even less understood. Even the people who did not think all actors drunkards and all actresses immoral, did think they were a lot of flighty, silly buffoons, not to be taken seriously for a moment. The profession, by reason of this feeling, was rather a close corporation. The recruits were generally young relatives of the older actors. There was plenty of room, and people began at the ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... great delight in exercising Tommy and Patty (who were big enough to be trusted) in flighty and would often skim round the whole island with them before I could walk half through the wood. And she would teach them also to swim or sail, I know not which to call it, for sometimes you should see them dart out of the air as if they would fall on their faces ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... Materialist, and Kopy-Keck was a Spiritualist. The former was slow and sententious; the latter was quick and flighty; the latter had generally the first word; the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... so funny that Alfaretta, who always was kind of flighty, made a little noise with her soft palate and tried to pass it off for a cough. Luanna May poked her in the ribs with her elbow, and Mrs. Rowan spoke up quite loud: "Why, Pa, how you go on! I wasn't but a minute, ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... his trust would have been in his mind a thing undreamed. He was phlegmatic, stolid to such a degree that one could not but wonder how the Revolution had any meaning to him at all. And yet love of freedom glowed sombrely and steadily in his dim soul. In ways it was indeed good that he was not flighty and imaginative. He never lost his head. He could obey orders, and he was neither curious nor garrulous. Once I asked how it was that he was ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... has come to an age when nobody can say she's flighty, I sh'd hope," continued Miss Peckham. "She's settled. And she's got to ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... the kitchen, but her flighty thoughts were swinging corners in the quadrille with Jeb, and the fried potatoes were gracefully shot into the coal-scuttle as the pan was waved aloft in imitation of dancers she had ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... make-up, the Patchwork Girl was magically alive and had proved herself not the least jolly and agreeable of the many quaint characters who inhabit the astonishing Fairyland of Oz. Indeed, Scraps was a general favorite, although she was rather flighty and erratic and did and said many things that surprised her friends. She was seldom still, but loved to dance, to turn handsprings and somersaults, to climb trees and to indulge ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... fox stopped short again in mid career, and crouched down; but Matyi did not leap over him as the flighty Armida had done, but, as the fox turned towards him with gnashing teeth, he snapped suddenly at him from the opposite side like lightning, and in that instant all that one could see was the fox turning a somersault in the ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... in behalf of General Hastings, and there follow a number of conferences between the legal representatives of the opposing parties. By means of these conferences, the two legal gentlemen run up very respectable bills of expenses. In the end, we get our ten thousand dollars, and the flighty old General gets back his letters.... My dear," Mary concluded vaingloriously, "we're inside the law, and so we're perfectly safe. And ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... wonder you are surprised—or at your mistake. The fact is, the circumstances are peculiar. It's my sister's fault, really; she's such a flighty little thing—unpardonably careless. I must have warned her a hundred times, if once, never to leave valuables in that silly old tin safe. But she won't listen to reason—never would. And it's her house—her safe. I've got ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... more, when I told her you would send for the doctor, it was worse than about the rubbers. She talked all the rubbish you can think of. I'm sure she's flighty—said she never had a doctor, that she always got well, and even cried when I told her that ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... had talked with Mary of Crawford's people in the West, but merely casually, as of complete strangers, which, of course, they were. It was all strange, but explainable if one considered that Mr. Smith was weak and ill and, perhaps, flighty. She must not think any more about it now—that is, she must try not to think. She must not give way, and above all she must not permit her uncles to suspect that she was troubled. She must try hard to put it from her mind until ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Boyd's Island without his hearing of it. Moreover, he keenly regretted on her account his own physical condition. Since rising from his bed of fever he had carefully avoided all fatigue, according to his doctor's injunction. But now, after this morning's efforts, his legs were weak and his head was flighty. Things showed a tendency to dance before his eyes in a way that he had not experienced heretofore. When he lay upon the ground an hour ago he did it, among other reasons, to avoid tumbling ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... my cigar on the window-ledge; chased my flighty thoughts a moment, then said in a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with a quiet conviction which gave solid weight to his words, owing to its contrast with the flighty enthusiasm which was the ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... perturbed and excited about something known only to herself, for she was strangely irritable on our walk, contradicted me fiercely, inquired testily who Nelson might be, then chid me for a dry old schoolmaster, when I told her, and such like flighty vagaries, inseparable, I believed, from her sex in general and her temperament in particular. If I have never taken the trouble to defend myself from the accusation of thinking The Pearl perfect in her somewhat spoiled relations with her best friends at this period of her life, it is ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... streets is such that it is not safe to let any young man or boy walk about, not so much because of prostitutes, men may learn to avoid them, but because of dressed-up, flighty girls, who have earned big wages during the past four years, and now are feeling the want of money to spend upon dress and pleasure. Almost for the first time girls have had money, and it has enabled them to do what they want; they have learned more than their mothers know and, therefore, ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... Charles. At the most, Ferdinand could hope only to exercise a dominant influence (converted after Philip's death in 1506 into practical sovereignty as Regent), with a perpetual risk of Maximilian turning his flighty ambitions towards asserting himself as ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... about as thirsty as a desert coyote; also, he looked flighty. I was reaching for the canteen when I happened to think what pleasure it would be to Miss Sampson to minister to him, and I drew back. "Wait a little." Then with an effort I plunged. "Vaughn, listen. Miss ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... by the fire. She was a small, daintily-made woman, and beautiful even at fifty-five. She had keen, black eyes and nervous, flighty ways. A smile, half cynical, half inviting, lit up ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... is a little matter: be it so; but of a truth I do tell thee, Cecil, it shall master full many a bold heart that the Spaniard cannot trouble; it shall win to it full many a proud and flighty one that even chivalry and manly comeliness cannot touch. I may shake titles and dignities by the dozen from my breakfast-board; but I may not save those upon whose heads I shake them from rottenness and oblivion. This year they and their sovereign dwell ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... centre either of power or action or intellect about which they may group themselves, and I think that Pearse became the leader because his temperament was more profoundly emotional than any of the others. He was emotional not in a flighty, but in a serious way, and one felt more that he suffered ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... when he came down, after an interval, it was to check Blanche, who would have gone up to interrupt her with queries about the perpetual blue merino. He sat down with Blanche on the staircase window-seat, and did not let her go till he had gently talked her out of flighty spirits ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... "It seems very flighty in me to be taking a new place at this time of life," observed Mrs. Bread, lugubriously. "But if you are going to turn the house upside down, I would rather ...
— The American • Henry James
... Johnstone) gave, and which the Lady of Glenuskie soon perceived to be only too true during the days spent at Nanci. To the two young sisters the condition of things was less evident. To Margaret their presence was such sunshine, that they usually saw her in her highest, most flighty, and imprudent spirits, taking at times absolute delight in shocking her two duennas; and it was in this temper that, one hot noon day, coming after an evening of song and music, finding Alain Chartier asleep on a bench in the garden, ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what it's for, then. Couldn't Mr. Gallilee put up a swing? And a 'flying circle' in the middle? You see they can't go out on the roofs; so they must have something else that will seem kind of flighty. And I'll tell you how they'll learn their letters. Sulie and I will paint 'em; great big ones, all colors; and hang 'em up with ribbons, and every child that learns one, so as to know it everywhere, shall take ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... make our fortune in Kentucky he crippled us again and we had to move here. Trying to make our fortune here, he brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He's an honest soul, and means the very best in the world, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid he's too flighty. He has splendid ideas, and he'll divide his chances with his friends with a free hand, the good generous soul, but something does seem to always interfere and spoil everything. I never did think he was right well balanced. But I don't blame my ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... him from all work, and begged him to come to his assistance. The voice had come to him at the time of the accident. As a rule, however, the voices seemed vagarious, and he attached no importance to them, except as phenomena which interested him slightly. There was nothing flighty about him, no indication of monomania—he reasoned well, but from the point of view of a man who has had only an elementary education, knowing nothing of philosophy; he had no religious crotchets, and apparently thought little or not at all on religious matters—was, in fine, a natural ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... grown out o' my recollection; but I want to see. He knows me, I know. I got my hand on him once when he was a boy—about my age, and he ain't forgot that, I know. He was a blusterer; but he did n 't have real grit. He won't say nothin' to my face. But I must go alone. You all are too flighty.' ...
— The Spectre In The Cart - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... youngest of all the sons' wives, as her husband was the latest born. She was quite a girl to some of them. Grandma had never more than half approved of her. Dorcas was high-strung and flighty, she said. She had her doubts about living happily with her. But Atherton was anxious for this division of the property, and he was her youngest darling, so she gave in. She felt lonely, and out of her ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Barentz. He was a young man, apparently not thirty years of age, of diminutive stature and delicate proportions. His face was handsome, but womanish. His movements were rapid and restless, and there was that appearance in his eye which would have warranted the supposition that he was a little flighty, even if his conduct had ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... is not an end, but a means. When God gets his way, he wants to have this world populated with men and women. Whether Caine meant John Storm for an ideal Christian we can not say. There is strength here, as in all he has written; but Storm's lacks are many and great. He is enthusiast, but flighty. He means well, but is spasmodic in its display. Storm might have grown into a hero had he lived longer, and, as a flame, leaped high at some point in his career. Both as man and Christian, he disappoints us. Red Jason, in "The Bondman," is a worthier contribution to the natural history ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... could effect any good, I had no wish to be drawn into the flighty venture, but as my comrade was resolute in courting danger I was forced ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... in his journal, 'a very pretty allusion,' and we may be sure, in spite of his reticence, that his own case was present at the time to his mind. His distressed father enlisted the interest of Lord Hailes, who requested Dr Jortin, Prebendary of St Paul's, to take in hand the flighty youth, and to persuade him to renounce the errors of the Church of Rome for those of the Church of England, for it was plain that Boswell had broken loose from his old moorings, and some middle course might, it was hoped, prove to be possible. 'Your ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... table she nearly swooned, and her disgust lasted some time, until at the end of half an hour or so she took her first morsel.[46] On the whole, if we accept the current standard of sanity, Madame de Warens must be pronounced ever so little flighty; but a monotonous world can afford to be lenient to people with a slight craziness, if it only has hearty benevolence and cheerfulness in its company, and is free from egoism or ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... flighty young monkey, though," pursued Brett pensively. "It's that touch of red in her hair that does it, I ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... be over. Only a few hours at most. I have met with an accident, my boy. I was riding from Truro, and got near home, when three men, who had been drinking hard at the tavern near by, came out from the hedgeside and frightened Bess; she is a very flighty mare, you know. She gave a side leap and threw me. My foot caught in the stirrup, and I was dragged along the road until I fancy the mare trod ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... never did full justice, from not understanding many of its best points. She liked Mr. Phillips much better, who was graver. Her Scotch phlegmatic temperament could not appreciate the fine spirit and unvarying good humour of Brandon, and his random way of talking she thought flighty and frivolous. But yet she could, and did, praise him for his kindness of heart and his want of selfishness, which he had shown on many occasions, great and small, at Barragong. These panegyrics were bestowed with discretion, not being ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... count upon this man as a positive lover, but he is an admirer. They have a disagreeable habit of going so far and then taking wing. Marriage seems an event rather difficult of accomplishment, for with all Marcia's flighty romance she shrinks from encountering actual poverty, but it might be this man's admiration is sufficiently strong to lead him beyond the debatable land. She hesitates just a little, then solaces herself with ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... are terribly flighty. [Presses the money into her hand.] Here, take it; and do not be too ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... Its wilful bravery of evil against The worth and right of goodness in the world: Ay, do you see how his face still brags at me? And long it has been, the time he's had to walk Lording about me with his wickedness. Do you know what he dared? I had a wife, A flighty pretty linnet-headed girl, But mine: he practised on her with his eyes; He knew of luring glances, and she went After his calling lust: and all since then They've lived together, fleering in my face, Pleased in sight of the windows ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... a ghastly pale to find there was no hope; And made remarks about a pond, and razors, and a rope; The other servants pitied him, and Rosie said as much; But Rosie was too flighty, and ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... into the breakfast-room, she was saluted with the customary remonstrance which her flighty disregard of all punctuality habitually provoked from the long-suffering household authorities. In Miss Garth's favorite phrase, "Magdalen was born with all the senses—except a ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... months after admission she one day suddenly became talkative, distractible and emotional, laughing and crying. There was with this, however, no open elation. Her talk was obscene, at times flighty, at times definitely scattered. All her ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... arm. In the enchantment of her realized dream, she pressed close to him, always anxious, feeling that he was as flighty as a wild sea-bird. To-morrow he would take his soaring on the open sea. And it was too late now, she could ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... trembled suddenly in her hand as she set it down. An overpowering sense of fatigue was upon her. With the death of her poor hope, with the collapse of all those flighty, childish dreams, the leaden weight of realities seemed to descend crushingly upon her. ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the mind, which is difficult to hold in and flighty, rushing wherever it listeth; a tamed ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... dear creature,] how can you for a moment suppose I should have any serious thoughts of that trifling, gay, flighty coquette, that disagreeable— ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... too, had been in favour of it—Annette, from behind the veil of his refusal to know what she was about, if she was about anything. Annette had said: "Let her marry this young man. He is a nice boy—not so highty-flighty as he seems." Where she got her expressions, he didn't know—but her opinion soothed his doubts. His wife, whatever her conduct, had clear eyes and an almost depressing amount of common sense. He had settled fifty thousand on Fleur, taking care that there was no cross settlement ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... eyes, her finely shaded feathers, and certain saucy dashing ways that she had which seemed greatly to take his fancy. But old Mrs. Scratchard, living in the neighbouring yard, assured all the neighbourhood that Gray Cock was a fool for thinking so much of that flighty young thing; THAT she had not the smallest notion how to get on in life, and thought of nothing in the world but her own pretty feathers. "Wait till she comes to have chickens," said Mrs. Scratchard; ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ones. After they had been married for eight years, Rosina met this Spaniard. He must have amounted to something. She wasn't a flighty woman. She came home and told Dudley how matters stood. He persuaded her to stay at home for six months and try to pull up. They were both fair-minded people, and I'm as sure as if I were the Almighty, that she did try. But at the ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... undervaluing the part, the important part, played by conservatism, the conservatism that holds on to what has been gained if it is good, that insists on discipline and heed to the plain teaching of experience, that refuses to go into hysterics of enthusiasm over every flighty suggestion, or to follow every leader simply because he proposes something new and strange—I do not mean the conservatism that refuses to try anything simply because it is new, and prefers to energetic life ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... me so. Why couldn't you let me know that she was flighty beforehand? I thought that she was a person whom it would have done ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Pontiac went on as it began that day. Not once a day, and sometimes not once in twenty days, did any human being speak to him. The village baker would not sell him bread; his groceries he had to buy from the neighbouring parishes, for the grocer's flighty wife called for the constable when he entered the bake-shop of Pontiac. He had to bake his own bread, and do his own cooking, washing, cleaning, and gardening. His hair grew long and his clothes became shabbier. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the Acting Governor, and His Honour's consort. We were also introduced to Mrs. Balmossie, the lady who was to chaperon us to Moozuffernuggar. Her husband was a soldierly Scotchman from Forfarshire, but she herself was English—a flighty little body with a perpetual giggle. She giggled so much over the idea of the Maharajah's inviting us to his palace that I wondered why on earth she accepted his invitation. At this she seemed surprised. 'Why, it's one of the jolliest places in Rajputana,' she answered, with ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... to me," even so flighty a little personage as Lillie Davis said one day, "I feel as if I could make any sacrifice quite as a matter of course, and without a ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... for weeks past, he's been so moody, so irritable, so fretted over his work, so unlike himself. And his picture has failed dismally. Of course William doesn't understand; but I do. I know you've probably quarrelled, or something. You know how flighty and unreliable you can be sometimes, Billy, and I don't say that to mean anything against you, either—that's your way. You're just as temperamental in your art, music, as Bertram is in his. You're utterly unsuited ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... it occurred.' 'She does it for love of us?—Oh! I can't trifle. Dartrey!' 'Tell me.' 'First, you haven't let me know what you think of my Nesta.' 'She's a dear good girl.' 'Not so interesting to you as a flighty little woman!' 'She has a speck of some sort on her mind.' Nataly spied at Dudley's behaviour, and said: 'That will wear away. Is Mr. Blathenoy much here?' 'As often as he can come, I believe.' 'That is . . . ?' 'I have seen him twice.' 'His wife remains?' 'Fixed here for the season.' 'My friend!' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... older than Sanchia, had married a Captain Sinclair, who was stationed at Aldershot. She had been the romp of former days and, when the storm had burst, hotly on the culprit's side. But Vicky had been flighty, and marriage changes one. Sanchia's eyes grew wistful as she sat, her letters on the ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... n't git so flighty, Case you got dat suit. Dem cloes ain't so mighty,— Second hand to boot, I 's a-tryin' to spite you! Full of jealousy! Look hyeah, man, I 'll fight you, Don't ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... people of much higher rank than yourself. If it be true that the Baroness [Waldstaedten] did the same, still it is quite another thing, because she is a passee elderly woman (who cannot possibly any longer charm), and is always rather flighty. I hope, my dear friend, that you will never lead a life like hers, even should you resolve never to become my wife. But the thing is past, and a candid avowal of your heedless conduct would have made me at once overlook it; and, allow me to say, if you will not be offended, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... eat them," replied the fool. "And I have often marvelled wherefor the flighty butterfly wears such gay and painted wings, while every creature that creeps and grubs is grey or brown ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to?" asked Fairbairn, with due monitorial solemnity, of that flighty youth; "don't you know ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... gether up some eggs out 'n the nestes, but it'd look sort o' flighty to go egg-huntin' here at midnight—an' he not two ...
— Sonny, A Christmas Guest • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... muslin, and Elsie sat near by with her father's letter in her hand, her soft dark eyes now glancing over it for perhaps the twentieth time, now at the face of one or the other of her companions, as Lottie rattled on in her usual gay, flighty style, and Aunt Wealthy answered her sometimes with a straightforward sentence, and again with one so topsy-turvy that her listeners could not ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... on her—it was her duty to tell her stories in the night. 'But only the old ones,' Malania Pavlovna would beg—'those I know already; the new ones are all so far-fetched.' Malania Pavlovna was flighty in the extreme, and at times she was fanciful too; some ridiculous notion would suddenly come into her head. She did not like the dwarf, Janus, for instance; she was always fancying he would suddenly get up and shout, 'Don't you know who I am? The prince of the Buriats. ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... kind of flighty like, and whispered, 'Good-bye, dear house!' and then ran out to the wagon. I expect she meant that for you and your grandmother, as much as for me, so I'm particular to tell you. This house had always been a refuge ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... tell you—all about it. I do not want you to blame Charlie. It was not his fault—nothing was his fault. I was a silly, flighty girl and fancied myself in love with everyone, whereas, really, I never cared at all, not until I met him. I don't want you to think he was to blame, because, if you do, you may want to be revenged on him, and now you have this opportunity ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... "Don't get flighty, Patricia," admonished Beth. "This is a serious matter, and Louise is in earnest. If we're going to help her we mustn't talk rubbish. Now, it isn't a bad suggestion that we ought to look nearer home for the key to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... the comedy; after fifteen or twenty minutes Mrs. Vervain opened her eyes and said, "But before you commence, Florida, I wish you'd play a little, to get me quieted down. I feel so very flighty. I suppose it's this sirocco. And I believe I'll lie down ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... a first guest arrived, a man of barely four and thirty, elegantly dressed, dark and good looking, with a delicately shaped nose, and curly hair and beard. As a rule, too, he had laughing eyes, and something giddy, flighty, bird-like in his demeanour; but that morning he seemed nervous, anxious even, and smiled in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... unmask imposition; and your fears, Clara, will only make me watch more closely, till I find out the real object of them. If you warn me of quarrelling with some one, it must be because you know some one who is not unlikely to quarrel with me. You are a flighty and fanciful girl, but you have sense enough not to trouble either yourself or me on a point of honour, save when there is some good reason ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... grandmother indulges them when they visit her. For once, I fancy, it won't hurt, and in the future I'll—Oh! what a lot I shall have to learn; and how delightfully exciting it all is! Mary, don't stare at me like that. It's impertinent. I know you don't mean it so, and you think I'm a little flighty. Well, I am. Very flighty, indeed! ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... is all in vain; I perceive that you and I shall never see Emile with the same eyes; you will always fancy him like your own young people, hasty, impetuous, flighty, wandering from fete to fete, from amusement to amusement, never able to settle to anything. You smile when I expect to make a thinker, a philosopher, a young theologian, of an ardent, lively, eager, and fiery young man, at the most impulsive period of youth. This dreamer, you say, is always ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... at least to her bed. Then he would play a solo on the Braydons' bell until he roused them. They would let him in, and beyond the peradventure of a doubt, they would understand what seemed to be beyond the ken of flighty and excitable underlings. He would make them understand, once he was in and once the first shock of beholding him had abated within them. They were a kindly, hospitable couple, the Braydons were. They would be ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... old man, in his broken way, replied that then he (the herb-doctor) was the person he sought—the person spoken of by the other person as yet unknown. He then, with flighty eagerness, wanted to know who this last person was, and where he was, and whether he could be trusted with ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... woman can be to see you back again," she said heartily, "though it's more than I hoped for so soon, and—Yes, the doctor says she's a little better, thank God! And your name has been on her lips more than once—poor dear!—since she has been flighty, and all the thanks I feel to you for bringing Lavina right along I can never tell you; for it seems a month since I saw a woman last. I just can't count the squaw! And do you want to come in ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... mean that for a moment. It isn't really dishonourable. My father could never have objected to you for my husband. He only wanted to guard me—Mary says so, and he told her everything. He thought me a silly, flighty girl, and was afraid I should be trapped for the sake of my money. I wish—oh how I wish I had had the courage to tell him! He would have seen you, and liked and trusted you—how ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... greater), yet she holds out on the strength of her original pretensions for a long time, and plays the upstart with decency and imposing consistency. Indeed, her infatuation and caprices are akin to the flighty perversity of a disordered imagination; and another turn of the wheel of good or evil fortune would have sent her to keep company with Hogarth's Merveilleuses in Bedlam, or with Decker's group of coquettes in the same place.—The ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... consequence frequently of a rather singular nature; however, on the whole, Sir Michael was popular, for if he benefited none, he harmed none; and he was considered by many a safe constitutional man, with no flighty ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... afternoon began. I may add that before dinner was over, the Signora dell'Acqua and I were fast friends. I had discovered the way of making jokes, and she had become intelligible. I found her a very nice, though flighty, little woman; and I believe she thought me gifted with the faculty of uttering eccentric epigrams in a grotesque tongue. Some of my remarks were flung about the table, and had the same success as uncouth Lombard carvings have with connoisseurs in naivetes of art. By ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... quiet method of evolution, which she pursues undismayed to the end, requires a certain lengthiness; and the reader's reward will be in a secure sense that he has been in intercourse with no mere flighty remnants, but with typical forms, of character, firmly and fully conceived. We are persuaded that the author might have written a novel which should have been all shrewd impressions of society, or all humorous impressions of country life, or all quiet fun and genial caricature. ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... relief from that, I think, that he took up politics of the rabid sort. He was a fanatical Radical—a Socialist—or typical Liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school. Energetic—flighty—undisciplined. Overwork upon a controversy did this for him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote—a curious production. Wild, whirling stuff. There were one or two prophecies. Some of them are already exploded, some of them are established facts. But for the most part ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... Geraldine gayly, "We shall drink a votre succes dans la guerre," and the flighty girl raised a glass of wine on high. Several of the guests crowded around and all were about to drink ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... very much. I was in the habit of coming in afternoons and sitting by him, and he liked to have me - liked to put out his arm and lay his hand on my knee - would keep it so a long while. Toward the last he was more restless and flighty at night - often fancied himself with his regiment - by his talk sometimes seem'd as if his feelings were hurt by being blamed by his officers for something he was entirely innocent of - said 'I never in my life was thought capable of such a thing, and never was.' At other times ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conversing.' There is much quiet intellectual persecution among 'reasonable' men; a cautious person hesitates before he tells them anything new, for if he gets a name for such things he will be called 'flighty,' and in times of decision he will not be ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... is," he said, "as I am na mich o' a lass's mon mysen, and I wunnot say as I ha' mich opinion o' woman foak i' general—they're flighty yo' see—they're flighty; but I mun say as I wur tuk by that little wench o' th' Parson's—I wur tuk ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... church and the love of God! What Gentile church is doing this, answering the economic needs of its people as well as the spiritual? Why should a settlement like yours prosper? Why, the most promising young man in it is deserting it to chase after a flighty girl! It has no church. It has no minister. Ha! As long as you Gentiles are so, the Mormons can ride over you and ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie |
