"Inconstant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rysbroek had become a lean, neat hypochondriac, highly cultivated, with fine instincts and excruciating aversions, bored by his leisure, yet incapable of action, and inconstant in every aspiration except this love of his. Whenever she refused him he sailed away, after threatening to plunge into some wild, dramatic waste, but always compromising on the easiest, beaten path. ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... bladder, elastic as a basket, into the next furrow. Then the sun found us, struck the wet gray bows to living, leaping opal, the colourless deep to hard sapphire, the many sails to pearl, and the little steam-plume of our escape to an inconstant rainbow. ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... gleaming, and of most translucent wave, Images all the woven boughs above, And each depending leaf, and every speck 460 Of azure sky, darting between their chasms; Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves Its portraiture, but some inconstant star Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, 465 Or gorgeous insect floating motionless, Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings Have spread their glories ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that in the very next satire he makes his own servant Davus tell him that his rhapsodies about the country and its charms are mere humbug, and that, for all his ridicule of the shortcomings of his neighbours, he is just as inconstant as they are in his likings and dislikings. The poet in this way lets us see into his own little vanities, and secures the right by doing so to rally his friends for theirs. To his valet, at all events, by his own showing, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... them, considered the demons to be well-intentioned. Homer (c. 1000 B. C.) speaks frequently of demons, and in one instance in the Odyssey tells of a sick man pining away, "one upon whom a hateful demon had gazed." Empedocles (c. 490-430 B. C.) taught that demons "were of a mixed and inconstant nature, and are subjected to a purgatorial process which may finally end in their ascension to higher abodes." Yet he attributed to them nearly all the calamities, vexations, and plagues incident to mankind. Plato (427-347 B. C.) writes of demons good and bad, and Aristotle (384-322 B. ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... ignorance. I read in the lives of our companions the same processes of reason, the same antique and fatal conflicts of the right against the wrong, and of unbitted nature with too rigid custom; I see them with our weaknesses, vain, false, inconstant against appetite, and with our one stalk of virtue, devoted to the dream of an ideal; and yet, as they hurry by me on the street with tail in air, or come singly to solicit my regard, I must own the secret purport of their lives is still inscrutable to man. Is man the friend, or is he the patron ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lord, in the inconstant wheel of the year I have sown my sowing that has an equal chance with the coins of a ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... mind to tell you. Dick —— has been taking my likeness, or rather has begun to do so. I thought, dear H——, that you would like to have this sketch, and I was in hopes that the first letter you received in Ireland from me would contain it; but, alas! Dick is as inconstant and capricious as a genius need be, and there lies my fac-simile in a state of non-conclusion; they all tell me it is very like, but it does appear to me so pretty that I am divided between satisfaction ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... powerful but inconstant in its course, The tempest varies with uncertain force. Like doleful wailings on the lonely waste, Solemn and dreary sounds the weaning blast. Exhausted gusts recoiling growl away, And, wak'd anew, return with feebler sway; Save where between ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... living in accord, do not immediately pronounce anything upon their friendship, though they should affirm it with an oath, though they should declare, "For us to live apart in a thing impossible!" For the heart of a bad man is faithless, unprincipled, inconstant: now overpowered by one impression, now by another. Ask not the usual questions, Were they born of the same parents, reared together, and under the same tutor; but ask this only, in what they place their real interest—whether in outward things or in the Will. If in outward things, call ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... to me her anxieties, "but I find it hard to keep up the deception that I am heart-whole and fancy-free, and yet indifferent to Count Hendrick's attentions. Indeed, my father openly upbraids me with being fickle, inconstant, unmaidenly, and I know not what besides, until I am driven to my wit's end to keep the peace between us. Yet I doubt not, if he knew the truth, he would marry me willy-nilly to Count Hendrick Luitken ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... as her sister, though in another style, began by awakening my curiosity—a weakness which usually renders the profligate man inconstant. If all women were to have the same features, the same disposition, and the same manners, men would not only never be inconstant, but would never be in love. Under that state of things one would choose a wife by instinct and keep to her till death, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... conviction, and with a lukewarmness which deeply wounded Conde's high-souled sister. She felt that she was no longer loved commensurately with the heroic and tender ideal of which she had dreamed, and that a struggle with fortune, too long continued, had cast down his inconstant and wavering spirit. Hence also arose that momentary error which we have neither disguised nor excused. Love enfeebled and discouraged had delivered her up once more to her natural coquetry, and coquetry stimulated by politics had made her brave the semblance ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... philosopher and saint-like character of a sacerdotal vicaro of any church or creed, feeling full well that the so-called divine teacher and pupil know just as much about the "hereafter" as I do—and that's nothing! Put not thy faith in wind, variable and inconstant. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... Berk., Rost., Mon., p. 139; but Rostafinski himself admits that the two species, here united, as he defined them, are very much alike, having "the same spores and capillitium", differing in the form of the sporangium, an inconstant feature. Bulliard's name has precedence; his descriptions of this and ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... the Everglades. Nanca's beauty must have driven him quite mad, I think. At any rate he wooed and won. Nanca begged the young foreigner to divorce her, which he did. The Seminole divorce custom is lenient when the marriage is childless. The artist, I fancy, was merely a wild, reckless, inconstant sort of chap who did not regard the simple Seminole marriage tie as binding. After the birth of his daughter, a tiny little elf whom Nanca has named "Red-winged Blackbird," he tried to run away, and the Indians ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... each ship-wrecked soul that slept Beneath the dark inconstant waves The wind gave songs in memory Of men true-hearted, pure ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the banished family any warmer supporter than that kind lady of Castlewood, in whose house Esmond was brought up. She influenced her husband, very much more perhaps than my lord knew, who admired his wife prodigiously though he might be inconstant to her, and who, adverse to the trouble of thinking himself, gladly enough adopted the opinions which she chose for him. To one of her simple and faithful heart, allegiance to any sovereign but the one was impossible. To serve King William for interest's ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... board-bill, obliging him to leave his balloon with mine host as surety, first placed in Donaldson's hands the means by which he became afterward best known. Fearless as he undoubtedly was, an ascension was undertaken with the misgivings which usually preface an initial stepping from terra firma to the inconstant air. Once aloft, however, with the widespreading splendor and endless immensity of the earth's surface unrolling beneath him, and an exquisite physical exhilaration thrilling along his nerves, Donaldson became heart and soul an aeronaut. The novel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... the Indian war. It was fear that predominated with her, there were many moments when she would have given worlds to be secure that the newcomer was not the man she thought of, who, whether constant or inconstant, could bring nothing but pain and disturbance to the calm tenour of her sister's life. Everything was an oppression to her; the children, in their wild, joyous spirits and gladsome inattention, tried her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... only serve to compose a forehead, a nose, and an old woman's chin." [64] Doubtless the face and the disfigurements were fictions of the author's lively imagination, and his words savour less of science than of satire; but Fontenelle was neither the first nor the last of those to whom "the inconstant moon that monthly changes" has been an impersonation of the fickle and the feminine. The following illustration is from Plutarch: "Cleobulus said, As touching fooles, I will tell you a tale which I heard my mother once relate unto a brother of mine. The time was (quoth she) ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... general laws which direct the grand phenomena of the Trades. Indeed, the most extensive observation serves only to link the whole into one harmonious chain or series of explanations, exhibiting the uniformity as well as the exquisite adaptability of Nature, even in those departments called "inconstant," where she is supposed to ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... Mentall Discourse, is of two sorts. The first is Unguided, Without Designee, and inconstant; Wherein there is no Passionate Thought, to govern and direct those that follow, to it self, as the end and scope of some desire, or other passion: In which case the thoughts are said to wander, and seem impertinent one to ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... time. For the qualities developed among civilized men no more belong to them in a savage state, than the properties of wine exist in the grape. Society begins with families. In the beginning, the old savage has a great wish to rule his children, but has no capacity for government. He is inconstant and violent in his desires, and incapable of any steady conduct. What at first keeps men together is not so much reverence for the father, as the common danger from wild beasts. The traditions of antiquity are full of the prowess of heroes in killing dragons and monsters. The ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... shallow; it has no deep root, and is like an inconstant friend. But a perennial spring, one whose ways are appointed, whose foundation is established, what a profound and beautiful symbol! In fact, there is no more large and universal symbol in nature than the spring, if ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... earnestly commenced, "you believe that my affections are inconstant, and that they ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... heart from love, And make thee loathe all of the feminine sex. They that have known me, knew me once of name To be a perfect wencher: I have tried All sorts, all sects, all states, and find them still Inconstant, fickle, always variable. Attend me, man! I will prescribe a method, How thou shalt ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... represent the advantage of cleaning and repairing our ship at Porto Segnro, in California, and I had much difficulty to persuade them. I at last brought them to my purpose, when we sailed from Cano northwards. Having inconstant gales and bad weather, we went between seventy and eighty leagues out to sea, in hopes of meeting more settled weather. When at sixty leagues from the land, the winds still continued variable, but at between seventy and eighty, they settled at E.N.E. and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... long remain, whether the manner in which the negroes were brought into touch with civilization resulted in the greater blessing or the greater curse. That manner was determined in part at least by the nature of the typical negroes themselves. Impulsive and inconstant, sociable and amorous, voluble, dilatory, and negligent, but robust, amiable, obedient and contented, they have been the world's premium slaves. Prehistoric Pharaohs, mediaeval Pashas and the grandees of Elizabethan England esteemed ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... on Gipsies, says:—"They are lively, uncommonly loquacious and chattering, fickle in the extreme, consequently inconstant in their pursuits, faithless to everybody, even their own kith and kin, void of the least emotion of gratitude, frequently rewarding benefits with the most insidious malice. Fear makes them slavishly compliant ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... flocking in. Bright eyes sparkled upon Marion; smiling lips gave her joy of his return; sage mothers fanned themselves, and hoped she mightn't be too youthful and inconstant for the quiet round of home; impetuous fathers fell into disgrace for too much exaltation of her beauty; daughters envied her; sons envied him; innumerable pairs of lovers profited by the occasion; all were interested, ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... mind readily and passively imbibes, stores up, and accumulates (and it is from them that all the rest flow) are false, confused, and overhastily abstracted from the facts; nor are the secondary and subsequent notions less arbitrary and inconstant; whence it follows that the entire fabric of human reason which we employ in the inquisition of nature, is badly put together and built up, and like some magnificent structure without any foundation. For while men are occupied in admiring ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... life from out my memory, Gone from desire, as ghost at last must go; Nor shadow fell, where shadow could not be, From those dark lures that make our worldly woe. O Sweet, forgive that my inconstant tongue Should dim the glories that I moved among With name of gloom that wrongs the ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... no attempt to conceal her amusement. She attributed his seriousness to sudden infatuation—an infatuation which made him seem ridiculously inconstant after ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... activities of a wicked world. Fancy his horror over the mere suspicion that she could be indifferent to his wishes—his comfort—even his health, because of a mere tomboy flirtation with a man who could swim better than he could! Most women were like that, he knew—vain, shallow, inconstant creatures! But was not his pearl an exception? It was horrible to have to ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... Every woman seems to him enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant, uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters, nor does he know where to strike the chain that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... is all Madness and Folly, Alone I lie, Toss, tumble, and cry, What a happy Creature is Polly! Was e'er such a Wretch as I! With rage I redden like Scarlet, That my dear inconstant Varlet, Stark blind to my Charms, Is lost in the Arms Of that Jilt, that inveigling Harlot! Stark blind to my Charms, Is lost in the Arms Of that Jilt, that inveigling Harlot! This, this ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... apt to refuse The guidance of bit and of bridle— Still blankly demur, spite of whip and spur, Unimpassioned, inconstant, or idle; Only let me puff, puff, till the brain cries, "Enough!" Such excitement is all I'm in lack o', And the poetic vein soon to fancy gives rein, Inspired by a pipe ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Faithless, inconstant man! How many ages seem to have elapsed since his unaccountable and perfidious disappearance! Could I still forgive him both that and the borrowed lucre that he promised to pay next week! Could I spurn ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... the muscles which contribute to form this posterior triangle of the neck, in which the subclavian vessel is located. The form or position of the clavicle in the depressed condition of the shoulder, as seen in Plate 8, is invariable; whereas that of the trapezius and sterno-mastoid muscles is inconstant, these muscles being found to stand at unequal intervals from each other in several bodies. The space between the insertions of both these muscles is indefinite, and may vary in degrees of width from the whole length of the clavicle to half an inch; or, as in some ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... about something in my life. But I was not inconstant though the fault was doubtless mine. That is a story which cannot be ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... lik'd, and some Enjoy'd, But if I said I Lov'd, I ly'd. Inconstant as the wandring Bee, From once touch'd Sweets I us'd to flee; Nor all the Power of Female Skill, Cou'd curb the freedom of my Will: Clarinda only found the Art, To Conquer and so ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... present to pursue with all zeal and perseverance the great cause we have now in hand. And we feel this to be the more necessary, because we cannot but be sensible that light, unstable, variable, capricious, inconstant, fastidious minds soon tire in any pursuit that requires strength, steadiness, and perseverance. Such persons, who we trust are but few, and who certainly do not resemble your Lordships nor us, begin already to say, How long is this business to continue? Our answer is, It is to continue ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... remarkable for the ardor and vivacity of their temperament,—that they were liable to sudden gusts of passion,—that they were inconstant in their affections, intolerant of dictation, impatient of control, and hasty to resent every assumption of superiority,—that they were pleased with flattery, and too ready to lend a willing ear to the adulation of the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the country. Niebuhr pronounces the elegies of Tibullus to be doleful, but Merivale thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of three inconstant paramours.... His spirit is eminently religious, though it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope. He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... supernatural character with which he was invested has descended to our time under two different aspects. The Nixa of the Germans is one of those fascinating and lovely fays whom the ancients termed Naiads; and unless her pride is insulted or her jealousy awakened by an inconstant lover, her temper is generally mild and her actions beneficent. The Old Nick known in England is an equally genuine descendant of the northern sea-god, and possesses a larger portion of his powers and terrors The British sailor, who fears nothing else, confesses his terror for this terrible ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... dramatic gift they reveal, being in this respect quite unique in their kind. The same year saw the publication of the not very successful expansion of one of these eclogues into the pastoral narrative in verse, entitled 'Omphale or the Inconstant Shepherdesse.' Brathwaite had already in 1614 published the Poet's Willow, containing a 'Pastorall' which recounts the unsuccessful love of Berillus, an Arcadian ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... express provision. The jailer had been furnished with my name. You are right surely, touching the character of Aurelian. Though rude and unlettered, and severe almost to cruelty, there are generous sentiments within which shed a softening light, if inconstant, upon the darker traits. I would conceal nothing from you, Gracchus; as I would do nothing without your approbation. I know your indifference to life. I know that you would not purchase a day by any unworthy concession, by any doubtful act ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... me,—ah, my dimpling mate, My Springtime girl, who walked with flower-shoon! But near me, nearer, steals a deep-eyed maid With creeping glance that sees and will not see, And blush that would those yea-sweet eyes upbraid,— O, might I woo her nor inconstant be! But is not Autumn dreamtime of the Spring? (Yon scarlet fruit-bell is a flower asleep;) And I am not forsworn if yet I keep Dream-faith with Spring in Autumn's deeper kiss. Then so, brown maiden, take this true-love ring, And lay thy long, soft ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... it is my turn to state mine for the advice I have given you. But first, I must presume to ask a few questions.—Did Agatha, through artful insinuation, gain your affection? or did she give you cause to suppose her inconstant? ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... poem has a strange tone—not unique, for it had sounded somewhere in mediaeval poetry in Italy—but in a dreadful sense divine. At the first reading, this sentence against inconstancy, spoken by one more than inconstant, moves something like indignation; nevertheless, it is menacingly and obscurely justified, on a ground as it were beyond the common ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... delicately organized; at the same time they lack vigor, are slow and indolent, possess vivid imaginations, are vain and inconstant, though hospitable to strangers, and ardent lovers ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... soldiers of the bravest and most warlike people on the earth. We read of no mutinies or disobedience of orders among his followers. It were hard to say whether the fiery Numidian, the proud and desultory Spaniard, the brave but inconstant Gaul, or the covetous Balearic, was most docile to his direction, or obedient to his will. Great indeed must have been the ascendency acquired by one man over such various and opposite races of men, usually ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... and could hardly resist the temptation to rush into the passage. She too had barely seen Major Grantly; and now the only bright gleam which appeared on her horizon depended on his constancy under circumstances which would have justified his inconstancy. But had he meant to be inconstant, surely he would never ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... imagination. So, also, at an earlier period, it was termed (according to Cloquet) by Cardano. Cloquet frequently insisted on the qualities of odors which cause them to appeal to the imagination; on their irregular and inconstant character; on their power of intoxicating the mind on some occasions; on the curious individual and racial preferences in the matter of odors. He remarked on the fact that the Persians employed asafoetida as a seasoning, while ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Hermia. Why should not I then prosecute my right? Demetrius, Ile auouch it to his head, Made loue to Nedars daughter, Helena, And won her soule: and she (sweet Ladie) dotes, Deuoutly dotes, dotes in Idolatry, Vpon this spotted and inconstant man ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... evening to an indescribably brilliant pyrotechnic display in the heavens. An aurora flashed across the sky such as neither of them had ever seen before. The vault was aglow with waves of red, violet, and purple that danced and whirled, with fickle, inconstant flashes of gold and green and yellow bars. A radiant incandescence of great power lit the arch and flooded it with light that poured through the cathedral windows ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... what is to be expected - as far as it does not hang by that inconstant quantity, my want of health. Remember me to Madam with the best thanks and wishes; ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thou wilt, thy sires, Bad husbands of their fires, Who, when they gave thee breath, Failed to bequeath The needful sinew stark as once, The Baresark marrow to thy bones, But left a legacy of ebbing veins, Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,— Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb, Amid ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... keeping it, for others to rest upon, he becomes a reed, which no man will vouchsafe to lean upon. Like a floating island, when we come next day to seek it, it is carried from the place we left it in, and, instead of earth to build upon, we find nothing but inconstant and deceiving waves. ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... 'And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, Turning this face ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... the same Cicero says, "In imperita muititudine est varietas et inconstantia et crebra tanquam tempestatum, sic sententiarum commutatio." [Footnote: (The senseless multitude are changeful and inconstant as the weather, and their ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... out of Thom. Walsi. Hypod. pag. 161.] In this yeare Roger of Walden departed this life; who hauing bene tossed vp and downe with sundrie changes of fortune, tried in a short time how inconstant, vncerteine variable, wandering, vnstable, and flitting she is; which when she is thought firmelie to stand, she slipperinglie falleth; and with a dissembling looke counterfaiteth false ioies. [Sidenote: Roger of waldens variable fortune.] For by the meanes of hir changeablenesse, ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... these questions, the young man began to weep bitterly. "How inconstant is fortune!" cried he; "she takes pleasure to pull down those she has raised. Where are they who enjoy quietly the happiness which they hold of her, and whose day is always clear ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... admiring women, eager to hear the new paragraph, and not sparing of applause. And what work, among others, was he elaborating at this time, but the notorious "First Blast"? So that he may have rolled out in his big pulpit voice, how women were weak, frail, impatient, feeble, foolish, inconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel, and how men were above them, even as God is above the angels, in the ears of his own wife, and the two dearest friends on earth. But he had lost the sense of incongruity, and continued to despise in theory the sex he honoured ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rain are past, calm is the noon of day. The clouds are divided in heaven. Over the green hills flies the inconstant sun. Red through the stony vale comes down the stream of the hill. Sweet are thy murmurs, O stream! but more sweet is the voice I hear. It is the voice of Alpin, the son of song, mourning for the dead! Bent is his head of age: red his tearful eye. Alpin, thou son of song, why alone on ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... pleasures of the country. Niebuhr pronounces his elegies doleful, [Footnote: Lect., vol. iii. p. 143.] but Merivale [Footnote: Hist, vol. iv. p. 602.] thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of three inconstant paramours." "His spirit is eminently religious, though it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope. He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... less enslaved to their desires than the few. Glory drags bound to her glittering chariot-wheels the nameless as well as the nobly-born. The poor are as inconstant as the rich. What of the man who is not rich? You may well smile. He changes from garret to garret, from bed to bed, from bath to bath and barber to barber, and is just as seasick in a hired boat as the wealthy man on board his ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... high an opinion of the sex at large, I fear, Mr. Verty," she said; "some of them are very inconstant; you ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... may be inconstant to Elizabeth, Betty, and Bess, I am never inconstant to love. But I will not defend myself. No, if it would do any good to confess, I own my fault, and will say that I hate myself for it; but I must ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... and address; inexhaustible in his resources; active and enterprising. But these splendid accomplishments were attended with such defects as rendered them pernicious to his country, and even ruinous to himself: he was volatile, inconstant, faithless, revengeful, malicious; restrained by no principle or duty; insatiable in his pretensions: and whether successful or unfortunate in one enterprise he immediately undertook another, in which he was never deterred from employing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... The inconstant April mornings drop showers or sunbeams over the glistening lake, while far beneath its surface a murky mass disengages itself from the muddy bottom, and rises slowly through the waves. The tasselled alder-branches droop above it; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... brain is sometimes as inconstant as a popular assembly; and presently after she had voted the morning was like to be rainy, and that the gilded chamber was the fittest play-room for the children, Mistress Deborah came to the somewhat inconsistent resolution, that the park ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... been for occasional glimpses of a gentler life—for the deer and caribou which crossed our path. Upon my soul, I was so full of gratitude and love at the sight that I could have thrown my arms round their necks and kissed them. I could not raise a gun at them. My Indians did that, and so inconstant is the human heart that I ate heartily of the meat. My Indians were almost less companionable to me than any animal would have been. Try as I would, I could not bring myself to like them, and I feared only too truly that they did ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... simple. He shows us two charming young men becoming morally blind with passion, in a company not so blinded. The only other "inconstant" person in the play (Sir Thurio) is inconstant from that water-like quality in the mind that floods with the full moon, and ebbs like a neap soon after. Even the members of the sub-plot, the two servants, are constant, the one to his master, who beats him, ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... none other than the empire of Love, the rule of Love and its own rule; the impression of Love which appears in the substance of my heart, is then no other impression than its own, and therefore after having said "Noble face," replies "Inconstant Love."[A] ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... is sure to teach wisdom and indifference to human glories. In our France of the nineteenth century, fickle as it has been, inconstant, fertile in revolutions, recantations, and changes of every sort, this lesson is more impressive than it has been at any period of our history. Never has Providence shown more clearly the nothingness of this world's grandeur and magnificence. Never has the saying of Ecclesiastes ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... won't do," she said; "much moonlight and Gladys and the Minster twins convict you. Do you remember that I told you one day in early summer—that Sheila and Dorothy and Gladys would mark you for their own? Oh, my inconstant courtier, they are yonder!—And I absolve ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... terrible mistake there, Lady Mary," said Sylla, in accents of mock anguish. "Mr. Cottrell is one of the most dangerous and inconstant of his sex. He made most desperate love last year to me in Suffolk, whispers pretty speeches into my ear the whole of this evening, and then turns me over—consigns me, I believe, is the proper term—to Mr. Beauchamp as if I were ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... is it upon such vague hopes as these, the inconstant humour of a crowd or of a disbanded soldiery, that men of honour are invited to risk their families, their ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... her and those were their reflections; two lodestars set above her that by turns brightened and drew her gaze; two lodestones set within her that claimed her banners as claim the moon and earth the inconstant sea; one of head, one of heart; one of choice, one of dower; one of will, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... but I am grieved to say that we have unluckily only a wretched luncheon to give you, and after your long walk over the fields too! I am so sorry. The fact is we are left, this morning, with a gaping larder, at the mercy of a haughty and inconstant butcher, who grinds down his helpless dependents without mercy, overbearing creature that he is! We must ask you to ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... love her? No! surely that could not be, for the change which arises in the most inconstant heart is, at least, gradual. George Jernam had changed in a day—in ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... he himself uses of a book by one of his opponents, as calculated "to gain a short, contemptible, and soon-fading reward, not to stir the constancy and solid firmness of any wise man ... but to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational, and ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... Inconstant man, that loved all he saw, And lusted after all that he did love; Ne would his looser life be tide to law, But joyd weak wemens hearts to tempt and prove, If from their loyall loves he might them move; 230 Which lewdnesse fild ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... Russia would never really improve until the Russian railways were linked up with the British-Indian system, a proposition which responsible Indian Officials viewed with a marked lack of enthusiasm. The Czarevitch was courteous, gentle and sincere, but though full of good intentions, he was fatally inconstant of purpose, and his mental endowments were insufficient for the tremendous responsibilities to which he was to succeed, and in that one fact lies the pathos of the story of ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... excellent and well-matched pair. Of course they had their disagreements. Newts are by nature fickle and inconstant. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... singing, and blessings on the river that seemed all silver with the backs of magic trout. As I thought of all I owed that noble fish, I kneeled by the river's bearded lip, among the nettles and the meadowsweet, and swore by the inconstant moon that trout and I were henceforth kinsmen, and that between our houses should be an eternal amity. The chub and the dace and the carp, not to speak of that Chinese pirate the pike, might still look to it, ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... 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 ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... shapeless suspicions which Ethel had caught from Leonora took a misty form and substance, only to be immediately dispelled in that inconstant mind by the sudden refreshing sound of Milly's voice: 'We've called to take Ethel home, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... of truth; the cautiously- decided will keep themselves from what is wrong.' CHAP. XXII. 1. The Master said, 'The people of the south have a saying— "A man without constancy cannot be either a wizard or a doctor." Good! 2. 'Inconstant in his virtue, he will ...
— The Chinese Classics—Volume 1: Confucian Analects • James Legge
... The streams all sorrow can subdue. Here, on a silent, shady green, The souls of lovers oft are seen, Who, in their life's unhappy space, Were murder'd by some perjur'd face. All these th' enchanted streams frequent, To drown their cares, and discontent, That th' inconstant, cruel sex Might not in death their spirits vex. And here our souls, big with delight Of their new state, will cease their flight: And now the last thoughts will appear, They'll have of us, or any here; But on those flow'ry ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... queen and parent passing dear, Whose force I am enforced to know and 'knowledge everywhere, This care of mine, though it be bred within my breast, Yet it is not so ripe as yet to breed me great unrest, So run I to and fro with hap luck as I find, Now fast, now loose: now hot, now cold: inconstant as the wind, I feel myself in love, yet not inflamed so, But causes move me now and then to let such fancies go, Which causes prevailing sets each thing else in doubt Much like the nail, that last came in, and drives the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... his sudden disappearance with his infant daughter. Some said he died abroad. Others, that he had appeared again for a brief space at the hall. But all now concurred in a belief of his decease. Of his child nothing was known. His inconstant wife, after enduring for some years the agonies of remorse, abandoned by Sir Reginald, and neglected by her own relatives, put an end to her existence by poison. This is all that could be gathered of the story, or the misfortunes ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... had used forms of speech derived from still older ones. They might naturally exclaim, "How strange it is that you should find records of a multitude of dead languages, that a part of the human economy which in our own time is so remarkable for its stability, should have been so inconstant in bygone ages! We all speak as our parents and grandparents spoke before us, and so, we are told, do the Germans and French. What evidence is there of such incessant variation in remoter times? and, if it be true, why not imagine that when one form of speech was ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... branches, weighting such branches with semi-pendulous plumes laden with haunting perfume. The fragrance of the bounteous, sacrificial blooms saturates miles of air, while their refuse tricks out the webs of spiders great and small with fictitious favours, and carpets the earth with inconstant gold. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... on the dry grass to-night, Nor damp within the shadow of the trees; The wind is intermitting, dry and light; And in the inconstant motion of the breeze The dust and straws are driven up and down, And whirled about ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... who cut off his head and hands, and carried them to Antony, whose wife, Julia, gloated with inhuman delight upon the pallid features, and in petty spite pierced with a needle the once eloquent tongue. Cicero had numerous faults; he was vain, vacillating, inconstant, timid, and the victim of morbid sensibility; but he was candid, truthful, just, generous, pure-minded, and warm-hearted. Gentle, sympathizing, and affectionate, he lived as a patriot and died as ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... is gathering fast, Loud roars the wild inconstant blast, Yon murky cloud is foul with rain, I see it driving o'er the plain; The hunter now has left the moor, The scatter'd coveys meet secure, While here I wander, prest with care, Along the lonely banks ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... gloomy night is gath'ring fast, Loud roars the wild, inconstant blast, Yon murky cloud is foul with rain, I see it driving o'er the plain; The hunter now has left the moor. The scatt'red coveys meet secure; While here I wander, prest with care, Along the ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... seemed so gentle, so courteous, and above all, so true! But it was 'seeming' only, Katrine!—and he was not anything of what he seemed. His courtesy and gentleness were but a mask for licentiousness,—his apparent truth was but a disguise for mere reckless and inconstant passion. I had to find this bit by bit,—and oh, how cruel was the disillusion! How I prayed for him, wept for him, tried to think that if he loved me he might yet endeavour to be nobler and truer for my sake. But his ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... could have deceived me in such a Manner. However, I am free from the Reproaches of a criminal Uneasiness to gratify his Desires. Charming Kismare, replied Kelirieu, had you shewed the Compliance which is due to a Monarch's Love, I presume to swear by his Head, that he would never have proved inconstant. But no Lover, and especially a King, will ever be satisfied with an ideal Love. Kindness cherishes the Flame, but Unkindness quenches it. But if you have still any Value for Zeokinizul's Heart, you still may avert ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... trifling, or made up of remote suppositions; if the definition contained in it be faulty, if it be controverted, if it be too evident, if it be one which is not admitted, or discreditable, or objected to, or contrary, or inconstant, or ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... drooping figure and pining looks told of that anxious suffering, that weary life-gnawing suspense, which is ten times more hard to bear than any evil, however great, of which we can ascertain the nature and discern the limits. Could Philip be ill? Could he—No, he could not be inconstant. Ought she to write to him again? But to this question her parents answered "No. It would be unfeminine, unladylike, undignified. If Mr. Hayforth were ill, he would doubtless write as soon as he was able; and if he ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... either in regard to French character or the progress of public affairs," said Lafayette, bitingly. "But I can assure him that if the French are inconstant, ignorant, and immoral, they are also energetic, lively, and easily aroused by noble examples. Moreover, the public mind has been instructed lately to an astonishing point by the political pamphlets issued in such ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... she, as it shrivelled, black and crackling, 'there is all the heed I take. Violet would no more allow me to be supplanted than Percy could be inconstant.' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge |
