"Whim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... certain days for visiting certain houses, and cleaning the lamps in them. The housewives had at first granted him as a privilege the indulgence of his whim, and as such alone had Duncan regarded it; but by and by, when they found their lamps burn so much better from being properly attended to, they began to make him some small return; and at length it became the custom with every housewife who accepted his services, to pay him ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the nakedness of the land. It was a whim only, and as it will end in nothing, it is not worth while for ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... accumulating,' and who 'does her malevolence gently;' or Mr. Hackit, a shrewd, substantial man, 'who was fond of soothing the acerbities of the feminine mind by a jocose compliment.' Where but in George Eliot would you get a tea-party described with such charming acceptance of whim? ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Zaleski rose from the couch, and walked to the organ. Assisted from behind by Ham, who foreknew his master's every whim, he proceeded to render with infinite feeling an air from the Lakme of Delibes; long he sat, dreamily uttering the melody, his head sunken on his breast. When at last he rose, his great expanse of brow was clear, and a smile all but solemn in its serenity was on his lips. He ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... his time very faithfully and with great approbation, but falling in love, or to speak more properly, taking a whim of marriage in his head, he accepted of a young woman in the neighbourhood as his partner for life. Soon after this, he removed to Windsor, where he took the tap at a well-accustomed inn, and began the world in a very probable way of doing well. However, partly through his own misfortunes, and ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... set features for a few seconds as he re-read the curt, almost savage denial, by his father of the "couple of thousand" asked for. "A fool to resign his commission in the Service and go into a thing he knew nothing about, merely to humour the fantastic whim of a woman of fashion who will, no doubt, now sheer very ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... he had set out to develop the Stinging Lizard. He had squared out his shaft and sunk on the vein only as far as the muckers could throw out the waste; and then, instead of installing a windlass or a whim, he had decided upon a gallows-frame and hoist. But to bring in his machinery he must first have a road, for the trail was all but impassable; and so, without sinking, he had blasted his way up the canyon, only to find his efforts wasted. The ore had been dug ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... William IV. was no ordinary King: that one can see even from the scanty extracts from his letters given in "Bunsen's Memoirs." Nor was his love of Bunsen a mere passing whim. He loved the man, and those who knew the refreshing and satisfying influence of Bunsen's society will easily understand what the King meant when he said, "I am hungry and thirsty for Bunsen." But what constitution can resist the daily doses of hyperbolical flattery that are poured into ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... be acquainted with your own country, while it is in its lustre. In a regular monarchy the folly of the Prince gives the tone; in a downright tyranny, folly dares give itself no airs; it is in a wanton overgrown commonwealth that whim and debauchery intrigue best together. Ask me which of these governments I prefer—oh! the last—only I fear it is ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... calamity could be laid by the Romans at his door, since he wasted the lives of men alike for public service and for private whim, as when he decided to expel the hunting spectacles from the city. Consequently some persons attempted to carry them on in the country outside and perished in the ruins of their theatres, which had been loosely ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... identify the spot where the occurrence took place, the subject of the following ballad. It is in all likelihood one of those wild and monkish legends that may be fitted or applied to any situation, according to the whim of the narrator. Many such legends, though the number is lessening daily, are still preserved, and an amusing volume might be made of these unappropriated wanderers that possess neither a local habitation ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Widow Sprigg needed no urging to drink her favorite beverage, which, like many another countrywoman,—more's the pity!—she kept steeping on the stove all day long. But now, for an instant, she looked doubtfully upon the cup; then, as a sudden whim seized her, caught it up eagerly and again ascended the stairs to Moses' bedroom. He lay motionless, his leg kept taut by a ball and chain and his poor body encased in plaster, but he could use his arms and eyes, the one thrown restlessly here and there ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... air-pillow through thick and thin, esteeming it, after his life and his rations, the greatest necessity of his existence. Another officer, when transportation was cut down, held to his camp-chair. Almost every one has his whim. ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... near Porlock—if one may call half a dozen cottages a village—is not an anomaly; indeed, it is a kind of geographical whim. The cleft in which it lies faces towards the north, and it is so deep and so deeply wooded that for four of the winter months there is no direct ray of sunlight in the gorge, only the sky or the light high up on the summits ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... Vorstellung [G.], excogitation^, a fine frenzy; cloudland^, dreamland; flight of fancy, fumes of fancy; thick coming fancies [Macbeth]; creation of the brain, coinage of the brain; imagery. conceit, maggot, figment, myth, dream, vision, shadow, chimera; phantasm, phantasy; fantasy, fancy; whim, whimsey^, whimsy; vagary, rhapsody, romance, gest^, geste^, extravaganza; air drawn dagger, bugbear, nightmare. flying Dutchman, great sea serpent, man in the moon, castle in the air, pipe dream, pie-in-the-sky, chateau en Espagne [Fr.]; Utopia, Atlantis^, happy valley, millennium, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... well, at least in anything beyond a newspaper; and we on this side have emancipated our tongues more than our pens. What stands between Americans and good writing is usually want of culture; we write as well as we know how, while in England the obstacle seems to be merely a boorish whim. The style of English books and magazines is growing far less careful than ours,—less finished, less harmonious, more slipshod, more slangy. What second-rate American writer would see any wit in describing himself, like Dean Alford in his recent book ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... substitution. But, in doing so, we must exercise care not to be carried away by a yearning for novelty. Least of all should any subject be admitted to the course of study that does not have behind it something more substantial and enduring than whim or caprice. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... that he abruptly changed his plans. He had no heart, perversity had killed his courage. It exasperated him beyond all measure to recall what little things his luck had hinged upon, what straws had turned his feet. A moment of pique with Lois, a broken piece of steel, a match, a momentary whim when Guth offered him payment. It was well that he did not know what part had been played by his quarrel with Harkness, that wet muk-luk, that vicious lead dog, and ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... replied our hero, "is the caprice of a female heart, fickle as the wind, uncertain as a calm at sea, fixed to no principle, but swayed by every fantastic gust of passion, or of whim. Congratulate yourself, therefore, my friend, upon your happy deliverance from such a domestic plague—upon the voluntary exile of a traitor from your bosom.—Recollect the dictates of your duty, your ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... same time. When, however, laws and statutes are put forth as pretexts for wicked counsels, and judges, affecting the equity of Cato or Cassius, sit on the bench, though in fact everything is done at the discretion of over-arrogant power, on the whim of which every man's life or death depends, the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... have pleased, and to his comfort found The wife he wish'd, if he had sought around, For there were lasses of his own degree, With no more hatred to the state than he; But he had courted spleen and age so long, His heart refused to woo the fair and young; So long attended on caprice and whim, He thought attention now was due to him; And as his flattery pleased the wealthy Dame, Heir to the wealth, he might the flattery claim: But this the fair, with one accord, denied, Nor waived for man's caprice the sex's pride. There is a season when to them is due Worship and awe, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... Berenguela's fate would have been and what Castile's if this usurper had been allowed to remain for a long time in power is a matter for conjecture, but Alvaro's dreams of success were soon shattered. Through some whim of fate it happened that the young king was accidentally killed one morning as he was at play in the courtyard of the palace, and Berenguela, as the only lawful heir, became the Queen of Castile in her own ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... devil's. For the heart does not rely on God and his truth, otherwise it would war with fraud and deception; but its object is to clothe itself with a misleading garb, even assuming the name of God, and thus to deceive, belie, betray and forsake its neighbor at the bidding of every fiendish whim, and all for the satisfaction of its ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... least extraordinary feature of his appearance. He constantly wore a full-trimmed scarlet waistcoat of most uncommon dimensions, a light grey coat, which altogether gave him an air of singularity and whim as remarkable as ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... given an atmosphere to the hard outlines of our stern New England; as that unique individual, half college-graduate and half Algonquin, the Robinson Crusoe of Walden Pond, who carried out a school-boy whim to its full proportions, and told the story of Nature in undress as only one who had hidden in her bedroom could have told it. I need not lengthen the catalogue by speaking of the living, or mentioning the women whose names have added to its distinction. It has long ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... its consciousness of madness? To White Fang, Beauty Smith was a veritable, if terrible, god. He was a mad god at best, but White Fang knew nothing of madness; he knew only that he must submit to the will of this new master, obey his every whim ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... felt a contempt for himself, as the sport of every passing impression. It was not enough, it seemed, that he should have cut short a summer vacation, and come hurrying back to the city at Winifred Anstice's behest. He must vibrate to every whim about him. He had found, with inward disgust, that he was raising his elbow to shake hands with the Grahams, instead of holding his hand at the customary, self-respecting angle; and that he might be still further convicted of weak mindedness, he had a sense of being in some inexplicable ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the precarious state of Schimmelpenninck's grandeur; that it not only depended upon the whim of Napoleon, but had long been intended as an hereditary sovereignty for Jerome. Another Dutchman asked him not to ruin his friend and his family for what he was well aware could never be called a sinecure place, and was ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... Instead of using an Anglo-French dictionary, he always used one in Anglo-Latin. The sense of a Latin or Greek word, he said, is better established, more surely fixed, more definite, less liable to capricious peculiarities of convention, than the vernacular words which the whim or ignorance of the lexicographer may choose. The reader composes his own vocabulary, and gains both correctness and energy.[25] However this may be, his knowledge of English was more accurate than is possessed by most French writers of our own day. Diderot's first work for the booksellers ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... I continued to play my part. When I saw Mrs. Kingdon, I realized she was the best woman in the world. She, like Jo, recognized me at once, having seen me rehearsing in San Francisco. I had the whim to stay incognito and she humored me, insisting, however, that you should be told the next day. But the next day you had gone. In the week that followed I learned the beauty of a home ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... if this is urged on the score of aesthetics, the ready reply will be,—"Oh, we can't give time here in America to go into niceties and French whim-whams!" But the French mode of doing almost all practical things is based on that true philosophy and utilitarian good sense which characterize that seemingly thoughtless people. Nowhere is economy a more careful study, and their market is artistically arranged to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Distin, who was taken aback. "Yes, I do. I should drive over to the station to see if he took a ticket for London, or Sheffield, or Birmingham, or somewhere. It's just like him. He has gone to buy screws, or something, to make a whim-wham ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... reward, the hope of Pratscha-Paramita, the peace that is beyond all knowledge and which Nirvana provides. That peace is—or was—the complete absence of anything, extinction utter and everlasting, a state of absolute non-existence which no whim of ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... tells me I have broke her heart—but yet will have none of me.... Tells me my duty lies elsewhere; that I shall make amends. How can a man make amends when his heart lies not in the deed?... Am I then to be fettered to a passing whim for all eternity? Does an instant's idle folly entail endless responsibility? Do I merit punishment everlasting for a silly amourette that lasted no longer than the July moon? Tell me, Loskiel, you who are called ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... man that much satisfaction. I think that is the way it ought to be. A man ought to love a woman more than she loves him. It ought to be enough for him if she lets him give her everything she wants in the world. He ought to serve her like the old knights—give up his whole life to satisfy some whim of hers; and it's her part, if she likes, to be cold and distant. That's my idea ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... la comtesse," I began saucily, but went on seriously. "Permit me, I beg, to seem rude, though it is farthest from my desire to appear so. It is more than the whim of my aunt that is at stake. Some day I ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... Why should he hate the English so? And why, if he does, should you feel yourself obliged to gratify him in a whim so unreasonable?" ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... my darling!" he said. "This is like you. I took this up as a whim as well as a stubborn belief; but somehow that poor little ignorant fellow, with his rough ways, seems to be rousing warmer feelings towards him, and, please God, we'll make a man of him of whom we ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... dear Holy Child, my only treasure, I abandon myself to Thy every whim. I seek no other joy than that of calling forth Thy sweet Smile. Vouchsafe to me the graces and the virtues of Thy Holy Childhood, so that on the day of my birth into Heaven the Angels and Saints may recognise in Thy Spouse: Teresa of the ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... a bored gesture. Everybody asked the same thing, and he who belonged to that country had never seen a rose of Paestum.... Sometimes, just in order to satisfy the whim of tourists, he would bring rose bushes from Capaccio Vecchio and other mountain villages,—rose bushes just like others with no difference except in price.... But he didn't wish to take advantage of anybody. He was sad and greatly troubled ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Punishment and so on, they have recourse to the most extravagant, abstract, remote and meaningless conceptions, and out of them build a Tower of Babel reaching to the clouds, and taking this or that form according to the special whim of the professor for the time being. The clearest and simplest relations of life, such as affect us directly, are thus made quite unintelligible, to the great detriment of the young people who are educated in such a school. These relations themselves are perfectly simple and ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... at sight of the lady's beauty that he could scarcely utter his thanks. However, although Florida was astonished to find that he made no further reply, she imputed it rather to some whim than to the power of love; and so she withdrew, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. II. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to you, and delivered up the harbour to your enemies. Lastly, he was most undisguisedly a tyrant, who made not free men only, but free fellow-citizens his slaves; who put to death, or drove into exile, or robbed of their wealth and property, not malefactors, note you, but the mere victims of his whim and fancy; and these were ever the better folk. Once again restored by the help of your sworn foes and antagonists, the Athenians, to his native town of Sicyon, the first thing he did was to take up arms against the governor from Thebes; but, finding himself powerless to drive him ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... new characters in a very old story, the details of which need not be described or dwelt on in this hasty chronicle. It was not by any means a case of love at first sight. It was better than that: it was a case of love based on a firmer foundation than whim, or passion, or sentimentality. At any rate, Helen and her stalwart lover were as happy, apparently, as if they had just begun to enjoy life and the delights thereof. There was no love-making, so far as Miss Tewksbury could see; but there was no attempt ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... we did not always sink the shop, we kept it solely for our own amusement. Fitz-James O'Brien was a frequent guest, and an eager partaker of our merriment, which sometimes resolved itself into the writing of burlesque poems. We sat around a table, and whenever the whim seized us, we each wrote down themes on little pieces of paper, and putting them into a hat or box we drew out one at random, and then scribbled away for dear life. We put no restriction upon ourselves: we could be grave or gay, or idiotic even; but we must be rapid, for half ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... a few shillings of their shop bills to be carried forward to the settlement after the next fishing season. But when a widow whose husband had left property, would acknowledge no obligation to discharge his debts, it came to be rather more than a whim. Evidently the religion of many of them was as yet of a poor sort—precisely like that of the negroes, whose devotion so far ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... lose Vera. It is her whim to let this boy live. We can keep him here to-night. Up to this he has not ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... no great hurry. He had the whim to stay awhile and see what the droll tinker might do when he awoke. So he hid behind a window shutter, on the outside, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... fate I must sigh at; Alas, that such frolic should now be so quiet! What spirits were his! what wit and what whim! Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb; Now wrangling and grumbling to keep up the ball, 55 Now teasing and vexing, yet laughing at all! In short, so provoking a devil was Dick, That we wish'd him full ten times a day at Old Nick; But, missing his mirth and agreeable vein, As often we ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... his scruples, and reveres his character. For proof thereof, I did not cease urging on Harry his careless promise, that our union should have our father's blessing on it; and the good pastor falling in with my whim, prevailed on Mr. Truelocke to remarry us very privately in the little church I spoke of, he himself assisting. 'Twas a foolish fancy, I wot, but I was not easy till I had it gratified. And it is now my constant hope that Harry will never put to sea again, but will be content to ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... the stars. Something I said about "those high Abodes of all the blest" provoked his temper. "Abodes? The stars?" He froze me with a sneer, "A light eruption on the firmament." "But," cried romantic I, "is there no sphere Where virtue is rewarded when we die?" And Hegel mocked, "A very pleasant whim. So you demand a bonus since you spent One lifetime and refrained from poisoning Your testy grandmother!" ... How much of him Remains in me—even when I am caught In dreams ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... if the clever thief or thieves had heard of Van Vreck's whim, no attempt would be made to dispose of the spoil to him. The elderly millionaire, though one of the most eccentric men living, was known ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... his will against its appearance even at his own funeral. Marie Louise loved him dearly, but she feared his prejudices. She had an abject terror of offending him, because she felt that she owed everything she had, and was, to the whim of his good grace. Gratitude was a passion with her, and it doomed her, as all passions do, good or bad, to the penalties human beings pay for every excess of virtue or vice—if, indeed, vice is anything but ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... connected with that of her husband, and after paying the full price for it, she finds that she is to lose it, for no reason of which she can feel the cogency. She has sacrificed her whole life to it, and her husband will not sacrifice to it a whim, a freak, an eccentricity; something not recognised or allowed for by the world, and which the world will agree with her in thinking a folly, if it thinks no worse! The dilemma is hardest upon that very meritorious class of men, who, ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... in as good condition as I am, and as, I hope you are, M. Morrel, and this day and a half was lost from pure whim, for the pleasure of going ashore, and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... need for my brother to be so upset. One must be firm and take things calmly. And I'm afraid, too, he'll introduce a lot of his fantastic notions in the bringing up of his children and indulge their every whim. ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... against the coming of the dawn that her husband might sleep in the day instead of the night. She herself went downstairs with the earliest stir of footsteps. Because of a whim that seized her, she helped to prepare the breakfast that was to be served to the household at sunrise, and then she partook of it heartily, looking out of a southern window as she ate, watching the red sun ascend behind ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... of nations there must always be. But I think that art, by creating a common intellectual atmosphere between all countries, might—if it could not overshadow the world with the silver wings of peace—at least make men such brothers that they would not go out to slay one another for the whim or folly of some king or minister, as they do in Europe. Fraternity would come no more with the hands of Cain, nor Liberty betray freedom with the kiss of Anarchy; for national hatreds are always strongest ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... berated that he had dragged his family to the country, destroying their happiness and spending all his money for—what, for what? Just to gratify a whim, a ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... own that strikes deep in his heart; that an angry frown, or a broken toy, may inflict for a time a cureless smart; and that little pain is as great to him as a weightier woe to an older mind. Aye! the harsh reproof, or unfavoured whim, may be sharp as a pang of a graver kind. Then, how dim-sighted and thoughtless are those, who would they were frolicsome children and free; they should rather rejoice to have fled from the woes that hung o'er them once so heavily. In misfortune's rude shocks ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... of love," I blurted out, "and you know nothing of it! What foolish whim possesses you to think that fascination Walter Butler has for you ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... it rich" you will have the pleasure of seeing your primitive windlass grow to a "whip," a "whim," and eventually to a big powerful engine, with its huge drum and Eiffel tower-like "poppet heads," or "derrick," with their great spindle pulley wheels revolving at ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... hand, I did not understand Strickland at all. I racked my brain, but could in no way account for an action so contrary to my conception of him. It was not strange that he should so heartlessly have betrayed his friends' confidence, nor that he hesitated not at all to gratify a whim at the cost of another's misery. That was in his character. He was a man without any conception of gratitude. He had no compassion. The emotions common to most of us simply did not exist in him, and it was as absurd to blame him for not feeling ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... be over in the morning. At breakfast he scanned the newspapers closely, half expecting to find the dreaded head-lines. As the morning wore away his spirits lifted. He had made up his mind to go to the railway station. From an obscure corner he would see her without being seen. It was his whim to see her first in this manner, to stare to his soul's content, to compare her in the flesh to the glorious picture his brain had painted. He made no doubt that she would far surpass the portrait in his mind: did not Ruby say ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... infancy was a sine qua non. They especially wished that the child should be too young to have acquired tastes or habits of any kind, whether good or the reverse. They did not seek to gratify a mere whim of the moment,—simply to provide themselves with a plaything,—but hoped to aid in shaping a life of more than ordinary usefulness and worth. The doctor made answer that he would gladly do his best to find such a child ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... upon the ledge, but keep inside the grotto that had given them such well-timed shelter. Some sulky savage, disappointed at not getting their scalps, might take it into his head to return and hurl down into the hole another shower of stones. Such a whim was probable ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Naturally it was but a short distance below him, though it had gained a little while he was struggling so hard to make land. It was turned on its side, spinning sometimes one way and then whirling the other, according to the whim of the current; then sea-sawing up and down, until all at once it shot upward like a huge sturgeon, which sometimes flings its whole length ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... fighting 'gainst nature's inflexible plan. There's never a woman for him,—for he's a superfluous man. The whole conception and execution of the poem afford a fine example of the manner in which a genuine artist may inform a subtile and an extravagant whim with life, humor, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... command through the foregoing chapters will have seen that it had not been called upon to make any exceptional effort to sap it of its reserve forces. In fact, it had simply been marched and countermarched along dusty tracks at the whim of a superior officer. Yet under this mild usage the column had arrived back at a base with 25 per cent of its animals useless and an equal proportion whose days of usefulness were numbered. The sole ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... chill to the hearts of mortals. But he soon calm'd himself, and waving his hand to the other: "Why, see," said he, "a score of times at least, have I been call'd away to the last sickness of our good little sister; and each time it proves to be nothing worse than some whim of the nurse or physician. Three years has the girl been able to live very heartily under her disease; and I'll be bound she'll stay ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... dwell in the fastnesses of the mountains, and I would reach her; she should drive me to turn again and gather the bones of the seamen I had dropped overboard, and I would turn and dredge the seas for them; for a whim she should demand to watch me at the task, and gangs of slaves should level mountains to open a prospect from her window; nay, all this while she should deny me sight of her, and I would embrace that last hardship that in the end she might be the dearer ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Alicia straining forward, her face like chalk, her very lips blanched, her whole high-strung body aquiver. Her eyes were distended, and in them I saw a look which told me that this was no mere girlish whim, that this was more than the animal call of youth and sex. Running Elk had become ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... infinitely richer and more appropriate; and as to the popular judgment, how should that be on the decline? In America,—where common wealth makes common entrance, and the lines are not so clearly drawn between the unskilful many and the judicious few,—managers will always make concessions to the whim and folly of the hour. But we see no cause for discouragement, so long as dramas are set forth with the conscientious accuracy that has marked the latest productions of "Hamlet" and "Richelieu," and while hushed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... child—the great bluff fellow who had carried him in his arms and hundreds of times made him welcome in that wonderland, his workshop, where he was always ready to leave off lucrative work to fashion him eel-spear or leaping-pole, or to satisfy any other whim that was on the surface—that this old friend was being menaced by a great savage of a stranger nearly as big as himself, and backed by a roaring excited crowd who seemed ready ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... Ruth suddenly, "I've come to a decision. I've been thinking it over for ages, so don't imagine it's a whim, or that I don't mean what I say. It's time that one of us turned out and earned some money on our own account, and, as I'm the eldest, I'm the one to go. Business gets worse and worse, and expenses increase, and must go on increasing, as the children grow up. ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... kindred had once so styled them despite the difference of their years; that later, during her long residence in the capital, she had rendered inestimable services to the Judge; for which reason the Judge greatly respected her, and in society liked, perhaps as a mere whim, to call himself her brother, which Telimena, for friendship's sake, did not forbid him. These confessions lightened the heart of Thaddeus. They also informed each other of other things; and all this happened in one ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... sleep, but, raising The window, stood, moon-gazing, In fairyland a guest; "On such a night," et cetera— See Shakespeare for much better a Description of the rest,— I mused, how sweet to wander Beside the river, yonder; And then the sudden whim Seized my head to pillow On Hudson's sparkling billow, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... whom I cannot rhyme to, One Scherer, dry as sawdust, grim and prim. Of him there's much to say, if I had time to Concern myself in any wise with HIM. He seems to hate the heights he cannot climb to, He thinks your poetry a coxcomb's whim, A good deal of his sawdust he has spilt on Shakespeare, and Moliere, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... is neglected. Some parents allow their girls to grow up accustomed to have every whim gratified, abundant sympathy lavished on every woe, however trifling, and the girl reaches womanhood with a moral organization unfitted to withstand the cares and worries of every-day life. And between the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... important company has been made intolerable for men of spirit and creative ability by the arrogant and dominating spirit of the management. The men who continue to sacrifice their individuality to the whim or the arbitrary rule of their superiors, in time lose their ambition and initiative; and the organization declines to a level of routine, mechanical efficiency only one remove ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... learned seems your gallant speech, and noble is your trim, And thus to court an humble maid is just to please your whim; So go and seek some lady fair, as high in pedigree, Nor stoop so low by Ivory to flatter ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... Harness, who was behind the scenes, remonstrated against the filial infatuation which sacrificed health, sleep, peace of mind, to gratify every passing whim of the Doctor's. At a time when she was sitting up at night and slaving, hour after hour, to earn the necessary means of living, Dr. Mitford must needs have a cow, a stable, and dairy implements procured for his amusement, and when he died he left 1,000 pounds of debts for the ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... least—in 1765—his employer taxed him with lack of diligence in composition, as well as for failing to maintain the necessary discipline among the musicians under his charge. It is likely enough that Haydn was not a rigid disciplinarian; but it must have been a mere whim on the part of Prince Nicolaus to reprove him on the score of laziness in composing. In any case, it seems to have been only a solitary reproof. There is no evidence of its having been repeated, and we may assume that even now it was not regarded as a very serious ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... were the enemies of my race, thirsting for the white man's blood, and when my only choice lay between killing and being killed. But to deliberately engage in a cold-blooded duel with a man against whom I had no grudge, and to incur the obligation of killing or being killed merely to gratify the whim of a savage monarch, was quite another matter, and one that, to confess the simple truth, I had no fancy for. Yet how to escape the dilemma I knew not, though it was forcibly borne in upon me that it would never do for me to betray the slightest hesitation, for savage ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Quane's pleasure to a lump av wood, lookin' out straight forninst me, wid a—a—candelabbrum in my hand, for you to pick your cards out av, must I not see nor feel? Av coorse I du! Up my back, an' in my boots, an' in the short hair av the neck—that's where I kape my eyes whim I'm on duty an' the reg'lar wans are fixed. Know! Take my word for it, sorr, ivrything an' a great dale more is known in a rig'mint; or fwhat wud be the use av a Mess Sargint, or a Sargint's wife ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... and to swear the most solemn oaths in confirmation of his promises. Now if he is able to promise you this also, that to him will come the victory in the war, no one could deny that the course you are taking is to your advantage. For it is great folly not to gratify every whim of him who is to become master. But if this outcome lies in uncertainty, and no man in the world is competent to guarantee the decision of fortune, consider what sort of misfortunes your haste is seeking to attain. For if the Goths overcome their adversaries ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... liberalism of Rousseau, the free and humane truisms that had refreshed the other nations, the return to Nature and to natural rights. But that which in Rousseau was a creed, became in Hazlitt a taste and in Lamb little more than a whim. These latter and their like form a group at the beginning of the nineteenth century of those we may call the Eccentrics: they gather round Coleridge and his decaying dreams or linger in the tracks of Keats and Shelley ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... make of it," the doctor said to Saunders. "I can only suppose that Mr. Borlsover has suffered some great emotional shock. You had better let me send someone to help you nurse him. And by all means indulge that whim of his never to be left alone in the dark. I would keep a light burning all night if I were you. But he must have more fresh air. It's perfectly absurd—this hatred ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... "No," she said at last, "I won't. You are not interested in the essay or in my hopes of success. You offer to help merely because you think it is your duty. I refuse to accept such grudging friendship. You toss aside my affairs at the slightest whim of an outsider, and then expect me to welcome the remnant of your mental powers. No, ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... peewee, commencing and ending his career as a flycatcher by an awkward chase after a beetle or "miller." He is hunting around in the dull grass now, I suspect, with the desire to indulge this favorite whim. There!—the opportunity is afforded him. Away goes a little cream-colored meadow-moth in the most tortuous course he is capable of, and away goes Socialis in pursuit. The contest is quite comical, though I dare say ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... try to encourage the boy in any taste he may exhibit, and try to build up a real structure on these slender lines. The great point is that he shall have SOME absorbing and wholesome instinct. He will be wealthy, and in a position to gratify any whim. He is not in the least likely to do anything foolish or vicious—he has not got the animal spirits for that. I shall encourage him to take up politics; and I shall try to put into his head a desire to do something for his fellow-creatures, and not to live an entirely lonely and ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... for when one begins to reflect why one don't like the country, I believe one grows near liking to reflect in it. I feel very often that I grow to correct twenty things in myself, as thinking them ridiculous at my age; and then with my spirit of whim and folly, I make myself believe that this is all prudence, and that I wish I were young enough to be as thoughtless and extravagant as I used to be. But if I know any thing of the matter, this is all flattering myself. I grow older, and love my follies less-if ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... weary land," I unaccountably felt the influence of those very superstitious fears and terrors which I was so anxious to combat in my fellow-travellers. I then soliloquized to myself, "What a poor creature is man, how weak, how miserable! how exposed to every whim and folly which a credulous mind can invent!" Thus soliloquizing, I got within the mysterious precincts of the Great Mountain Rock, in the course of three-quarters of an hour. I had, however, still more fear of the living than the dead, and said to myself mechanically aloud, "Man has more to ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... affects us moderns with astonishment at the extraordinary thoroughness of all the ancient Roman feats of engineering; had this high road across the Bay been intended to serve any useful purpose, instead of merely to satisfy the passing whim of a selfish tyrant, we could have had no choice but to admire the marvellous speed of the artificers and the completeness of the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... 'Yes, you may be bribed by flattery.' At the Reverend Mr. M'Lean's, Dr. Johnson asked him, if the people of Col had any superstitions. He said, 'No.' The cutting peats at the increase of the moon was mentioned as one; but he would not allow it, saying, it was not a superstition, but a whim. Dr. Johnson would not admit the distinction. There were many superstitions, he maintained, not connected with religion; and this was one of them[825]. On Monday we had a dispute at the Captain's, whether sand-hills could be fixed down by art. Dr. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... rejoined his lordship, "the whim is wearing off! One pellet drives out another. Behind the love in the popgun came the conviction that it would be simple ruin! But we Graemes are stiff-necked both to God and man, and I don't trust ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... suspicious sailor on guard searched us. He turned many back to Petrograd. The train pulled back carrying four hundred women and children and babies disappointed at the very door to freedom, weeping, penniless, and starving, starting back into Russia all to suit the whim of an ignorant under officer. Under the influence of flattery he softened toward us and after robbing us of everything that had been provided us by our friends for the journey, taking even the official papers sent by the Bolshevik government to our ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... as poets, he began to hanker after poetic reputation, and to reflect with pain and regret upon the hidden fruits of his best effort. Rossetti—in all love of his memory be it spoken—was after all a frail mortal; of unstable character: of variable purpose: a creature of impulse and whim, and with a plentiful lack of the backbone of volition. With less affection he would not have buried his book; with more strength of will he had not done so; or, having done so, he had never wished to undo what he had done; or having undone it, he would ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... himself looking ahead, questioning the future. In spite of his real ability and his freedom from the more outbreaking faults, Jerry had been progressing steadily toward utter worthlessness, by the simple but effective method of always obeying the whim of the moment. The old grandmother with whom he lived had long before given up all attempt to control the boy, who was generally good-natured when allowed to do exactly as he pleased. Jerry enjoyed himself, ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... Julian—Forgive an old woman's whim, and come to me and comfort my old age. All I have is yours, Julian; and I love you, though I wrote to ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... and listen awhile, If ever you wished to smile, Or hear a true story of old, Attend to what I now unfold! 'Tis of a lad whose fame did resound Through every village and town around, For fun, for frolic, and for whim, None ever was to equal him, And his name was Arthur O'Bradley! O! rare Arthur O'Bradley! wonderful Arthur O'Bradley! ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... not strictly true, for Meg was most interfering in the matter of Jan's clothes. Hannah shook her head. "I thocht it my duty to speak, Miss Jan, and I'll say no more. But it's sheer defiance o' her Maker to crop her heid and to clothe herself in whim-whams, when she could be dressed like a lady; and I'm real vexed she should make such an object of herself when she might just be quite unnoticeable, sae wee and shelpit ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... fate and recriminations touching his own selfishness. On the other hand, however, the journey daunted him. He was not a man to sacrifice his creature comforts, and to be asked to sacrifice them to a mere whim, a shadow, added weight to his ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... that she is in Dreiberg; and we dare not tell him, for he still believes that she had something to do with my abduction." Then she stopped. She was strangely making this peasant her confidante. What a whim! ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... member of the firm, I had a perfect right to do so. I had a chance to make fifty thousand on one lot of lumber. I was not to be prevented from doing so by a whim of my partner. He prefers generally to furnish money, rather than put our business paper on the market. I gave him the opportunity to do so. He refused, and I raised the money as I could. This is simply a question between Mr. Collingsby and me. When ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... and different styles of personal beauty or personal traits would be as obvious as is this newly-discovered harmony between perfume and costume; but we fear that the new fashion is due to coquettish art rather than aesthetic taste, and that, like many another whim of the drawing-room, it will die out before the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... as I suppose, few young women of the present day, who do not read more or less; and to whom reading is not, in a greater or less degree, a source of intellectual improvement. Their reading is, however, governed chiefly by whim, or fancy, or accident—or at most, by taste. Some read newspapers only; some read only novels; some read every thing, and therefore nothing: Each of these methods—if methods they ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... much to refresh one in the reasonable transparency of Hooker, representing thus early the tradition of a classical clearness in English literature, anticipated by Latimer and More, and to be fulfilled afterwards in Butler and Hume. But then, in recompense for that looseness and whim, in Sir Thomas Browne for instance, we have in those "quaint" writers, as they themselves understood the term (coint, adorned, but adorned with all the curious ornaments of their own predilection, provincial [126] or archaic, certainly unfamiliar, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... though he loved Eustacia well. All the effect that her remark had upon him was a resolve to chain himself more closely than ever to his books, so as to be the sooner enabled to appeal to substantial results from another course in arguing against her whim. ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... I were to do what you wish, it would be a caprice, a mere whim. In displaying such an impatient humor I show my whole court that I have no control over my own feelings. Do not people already say that I am dreaming of the conquest of the world, but that I ought previously to begin by achieving ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... examine the whole matter in dispute by every light which can be put in requisition; and every interest that appears to be affected by your conduct should have its utmost claims considered—your father's in the first place; and that interest, not in the miserable limits of a few days' pique or whim in which it would seem to express itself; but in its whole extent ... the hereafter which all momentary passion prevents him seeing ... indeed, the present on either side which everyone else must see. And this examination made, with whatever earnestness ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... is entirely a matter of whim, and new food-fads sweep through communities. For a few months at a time, everyone, whether in a private house or a country club, will eat nothing but English muffins and jam, then suddenly they like only toasted cheese crackers, or Sally Lunn, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... influence in turning her susceptible heart towards his protege. He then quietly settled back to his old solitary habits, and for a week left the Robinsons unvisited. The result was a morning call by Trinidad Joe on the hermit. "It's a whim of my gal's, Mr. North," he said, dejectedly, "and ez I told you before and warned ye, when that gal hez an idee, fower yoke of oxen and seving men can't drag it outer her. She's got a idee o' larnin'—never hevin' ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... and exact regularity of sense and humours, you would have looked for, in one so extracted;—he was, on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a composition,—as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions;—with as much life and whim, and gaite de coeur about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put together. With all this sail, poor Yorick carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and at the age of twenty-six, knew just about as well how to steer ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... there somewhat flabbergasted. After all, I hadn't fully believed that the boy had absolutely nothing to go on, that he had bought purely at a whim, put up eight hundred thousand dollars on my skill at running down a criminal. It sort of crumpled me up. I said so. He laughed a little, ran up to the curb at the Phelan building, cut out the engine, set the brake and turned to ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... only one Mrs. Caldwell ever heard of, for Aunt Grace Mary got the use of her pony carriage next day, by telling Uncle James her mamma had sent Caroline to say she particularly wished her to take Beth to see her. Uncle James, to whom any whim of Lady Benyon's was wisdom, ordered the carriage for them himself; and, as they drove off together, Aunt Grace Mary remarked to Beth, "I think I managed that very cleverly; don't you?" Naturally estimable women are forced into habits of dissimulation by the unreason of the tyrant in authority ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... make your own home, and I will take you whither you will. I will be a servant to minister to every whim; all the world shall be a Paradise to you; you shall have every joy that wealth, and love, and sweet friends can procure for you,—if you will obey me in one thing." Lady Anna, still crouching upon the ground, hid her face ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... mother whose babe seemed to take her very heart away when it went into the Darkness can pity the other bereaved ones; so that her soul is exalted through its grief. The poet is thought by some to have uttered a mere aimless whim in ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... United States, the fishermen suffered severely. Crowded together on the banks, they were easy prey for the British cruisers, who, in time of peace or in time of war, treated them about as they chose, impressing such sailors as seemed useful, and seizing such of their cargo as the whim of the captain of the cruiser might suggest. And even before the colonies had attained the status of a nation, the jealousy and hostility of Great Britain bore heavily on the fortunes of the New England fishermen. It was then, as it has been until the present day, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... that three hundred a week for the 'Posie Girl' goes, of course, but this play is just a Hawtry whim that I have got to let her get out of her system. One hundred a week is my limit, and you ought to do it for seventy-five. You can sit in your chair all the time ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... there commenced for Saint Patrick a bitterly hard life, for little kindness was wasted on those who were sold into bondage, and slaves were compelled to labor terribly with aching muscles and empty bellies, beaten and cuffed at the whim of their master—who had a perfect right to slay them if he so desired Hunger, blows and fatigue were Saint Patrick's portion and were added to the homesickness of a young man ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... had great energy and resolution, and the subject of our sketch was not disposed to undertake an enterprise and then abandon it. She had trials of other kinds, to bear. The surgeons afforded her few or no facilities for her work; and evidently expected that her whim of nursing would soon be given over. Then came the general order for the removal of volunteer nurses from the hospitals; this she evaded by enrolling herself as nurse, and drawing army pay, which she distributed to the men. For nearly a year she ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... burning, agonising, reluctant tears, that men shed, wrung from the heart as if it were its blood. He had never been sent to school, lest he should meet with mortification. He had had various tutors, trained to show, rather than to exact, respect; one succeeding another, at his own whim and caprice. His natural quickness, and a very strong, hard, inquisitive turn of mind, had enabled him, however, to pick up more knowledge, though of a desultory and miscellaneous nature, than boys of his age generally possess; and his roving, independent, out-of- door existence had served to ripen ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... various parts of the kingdom. But the fanatics were not alone to blame; for it is well known that churchwardens and even incumbents of our churches have in many cases taken up and sold the brasses to satisfy some whim of their own in what they called "restoration" of the edifice over which ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... courteous during the first months after his arrival in India, began now to show symptoms of a haughty and overbearing spirit. He had adopted, for reasons which the reader may conjecture, but which appeared to be mere whim, at Fort St. George, the name of Tresham, in addition to that by which he had hitherto been distinguished, and in this he presisted with an obstinacy, which belonged more to the pride than the craft of his character. The Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment, an old ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... am I, my friend. Be calm! We are as ever much inclined to thee; And now, take these away, forever, too. What's whim in others, is, in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a young man—a younger man—ah, well, in Ninety-four, then—I explored this country on a walking tour, inspired by Stevenson. You know, perhaps, his diverting Travels with a Donkey? But I daresay its spirit would hardly have survived translation.... At all events, I had the whim to revisit some of those well-remembered scenes. I say some, for naturally it would be impossible, even with the vastly improved roads of to-day, for my automobile to penetrate everywhere I wandered afoot. Nor would I wish ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... and sick. He had expected McNabb's anger at his foolish whim, and knew that he deserved it—but that McNabb should accuse him of theft! Sick at heart, he faltered his answer, and in his own ears his voice sounded strange, and dull, and unconvincing. "You think I—I ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... have been expended upon perfectly useless and absolutely childish devices. It might be that he would buy toy pistols and paper caps for himself and his following of urchins; or that his whim would lead him to expend all the money in tin flutes. In one case the group he so incongruously headed would be for that one day a gang of make-believe banditti; in another, they would constitute themselves a fife-and-drum corps—with barreltops for the drums—and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... awake in the morning," she said, and looked from one to the other of their blank faces. "You look as if it were a shock, instead of a surprise," she added. "I did not tell you at first, as it would seem only a whim. But he has told me I have reason for the whim, and that I should continue. So—I think ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... have questioned him. He's been satisfying every whim of curiosity that pops into his mind. Send ...
— The Big Tomorrow • Paul Lohrman
... lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard, on stormy nights, by some poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was at sea, they had been sometimes known to beat a blustering Nor'Wester; ay, "all to fits," ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... reply to this. She looked up at me and said: "A strange whim, to die in those fanciful rags. It is dreadful to see; but he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... recommended by the bourgeoisie, are really his road to happiness? No one. He knows that he has something to-day, and that it does not depend upon himself whether he shall have something to-morrow. He knows that every breeze that blows, every whim of his employer, every bad turn of trade may hurl him back into the fierce whirlpool from which he has temporarily saved himself, and in which it is hard and often impossible to keep his head above water. He knows that, though he may have the means of living to-day, it is very uncertain ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... almost a stranger. When he afterwards recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable frankness which had very important results for him, it seemed to him—as it seems to everyone in such cases—that it was merely some silly whim that seized him: yet that burst of frankness, together with other trifling events, had immense consequences for him ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... months because the man cannot find another place. Nevertheless he will have to go. As a rule, a man under notice to quit is in the position of standing by and seeing his home, and his living, and the well-being of his family sacrificed to the whim of a superior whom he dares not oppose; and I do not dream of arguing that that is a tolerable position for any Englishman to be in. None the less, it is true that these acute troubles, which fall upon a few people here and there, and presently are left behind ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... it is difficult to explain," said Alfred, "besides, the situation had its charm. No, I am not a robber, and I don't believe you thought so. I have only thwarted a young lady's whim, which I am aware is a great crime. I ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... remarkable that Indian thought, restless and speculative as it is, hardly ever concerns itself with the design, object or end of the world. The notion of [Greek: Telos] plays little part in its cosmogony or ethics[135]. The Universe is often regarded as a sport, a passing whim of the divine Being, almost a mistake. Those legends which describe it as the outcome of a creative act, generally represent the creator as moved by some impulse to multiply himself rather than as executing some ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... was her little girl's confidential friend as well as her mother. The child, quite unreservedly, told her what she wanted and why she wanted it. It was no weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a genuine respect for another person's rights as an individual—even though that individual was merely a little child—that led that mother to allow her daughter to have what she wanted. May not some subtle sense of this have been the basis of the child's happiness in ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... it with the great, With whom the whim doth always run, That Heaven all creatures doth create For their behoof beneath the sun— Count they four feet, or two, or none. If one should dare the fact dispute, He's straight set down a stupid brute. Now, grant it so,—such lords among, What should be done, or said, or sung? At distance ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... confessed. "He comes and goes as the whim seizes him, and I very seldom know where he is. One week it is whiting and another codling. Lately he seems to have shown some ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... passionate, I grant, but that is the effect of his bringing up on a plantation in Louisiana, surrounded by his father's slaves, for though they are now free by law the nature of the negro is unchanged, and servitude is his natural position. The little white master is treated like a god, every whim is humored, and there being no restraining hand upon him, it would be strange if he did not become hasty ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... instincts, which formerly passed unheeded. I thank the French theorists for more forcibly directing my attention to the finger of God, which I discern in every awkward movement and every wayward whim. They are all guardians of his life and growth and power. I regret indeed that I have not time to make infancy and the development of its powers my ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... his public work with every promise of success. For a few months he preached with great power, and thousands flocked to hear him. Then came the waning of his popularity, and soon he was shut up in a prison, and in a little while was cruelly murdered to humor the whim of a ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... heathen goddess, and would not go well with the idea of a holy palmer. COCOA, PHOENIX, and ARECA, one after the other, went in at his eyes and through his head; none of them pleased him. His wife, however, who in her smiling way had fallen in with his whim, helped him out of his difficulty. She was the daughter of nonconformist parents in Lancashire, and had been encouraged when a child to read a certain old-fashioned book called The Pilgrim's Progress, which her husband had never seen. He did not read it now, but accepting her suggestion, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... the shore watching a line of crabs make for the sea, and squashes the twentieth for mere variety and sport. If Jehovah is requested to explain his loves and hates, he answers with Shylock, "it is my whim." It was his whim to love Jacob and hate Esau, and it was no doubt his whim to accept Abel's offering ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... esteemed, like the popular novelist, not for their art but for some foolish gift, some facile trick of notoriety, whose actions have tickled the fancy, not the understanding of the world. The coward and the impostor have been set upon a pedestal of glory either by accident or by the whim of posterity. For more than a century Dick Turpin has appeared not so much the greatest of highwaymen, as the Highwaymen Incarnate. His prowess has been extolled in novels and upon the stage; his ride to York is still bepraised for a feat of miraculous ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... careless. Having tasted of the best, merely for the asking, they become dissatisfied with everything except the best. This is the dominant tendency in the city and wherever parents are foolish enough to satisfy the child's every whim. If the parents carry the child in this manner, the child, in later years, will have weak legs and the parents will have weak backs. Moreover, love and respect move in the direction of activity, and if everything comes the child's way there will be little love, ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... offended," he said to himself, "to heed me, and I must wait for a more favorable opportunity to renew the conversation. I have seen this fancy gradually coming on, and, fool that I was, was afraid to speak for fear of making things worse. I thought it might be only a passing whim, like those which flutter twenty times through girls' silly heads before they are married, and was unwilling to treat it as of any consequence. But does Anne mean to deceive me? It is not at all like her. She never did so before. No, she has courage enough for anything, and ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams |
