"Capricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... father's frowns have upon a daughter's heart. Besides, what have I to allege against Mr. Dimple, to justify myself to the world? He carries himself so smoothly, that every one would impute the blame to me, and call me capricious. ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... capacity for friendship; and closer still, perhaps, clings little Hannibal, a boy about whose parentage nothing is known until the end of the story. Hannibal is charmed into tolerance of the Judge's picturesque vices, while Miss Betty, lovely and capricious, is charmed into placing all her affairs, both material and sentimental, in the hands ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... at last, and came to know him very well; and then I discovered how the nervousness, the bashfulness, the mauvaise honte, which made him so shy and retiring in private, stood him in wonderful stead on the stage. The nervous man became the fretful and capricious tyrant of mock tragedy; the bashful man warmed at the foot-lights with passion and power. The manner which in society was a drawback and a defect became in the pursuit of his art a charm and an excellence. What new parts may be created for Robson, and how he will acquit himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... There was something splendid in it: she, herself, was a noble animal; and she seemed entirely in place where she was. The lions were fond of her, and she of them; but the first part of her performance had shown that they could be capricious. A lion's love is but a lion's love after all—and hers likewise, no doubt! The three seemed as one in their beauty, the woman superbly superior. Meyerbeer, in a far corner, was still on the trail of his sensation. He thought that he might get an article out ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... gaolers to experience and display all the successive severities of Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur, and Norfolk Island. A fundamental fact to be exhibited was the impassable gulf of misunderstanding that might exist between capricious or incompetent prison officials and a criminal who, for any reason, had once come to be regarded as hopelessly vicious. 'We must treat brutes like brutes,' says the prime martinet of the story: 'keep 'em down, sir; make 'em feel what they are. They're here to work, sir. If ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... history in the middle, and was too sick of politics at home to enter into them here. In short, I have done with the world, and live in it rather than in a desert, like you. Few men can bear absolute retirement, and we English worst of all. We grow so humorsome, so obstinate and capricious, and so prejudiced, that it requires a fund of good-nature like yours not to grow morose. Company keeps our rind from growing too coarse and rough; and though at my return I design not to mix in public, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... hopes, what terrors, does thy gift create, Ambiguous emblem of uncertain fate; The myrtle, ensign of supreme command, Consigned by Venus to Melissa's hand: Not less capricious than a reigning fair, Now grants, and now rejects a lover's prayer. In myrtle shades oft sings the happy swain, In myrtle shades despairing ghosts complain: The myrtle crowns the happy lovers' heads, The unhappy ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... his hammock, where he smoked his most excellent tobacco in his best pipe, Selkirk smilingly contemplated the capricious bounds, the riotous sports of his cats and kids, their graceful postures, their fraternal combats, in which sheathed claws and the inoffensive horn were the only ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... most capricious, the most beautiful woman in the world," cried Talbot, "whose smile intoxicates, whose frown drives ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... airs of the water, and the glorious pageant of the sunset calmed my troubled spirit. All day the serene and beamy azure of the heavens had been plumed with snowy cloudlets of graceful and capricious form, which, as the sun sank to the horizon, were tinged with fleeting glows resembling the iris of a dove's neck, or the hues of a dying dolphin. The great luminary himself was lost in a golden glamour, and a single bright ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... phrases, and the kindly deeds, which used to make the web of their characters, were seen as if thrust asunder by a microscopic vision, that showed all the intermediate frivolities, all the suppressed egoism, all the struggling chaos of puerilities, meanness, vague capricious memories, and indolent make-shift thoughts, from which human words and deeds emerge like leaflets covering ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... who know the reason, tell me How is it that instinct Prompts the heart to like or not like At its own capricious will? Tell me by what hidden magic Our impressions first are led Into liking or disliking, Oft ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... manufactures must be sold as cheap abroad as any other foreign goods of the same quality and kind, and consequently must be sold cheaper at home. They would still, therefore, keep possession of the home market; and though a capricious man of fashion might sometimes prefer foreign wares, merely because they were foreign, to cheaper and better goods of the same kind that were made at home, this folly could, from the nature of things, extend to so few, that it could make no sensible impression upon the general ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... a capricious, whimsical, fine lady, till the smallpox, which she got here, by lessening her beauty, lessened her humors too; but, as I presume it did not change her sex, I trust to that for her having such a share of them ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... consequently a very full week to Fan, who now for the first time saw something of the hidden wonders and glories of London. And she was happy; but this novel experience—the sight of all that unimagined wealth of beauty—was even less to her than Mary's perfect affection, which was now no longer capricious, bursting forth at rare intervals like sunshine out of a stormy sky. Then that week in fairyland was over, and Tom Starbrow went back to Manchester to arrange his affairs; but before going he presented Fan with a very beautiful lady's ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art in proportion as they indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression;" it may be answered, that the language, which he has in view, can be attributed to rustics with no greater right, than the style of Hooker or Bacon to Tom Brown or Sir Roger L'Estrange. Doubtless, if what is peculiar to each were omitted in each, the result must needs ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... spoke the bows of the Flying Fish swung slowly round, and her hull was swept gently away from the face of the cliff by a capricious zephyr which just then came creeping ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... them, a mile and a half off, in the wreathing mist of the Cauldon Bar Ironworks, there was a yellow gleam that even the capricious sunlight could not kill, and then two rivers of fire sprang from the gleam and ran in a thousand delicate and lovely hues down the side of a mountain of refuse. They were emptying a few tons of molten slag at the Cauldon Bar Ironworks. The two rivers hung slowly dying ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... presence of tape worm. The children may have pains in the abdomen, diarrhea, a capricious appetite, foul breath, and they may suffer from anemia, sometimes quite severely. The only positive symptoms is the presence of links of the worm in ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... long rambling narrative of what he had heard on the subject of the wonderful remedy, and of the capricious manner in which a supply of it had been first offered to him, and then taken away again. "Turn it over in your own mind," he said grandly, "and tell me what your opinion is, ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... down-river one, will doubtless be found comparatively tenantless. Owing to obstructions against the side windows, the whole place is dim and dusky; very much so, for the most part; yet, by starts, haggardly lit here and there by narrow, capricious sky-lights in the cornices. But there would seem no special need for light, the place being designed more to pass the night in, than the day; in brief, a pine barrens dormitory, of knotty pine bunks, without bedding. ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... of the succeeding fortnight. Mad. De la Rocheaimard gradually grew feebler, but she might still live months. No one could tell, and Adrienne hoped she would never die. Happily, her real wants were few; though her appetite was capricious, and her temper querulous. Love for her grandchild, however, shone in all she said and did, and so long as she was loved by this, the only being on earth she had ever been taught to love herself, Adrienne would not think an instant of the ills caused by the infirmities ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... is growing, like the plants to which it relates. It cannot be written "offhand" or finished "on time" to suit any one except Dame Nature, who, being feminine, is often inscrutable and apparently capricious. The experience of one season is often reversed in the next, and the guide in gardening of whom I am most afraid is the man who is always sure he is right. It was my privilege to have the late Mr. Charles ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... race. Her features were moulded in a delicate, definite harmony that would have marked her out in any assemblage of beauty; and the spirit of beauty was there too. There were actually pride and dignity under the arched brows—so capricious is Nature in shaping her wilder daughters—and in the deep soft eyes brooded, even when she was happiest, a heart-disquieting quality of wistfulness. She was happy now; and ever and anon she raised her eyes to the slouching back of the man riding ahead with a look of ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... control it have the power to stand as an inflexible barrier between individuals, groups of individuals, nations and international peoples. The very agencies which should under a rational form of civilization be devoted to promoting the interests of mankind, are used as their capricious self-interest incline them by the few who have been allowed to obtain control of them. What if helpless people are swept off by starvation or by diseases superinduced by lack of proper food? What if in the great cities an increasing sacrifice of innocents goes on because their parents ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... the dances, The dearest were those we sat out, How I frowned when detecting your glances On others, which caused you to pout? You are changeful and coy and capricious, A weathercock easily blown; But when shall I hear the delicious One word that proclaims you ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 8, 1891 • Various
... organized religious life have their difficulties: the one, the martinet superior and the routine subject; the other, the capricious subject and the lax superior. In one kind the bond of union as well as the stimulus of endeavor is mainly obedience, fraternal charity assisting; in the other it is mainly fraternal charity, obedience assisting; each has to overcome obstacles ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... which, for its regularity of effect and convenience in manufacture and use, is still preferred for general purposes to all the new and more violent but more capricious agents. In England it is composed of 75 parts saltpetre to 10 sulphur and 15 charcoal; these proportions are varied slightly in different countries. The ingredients are mixed together with great mechanical nicety, and the compound is then pressed ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... if so, it is a most unfortunate thing for your theory, because the fact implies that the Deity has planned his types in such a way as to suggest the counter-theory of descent. For instance, it would seem most capricious on the part of the Deity to have made the eyes of an innumerable number of fish on exactly the same ideal type, and then to have made the eye of the octopus so exactly like these other eyes in superficial appearance as ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... Dad seemed to be laying the groundwork for a lively roundup one of his days. He said he'd been marrying women off and on for forty years. His easy plan seemed to be just to take one that pleased his capricious temper wherever he found her, ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... to heaven, yet forced by an unconquerable fate to wander near the earth about the haunts of men; for these errant birds have strange uncertainties, and many a mysterious anxiety in the course of their airy flight. Sometimes they lose the wind when the capricious gusts battle, or come and go in the upper regions. When this confusion comes by day, you can see the leader of the file fluttering aimlessly in the air, then turn about and take his place at the tail ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... Tangier, who exercises both civil and military power, was at this time Arbi Esid, a man of a stern and capricious character. To him Tahra, the Moor, repaired, soliciting an audience. She told him that her home had afforded refuge to a young maiden of the Hebrews, who was fairer than the spring, and whom she had led by her arguments to the verge of Mahometanism; but that should she remain ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... in London, and I met her at many houses, and was desperately in love with her. But though she treated me with friendship, she was proud and capricious as ever, and a few years later married a man whom I knew and detested—a Mr. Bentley Drummle, a bully and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... hum of conversation and capricious laughter, Vanya's vague music drifted like wind-blown thistle-down, and his absent regard never left Marya, where she rested among the cushions in low-voiced ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... capricious and swayed by fluctuations of health. She was "up and down," whatever that betokened. At one moment she "saw the sun,"—her poetical way of expressing that she began to feel pretty well,—and thought she ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... returned from lumbering in Canada to make a living at home. The motif of the tale is the unconscious competition of the two friends, of whom Andy is very willing to play "second fiddle," did not character and brains force him to the front. The young squire of Halton is too selfish and capricious to succeed, and in spite of his loyalty to friendship, Andy finds himself driven to take his place both in love and in politics. A host of characters cross the stage, and the scene flits between Meriton and London. The book is so light in touch, so shrewd in ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... gave formal notice of his purpose to abdicate the imperial authority. Lafayette was at the head of the deputation appointed by the chamber of representatives, to wait on the Emperor, to accept and thank him for his abdication, A few days before this, when the deputies were accused of being capricious and ungrateful, by a friend of Napoleon, Lafayette observed, in reply, "go tell him that we can trust him no longer; we ourselves will undertake the salvation of ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... prophet, entered the presence of the emperor. He was venerable in years, and his gray locks fell in clusters upon his shoulders. The boy king was overawed by his appearance. One word from that capricious king would cause the head of Sylvestre to fall from the block. But the intrepid Christian, with the solemnity of an embassador from God, with pointed finger and eye sparkling with indignation, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... will and energetic purpose which a man needs to possess more than a woman. Alexander Patoff, on the other hand, without being effeminate, was intensely feminine. He had fine sensibilities, he had quick intuitions, he was capricious and womanly in his ideas. It follows that, in the scale of characters, Hermione held the mean between the two brothers. Compared with Paul's powerful nature, her qualities were those of a woman; in comparison with Alexander's delicate organization of mind, Hermione's character was ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... attitude of the uneducated man towards the permanent terrors of nature, what will it be towards those which are sudden and seemingly capricious?—towards storms, earthquakes, floods, blights, pestilences? We know too well what it has been—one of blind, and therefore often cruel, fear. How could it be otherwise? Was Theophrastus's superstitious man so very foolish ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... came up the hill from Waltham I was inspired to verse, and wrote it inside my mind, completing a passage I had been working at for two years, upon joy. But it was easy for me to be happy, since I was on a horse and warm and well fed; yet even for me such days are capricious. I have known but few in my life. They are each of them distinct and clear, so rare are they, and (what is more) so different are they in their very quality from ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... layeth bare the law's mysterious sense. For him the crown is destined, to him belongeth royal homage. When one sees with what severity and injustice Abraham Ibn Ezra treats the French commentator, one may well doubt whether this enthusiastic eulogy sprang from his pen, capricious though we know him to have been. "The Talmud," he said, "has declared that the Peshat must never lose its rights. But following generations gave the first place to Derash, as Rashi did, who pursued this method in commenting upon the entire Bible, though he believed ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... that—after M. d'Artagnan, who knows everything, shall have given me a fresh strength and courage. Madame, a coquette I fear, and yet a coquette who is herself in love, has her moments of kindness; a coquette who is as capricious and uncertain as life or death, but who tells De Guiche that he is the happiest of men. He at least is lying on roses." And so he hastily quitted the comte's apartments, reproaching himself as he went for having talked of nothing but his own affairs to De Guiche, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ground-thoughts of early theology. At one point, as if Browning wished to sketch the beginning of a new theological period, Caliban represents a more advanced thought than savage man conceives. This is Caliban's imagination of a higher being than Setebos who is the capricious creator and power of the earth—of the "Quiet," who is master of Setebos and whose temper is quite different; who also made the stars, things which Caliban, with a touch of Browning's subtle thought, separates from the sun and moon and earth. It ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... have been too idealistic: he wished to protect the Church as a sort of earthly paradise, of which the rules might seem to him as paternal as those of heaven, but might well seem to the king as capricious as those of Fairyland.' The tremendously suggestive thing of the whole story of Becket is that Henry II submitted to being thrashed at Becket's tomb. It was like 'Cecil Rhodes submitting to be horsewhipped by a Boer as an apology for some indefensible death incidental to the Jameson Raid.' Undoubtedly ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... and that its practical evil consists in worshipping beings whom we represent to our imaginations as morally imperfect. Conversely, one who imputes to God sentiments and conduct which in man he would call capricious or cruel, such a one, even if he be as monotheistic as a Mussulman, admits into his soul the whole virus ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... and close ties in three different circles of this highest society. One circle was her husband's government official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, brought together in the most various and capricious manner, and belonging to different social strata. Anna found it difficult now to recall the feeling of almost awe-stricken reverence which she had at first entertained for these persons. Now she knew all of them as people know one another ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... President Davis will be regarded by the world as a second Washington? What will his own country say of him? I know not, of course; but I know what quite a number here say of him now. They say he is a small specimen of a statesman, and no military chieftain at all. And worse still, that he is a capricious tyrant, for lifting up Yankees and keeping down great Southern men. Wise, Floyd, etc. are kept in obscurity; while Pemberton, who commanded the Massachusetts troops, under Lincoln, in April, 1861, is made a lieutenant-general; G. W. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... distance from the scene of operations, as the good Talavera, for instance, and the count of Tendilla, who saw with much concern the prospect of changing the steady and well-tried hand, which had held the helm for more than thirty years, for the capricious guidance of Philip ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... aunt's home in the East. She had been very restless and capricious just before she went. All women were thus, he supposed. But he ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... our small but significant son, Is prey of a temper capricious and hot, And tires of a project as soon as begun, And wants what he hasn't, and hates what he's got, A dutiful father, I ponder and brood, Essaying by reason and logic to find The radical cause of the juvenile mood In the intricate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... sickly and depraved from the unhealthy work, from drink and lewdness, foolish and capricious, he aimlessly prowled around the city, as in a dream, entered some shed and abstracted a few worthless mats, then, instead of destroying the causes that led this boy into his present condition, we intend to mend ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... indignant feelings, I walked rapidly on, without deigning to look at one so heartless and capricious. Mr. Regulus was right. He was not a proper companion. I would never allow him to walk ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... never violated the laws, or irritated the people by oppressive exactions. Many acts of the Tudor princes seem to indicate the reign of despotism in England, but this despotism was never grievous, and had all the benignity of a paternal government. Capricious and arbitrary as Elizabeth was, in regard to some unfortunate individuals who provoked her hatred or her jealousy, still she ever sedulously guarded the interests of the nation, and listened to the counsel of patriotic and able ministers. When England was threatened with a ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... internal organs as well as in external characters, in the {246} functions and mutual relations of parts—will be rigorously tested, preserved, or rejected. Natural selection often checks man's comparatively feeble and capricious attempts at improvement; and if this were not so, the result of his work, and of nature's work, would be even still more different. Nevertheless, we must not overrate the amount of difference between natural species and domestic races; ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human mind. And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... less remarkable than the women for the clothes they wore, no less capricious in their changes. A decided, if not a conspicuous, turn of public taste had done much since the accession of the first George to minimize if not to obliterate the differences between class and class. Men no longer consented readily ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... one harmonious chain or series of explanations, exhibiting the uniformity as well as the exquisite adaptability of Nature, even in those departments called "inconstant," where she is supposed to be most capricious. ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... aspect of the Philosophy of his whole life. Lamb was, in his life, a great epicurean philosopher, as, in all probability, many other "saints" have been. The things in him that fretted Carlyle, his fits of intoxication, his outbursts of capricious impishness, his perversity and his irony, were just as much part of the whole scheme as were his celibacy and his relation to ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... delicious to the Ear, what most sweetly affects the Soul, and is the strongest Basis of Harmony. And must we be deprived of these Charms, without knowing the Reason why? Oh! I understand you: I ought not to ask the Masters, but the Audience, those capricious Protectors of the Mode, that cannot endure this; and herein lies my Mistake. Alas! the Mode and the Multitude flow like Torrents, which, when at their Height, having spent their Violence, quickly disappear. The Mischief is in the Spring itself; the Fault is in the Singers. They praise the Pathetick, ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... with that indescribable charm of person, manner, and character, which distinguished Marie Antoinette. This is in itself a distinction quite sufficient to detach friends from its possessor through envy. Besides, she was Queen of France, the woman of highest rank in a most capricious, restless and libertine nation. The two Princesses placed nearest to her, and who were the first to desert her, though both very much inferior in personal and mental qualifications, no doubt, though not directly, may have ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... He was induced to make the experiment partly by his love for, and partial intercourse with, the Italian language, of which it is so easy to acquire a slight knowledge, and with which it is so nearly impossible for a foreigner to become accurately conversant. The Italian language is like a capricious beauty, who accords her smiles to all, her favours to few, and sometimes least to those who have courted her longest. The translator wished also to present in an English dress a part at least of a poem never yet rendered into a northern language; at the same time ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... intermittent sound of the sharp whistling of milk into the pail, and Kester, sitting on a three-legged stool, cajoling a capricious cow into letting her fragrant burden flow. Sylvia stood near the farther window-ledge, on which a horn lantern was placed, pretending to knit at a gray worsted stocking, but in reality laughing at Kester's futile endeavours, and finding quite enough to do with her eyes, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... be in making a trip down these inland waters, where one is at the mercy of a capricious current save when a favorite of fortune chances to own a motor boat that scorns the usual drifting process, and speeds along at a ten-mile-an-hour clip, regardless of baffling ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... their proceedings. Tracy has been of nearly every committee during the session, and for the most part the chairman, and of course drawer of the reports. Seven federalists voting always in phalanx, and joined by some discontented republicans, some oblique ones, some capricious, have so often made a majority, as to produce very serious embarrassment to the public operations; and very much do I dread the submitting to them, at the next session, any treaty which can be made with either England or ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... are exhausted, is, perhaps, natural to us in our imperfect state. But why put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak in a way that you will regret. ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... of a very singular turn of humour, and though, without the abilities, bore some resemblance to the famous dean of St. Patrick's, and perhaps was not so subject to those capricious whims which produced so much uneasiness to all who attended upon dean Swift. It is said of Dr. Main, that his propension to innocent raillery was so great, that it kept him company even after death. Among other legacies, he bequeathed to an old servant ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... majority of men since the world began have been content to close their eyes tightly or utter their three prayers and take the goods the gods provide. Pedro the Cruel was no exception to this rule, and his capricious ventures in search of married bliss would fill many pages. According to Burke, "he was lawfully married in 1352 to the lady who passed during her entire life as his mistress, Maria de Padilla; he was certainly married to Blanche of Bourbon in 1353; and his seduction, or rather his violation, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... and capricious creature, is, oftentimes so easily offended that if the maid rise from her before the milk is all withdrawn, the chances are that she will not again stand quietly at that milking; or, if the vessel ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... this praise, and then moved onwards in order to liberate Papillette, who was very inconveniently cramped, and almost suffocated with anger. Disagreeable truths seldom reach the ear of princesses; her resentment, therefore, was to be expected. Meanwhile, her heart being equally capricious as her understanding, she felt ready to pardon, and even, on reflection, to justify Patipata. But pride soon combated this weakness; and she determined to send him away. She complained to her father; assured him, that by mere chance she had heard the most odious calumnies uttered by a prince who ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... speaks of "the Breton book" from which he took his matter, and that Marie de France states that her tales are drawn from old Breton sources, not to admit the possible existence of a body of Arthurian tradition in Brittany appears capricious. Thomas's Sir Tristrem is professedly based on the poem of the Breton Breri, and there is no reason why Brittany, drawing sap and fibre as it did from Britain, should not have produced Arthurian stories of ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... capricious man, fancying that it is ignominious for him to follow the advice of his friends or his servants, might prefer the satisfaction of contradicting them to the profit he could derive from their counsel. It may happen, however, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... their habits and instincts, yet the birds sometimes seem as whimsical and capricious as superior beings. One is not safe, for instance, in making any absolute assertion as to their place or mode of building. Ground-builders often get up into a bush, and tree-builders sometimes get upon the ground or into a tussock of grass. The song sparrow, which is a ground builder, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... among the motley crowd of natives, and gave one the impression of a glorified farmyard. The building itself, like most Indian palaces, is composed of a heterogeneous agglomeration in all sorts of sizes and styles. Each successive Maharana having apparently added a bit here and a bit there as his capricious fancy prompted. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Tesserarian art is a sure road to wealth and reputation. A master of that sublime science who in a supper or an assembly is placed below a magistrate displays in his countenance the surprise and indignation which Cato might be supposed to feel when he was refused the praetorship by the votes of a capricious people. The acquisition of knowledge seldom engages the curiosity of the nobles, who abhor the fatigue and disdain the advantages of study; and the only books which they peruse are the Satires of Juvenal and the verbose and fabulous histories ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... addressed that goddess of lovely face, and having dismissed her thus, he harnessed to his heavenly car a number of saints devoted to the practice of austerities. A disregarder of Brahmanas, endued with power and intoxicated with pride, capricious, and of vicious soul, he employed those saints to carry him. Meanwhile, dismissed by Nahusha, Sachi went to Vrihaspati and said, "But little remaineth of the term assigned by Nahusha to me. Be compassionate unto me who respect thee so, and quickly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... however personal, which involved Food or Drink) scowled and laughed. Le con, surplice, chaude pisse—how could he sit with men and gentlemen? Surplice sat down gracefully and lightly on one of our beds, taking extreme care not to strain the somewhat capricious mechanism thereof; sat very proudly; erect; modest but unfearful. We offered him a cup of wine. A kind of huge convulsion gripped, for an instant, fiercely his entire face: then he said in a whisper of sheer and unspeakable wonderment, leaning a little toward us without in any way suggesting ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... our thoughts, and causes us to ascribe the one inference to our judgment, and the other to our imagination. The general rule is attributed to our judgment; as being more extensive and constant. The exception to the imagination, as being more capricious and uncertain. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... particularly at Koummeh, Semneh, Napata, Denderah, and Ombos. Altogether, Thothmes III. is pronounced to have left behind him more monuments than any other Pharaoh excepting Rameses II., and though occasionally showing himself, as a builder, somewhat capricious and whimsical, still, on the whole, to have worked in a pure style and proved that he was not deficient ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... stated Gravity of the Spaniard; the supicious Jealousy of the Italian; the forbidding Haughtiness of the German; the saturnine Gloominess of the Flandrican, nor the sordid Parsimony of the Dutchman: In short, they are neither whimsical, splenetic, sullen or capricious:—And, as for Cunning, Craft, or Dissimulation, these are such sorry Guests as never found Shelter in the generous Breast of an Irish Noble or Gentleman; so that, if we consider this Country, with regard to its military Fame, constitutional Wisdom, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... "Yes, I'm somewhat capricious by nature. As to the horse, as you say, my dear Patout, he wants nothing. You need only remove his bridle; leave him saddled. Oh, wait; put this pistol back in the holsters and take care of these other two for me." And the young man removed the two from his belt and handed ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... when I made the acquaintance of Marguerite. You can well understand that, in spite of myself, my expenses soon increased. Marguerite's nature was very capricious, and, like so many women, she never regarded as a serious expense those thousand and one distractions which made up her life. So, wishing to spend as much time with me as possible, she would write to me in the morning that she would dine with me, not at home, but at ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... art of spiritual computation is not governed by the same principles and rules which guide our speculations concerning earthly objects. The value of gold, silver, merchandize, food, raiment, lands, and houses, is easily regulated, by custom, convenience, or necessity. Even the more capricious and imaginary worth of a picture, medal, or statue, may be reduced to something of systematic rule. Crowns and sceptres have had their adjudged valuation; and kingdoms have been bought and sold for sums of money. But who can affix the adequate price to a human soul? "What shall it profit a man, if ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... and stroke her brown hair and joke with her about her fits of good and ill humour. Sidney knew well enough what was in his friend's mind, and, though with no sense of constraint, he felt that this handsome, keen-eyed, capricious girl was destined to be his wife. He liked Clara; she always attracted him and interested him; but her faults were too obvious to escape any eye, and the older she grew, the more was he impressed and troubled by them. The thought of Clara became a preoccupation, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... duration. After my misfortunes in Scotland, I know not what I should have done had it not been for your generous welcome. I lost all in Scotland, and it would now be impossible for me to go to France. An attempt on my part to escape would result in my arrest. Fortune certainly has turned her capricious back upon me, with the one exception that she has left ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... that those long-tried men and women submitted with unexampled patience for full eight-and-twenty years to the spoiling of their goods and the ruin of their prospects; but when it came to be a question of submission to the capricious will of the King or loyalty to Jesus Christ, thousands of them chose the latter alternative, and many hundreds sealed ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... their own ranks, who often accused them of imbecility and cowardice, they maintained a steady policy of non-resistance, and, under every show of Federal authority in support of the bogus laws, they submitted to obnoxious searches and seizures, to capricious arrest and painful imprisonment, rather than by resistance to place themselves in the attitude of deliberate outlaws. [Footnote: See Governor Robinson's message to the free-State Legislature, March 4, 1856. Mrs. S. T. L. Robinson, "Kansas," ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... remarkable tribute to the graces of the woman whose praises were so delicately sung. The faithful lover, who was a Protestant, gave a crowning proof of his devotion, in changing his religion. So much adoration could hardly fail to touch the most capricious and obdurate of hearts. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... able to learn who the bride o' Preston really was; but we have frequently heard the saying applied to young women, who are capricious and changeable. ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... listened with patience to the friar, and answered that the request made would take many days to consider, as he had to deal with those who were more capricious than the changing seasons, and more perverse than opposing winds and tides. Reluctantly the friar and his friends were prevailed on to remain at the goblin castle, and how it fared with them we shall ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... of other rooms are repapered or re-panelled. Of course this effect is still more definite when the picture is on the walls themselves, either on canvas stretched into fixed shapes on their panels, or in fresco; involving, of course, the preservation of the building from all unnecessary and capricious alteration. And, generally speaking, the occupation of a large number of hands in painting or sculpture in any nation may be considered as tending to check the disposition to indulge in perishable luxury. I do not, however, in my assumption ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... Will. Their passions, which heretofore had been under the control of reason, revolted against them, and their will was turned away from God. We, their children, have inherited all the consequences of their fall. We seek ourselves inordinately—follow our own capricious will, which leads us into excesses, at which we blush, in our sober moments. We stubbornly persist in seeking our happiness in creatures, though reason itself loudly proclaims that in them it cannot be found. Evidently, then, our will has been sadly ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... entering. Hush! If I could but describe her! Languorous, slender and passionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything. An indolent purposeful step. An unimaginable grace. If you were /her/ lover, my boy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious and sudden, how hostile, ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... to a small room, where he seated himself, and asked me, with his usual mixture of bluntness and good-breeding, the nature of my business. I made him no reply: I contented myself with placing Glanville's billet doux in his hand. The room was dimly lighted with a single candle, and the small and capricious fire, near which the gambler was seated, threw its upward light, by starts and intervals, over the strong features and deep lines of his countenance. It would have been a ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... therefore, not something in the air, unreal, intangible; but something in me, in you, in each man, something which you cannot handle except as individual and {113} in individuals; on the other hand, something more than individual or capricious or uncertain,—something ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... have been, in recent years, so severely tested and found not wanting, should have been so careless as to append to his Gospel a spurious account of so momentous an occurrence as the human Birth of our Lord. "Historical accuracy is not a capricious and intermittent impulse," writes Bishop Alexander. "It is a fixed habit of mind, the result of a particular discipline. Historians of the school of the author of the Acts of the Apostles are not ...
— The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord - A paper read (in substance) before the confraternity of the Holy - Trinity at Cambridge • B. W. Randolph
... Dublin, the stranger brought Fenton to his hotel, where he was desirous to keep him for a day or two, until he should regain a little strength, that he might, without risk, be able to sustain the interview that was before him. Aware of the capricious nature of the young man's feelings, and his feeble state of health, he himself kept aloof from him, lest his presence might occasion such a shock as would induce anything like a fit of insanity—a circumstance which must mar the pleasure ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... every other man in society, as the merchant, the mechanic, or the farmer, to prosecute his business unmolested; shielded by the same laws which protect them from the attacks of malicious libellers out of the theatre, and the insults of capricious Ignorance or stupid Malevolence within. "Reproof," says Dr. Johnson, "should not exhaust its power upon petty failings;" and "the care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature. On this principle the editors ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... and me. My unlimited obedience had respect to action, but not to opinion. Loyalty to my brother did not rest upon hypocrisy: because I was faithful, it did not follow that I must be false in relation to his capricious opinions. And these opinions sometimes took the shape of acts. Twice, at the least, in every week, but sometimes every night, my brother insisted on singing "Te Deum" for supposed victories which he had won; and he insisted also on my bearing a part in these "Te Deums." Now, as I knew ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... worship of a secluded and distant object of loyalty: the men who thus flattered knew perfectly well, often by painful experience, what Elizabeth was: able, indeed, high-spirited, successful, but ungrateful to her servants, capricious, vain, ill-tempered, unjust, and in her old age, ugly. And yet the Gloriana of the Faery Queen, the Empress of all nobleness,—Belphoebe, the Princess of all sweetness and beauty,—Britomart, the armed votaress of all purity,—Mercilla, the ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... to which I yield my arms, From my sad sighs draw wanton pleasure still? Is't not enough to suffer for thy charms That I must grieve at thy capricious will? ...
— The Countess of Escarbagnas • Moliere
... That auld capricious carlin, Nature, To mak amends for scrimpit stature, She's turn'd you aff, a human creature On her first plan; And in her freaks, on every feature ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... having inquired what troops he considered the best, "Those which are victorious, madam," replied the Emperor. "But," added he, "soldiers are capricious and inconstant, like you ladies. The best troops were the Carthaginians under Hannibal, the Romans under the Scipios, the Macedonians under Alexander, and the Prussians under Frederick." He thought, however, that the French ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... public, or mob, in all ages, have been a set of blind, deaf, obstinate, senseless, illiterate savages. That no man of genius, in his senses, would be ambitious of pleasing such a capricious, ungrateful rabble. That the only legitimate end of writing for them is to pick their pockets, and, that failing, we are at full liberty to vilify and abuse them as much as ever ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... "Ambition more easily takes hold of small souls than great ones, just as a fire catches the straw roof of the huts more easily than the palaces"; or Pascal: "In a great soul, everything is great"; or the poet Bodenstedt when he sings: "A gray eye is a sly eye, a brown eye is roguish and capricious, but a blue eye shows loyalty"? And too often we must be satisfied with opposites. Lessing tells us: "All great men are modest"; Goethe: "Only rascals are modest." The psychology of modesty is probably more neatly expressed ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Trevirans and all the rest that have the souls of slaves, what reward do you hope to gain for shedding your blood so often in the cause of Rome, except the thankless task of military service, endless taxation, and the rods and axes of these capricious tyrants? Look at me! I have only a single cohort under my command, and yet with the Canninefates and Batavi, a mere fraction of the Gallic peoples, I am engaged in destroying their great useless camp and besieging them with famine and the sword. In short, our venture will either end in ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... he said at last. "Fortune, I am convinced, dwells here; for I have seen her the guest now of this one and now of that one. How is it that I cannot entertain the capricious creature? I must try her elsewhere. I have already been told that the people of this place are exceedingly ambitious. Evidently there is no room for me here. So, adieu! gentleman of the court, and follow to the bitter end this will-o'-the-wisp! They tell me that Dame Fortune has temples ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... have created Celebes in a capricious moment, such a medley of bold promontories, jutting peninsulas, deep gulfs and curving bays does its outline present. Indeed, its coast line is so irregular and so deeply indented by the three great gulfs or bays of Tomini, Tolo, and Boni that it is small wonder ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... malarial fever leaves behind it. Susannah had need to support her, as well as herself, by the small fees which her day-scholars could afford. She had had the satisfaction of seeing Elvira restored in a great degree to health, but so capricious and fantastic were the bright little lady's words and actions that it was impossible to say whether or not she had slipped across the wavering line that separates the sane ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... Corean woman, though that of a slave kept in strict seclusion, with prospects of floggings and head-chopping, is not always devoid of adventures. Love is a thing which is capricious in the extreme, and there are stories current in Cho-sen about young, wives being carelessly looked after by their husbands, and falling in love with some good-looking youth, of course married to some one else. Having, perhaps, against her master's orders, made ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... each other," he added, "you and I, quite alone. Captain Bontnor is a very worthy old fellow, but—" and he shrugged his shoulders. "We cannot leave her to the wayward charity of a capricious woman!" he added, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... the one which most attracts and holds all those who regard the Faultless Painter with sympathy, and who admiring his genius regret his errors, is a portrait of his wife Lucrezia Fede, whose name, a French writer has said, is a double epigram. It was this capricious and wilful beauty who made poor Andrea break his word and embezzle the money King Francis had given him to spend for works of art. Yet this dangerous face is his best excuse,—the face of a man-snarer, subtle and passionate and cruel in its blind selfishness, and yet so beautiful that ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... prepared for the worst,' said Vertua. 'You hate, you despise me, Chevalier. You have ruined me, to your own and other people's joy; but you do not know me. Let me tell you then that I was once a gambler like you, that capricious Fortune was as favourable to me as she is to you, that I travelled through half Europe, stopping everywhere where high play and the hope of large gains enticed me, that the piles of gold continually increased in my bank as they do in yours. I had a true and beautiful wife, whom I ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... fox-hunting squire as in any of these. Sharp alternations of violent action and self-indulgent repose; a hard run, and a long revel after it; this is what over-much horse tends to animalize a man into. Such antecedents may have helped to make little Dick Venner a self-willed, capricious boy, and a rough ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... sub-continent are exactly the opposite to those obtaining on the other. In the western provinces, the rainy season occurs in the winter months (May—October), in the eastern, including the Boer States, the rain falls chiefly in the summer (October—March). Yet so capricious are these phenomena that a commander, who counted absolutely upon them for his schemes, might easily find them in abeyance, or even for a ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... express an opinion on the subject are, at present, agreed that the manifold varieties of animal and vegetable form have not either come into existence by chance, nor result from capricious exertions of creative power; but that they have taken place in a definite order, the statement of which order is what men of science term a natural law. Whether such a law is to be regarded as an expression of the mode of operation of natural forces, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... court-yard. To brush her hair while such a confidant looked on and asked questions, was more than Pallas Athene herself could do, though she looked out forever from the windows of her Acropolis over the Blue AEgean. The sea is capricious, fickle, angry, fawning, violent, savage and wanton; it caresses and raves in a breath, and has its moods of silence, but Esther's huge playmate rambled on with its story, in the same steady voice, never shrill or angry, never silent or degraded by a sign of human failings, ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... Her little republic was completely governed by a system of equitable laws. On every alleged offence, a court-martial, as they termed it, was held, and the accused tried by her peers. There were no arbitrary punishments, no sallies of capricious passion. The laws were promulgated, and obedience was indispensable; the sentences of the courts-martial were always approved, and had a salutary effect. In short, there was a combination of authority, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... lost in the immensity of the Atlantic, but the other, which passes into the Irish sea, rejoins, and feeds the inhabitants of most of the coasts that border on it. The brigades, as we call them, which are separated from the greater columns, are often capricious in their motions, and do not show an ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... falling apple should lead Sir Isaac Newton's thoughts to the problem of gravity is not so remarkable, but that the laws of prosody should result from an equally capricious occurrence strikes one as odd. I mention the discoverer's name partly that schoolboys may remember him, or not, in their prayers. It was Al-Khalil Ibn Ahmad who, at Mecca, had besought Allah to bestow upon him a science hitherto unknown. Allah being ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... soothingly. "The great she-eagle has got it for a nest egg. She sits on it night and day, and thinks she will bring the greatest eagle out of it that ever sharpened his beak on the rocks of Mount Skycrack. I can warrant no one else will touch it while she has got it. But she is rather capricious, and I confess I am not easy about it; for the least scratch of one of her claws would do for me at once. And she ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... so capricious, Sir," said she, "that after telling you but yesterday I could not be of your party, I shall tell you ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... To-day where will you find a competent scholarly critic who is not a whole-hearted admirer of Borrow's style? His grave and gay pictures of persons and places, are etched in with instinctive faithfulness, and clarity of atmosphere; always excepting such characters as were under the ban of his capricious hatred: "Mr. Flamson," "the Old Radical," Scott and his "gentility nonsense," and so forth. It is doubtful if any but lovers of the open road, can thoroughly enter into the Borrow fellowship, but only such as Mr. E. V. Lucas, ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... called upon. Such cities, however, were distinctly the exception, and most of them in the end preferred to come directly within the Roman sphere of administration. They often found their burdens smaller and less capricious than when they taxed themselves ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Lane, coldly. "She has left me of her own choice; and, now, she must return. I gave her no cause for the rash act. Enough for me that I am willing to forgive and forget all this. But I am not the man to humble myself at the feet of a capricious woman. It is not ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... judge, whose absolute decrees nothing can change; you fancy that you see around you those demons whom he has made the ministers of his vengeance upon his weak creatures; thus is your heart filled with affright; you fear that at every instant you may offend, without being aware of it, a capricious God, always threatening and always enraged. In consequence of such a state of mind, all those moments of your life which should only be productive of contentment and peace, are constantly poisoned by inquietudes, scruples, and panic terrors, from which a soul as pure as yours ought to be forever ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... exact, and according to the rules of perfect mechanism, cannot be made without some industry; and that artless matter alone cannot perform what argues so much knowledge. Hence it appears that sound reason naturally concludes that matter alone cannot, either by the simple laws of motion, or by the capricious strokes of chance, make even animals that are mere machines. Those philosophers themselves, who will not allow beasts to have any reasoning faculty, cannot avoid acknowledging that what they suppose to be blind and artless in these machines is yet full of wisdom and art ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... conquer. Every woman seems to him enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant, uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters, nor does he know where to strike the chain that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... supposition that they expected a resurrection of the flesh. In the first place, it is difficult to reason safely to any dogmatic conclusions from the funeral customs of a people. These usages are so much a matter of capricious priestly ritual, ancestral tradition, unreasoning instinct, blind or morbid superstition, that any consistent doctrinal construction is not fairly to be put upon them. Secondly, the Zoroastrians did not express ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... with a pretty trick of blushing, and was going to conquer the world—found her fretfulness, her very selfishness adorable: and told her so, kneeling before her, gazing into her bewildering eyes—only he called it her waywardness, her imperiousness; begged her for his sake to be more capricious. Told her how beautiful she looked when displeased. So, no ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... daughter of an Englishman naturalized in France. But I have wandered far from my story, which is simply a sketch of the surface of the place. Seen obliquely, from either side, in combination with its bridge and gallery, the chateau is singular and fantastic, a striking example of a wilful and capricious conception. Unfortunately, all caprices are not so graceful and successful, and I grudge the honor of this one to the false and blood- polluted Catherine. (To be exact, I believe the arches of the bridge were laid by the elderly ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... towards pain for its own sake— towards pain, as though pain were really beautiful and desirable in itself. One element in all this is undoubtedly due to the desire of the will to assert its freedom and the integrity of its being; in other words to the desire of the will towards the irrational, the capricious, the destructive, the chaotic. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... smallest part of any one of them. These beings of consummate wisdom are made to speak an obscure, irrational language; some of them, although their goodness is proclaimed, have been cruel and sanguinary; others, although their justice is held forth, have been partial, unjust, capricious; some, who are represented as all merciful, destine to the most hideous punishments the unhappy victims to their wrath: examine any one of them more closely, he will find that they have never in any two countries held literally the ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... flattering a being with no moral sense, because he happens to be dangerous, or else you have to invent reasons for his wrath against the people who happen to be struck. And they are pretty sure to be bad reasons. The god, if personal, becomes capricious and cruel. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... about her, as if there was something wrong in it. Do me a kindness, good friend, and let me send off all these sheets of paper, the idle work of an idle morning, just as they are. When I write next, I promise to be ashamed of my own capricious state of mind, and to paint the portrait of Miss Regina at ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... in this town (Liverpool), much injury has been occasioned by mildew, the operations of which appear very capricious; in some cases attacking the printed part of an engraving, leaving the margin unaffected; in others attacking the inside of the backs only; and in a few instances it attacks all parts with the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... some chocolates.' He spoke to her as though she were a child and like a child she obeyed him, for she was alarmed that he should exert his capricious prerogative and throw over The Tempest at ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... notwithstanding this narrow disposition, which ran like veins abnormally distended over nearly all his habits of life, he could, and did at times, do liberal things. But even in such things he was capricious and eccentric; as when a highly esteemed Quaker, named Coates, asked him one day to make a donation to ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... principles. Then the parliamentary limit is sui generis; for the metropolis here comprises the City of London, the city of Westminster, the borough of Southwark, and the five modern boroughs of Marylebone, Finsbury, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, and Lambeth—a very capricious limit, truly; for while it includes the far east at Woolwich, it excludes Pimlico, Brompton, and a vast adjoining area. Lastly, to give one more mesh to this net, we find the police metropolis to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... feeling, and for false expressions of feeling. An Arabian courser cannot travel comfortably with a snail. A soul whose motions are musical curves cannot well blend with a soul whose motions are discordant angles. A woman is naturally as much more capricious than a man, as she is more susceptible. A slighter shock suffices to jostle her delicate emotions out of delight into disgust. She is therefore a severer personal critic. Male peccadilloes are female crimes. A wet-blanket presence that she could not tolerate may refresh him. As less ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... celebrated, too, for his fine foot; a dapper little fellow, altogether pretty in the eyes of simple female courtiers, with his blond locks combed out at the temples, with his bright eyes, sharp wit, and sparkling capricious ways. The cockatoo locks, these at least we will ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... for it, they had to take the wind and weather as it came, and the crew had a busy time of it "box-hauling" the yards, now this way, now that; trimming the sails to every passing breath of the capricious air, and, after all their trouble, accomplishing only some half-a-dozen miles during ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... only a very selfish, but a very ordinary man—not ordinary, perhaps, in the sense of intellect, for that would be impossible in the case of one who was so long able to maintain his eminent position, and to succeed in his capricious progresses, in spite of inferior means, and a singular deficiency of the heroic faculty. But his ambition was the vulgar ambition, and, if possible, something still inferior. It contemplated his personal wants alone; it lacked all the elevation of purpose which is ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... ridiculous and even insulting by any other woman belonging to the same profession, and many ladies of the highest rank honoured her with her friendship more even than with their patronage. Never did the capricious audience of a Parisian pit dare to hiss Silvia, not even in her performance of characters which the public disliked, and it was the general opinion that she was in ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of contemporary documents as good as those which our publications present. These documents all relate to real experiences of persons. These experiences have three characters in common: They are capricious, discontinuous, and not easily controlled; they require peculiar persons for their production; their significance seems to be wholly for personal life. Those who preferentially attend to them, and still more those who are individually subject to them, not only easily may find, but are logically ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... gentleman's library will be complete without it. Literate people in those days were comparatively few; but, bating that, one may say that sermons were as much in request as novels are to-day. I wonder, will mankind continue to be capricious? It is a very solemn thought indeed that no more than a hundred-and-fifty years hence the novelists of our time, with all their moral and political and sociological outlook and influence, will perhaps shine as indistinctly as do those old preachers, with all their elegance, now. 'Yes, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... married her, was his wife and not his mistress. It is just this point that ought to be emphasised, in order to give the right clue to Eleanor's character and conduct in regard to her treatment of Rosamond. Rosamond must be right and virtuous; Eleanor wrong and vicious; the King fond, weak, and capricious. To regard the whole story as one of a mere amour is to entirely miss the beauty of the gentle Rosamond's nature. She is at once ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... about in the greatest profusion. A stuffed chair, on rollers, was near the boy, and a garden chair stood upon the steps, ready for immediate use, and every thing around seemed fitted to minister to a diseased body and a capricious will. The lad drew pettishly away from the caress of his fond mother, as ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... in the mould of his own individual impressions. He gives us man as he is, or as he was, in almost every variety of situation, action, and feeling. Lord Byron makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave; he gives us the misanthrope and the voluptuary by turns; and with these two characters, burning or melting in their own fires, he makes out everlasting centos ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... in the neighbourhood of London, when sanitation was hardly in its infancy, when pauperism was fostered by the poor law, and when the working classes in towns were huddled together, without legal check or moral scruple, in undrained courts and underground cellars. So capricious and shortsighted is the public conscience in its treatment ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... had evidently been "banting," and a few towels a foot long with a surface like sand-paper, completed the fittings of the room. Baths were unknown, and hot water was a luxury distributed sparingly by a capricious handmaiden. It is only fair to add that everything in the room was perfectly clean, as was the coarse table linen ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... Prior A Simile The Flies Phillis's Age To the Duke de Noailles On Bishop Atterbury Forma Bonum Fragile Earning a Dinner Bibo and Charon The Pedant Epigrams of Joseph Addison The Countess of Manchester To an Ill-favored Lady To a Capricious Friend To a Rogue Epigrams of Alexander Pope On Mrs. Tofts To a Blockhead The Fool and the Poet Epigrams of Dean Swift On Burning a Dull Poem To a Lady The Cudgeled Husband On seeing Verses written upon Windows at Inns On seeing the Busts of Newton, Looke, etc. On the Church's Danger On one ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... him, dissipated all such regrets; and when at length the hour for making her toilet arrived, her jaded cousin was literally made to perform all the offices of a waiting-maid. Three times was the tired little girl sent down to the village in quest of something which the capricious Eugenia must have, and which, when brought, was not "the thing at all," and must be exchanged. Up the stairs and down the stairs she went, bringing pins to Alice and powder to Eugenia, enacting, in short, the part of a ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... or my family, without omitting public matters. My father, a grave and serious man, regards little else than the latter; but I, a very ignorant young girl, may be permitted to follow the dictates of my fancy, and the capricious guidance of my imagination; at least there shall be neither pretension ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... other. Let it lie in the dirt. Let him give it to those others, those women who want it—and him." She would go home at once; not to the pleasure-gardens, not anywhere but back to the cottage; and Jose followed her meekly, struck dumb. He had seen her wilful, capricious, childishly passionate, a little hard to understand, many times before, but never like this. What had occurred to ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett |
