"Wilful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so new and intoxicating, had lured him on, as she had been wont to lure the black pony of her childhood with a handful of sugar. Yes, her Arthur was a genius; she had always known it. And something of a child too—lazy, wilful, and sensuous—that, too, she had known for some time. And she loved ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... father's vines, A child I roamed, I shunned the rich, ripe fruit Within my reach, and stretched my little arm Beyond its strength, for that which farthest hung, Though poorest too perchance. Years past away, The wilful child is grown a woman now, Yet wilful still, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... that He can and will give you the power to do so; ay, He has given you the power already, if you will but claim and use it. But you must claim and use it, because you are meant not merely to be God's wilful, ignorant, selfish child, obeying Him from fear of the rod, but to be His willing, loving, ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... buried in books and knowing little of the world the remark is not so greatly to be wondered at. Profound scholars are apt to be impatient of mundane things. Professor Webster showed a similar want of appreciation of the circumstances of a person charged with wilful murder. Selby Watson was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The sentence was afterwards commuted to one of penal servitude for life, the Home Secretary of the day showing by his decision that, though not satisfied of ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... once the king of the prairies, has been practically exterminated. Perhaps no greater grief has ever entered into the life of the Indian than this wilful waste and irreparable loss. To this hour the Indian mourns the going away of the buffalo. He cannot be reconciled. He dates every joyful and profitable event in his life to the days of the buffalo. In the assembly ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon
... peevish and purse-proud as the other: and this law-suit begot higher oppositions, and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits; for you must remember that both were rich, and must therefore have their wills. Well! this wilful, purse-proud law-suit lasted during the life of the first husband; after which his wife vext and chid, and chid and vext, till she also chid and vext herself into her grave: and so the wealth of these poor rich people was curst into a punishment, because they wanted meek and ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... face, and obstinate mouth, Mrs. Minto's spirit suddenly failed. Where she had meant to be maternally peremptory she became querulous. "Wherever you going now?" she asked weakly. "Oh, you are a naughty wilful girl." ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... fault, only your misfortune, it would be wise for you to go where the facts are not so well known as in the congregation of St Blank's. There are people in that congregation who consider you guilty of a wilful deception in wearing the name you do, and of an affront to good taste in accepting the position you occupy. Many people talk of leaving the church on your account. Your gifts as a musician would win you ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... aloft; The breezes swept onward with many a sigh, And kissed with caresses soft. Still, still the fair maid By the dark river strayed, And flung forth in thoughtless play Each bud from her breast In wilful unrest, And ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... doom, which was strangling to death and burning to ashes thereafter. The majority of the jury which tried Barbara Napier, having acquitted her of attendance at the North Berwick meeting, were themselves threatened with a trial for wilful error upon an assize, and could only escape from severe censure and punishment by pleading guilty, and submitting themselves to the king's pleasure. The alterations and trenching,' adds Scott, 'which lately took place on the Castle-hill at Edinburgh for the purpose of forming ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... of his ardent attachment to his Saviour, and his intense love to the souls of sinners. He was as delicate in his expressions as any writer of his age, who addressed the openly vicious and profane—calling things by their most forcible and popular appellations. A wilful untruth is, with him, 'a lie.' To show the wickedness and extreme folly of swearing, he gives the words and imprecations then commonly in use; but which, happily for us, we never hear, except among the most degraded classes of society. Swearing was formerly ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Memorial, revolving many things in his mind. With all the discomfort and uneasiness and foreboding Forrest's sudden reappearance cost him, with all the embarrassment likely to follow, one reflection had given him joy. There at least within those walls was a proud and wilful girl whose spirit he had longed to tame, whose distrust and defiance he had smarted under, but who now would have to admit the truth of some of the most salient of his accusations and prophecies with ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... knowledge and learning, doth not only hurt shooting, but the most weighty things in the world beside. And, therefore, I marvel much at those people which be the maintainers of uses without knowledge, having no other word in their mouth but this use, use, custom, custom. Such men, more wilful than wise, beside other discommodities, take all place and occasion from all amendment. And this I speak generally of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Merrifield, and showed no signs of being set against his lessons. To be sure it was a bad way of spending a Sunday, to be laid up with ailments brought on by over-eating; but even this was better than spending it, like the former one, in wilful misbehaviour; and John, who knew that Papa, Mamma, brothers, and sisters all alike detested and despised real greediness, had been heartily ashamed of himself, both for this and his forfeits. A new week was a new starting-point, and he meant to spend this one well. For ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that you are circulating by public letter and bulletin various statements that impugn my loyalty as an American and thereby put in jeopardy my good name and reputation. These assertions are made by you either with wilful intent to injure my name and standing in the community or without having made an effort to establish their proof. I hereby set forth the facts which have been distorted by you into untruths, either by contrary statements ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... perforce with wilful choler meeting Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. I will withdraw; but this intrusion shall, Now seeming sweet, convert to ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... vermin. In this form he has to live for a year. Leaving that form he succeeds in regaining his status as a human being of the regenerate order. If the preceptor kills, without reason, his disciple who is even as a son to him, he has, in consequence of such a wilful act of sin on his part, to take birth as a beast of prey. That son who disregards his father and mother, O king, has to take birth, after leaving off his human form as an animal of the asinine order. Assuming the asinine form ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... heart fluttered, and he became slightly perturbed; but he sat down manfully; determined to await the issue. Margaret welcomed him with more restraint than was her wont, but not—he thought and hoped—less cordially. Maidens are wilful and perverse. Why should she hold her head down, as she had never done before? Why strain her eyes upon her work, and ply her needle as though her life depended on the haste with which she wrought? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... "understood just as well, and even better, than we do now;" and twenty-one of them—a clear majority of the whole "thirty-nine"—so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and wilful perjury if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories. Thus the twenty-one acted; and, ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... normal; it consists of an equal balance of the weight of the body on the two legs. This attitude is that of the soldier carrying arms, without the stiffness assumed by the wilful regularity of rigid discipline. It is also that attitude taken by a man in the act of salutation; it is also characteristic of the weakness of a child or of old age; it is the sign of respect. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... shaking his head, "don't you think you are presuming a little too much on my friendship? If you were the only one to be trusted, why, I might do it; but in this case I would have to depend on the boy as well, and there's no knowing how he would misbehave. According to your own story, he is a wilful, wrong-headed lad, who has already rewarded your kindness to him with base ingratitude. Oh, no! I could ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... by commission or by omission, careless or wilful, is probably less harmful than the indirect injury produced by continual repetition of unintentional misconceptions. The former occurs generally in the case of living, present-moment questions; it reaches chiefly those already convinced; and it has its counteraction in the arguments of the ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan
... and observation, that this humble, hard-working, mortified Irish priest, William MacDonald, practised in a high, a very high, degree, every virtue which we venerate in the saints of God. I never met a holier soul. I could not imagine him guilty of the smallest, wilful fault. I feel more inclined to pray to him than for him; it seems incredible that he should have anything to expiate in purgatory. May his successors walk in his footsteps, and his children never forget the lessons he taught them more by example than by word. May our friendship, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... assailed with a good deal of personal abuse, and was credited with vacillation and apathy, especially in Ireland, where his opponents, acting in the capacity of jurymen at inquests on the victims of the famine, sometimes went so far as to bring in a verdict of wilful murder against the Prime Minister. It is easy enough after the event to point out better methods than those devised at the imperious call of the moment by the Russell Administration, but there are few fair-minded ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... "Well, a wilful man maun have his way: he who will to Curragh, must to Curragh!" and we proceeded ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... healed in wilful error or by it, any more than he is morally saved in or by sin. It is error even to murmur or to be angry over sin. To be 370:1 every whit whole, man must be better spiritually as well as physically. To be immortal, we must forsake the 370:3 mortal sense of things, turn from the lie of ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... operation find their obvious and complete explanation in the assumption of a contriver, and all such hazy films as that of variability producing variation cease to be capable of serving as excuses for wilful blindness. And why should not the power in question be so credited? Here is Mr. Darwin's solitary reason why. He doubts whether the inference implied may not be 'presumptuous.' He apprehends that we have no 'right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... from the ancients any honor that is their due, nor yet to dispute with the moderns, and enter into controversy with those who have excelled in anatomy and been my teachers. I would not charge with wilful falsehood any one who was sincerely anxious for truth, nor lay it to any one's door as a crime that he had fallen into error. I avow myself the partisan of truth alone; and I can indeed say that I have ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... things, conveniences for taking hold of a number of cases that would otherwise be unmanageable. The appeal to Justice is a necessarily inadequate attempt to de-individualize a case, to eliminate the self's biassed attitude. I have declared that it is my wilful belief that everything that exists is significant and necessary. The idea of Justice seems to me a defective, quantitative application of the spirit of that belief to men and women. In every case you try and discover and act upon a plausible equity that must necessarily ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... avengers. It was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chessboard, should break the mould ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... calm, so we be sailing. I long have wished to voyage into mid sea, To give my senses rest from wondering On this perplexed grammar of the land Written in men and women, the strange trees, Herbs, and those things so like to souls, the beasts. My wilful senses will keep perilously Employed with these my brain, and weary it Still to be asking. But on the high seas Such throng'd reality is left behind,— Only vast air and water, and the hue That always seems like special news of God. Surely 'tis half way ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... ago, this young man, whose name is not Richards," began Captain Danton, "ran away from home, and began life on his own account. He had been a wilful, headstrong, passionate boy always, but yet loving and generous. He fled from his friends, in a miserable hour of passion, and never returned to them any more; for the sick, sinful, broken-down, wretched man who returned ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... things: of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife, that still tingle in my head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It's the way that I am made. If the country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God, if this be wilful blindness, that He may enlighten ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with the wilful murder of a young man named Victor Franklin," answered Dory. "His body was recovered from Longthorp Tarn this afternoon. You had better say nothing. Also with the theft of certain papers known to have ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... over-full. You talk because it is pleasant, not because you have anything to say. You weary of terms that are already love-laden, and you go out into the highways and hedges, and gather up the rough, wild, wilful words, heavy with the hatreds of men, and fill them to the brim with honey-dew. All things great and small, grand or humble, you press into your service, force them to do soldier's duty, and your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... revolt of the same people and commencement of their monarchy under Deioces falls almost exactly at the date when they entirely lose their independence. As there is no reason to suspect Herodotus either of partiality toward the Medes or of any wilful departure from the truth, we must regard him as imposed upon by his informants, who were probably either Medes or Persians. These mendacious patriots found little difficulty in palming their false tale upon the simple Halicarnassian, thereby at once extending the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... give up my dearly-beloved weapon; but I did so with a very bad grace; and I am sorry to say that my father's words had at that time little or no effect on my heart. I say at the time, for afterwards, when it was too late, I thought of them over and over again, and deeply repented of my wilful obstinacy and folly. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... and the absence of any one who could control him had made him wilful and extravagant and had wrought in him a curious love of personal display. Even as a child he would clamor to be dressed in the most gorgeous uniforms; and when he got possession of his property his love of display became almost a monomania. He built a theater ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... with different kinds of stone, of which, probably, one is more costly than another; which latter, as you cannot construct your building of it entirely, you arrange in conspicuous bars. But the chiselling of the stones is a wilful throwing away of time and labor in defacing the building: it costs much to hew one of those monstrous blocks into shape; and, when it is done, the building is weaker than it was before, by just as much stone as has been cut away from its joints. And, secondly, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... filled with light-hearted joy, and nurse's praise warmed her heart; nurse so seldom praised her. She helped Alick's wilful legs to the foot of the steps and watched ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... perfect silence and set off in full gallop. The mule was obstinate and wilful and soon grew restive under the weight of the box and began to prance and kick. He did this so effectually that he threw Gourmandinet and his precious box of ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... of the present age will incline to believe, that in the account of his own conversion, Constantine attested a wilful falsehood by a solemn and deliberate perjury. They may not hesitate to pronounce, that in the choice of a religion, his mind was determined only by a sense of interest; and that (according to the expression of a profane poet) [54] he used the altars of the church as a convenient ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... silk, with broad cherry-colored stripes, made ultra fashionably low, and with short sleeves; a large bow of cherry-colored ribbon was placed on each side of her light hair, and set off the prettiest, sprightliest, most wilful little face in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... it be a motor-barge? But why should a motor-barge be forging out to sea, where no motor-barges or motor-boats of any sort, except racers, had any need to venture, unless they were navigated to gratify the whim of a wilful American girl? ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... policy of conquest and strangulation "was not the German policy, but that of the Austrian Imperial House." What better testimony is required to prove that Austria was not the blind tool, but the willing and wilful accomplice ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... to; and then the policeman who had interrupted the quarrel between Jem Wilson and the murdered young man was brought forward, and gave his evidence, clear, simple, and straightforward. The coroner had no hesitation, the jury had none, but the verdict was cautiously worded. "Wilful murder against some ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... almost see the face of the child, its humorous anger, its wilful triumph, and also the enraged look of the Bailly as he raked the stream with his long stick, tied with a sort of tassel of office. Presently he saw the child turn at the call of a woman in the Place du Vier Prison, who appeared to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Church Unity—the Apostolic Ministry, the Sacraments, the Creeds and the Holy Scriptures. But the word also means separation from the Church and is applied to those religious bodies which have abandoned the Historic Church. Such wilful separation, whether within the Church or without, St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians, calls a sin (1 Cor. 1:10; 3:3; 11:18), and in Romans 16:18, we are directed to avoid those who cause divisions. The Church regards ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... consent; but as long as one party was bound, so was the other; and he thoroughly sided with Edgar in not being threatened out of it whilst Alice persisted. Still more flatly did he refuse Miss Pearson's entreaty that he would see the wilful girl, and persuade her how hopeless was her resistance, and how little prospect of the attachment being prosperous. Nothing but despair and perplexity could have prompted the good aunts to try such a resource, but they were ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... She laughed again, with that wilful sound in the laugh which he remembered. He wondered how she was going to get on at the Hoopers. Mrs. Hooper's idiosyncrasies were very generally known. He himself had always given both Mrs. Hooper and her eldest daughter a wide berth in the social gatherings ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Aaron Vail Brown, while it so effectually demolishes Jackson's fable of Erving's treaty with Spain for the boundary of the Rio del Norte, and his libellous charge against our government for surrendering the territory which they had the option to retain, is, with this exception, as wide and as wilful a departure from the truth as the calumny of Jackson itself, which it ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... to the Catholic cause, and performed her duty as a member of the Roman Church. The princes of the League would then appear the sole authors of those evils, which the continuance of the war would unavoidably bring upon the Roman Catholics of Germany; they alone, by their wilful and obstinate adherence to the Emperor, would frustrate the measures employed for their protection, involve the church in danger, and themselves ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... earth, that Daphnes roote groan'd for Apollo's wrong: Hermophrodite wept shewers and wisht his birth had neuer bin, or that he more had clung To Salmacis, and Clitie grieued in vaine: Leueothoes wrong, the occasion of her baine, my wilful eie (this should the burthen be) Hath rob'd me of, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... song, owe their musical perfection. Mr. Swinburne, in an essay upon Matthew Arnold's New Poems (1867), has said, truly, that 'rhyme is the native condition of lyric verse in England'; and that 'to throw away the natural grace of rhyme from a modern song is a wilful abdication of half the charm and half the power of verse.' To this general rule he might possibly admit one exception—Tennyson's short poem beginning with 'Tears, idle tears,' which is so delicately modulated that the absence of rhyme is not missed. At any rate it is certain that all popular ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... For what has happened to the Antinous may happen to other cruisers, even to battleships. If there is sabotage among the workmen in the shipyards, it must be discovered and stamped out without a moment's delay. This time it is the cutting of a wire cable; at another time it may be some wilful injury far more serious. A warship is a mass of delicate machinery to which a highly skilled enemy agent might do almost infinite damage. Dawson has been run off his feet during the past two days; I don't know what he has discovered; but if he does not get to the bottom of the business in double-quick ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... bitter despair or passionate entreaty—vainly hoping that he might thereby arouse her better nature, and bring her in repentance back to him. And at first sight it seemed not impossible that such a thing might take place; for, in the midst of all her change of conduct and wilful avoidance of allusion to the past, she felt no dislike of him. It was merely her love for him that she had suppressed, and in its place there still remained a warm regard. If he could have been content with her friendship ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... if they really proceeded from these men, must either be true as far as the fidelity of human recollection is usually to be depended upon, that is, must be true in substance and in their principal parts, (which is sufficient for the purpose of proving a supernatural agency,) or they must be wilful and mediated falsehoods. Yet the writers who fabricated and uttered these falsehoods, if they be such, are of the number of those who, unless the whole contexture of the Christian story be a dream, sacrificed their ease and safety in the cause, and for a purpose the ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... have lived Struggling like Lizzy," was the thought that rived The wretched mother's heart when she knew all. "But for my foolishness about that shawl— And Master would have kept them back the day; But I was wilful—driving them away In such ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... East. From Schwun we marched direct to this place, which we reached on the 4th, the day before yesterday, without halting once: most of the marches fifteen miles, and all terrible teasers, on account of the badness of the roads, and the stupidity or wilful ignorance of our guides. One of our marches was to have been a short one of ten miles; but for some unaccountable reasons our route and encamping ground were changed three times. We lost our way in the jungle, and ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... diversity of character and varieties of mood and temper, which bring some clouds of sorrow. In our little Eden of innocence there were storms now and then. Miles was a little wild and head-strong from his babyhood, and Margaret, though very beautiful, was often wilful and vain. For five years the twins had grown up together the same in beauty and health One day an accident befel Herbert, and the dear child rose from his bed of sickness a pale and crippled boy. His twin sister grew up tall and blooming. The twins loved each other very much, and it was a pleasant ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... plain that he was in dead earnest and Kendric cried, "Yes," quite heartily. Then Barlow, putting up with Kendric's mood since there was no other way that one might do for a wilful, spoiled child over which he had no authority of the rod, allowed himself to be dragged to the middle of the room and there, standing side by side, the two men lifted their voices to the swing and pulse of "The Flying Fish Catcher," through all but interminable verses, while the men about them ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... and yet, while adopting some of its materials, he abandoned its medium. He was given the opportunity of ante-dating the introduction of technique into the English prose short-story by four hundred and fifty years, and he disregarded it almost cavalierly. How is such wilful neglect to be accounted for? Only by his instinctive feeling that the technique, which Boccaccio had applied in the Decameron, belonged by right to the realm of poetry, had been learned in the practising of ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... that nobody in the world had a legal right to the child until a guardian should be appointed. A plain and simple path was open before him: it was his only path. James Parsons had proved wilful and wrong-headed; there was nothing now but to take out letters as guardian of the boy. Then James would ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... society. The bright, sweet-natured girl had come as a welcome diversion to a couple who in seclusion did battle with tendencies to yawn. He was not quite convinced, for that matter, that the American lady always went to that trouble. She seemed to his observation a wilful sort of person, who would not be restrained by small ordinary considerations from doing the things she wanted to do. Her relations with her companion afforded him food for much thought. Without any overt demonstrations, she produced ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... the Spanish girl's melodious voice. Nell lay in the hammock, her hands behind her head, with rosy cheeks and arch eyes. Indeed, she looked rebellious. Certain it was, Dick reflected, that the young lady had fully recovered the wilful personality which had lain dormant for a while. Equally certain it seemed that Mercedes's earnestness was not apparently having the effect ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... their young stock. Did we know that? And she was going to stay with a Mrs. Pierce down there for a while, near where Nate would be working. All this she told us; but when he did not return to dine with her on this first day, I think she found it hard to sustain her wilful cheeriness. Lin offered to take her driving to see the military post and dress parade at retreat, and Cloud's Peak, and Buffalo's various sights; but she made excuses and retired to her room. Nate, however, was at tea, ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... loved my mother. From infancy to manhood I lived in her. Home was not home to me without her. I do not remember any single act of wilful disobedience to her wishes. When my father died I was so passionately attached to my mother that I can recollect that, deeply though I felt his loss, my grief was all but forbidden by the thought that it was not my mother who had been taken from me. And yet one of the regrets that has followed me ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... daughter," he said after a short silence, "and it is time for you to ponder well upon the significance of his words. You can't always be a wilful, headstrong little girl, running everywhere and doing just as you please. You have grown to be a woman in stature—you must be one in fact. You know I told you at first to be careful how ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... just now. The problem appeared to be a personal one, not a question of statutes and judges. In his talk with Miss Carstairs before he knew her by name, he had failed to notice anything that suggested the spoiled and wilful child he had come to find. He could remember nothing she had said or done that helped him at all to think of her as his enemy. The fact was that it was all quite the other way. And this helped him to understand now, as he had not understood before, why Uncle ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... systems whose graver errors or weaker absurdities now form subjects of regret and ridicule; and fomented among the members of smaller societies and sects discords, strifes, and recriminations, which have been based on no other foundation than wilful or accidental ignorance. By bringing those in contact who otherwise would never have met, and improving the acquaintance of those who have, railways have spread individual opinions, tastes, and information more ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... dealings with Major Gotherson, it came out that he had cheated the States of Holland out of L7,000, in consequence of which he was hanged in effigy at the Hague in 1672. In 1682 he fled from England to escape from the law, as he had been guilty of wilful murder by killing George Butler, a hackney coachman, and he reached Norway in safety, where he remained till 1696. In that year some of his influential friends obtained a pardon for him from William III., ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... all see the necessity," Stephen protested. He was wilful and wayward; he adopted a privileged air, and she scolded him. In their dispute they laughed so imprudently that Sister Ann Frances turned her draped head to look back at them. Then they quickened their steps ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... wilful at times, and that's right enough. I don't like a girl without spirit. There's a mighty pretty girl comes to the dancing class; but she is all milk and water. Her eyes never flash like yours when you're put out; why, I can see them ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... who, walking on Life's way, Hast seen no lovelock of thy love's grow grey Listen, and love thy life, and let the Wheel Of Heaven go spinning its own wilful way. ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... smile haunted him as he roped his way down the stairs to the street, and then the face in the photograph replaced it—the laughing eyes, the wilful, pleasure—loving mouth he had seen in the school and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... trouble. Crowner's Quest was held on the "Beau;" and I only wonder that they did not bring it in murder against Me. The jury sat a long time without making up their minds, till the Parish constable ordered them in a bowl of Flip, upon which they proceeded to bring in a verdict of Wilful Murder against some person or persons unknown. I can scarcely, to this day, bring myself to suspect my pretty maid, that should have married the Pewterer, of such a bold Act, and the rather believe that it was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... with Lucretius, between the blind victims of religio and the indefatigable student of the rerum natura; not, as in the Aeneid, between the man who bows to the decrees of fate, destiny, God, or whatever we choose to call it, and the wilful rebel, victim of his own passions; not, as in the Roman State and family, between the man who performs religious duties and the man who wilfully neglects them—between pius and impius; but between the universal ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... Henry continued impressively, but with a wilful touch of incredulity, "you are in a position to pay your ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... there, and since when. And, if not, then it needs no seer to tell you what sacrilege, what profanity it is for you to touch the ark of God: to speak, or to vote, or to lift a finger either for or against any church whatsoever. Intrude your wilful ignorance and your wicked passions anywhere else. March up boldly and vote defiantly on questions of State that you never read a sober line about, and are as ignorant about as you are of Hebrew; but beware of touching ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... of the very essence of lying, being not only subversive of social happiness, by preventing all confidential intercourse amongst mankind, but diametrically opposed to the commands of God. Every species of wilful deceit, as the use of ambiguities in language for the purpose of misleading; the adoption of expressions which we know to be understood by another in a different sense from what we really mean; mental reservations; a studied suppression of part of the truth, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... not very old,' said Agatha, scanning the bright, handsome face with its wilful mouth and determined chin; 'and as I know vanity is not a failing of yours, I may say that you are too good-looking to be going ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... deserve to win Nelly, my suit at first being based upon foundations so unworthy. But the pursuit of her stirred me deeply; and in the end—say, in a couple of days—I was her very humble and devoted slave. She really was an attractive child, I fancy, in her wilful, imperious way. And, Cupid, how I did adore her by the time I had driven Master Fred from the field! Even my father suffered a temporary eclipse in my regard during the first white-hot fervour of my devotion to Nelly. ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... fits of temper, who fight, who eat stimulating food, who sing and dance and thus develop their emotions, who are sudden, vehement and emotional, lack the power to concentrate. But those whose actions are slower and directed by their intelligence develop concentration. Sometimes dogmatic, wilful, excitable persons can concentrate, but it is spasmodic, erratic concentration instead of controlled and uniform concentration. Their energy works by spells; sometimes they have plenty, other times very little; it is easily excited; easily wasted. ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... Granger, on the charge of being concerned in the death of Corporal Eric Strangeways, and of the wilful murder of one Druce Spurling, your accomplice in the latter crime, whom you, well knowing that he was a fugitive from justice, assisted to escape from ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... freedom the payment of another's debt, which has united him to a woman whose merits are not towards him—whose secret love, and long-enduring faith, are yet unknown and untried—might well make his bride distasteful to him. He flies her on the very day of their marriage, most like a wilful, haughty, angry boy, but not like a profligate. On other points he is not so easily defended; and Shakspeare, we see, has not defended, but corrected him. The latter part of the play is more perplexing than pleasing. We do not, indeed, repine with Dr. Johnson, that Bertram, after ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Ariosto and Tasso.[56] With French he naturally had a wider acquaintance, but still nothing beyond the reach of the very general reader. The notable point is that he refrains from passing judgment on the entire body of French poetry because it is unlike English poetry. He is not infected with the wilful provincialism of Lamb nor with the spirit of John Bullishness which seriously proclaims in its rivals "equally a want of books and men."[57] "We may be sure of this," says Hazlitt, "that when we see nothing but grossness ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... could not restrain himself. 'You scoundrel,' said he, seizing Undy by the collar; 'you utterly unmitigated scoundrel! You premeditated, wilful villain!' and he held Undy as though he ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... which will be lost By death brought on ourselves, or childless days Resolved, as thou proposest; so our foe Shal 'scape his punishment ordained, and we Instead shall double ours upon our heads. No more be mentioned then of violence Against ourselves; and wilful barrenness, That cuts us off from hope; and savours only Rancour and pride, impatience and despite, Reluctance against God and his just yoke Laid on our necks. Remember with what mild And gracious temper he both heard, and judged, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... whole morning at writing, still the History, such is my wilful whim. Twenty pages now finished—I suppose the clear fourth part of a volume. I went out, but the day being sulky I sat in the Conservatory, after trying a walk! I have been glancing over the works for Gillies's review, and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... understand it. They seem to me wilful, unworthy of you, your reasons; it's perverse—yes, that is what it is, perverse! You are not really happy here; the life ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... afraid that he himself (judging from some passages in his Autobiography) hardly possesses a proper degree of pride, or the due feeling of self-respect. The Christian in the novel is the butt and laughing-stock of a proud, wilful young beauty of the name of Naomi; yet does he forsake the love of a sweet girl Lucie, to be the beaten spaniel of this Naomi. He has so little spirit as to take her money and her contempt at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... come to pass at the desire of thy KA (i.e. double), and that Thenu doth not speak words of overboldness to thee, and that she is as [obedient as] thy hunting dogs. Behold, the flight, which thy servant who is now speaking made, was made by him as the result of ignorance; it was not wilful, and I did not decide upon it after careful meditation. I cannot understand how I could ever have separated myself from my country. It seemeth to me now to have been the product of a dream wherein a man who ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health, including injury to or loss of sight, hearing or limb, or any organ of the body or any mental derangement; and the act or omission must be wilful, i.e. deliberate and intentional, and not merely accidental or inadvertent. The offence may be punished either summarily or on indictment, and the offender may be sent to penal servitude if it is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... desperate, full of fancies, and wilful; and you misunderstand. I have an additional reason for seeing you tonight besides love of you. For though, unlike you, I feel our affection may be eternal, I feel with you in this, that our present ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... a curious illustration in this colony of French origin. Rococo—antiquated, old-fashioned—would seem to have become rococo itself; and in its place the negroes have adopted the word entete, wilful, headstrong, to express, as it were, the persistence of a person in retaining anything that has gone out of fashion. This term was first applied to white hats; and the wearers of such have been assailed from every corner of the streets with the cry of "Entete chapeau!" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... "Wilful trespass," wheezed Plant. "That's what, young man. His sheep grazed over our line. He's lucky that I don't have him up before the United States courts for ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... according to the rules she ought to have been irresponsible, gay, and indulgently watched over by the wisdom of admiring age. But she felt towards the French nation as a mother might feel towards adorable, wilful children suffering through their own charming foolishness. She saw France personified in Chirac. How easily, despite his special knowledge, he had yielded to the fever! Her heart bled for France and Chirac ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... appeared nothing loth, it was decided he should go to Warmouth, to the great grief of Kinch, who thought it a most unheard-of proceeding, and he regarded Mrs. Bird thenceforth as his personal enemy, and a wilful disturber of ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... was following after the flighty cayuse; not trying to catch her, only striving to get her out of the way. "Buckskin" was wilful, however, and as often as the angry interpreter drove her off, came circling saucily back—to halt in the path of the coming braves. The string by the willows, the hobbled horses and the gentle free ones, ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... since our chronicles began, With war assiduous, from our inner realms, Still undefiled by their invading feet. The choking hurry of my noisy heart Told me the truth. At first I would have fled, But, being unperceived by him, I lingered,— Inquisitive and wilful that I am. Thenceforth, sweet Queen, I never can forget The face of this one man which I have seen. Triumph was on his brow, and yet not that So much as doubt and earnest questioning. Something arose into his eyes and shone Which must have been ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... revived, with new privileges and powers,—a Representative Assembly of Councillors. It proclaimed, as its first law, one that seems simple enough to our happier times, but never hitherto executed at Rome: Every wilful homicide, of whatever rank, was to be punished by death. It enacted, that no private noble or citizen should be suffered to maintain fortifications and garrisons in the city or the country; that the gates and bridges of the State should be under the control of ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of stature, with a square head and a billowy, sable-silvered head of hair; full lips, richly shadowed by his beard; an eye which twinkled like some bland star of humour at one minute and pierced like a gimlet at the next; a manner suavely dogged, jovially wilful, calmly hectoring, winning as the wiles of a child; a voice of husky sweetness, like a fog-bound clarion at times; a learning which, if it embraced nothing wholly, had squeezed some spot of vital juice out of well-nigh everything; wise, loquacious, masterful, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... her kindly as she was led to the Jefferson car, and there was a subtle deference in his manner, indicating his realization that he was speaking—not to the wilful little maid who could be annoying—but to the owner of Granados and, despite his five year contract as manager, an owner who could change entirely the activities of the two ranches in another year—and it was ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Burnet. But with these good qualities Compton was a weak man, wilful, and strangely wedded to a party.—Swift. He ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... anywhere. She had good sense and good judgment, and was ready with sweet words or sharp words, as the case presented seemed to demand. She was firm where firmness seemed to be required, but had long patience and unfailing gentleness in her dealings with the weak and even with the wilful; and as the days passed, John took heed of her words and ways with ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... clear that the mistress of 'The Seven Stars' could not become Mr. Gurd's partner and continue to reign over her own constellation as of old. Yet Nelly did not readily accept a fact so obvious, even under Mr. Legg's reiterated admonitions. She felt wayward—almost wilful about it: and there came an evening when Richard dropped in for his usual half hour of courting to find her in such a frame of mind. Humour on his part had saved the situation; but he lacked humour, and while Nelly, even as she spoke, knew she was talking nonsense and only waited his reminder ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... the spectacle presented to us by the educated intellect of England, France, and Germany! Lovers of their country and of their race, religious men, external to the Catholic Church, have attempted various expedients to arrest fierce wilful human nature in its onward course, and to bring it into subjection. The necessity of some form of religion for the interests of humanity, has been generally acknowledged: but where was the concrete representative of things invisible, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... tone that only names of prominence and wealth can bestow Annie's name was solicited. Wherever it appeared it gave the instant stamp of dignity and integrity. She had seen this goal dimly in the distance, when she stepped from her rather spoiled and wilful girlhood into this splendid wifehood, but even Annie was astonished at the rapidity with which it had come about. Mama, of course, had known all the right people, even if she had dropped all social ties after Papa's death. And Hendrick's name was an open sesame. But even so it was surprising, ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... remembered that Manetho was writing for the edification of a Greek king (Ptolemy Philadelphus) and his Greek court at Alexandria, and had therefore to evince a respect for the great Greek classic which he may not always have really felt. Herodotus is not, of course, accused of any wilful misstatement in this or in any other matter in which his accuracy is suspected. He merely wrote down what he was told by the Egyptians themselves, and Merpeba was sufficiently near in time to Aha to be easily confounded ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... Mr Marston; "that was no accident this afternoon, but a wilful attempt made by some miserably prejudiced person ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... her handkerchief and evidently pondering the entirely new suggestion. I thought it best to let her ponder. As a general rule, people will do anything in the world rather than think; so, when one sees a human being wrapped in thought, one ought to regard wilful disturbance of the process as sacrilege. I lit a cigarette and wandered about ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... others; and even commended when he could Dr. Reynolds, the chief of the Puritans; the king consented to the only two important articles that side suggested; a new catechism adapted to the people—"Let the weak be informed and the wilful be punished," said the king; and that new translation of the Bible which forms our present version. "But," added the king, "it must be without marginal notes, for the Geneva Bible is the worst for them, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... "Wilful man," said Sam, "didn't I advise you not to come? There, lie down and take it easy. We'll bring you some fruit on ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... worse than this. Breach of promise is only a negative crime. The Allies went to the other extreme; their help took the form of positive wilful obstruction. The Japanese, by bolstering up Semianoff and Kalmakoff, and the Americans, by protecting and organising enemies, made it practically impossible for the Omsk Government to maintain its authority or existence. The most that could be ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... driving me out of my senses day by day. You know I don't wish you to associate with her; you know that I object extremely to your being seen everywhere in her company. But you don't care: the more I expostulate the more obstinate and wilful you ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... seems to want is a little more affability. He is terribly haughty, and already knows what respect is. His look is what may be called agreeable, but his air is milder than his character, for his little head is rather an obstinate and wilful one. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... however valuable from the psychological, are worthless from the historical, standpoint. They abound in misrepresentations which are in part due to lapse of time and weakness of memory, in part to wilful intention. Wishing the Robespierre-Salicetti episode of his life to be forgotten, he strives in his memoirs to create the impression that the Convention had ordered him to take charge of the artillery at Toulon, when in ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... 'justifiable homicide by Sir Ferdinand Morringer and other members of the police force of New South Wales in the case of one James Marston, charged with robbery under arms, and of a man habitually known as "Starlight", but of whose real name there was no evidence before the jury.' As for the police, it was wilful murder against us. Warrigal and I were remanded to Turon Court for further evidence, and as soon as we were patched up a bit by the doctor—for both of us looked like making a die of it for two or three weeks—we were started ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... endless life beyond the grave; That when the icy hand of death Shall seize their frames, and stop their breath, Their souls on wings of faith may rise To life and joy beyond the skies. O Father, grant me this request And I shall be supremely bless'd; Bend ev'ry stubborn, wilful knee, And draw each wand'ring heart to thee. But hark! I hear a cheering voice That bids my waiting soul rejoice. "Be still, and know that I am God," And bow submissive to the rod. It seems almost that voice from heav'n, Had spoke my childrens' sins forgiven, So ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... some people this statement may seem a wilful paradox, yet I believe it to be true. The Olympian religion, radiating from Homer at the Panathenaea, produced what I will venture to call exactly a religious reformation. Let us consider how, with all its flaws and falsehoods, it was fitted to ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... "Well, well, wilful heart must have its way; only take my counsel: speak to the poor young lady first, and see what she will tell you, lest you only make bad worse, and bring down her father and his men on ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... work equally well performed by a man and by a woman, it is ordained that the woman on the ground of her sex alone shall receive a less recompense, is the nearest approach to a wilful and unqualified "wrong" in the whole relation of woman to society today. That males of enlightenment and equity can for an hour tolerate the existence of this inequality has seemed to me always incomprehensible; ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... directly and indirectly on Carlisle's distraught mood touched the lover deeply. He hardly needed Mrs. Heth's frightened hints about the necessity of gentleness with firmness in dealing with a flare-up. Had he himself not known the wilful nature of her spirit in excitement, that never-forgotten evening in ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... between ourselves, I do think I deserve something to eat after that," muttered the poor fellow. "Here, where did I put that there piece of cake? It must be lost amongst those leaves. Dropped it when I was feeling for the spear. What! plenty more in the basket? No, I won't. Wilful waste makes woeful want. Why, here it is in my trousers pocket all the time! So, now then, let's have another try; and I will treat myself to a banana afterwards. No, I won't; I'll have two." And hurrying to the basket, he helped himself to the fruit, and then made himself comfortable ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... looked round the room, biting her lip, and French observed her for a moment. He remembered the foreign vivacity and dash, the wilful grace of her youth, and marvelled at her stiffened, pretentious air, her loss of charm. Instinctively the saint in him knew from the mere look of her that she had been feeding herself on egotisms and falsehoods, and his ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... broken it in silence, without a warning, with the baldest possible explanation! His aunt, despite her real interest in him, could never extract from him a clear account of his doings and his movements. And this South African excursion was the last and worst illustration of his wilful ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... employment on a collier, discharging coals. Then, by an extraordinary piece of good luck, he got a billet as proof-reader on the North Queensland Trumpet Call, from which, after an exciting three weeks, he was dismissed for "general incompetency and wilful neglect of his duties." So with sorrow in his heart he had turned to the ever-resourceful sea again for a living. He worked his passage down to Sydney in an old, heart-broken, wheezing steamer named the You ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... As for Percinet, he escapes in a wonderful fashion, though partly by help of his lady's little wilfulnesses, the dangers of the handsome, amiable, in a small way always successful, and almost omnipotent hero. There is a sort of ironic tenderness, in his letting Gracieuse again and again go her wilful way and show her foolish filiality, which saves him. He is always ready, and does his spiriting in the politest and best manner, particularly when he shepherds all those amusing but rebellious little people into their box again—a feat which some great novelists have achieved ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... latest bulletins of Giorgione, Pater would have been delighted to hear, are highly satisfactory. Pictures once torn from the altars of authenticity are being reinstated under the acolytage of Mr. Herbert Cook. A curious and perhaps wilful error, too, has escaped Mr. Benson's notice. Referring to the tomb of Cardinal Jacopo at San Miniato, Pater says, 'insignis forma fui—his epitaph dares to say;' the inscription reads fuit. But perhaps the t was added by the Italian Government ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... thinks this last statement tends to prove would be difficult to say. In the body of my work I go into the minute details of the strength of the combatants in the lake action; I clearly show that James was guilty of gross and wilful falsification of the truth; and no material statement I make can ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the king's enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder. As not more abnormal than all other parallel processes of adaptation to altered conditions of existence, resulting in a reciprocal equilibrium between the bodily organism and its attendant circumstances, foods, beverages, acquired habits, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... thought, in her great bed. One saw a sharp white oval floating in the black clouds which were her hair. She looked younger than any bride could be, childish, a child ill of a fever, wilful, querulous, miserable. All the time she listened to what Milo had to say her lips twitched, and her fingers plucked gold threads out of the cherubim on ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... animosity is too strong a word for the resentful spite, like the jealous rage of a spoiled child, which gleamed now and then in her eyes. I couldn't think of her as wicked any more than I could think of a bad child as wicked. She was merely wilful and undisciplined and—I hardly know how to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... however, to deal with these slippery people, who seemed much more inclined to pilfer. Notwithstanding a strict guard maintained round the camp, various implements were stolen, and several horses carried off. Among the latter, we have to include the long-cherished steed of Pierre Dorion. From some wilful caprice, that worthy pitched his tent at some distance from the main body, and tethered his invaluable steed beside it, from whence it was abstracted in the night, to the infinite chagrin and mortification ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... suddenly, making a wilful anti-climax to her speech, and, as Stair knew very well, not in the least finishing as she had meant to. But her housekeeping pride was aroused. He must eat. She would heap his plate. She had heard him late last night moving about. Had he not slept well? That was why she had let him sleep ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... downright treason into which it was drifting. He was a man of indomitable energy, devoted loyalty, and thorough honesty. Contractors could not manipulate him, traitors could not deceive him. Impulsive, perhaps, but true; wilful, it is possible, but placable; impatient, but persistent and efficient,—he became at once one of the most marked and important of the members of the Cabinet." Lincoln and Stanton together were ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... tears. He had an instant of intense resentment against his daughter. What brutality had she been guilty of toward Elfrida in that moment of unreasonable jealousy that surged up between them? He would fiercely like to know. But Elfrida was smiling again, looking up at him in wilful disregard of her ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... "'Wilful murder?' says he in his quiet way. 'What the deuce is that? What are you talking about? People do get killed sometimes when they get in one's ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... never been ordered, and he would not listen to it. "Then bring fish," I said, that I might draw them: no, that was not ordered. "Then go you to the palace, and leave me to go to Urondogani to-morrow, after I have taken a latitude;" but the wilful creature would not go until he saw me under way. And as nobody would do anything for me without Kasoro's orders, I amused the people by firing at the ferry-boat upon the Usoga side, which they defied me to hit, the ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... fancies, and kept in sprightly humour. Another of them had said, when the sailors were flogged, it was out of the hearing of the Africans, lest it should depress their spirits. He by no means wished to say that such descriptions were wilful misrepresentations. If they were not, it proved that interest of prejudice was capable of spreading a film over the eyes thick enough to occasion ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... frequent our libraries. These abuses are manifold and far-reaching. Most of them are committed through ignorance, and can be corrected by the courteous but firm interposition of the librarian, instructing the delinquent how to treat a book in hand. Others are wilful and unpardonable offences against property rights and public morals, even if not made penal offences by law. One of these is book mutilation, very widely practiced, but rarely detected until the mischief is done, and the ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... eighty-five." Another common form of humorous complication is taking an expression in a different sense from that it usually bears. "You cannot eat your cake, and have your cake;" "But how," asks the wilful child, "am I to eat my cake, if I don't have it?" Thackeray speaks of a young man who possessed every qualification ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... was born in Kaura, a child to whom the name Lij Kassi was given—a lad whose uncle was then governor of that part of Abyssinia. The boy grew to be wilful, self-reliant, and very ambitious; it is even said that he set himself out to be the elect of God, who should raise his country to a glory equal to that of Ethiopia of old. There was a prophecy indeed, "And it shall come to pass that a king shall arise ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... sovereignty of God belongs to him as the Supreme Disposer, and consists in his perfect right and perfect ability to do us he pleases." Of course, having made the will of God wholly arbitrary, they proceed to deny that it is arbitrary, or that wilfulness in God can possibly be wilful. But all this is using "words of wind for the ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke |
