"Changeable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, and nose jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the veils. And it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle a rent; and instead of ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... faintest suggestion of irony and impatience? The fact is that I was at that moment as far from being able to comprehend this lovely but inscrutable woman as when I met her for the first time in the saloon of the City of Cawnpore: her moods were as changeable as the weather: there were occasions when her manner toward me was almost as warm and genial and sympathetic as even a lover could require; while there were others when she appeared animated by a set purpose to impress upon me the conviction that our remarkable adventure ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... this morning, on a white horse, and wearing a kirtle of changeable green like the sea's green in sunlight: her golden hair was bound with a gold frontlet wherein were emeralds. Freydis, dark and stately, was in crimson embroidered with small gold stars and ink-horns: a hooded falcon sat on her ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... long greatcoat to his ankles—he was one who never wore oilskins aboard ship—swinging with the swing of the plunging vessel as if he was built into her, and with his head thrown back and a smile, it may be, that was not a smile at all, and kept looking at me from out of eyes that were changeable as the ...
— The Trawler • James Brendan Connolly
... "Adrien is very changeable," Vermont said reflectively, "one can never count on his movements; following him is like wild duck shooting, down the river on Monday, and up the Fens on Tuesday. I'm sorry I missed him, though, for I have several papers which he ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... able to suppress the vices of humanity, and the obstacles to the work of liberal institutions. His notion of the people was an illusion, not a reality. He became irritated to find the people often so weak, so cowardly, so cruel, so ignorant, so changeable, so unworthy the rank which nature has assigned them. He became irritated and soured, and challenged the scaffold to extricate him from his difficulties. Then, indignant at the excesses of the scaffold, he returned to words of justice and humanity. Then once more he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... with a colonial shower, which gave us all a good drenching. Started about eight o'clock; returned to Kyneton; crossed the bridge, and passed several farm-houses. The country here is very changeable, sometimes flat and boggy, at others, very hilly and stony. We were obliged to ford several small creeks, evidently tributaries to the Campaspe, and at about ten miles from Kyneton, entered the Coliban range, which is thickly wooded. The river ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... continually moving. As soon as the king entered the great hall, the hautboys, out of the wood on the top of the hill, entertained the time, till Flora and Zephyr were seen busily gathering flowers from the bower, throwing them into baskets which two silvans held, attired in changeable taffeta. The song is light as their fingers, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... chair so all over bejointed, behinged, and bepadded, everyway so elastic, springy, and docile to the airiest touch, that in some one of its endlessly-changeable accommodations of back, seat, footboard, and arms, the most restless body, the body most racked, nay, I had almost added the most tormented conscience must, somehow and somewhere, find rest. Believing that I owed it to suffering humanity to make known such a chair ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... of his relation to Alice was not so easily settled. She had come to irritate him now. Her changeable, swift-witted, moody, hysterical invalidism had begun to wear upon him intolerably. Everything she did was wrong. It was brutal even to admit this, but he could no longer conceal it either from himself or from her. It was deeply, ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... usually means a milksop, but here it is equivalent to 'a butterfly', 'a weathercock'—a man of changeable ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... "and it is as difficult to take off her looks as her manner. Her expression is too changeable to leave any characteristic fixed in the mind. The fact is, Miss Anstice is ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... same hemisphere, who differ in the length of their shadows, they all unite in hatred and contempt for the inhabitants of the opposite side. Those who have the benefit of a moon, that is, who are turned towards the earth, are lively, indolent, and changeable as the face of the luminary on which they pride themselves; while those on the other side are more grave, sedate, and industrious. The first are called the Hilliboos, and the last the Moriboos—or ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Kate Dancox was changeable as the ever-shifting sea. Delighted with the frock that was in process, she extended her approbation to its maker; and when Mrs. Ram, a homely workwoman, departed with her small bundle in her arms, it pleased the young lady to say she would attend her to her home. This involved ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... "His changeable humors, his irregularities, his caprices, his total disregard of everything and body, save the fancy in his head, prevented him from doing well in the world. The evils and sufferings that poverty brought upon him, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... be spared, and so, largely for his own good and partly for mine, I kept the thing in his mind, which was necessary, as would-be suicides are very changeable aid hard to hold to their purpose. He had a preference for a pistol, which was an extravagance, for we hadn't enough between us to hire a pistol. A fork would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hands of a limited number of property owners and the expropriation of the great proletarian mass of mankind, a concentration which is after all no more than a tendency conditional on changing and changeable conventions about property, and it finds its hope of a better future in the outcome of a class conflict between the expropriated Many and the expropriating Few. Both sides are to be equally swayed ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... had not had even half a day's south-east wind since we left Waigiou. Contrary winds, squalls, and currents drifted us about the rest of the day at their pleasure. The night was equally squally and changeable, and kept us hard at work taking in and making sail, and rowing in ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Eternal and Unchangeable it must follow that anything finite, changeable, fleeting, and conditioned cannot be THE ALL. And as there is Nothing outside of THE ALL, in Reality, then any and all such finite things must be as Nothing in Reality. Now do not become befogged, nor frightened—we ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... consistency, to a thick infusion of gum arabic in common water. But this was only the least remarkable of its extraordinary qualities. It was not colourless, nor was it of any one uniform colour—presenting to the eye, as it flowed, every possible shade of purple; like the hues of a changeable silk. This variation in shade was produced in a manner which excited as profound astonishment in the minds of our party as the mirror had done in the case of Too-wit. Upon collecting a basinful, and allowing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... But of the woman I marry, very likely indeed! Woman is a changeable thing, as our Virgil informed us at school; but her change par excellence is from the fairy you woo to the brownie you wed. It is not that she has been a hypocrite,—it is that she is a transmigration. You marry a girl for her accomplishments. She ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she was frank, girlish, full of fun and always lovable; to her elders quiet and earnestly solicitous to please; to the young men cold; but with a penetrating, mocking promise haunting that coldness, and sometimes sweetly agreeable, often wilful, and changeable as April winds. At last the colonel concluded that she needed, as did all other spirited young women, the taming influence of a man whom she loved, a home to care for, and children to soften ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... daybreak, he to embark on the sea, she to weep, and as he sought his ship he could hear the magpies cackle: "If the sea is changeable ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... his heart: But hearing nothing more of him, She supposed that He had quitted the pursuit, disgusted by the lowness of her origin, and knowing upon other terms than marriage He had nothing to hope from such a Dragon of Virtue as She professed herself; Or else, that being naturally capricious and changeable, the remembrance of her charms had been effaced from the Conde's heart by those of some newer Beauty. Whatever was the cause of her losing him, She lamented it sorely. She strove in vain, as She assured every body who was ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... deprived of all sublunary power, the enraged Great Hare, Manito (such seems the meaning of Manabozho), changed the dead carcass of his enemy into the great caniew, or war eagle. Nothing had given Manabozho half the trouble and vexation of the flighty, defying, changeable and mischievous Paup-Puk-Keewiss, who eluded him by jumping from one end of the continent to the other. He had killed the great power of evil in the prince of serpents, who had destroyed Chebizbos his grandson—he had survived the flood produced by the great Serpent, and overcome, in ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... cheek tinted with such a healthy fresh bloom, her grey eyes laughing with merry softness, her whole person so alert and elastic with exuberant life and enjoyment, that grandmamma was as happy in watching her as if she had been her own daughter, and stroked down the broad flounces of her changeable silk, and admired her black lace, as if she felt the whole family ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... about the AEolian Isle is that it was afloat in the waters of the sea, as Delos and other islands of antiquity were reported to be. Not stationary then; the king of it, AEolus, has a name which indicates a changeable nature, veering about like the winds, of which he is king. The second fact pertaining to this Isle is that a wall of brass encircles it not to be broken through; "and the cliff runs up sheer from the sea." Manifestly two opposite ideas are suggested in this description: the fixed and ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... tends to absorb and make its own that without. Matter, attacked and conquered by form, gives place to concrete form. It is the matter, the content, that differentiates one of our intuitions from another: form is constant: it is spiritual activity, while matter is changeable. Without matter, however, our spiritual activity would not leave its abstraction to become concrete and real, this or that spiritual content, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... therefore, contrary to the common opinion which avers that a people when they have the management of affairs are changeable, fickle, and ungrateful, that these faults exist not in them otherwise than as they exist in individual princes; so that were any to accuse both princes and peoples, the charge might be true, but that to make exception in ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... would be the face of young society! That young women do wield a mighty influence over young men we admit; but it is not so great nor so good as it should be. Much of it is directly evil. It is trifling, deceitful, volatile, changeable, and not unfrequently carnal. It is often low, worldly, irreverent, base. I am sorry to say it, but young women rebuke but very little the evil doings of their male associates. They chide not the waywardness ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... must be recollected that the Mediterranean is dotted with numerous islands; and he knew that, however changeable or adverse the winds might be, it would always prove an easy matter to make such arrangements as to enable him to gain some port a few days previously to the close of the month. Moreover, so strong, so intense was his love for Nisida, that, even without the prospect afforded ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... is comin' over here to make money enough to bring her over after a while, sure. It kind o' makes my heart jump up, miss, to think of seein' anybody from Drogheda, and more'n all to see Andy again, that always played with me, and—— But I despise him too, miss, fer bein' so changeable. But then, Dora she makes fools out of all of them with her purty face and her coaxin' ways, miss. ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... said Sun, "the hearts of women have been as changeable as the waves of the sea. And among the Flowers-in-the-Mist especially there are few who are found faithful. Since the present case concerns a famous singing girl, who knows the whole earth, it is probable that she has some former associate in ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... melancholy god protect thee: and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... surprisals from neighboring tribes; the different nations of these coasts being extremely hostile to one another. It may have been a precaution against inundations caused by floods from the mountains. After leaving this port, they were driven backwards and forwards, by the changeable and tempestuous winds, until the day after Christmas; when they sheltered themselves in another port, where they remained until the 3d of January, 1503, repairing one of the caravels, and procuring wood, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... friend; you know that I love you, and I often believe that you love me. But how can I count on you? I am your mistress, alas! but you are not my lover. It is for you that Shakespeare has written these sad words: 'Make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.' And I, Octave," she added, pointing to her mourning costume, "I am reduced to a single color, and I shall not change ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... brought a new South to take the place of the old plantation life. Congenial as they were in many ways, the possession of the latchkey, Dr. Bagby tells us, did not argue an intimate personal relation, as the fancy of the brilliant editor of the Examiner was apparently changeable, and wavered when he discovered that his assistant neither played chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversational excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where the valiant ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... pleasure she could not keep grave. The other faces were as interested and as gracious. There was Pete, tall and very black, and very grave, as Darry was also. There was Jem, full of life and waggishness, and bright for any exercise of his wits; and grave shadows used to come over his changeable face often enough too. There was Margaret, with her sombre beauty; and old Theresa with her worn old face. I think there was a certain indescribable reserve of gravity upon them all, but there was not one whose lips did not part in a white line when looking at me, nor whose eyes ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... back, by that young lady, in whose face I have watched the reflection of every changing scene; only oblige me by sitting there; and, take my word for it, the slips of pasteboard shall assume spiritual life, and the bedaubed canvas become an airy and changeable reflex of what ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to the Dardanelles, the Tigre encountered changeable weather; the sails had often to be shifted. When he was on watch, Edgar always went aloft with his friend Wilkinson and took his place beside him, listened to the orders that he gave, and watched him at work. In a few days he was able to ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... the price of provisions, and about house rent, and the probabilities of his finding customers for his tailoring work; and whether they should all have to live in the shop, and whether his sickly wife would thrive under the changeable climate, and whether they should make a home, or always be like "strangers in a ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... tithe; and the vestiges of some of those vineyards remain to this day. They were usually placed on the south side of a hill, in a light dry soil, having the surface covered with sand; the vines being trained near the ground. But with such inclement and changeable springs, and long protracted winters, as have been experienced of late, even such frost as is seen at this moment (24th of April,) vines as standards in the open air, would be destroyed; or, at least, no dependence could ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... you euer cure any so? Ros. Yes one, and in this manner. Hee was to imagine me his Loue, his Mistris: and I set him euerie day to woe me. At which time would I, being but a moonish youth, greeue, be effeminate, changeable, longing, and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, ful of teares, full of smiles; for euerie passion something, and for no passion truly any thing, as boyes and women are for the most part, cattle of this colour: ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... return. She was going to an evening party, and though usually passive as to dress, she was so changeable and difficult to satisfy that Grindstone grew cross, and showed it by stern, rigid obedience. And Cecil well knew that Grindstone; who was in authority in the present house, hated the return to be merely the visitor ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Every man is about some establishment of his hopes,—lays some foundation of his confidence which he may stand upon. They are one of the two that Christ speaks of, Luke vi. 48, 49; one builds on the rock, another on the sand. Now as the foundation is, so is the house. A changeable foundation makes a falling house, a sure foundation makes an unchangeable house, a house without a foundation will prove quickly no house. Now whatsoever men build their hope and confidence upon,—besides the word of God, his sure promise and sure covenant, and Jesus Christ in them,—they ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... use of wine rarely leads to drunkenness, and never, or almost never, to inebriety; but in the intemperate belt, where we live, and which includes Northern Europe and the United States, with a cold and violently changeable climate, the habit of drinking either wines or stronger liquors is liable to develop in some cases a habit of intemperance. Notably in our country, where nervous sensitiveness is seen in its extreme manifestations, the majority of brain-workers are not safe so long as they are ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... raptures before the ideal match is secured. Some of us are almost glad that Juliet passed away in swift fashion when the cup of life foamed most exquisitely at her lips. How would she have fared had that changeable firebrand Romeo taken to wandering once more? It is a grievously flippant question to ask when the most glorious of all love-poems is in question; yet I ask it very seriously, and merely in a symbolic way. Romeo is a shadow, the adored Juliet ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... had to cross was at the end of the straight avenue of lichened trees so harried by the west winds. The river was very changeable, being subject to the tides and to all the moods of the neighboring ocean. We crossed in a ferry-boat or a yawl, always having for our oarsmen old sailors with bleached beards and sunburnt faces whom we ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... no taste Of popular applause; the noisy praise Of giddy crowds, as changeable as winds; Still vehement, and still without a cause; Servant to chance, and blowing in the tide Of swoln success; but veering with its ebb, It ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... intercourse had sufficed to reveal a nature on the common level, it sufficed also to chill the feeling that had rushed to the surface to welcome a friend, and send the new-found floating far away on the swift ebb of disappointment. Any whom she treats thus, called her, of course, fitful and changeable, whereas it was in truth the unchangeableness of her ideal and her faithfulness to it that exposed her to blame. She was so true, so much in earnest, and, although gentle, had so little softness to drape the sterner outlines of her character that ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... three weeks we continued to live together in the house of Durrisdeer: the beginning of that most singular chapter of my life—what I must call my intimacy with the Master. At first he was somewhat changeable in his behaviour: now civil, now returning to his old manner of flouting me to my face; and in both I met him half-way. Thanks be to Providence, I had now no measure to keep with the man; and I was never afraid of black brows, only ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... especially fascinating about an island amid the ocean. Its very existence has for all explorers an air of magic. An island offers to us heights rising from depths; it exhibits that which is most fixed beside that which is most changeable, the fertile beside the barren, and safety after danger. The ocean forever tends to encroach on the island, the island upon the ocean. They exist side by side, friends yet enemies. The island signifies ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... believe it was my crying about some housemaid or other who went away that first set her abusing me for having low tastes—a sort of thing that used to cut me to the heart, and which she kept up till the very day I left her for good. We were a precious pair: I sulky and obstinate, she changeable and hot-tempered. She used to begin breakfast sometimes by knocking me to the other side of the room with a slap, and finish it by calling me her darling boy and promising me all manner of toys and things. I soon gave up trying to please her, or like her, and became ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... ideas and fantasies from the shy places where they usually haunt. She was indeed an admirable talker, considering how long she had held her tongue for lack of a listener,—pleasant, sunny and shadowy, often piquant, and giving glimpses of all a woman's various and readily changeable moods and humors; and beneath them all there ran a deep and powerful under-current of earnestness, which did not fail to produce in the listener's mind something like a temporary faith in what she herself believed so fervently. But the streets of London are not favorable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that a crisis had come in his life, and that neither silver speculations nor any other questions could ever be of such importance to him as this new and all-absorbing one. The love which had sprung up in his heart was not the sudden, changeable fancy of a boy, but rather the wild, fierce passion of a man of strong will and imperious temper. He had been accustomed to succeed in all that he undertook. He swore in his heart that he would ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seeing that she is a proud jade and a capricious one, and only allows herself to be seen at certain times. Do you understand? So in all languages does she belong to the feminine gender, being a thing essentially changeable and ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... feathers which curl over something like those of the umbrella-bird. This ornament—as also the head, throat, back, wings, and upper tail-coverts—is of the very richest green, with a gloss of gold, which glows, when moved by the breeze, with a changeable sheen. The upper tail-coverts are exceedingly long, projecting considerably beyond the tail, and flowing gracefully over the stiffer feathers beneath them. The lower part of the body is of ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Send her, therefore," he continued, "thither, in her full array, I will warrant that she will deceive every body, and that she will blind the counsellors and the warriors, and all the officers, secular and ecclesiastical, and will draw them hither in multitudes presently, by means of her mask of changeable hue." And thereupon he ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... party was much lighter in colour than the others, and I at first fancied he spoke some Malay dialect from the similarity in sound and intonation of his words, nor was it until I had used some of the commonest and least changeable Malay words—as those meaning fire, water, etc.—without being understood, that I was convinced of my mistake. Two others of our party were allowed to come up one by one, and some trifling articles were exchanged for various ornaments. Still they ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... right and wrong, till we fall, as too many do, under the prophet's curse, "Woe to them who call good evil, and evil good; who put sweet for bitter, and bitter for sweet," and fancy, like Ezekiel's Jews, that God's ways are unequal; that is, unlike each other, changeable, arbitrary, and capricious, doing one thing at one time, and another at another. No. It is sinful man who is changeable; it is sinful man who is arbitrary. But The Lord is not a man, that He should ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... battlefield of frost and fire." The interior comprises lava and sand tracts, and ice-fields, but outside these are river valleys and lake districts affording pasturage, and arable land capable of producing root crops. The climate is changeable, mild for the latitude, but somewhat colder than Scotland. There are few trees, and these small; cranberries grow among the heather, and Iceland moss is a plentiful article of food. The island exports sheep ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the examples of such vicissitudes are beyond number, nevertheless I will only enumerable a few in a cursory manner. This changeable and fickle fortune made Agathocles, the Sicilian, a king from being a potter, and reduced Dionysius, formerly the terror of all nations, to be the master of a grammar school. This same fortune emboldened Andriscus of Adramyttium, who had been ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... went on under full steam; the black smoke whirled in spirals about the sparkling summits of the icebergs; the weather was changeable, turning from a dry cold to a snowstorm with inconceivable rapidity. Since the brig drew but little water, Hatteras hugged the west shore; he did not want to miss the entrance of Bellot Sound, for the Gulf of Boothia has no other entrance towards ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... Changeable, versatile, inconstant Eusebius, where is now your burst of philanthropy—where is all your rage? Pretty havoc you would but now have made, had you been armed with thunder—thunder, I say, for yours would have been no silent devastation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... been tossed about as an unwelcome incumbrance from one relation to another, had lately married a Baron von Kalb. Her heart had no part in the marriage, which was arranged by her guardian. In the pursuit of his career her husband left her much to herself. She was an introspective creature, very changeable in her moods and passionately fond of music and poetry. In Schiller she found her affinity. He acted first as her guide about Mannheim, then as her mentor in matters of literature. They saw much of each other; became intimately confidential ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... God's office, in both cases, is to save only. No one seriously imagines that Providence does more than govern—that is, watch over and incidentally modify the natural course of affairs—not even in the other world, if fortunes are still changeable there. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... my degree," he said softly. "I insisted that it might be possible there were no absolute rules underlying all reality, but only relative rules that might be changeable. In other words, I questioned the validity of asserting that natural law was universal. ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... is one of even more fickle and changeable a nature than most others; it is, however, one of very great importance to those who are desirous of securing plenty of geranium and other cuttings, for the next summer's work; because, should the month by chance happen to be a dry one, it will be almost impossible to obtain very many in consequence ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... caught the fancy of the changeable crowd in the room. They cheered and applauded it. When he was acquitted they were quite as pleased as if he had been condemned to be beheaded, and put him in a great chair and carried him home in triumph ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... think) only in a material sense; a question of letters, not hearts. You will find a warm welcome at Skerryvore from both the lightkeepers; and, indeed, we never tell ourselves one of our financial fairy tales, but a run to Davos is a prime feature. I am not changeable in friendship; and I think I can promise you you have a pair of trusty well- wishers and friends in Bournemouth: whether they write or not is but a small thing; the flag may not be waved, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... replied, "It has always been the case that success is changeable; and there is no luck in the matter. It has gone with your family as with mine, to have by turns the better lot. I am little beyond childhood in years; and at any rate we could not have defended ourselves, as we did not expect any attack on ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... Paoli had reason to wish that I should talk much with his countrymen, as it gave me a higher opinion both of him and of them. Thuanus[113] has justly said, "Sunt mobilia Corsorum ingenia. The dispositions of the Corsicans are changeable." Yet after ten years, their attachment to Paoli is as strong as at the first. Nay, they have an enthusiastick admiration of him. "Questo grand' uomo mandato per Dio a liberare la patria. This great man whom God hath sent to free our country," was ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... instead, a true April day, of the most fickle and changeable type. Gusts of rain and wind alternated with flashes of bright sunshine. The second battalion of the Third Regiment arrived, and the work of completing the cantonments went on. The huts which were half finished yesterday were now put in good order, and in ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... another and larger sheet of water, and this Twinkle decided was the most beautiful lake she had ever seen. Its waters were mostly deep blue in color, although they had a changeable effect and constantly shifted from one hue to another. Little waves rippled all over its surface, and the edges of the waves were glistening jewels which, as they scattered in spray and fell into the bosom of the lake, glinted and ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... moon, from whom the sea taketh this virtue, be accounted fickle for increasing and decreasing? Flowers in their buds are nothing worth till they be blown; nor blossoms accounted till they be ripe fruit; and shall we then say they be changeable, for that they grow from seeds to leaves, from leaves to buds, from buds to their perfection? then, why be not twigs that become trees, children that become men, and mornings that grow to evenings, termed wavering, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... as influencing the feelings through its effect on the objects of sense. We may add, that whatever has been said upon the advantages derived to these scenes from a changeable atmosphere, would apply, perhaps still more forcibly, to their appearance under the varied solemnities of night. Milton, it will be remembered, has given a clouded moon to Paradise itself. In the night-season also, the narrowness ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... dies: for before the foundation of the worlds, and before all that can be called "before," Thou art, and art God and Lord of all which Thou hast created: in Thee abide, fixed for ever, the first causes of all things unabiding; and of all things changeable, the springs abide in Thee unchangeable: and in Thee live the eternal reasons of all things unreasoning and temporal. Say, Lord, to me, Thy suppliant; say, all-pitying, to me, Thy pitiable one; say, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... disposed of his affairs, he thought of letting the enemy win the field, or of flying through Media and Armenia and seizing Cappadocia, but came to no resolution while his friends stayed with him. After turning to many expedients in his mind, which his changeable fortune had made versatile, he at last put his men in array, and encouraged the Greeks and barbarians; as for the phalanx and the Argyraspids, they encouraged him, and bade him be of good heart; for the enemy ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... south, and though the first rays of the sun reached it at about eleven in the morning, the buildings afterwards darkened it again until the sun was in the west. Moreover to-day, the weather had been changeable, and it had rained a little about noon. Now the air was again clear, and the workshop was lit up so that the light penetrated even to the ancient cobwebs in the corners, and touched the wax models and casts on the shelves, and gilded the old wood of the door opposite with ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... suspicion, were hailed like the last speech of a martyr for liberty. All eyes were suffused with tears. "We will die with you," cried Camille Desmoulins, extending his arms towards Robespierre, as though he would fain embrace him. His excitable and changeable spirit was borne away by the breath of each new enthusiastic impulse. He passed from the arms of La Fayette into those of Robespierre like a courtezan. Eight hundred persons rose en masse; and by their attitudes, their gestures, their spontaneous and unanimous inspiration, offered one of those ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... to human life."—"Some turn the wheel of electricity, some suspend rings to a loadstone, and find that what they did yesterday they can do again to-day. Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the wind is changeable. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 3: All sins agree in aversion from God, although they differ by conversion to different changeable ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... that we call matter—the most solid metals and the most attenuated vapours, the most stable and resisting inorganic bodies, and the unstable tissues of living bodies—to be alike in restless, orderly motion, to be, in fact, motion itself and not the thing moved, to be changeable but indestructible, passing through phases but eternal, there seems less difficulty in assuming it to be the ultimate reality, and mind and consciousness to be its most highly specialised qualities. Huxley, while stating this view plainly enough, refused to accept it as a ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... there some other cause, arising possibly from some hidden fluctuation of mood, some restlessness of the spirit, of which he had had no warning? Her aunt's declaration that they were all lacking in stability recurred to him. Was it so with her? Was she fickle, was she changeable, his little Chris? ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... weathered from the cliffs like ordinary taluses, they were all formed suddenly and simultaneously by a great earthquake that occurred at least three centuries ago. And though thus hurled into existence in a few seconds or minutes, they are the least changeable of all the Sierra soil-beds. Excepting those which were launched directly into the channels of swift rivers, scarcely one of their wedged and interlacing boulders has moved since the day of their creation; and though mostly made up of huge blocks of granite, many of them from ten to fifty ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... above its mouth this canyon ends, and a narrow valley with a flood plain is found. Still farther up the stream the river comes down through another canyon, and beyond that a narrow valley is found, and its upper course is now through a canyon and now through a valley. All these canyons are alike changeable in their ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... the provincial Englishman's understanding, is a land where a hunter is always being nibbled to death by sheep; or a prospective mother is being so badly frightened by a chameleon that her child is born with a complexion changeable at will and an ungovernable appetite for flies; or a billionaire is giving a monkey dinner or poisoning his wife, or something. Also, he gets the idea that a through train in this country is so called because it invariably runs through the train ahead ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... has been called a weather glass. Rules are attempted to be established, by which, from the height of the mercury, the coming state of the weather may be predicted, and we accordingly find the words "Rain," "Fair," "Changeable," "Frost," &c., engraved on the scale attached to common domestic barometers, as if, when the mercury stands at the height marked by these words, the weather is always subject to the vicissitudes expressed by them. These marks are, however, entitled to no attention; and it is only surprising to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... Terabon floated out into the main river current and ran with the stream. They were passing through the famous, changeable channels among the great sandbars from Island No. 34 down to Hopefield Bend. They rounded Dean Island Bend in the darkness, for they had floated all day and far into the night, driven by an anxiety which ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... her,—the uncertainty whether he would or would not go and spend the evening with Sally,—the musing during the day over all that he had done and said the day before, were a constant interior excitement. For Moses, besides being in his moods quite variable and changeable, had also a good deal of the dramatic element in him, and put on sundry appearances in the ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the only changeable thing in this world, and this letter, which I thought I was going to send to you from Gloucester, is now being finished in London. We was expecting to start for Buxton, but some money that Jone had ordered to be sent from London two or three days before didn't come, and he thought it would be wise ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... and intelligible account of progress towards any definite end. They seem rather designed to attract and to appeal to our sympathy than to satisfy our intelligence. They set before us all kinds of work unrelated, indefinite, changeable, and changing from year to year, as though the compilers selected from the letters of missionaries any striking statements which they thought would attract support in themselves and by themselves. No goal is set before us, and the progress ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... well there is no objection to this in very hot weather. In cold weather, however, it is doubtful if any children are benefited by it, particularly in a changeable climate like that of New York. Many delicate children are certainly injured by such attempts ...
— The Care and Feeding of Children - A Catechism for the Use of Mothers and Children's Nurses • L. Emmett Holt
... was that the lawyer was right, and so was the professor, for at that time Lawrence was as changeable of aspect as an April day, and his friends could only judge him by that which he wore when ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... desirable was within his reach. He had then been right in supposing that that face which had once looked up to his so full of love had been a true reflex of the girl's heart,—that it had indicated to him love which was not changeable. It was true that Clara, having accepted a suitor at her mother's order, might now be allowed to come back to him! As he thought of this, he wondered at the endurance and obedience of a woman's heart which could thus give up ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... mostly on that war experience he went through, Perk—they say once a man was gassed pretty badly over there, he'd always prove to be a queer fish—changeable, nervous and apt to do all ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... corners of the universe; all the sea is a drop in the universe; Athos a little clod of the universe; all the present time is a point in eternity. All things are little, changeable, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... "Certainly not." It was only the principle involved; that the young man must be very changeable, and that Peggy might run a risk in the future if Harry were thrown ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... a legitimate means of warfare, Peterborough altogether exceeded the usual limits, and appeared to delight in inventing the most complicated falsehoods from the mere love of mischief. At times Jack was completely bewildered by his general, so rapid were the changes of plans, so changeable his purposes, so fantastic and eccentric his bearing and utterances. That his military genius was astonishing no one can for a moment question, but it was the genius rather of a knight errant than of the commander of ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... imbued with the same ideas as the Chaldaens regarding the constitution of the world and the nature of the laws which governed it. They lived likewise in perpetual fear of those invisible beings whose changeable and arbitrary will actuated all visible phenomena; they attributed all the reverses and misfortunes which overtook them to the direct action of these malevolent beings; they believed firmly in the influence of stars on the course of events; ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... honeysuckles and roses, that if folks could jest live on and never git old and it'd stay June forever, that this world'd be heaven enough for anybody. And that's the way it was that Sunday mornin'. I ricollect I had on my 'second-day' dress, the prettiest sort of a changeable silk, kind 'o dove color and pink, and I had a leghorn bonnet on with pink roses inside the brim, and black lace mitts on my hands. I stood up before the glass jest before I went out to the gate where Abram was, waitin' ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... violet froth. As she came starry-eyed through the gardens, the impudent wind trifling with her hair, I protest she might have been some lady of Oberon's court stolen out of Elfland to bedevil us poor mortals, with only a moonbeam for the changeable heart of her, and for raiment a violet shadow spirited from the under side of some big, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... marry, free choice of a husband. For the king was embarrassed, and hung vacillating betwixt shame and fear of battle. Thus Westmar, having been referred to the thoughts of the girl's heart, and knowing that every woman is as changeable in purpose as she is fickle in soul, proceeded to fulfil his task all the more confidently because he knew how mutable the wishes of maidens were. His confidence in his charge was increased and his zeal encouraged, because she ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... share of the rough work, whether riding or horse-breaking or building brush corrals, but while he responded to every mood of his changeable companion he hid the whirl of emotion which possessed him, guarding the secret of his heart even when writing to Lucy Ware; and slowly, as the months crept by, the wound healed ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... almost amounted to a necessity, and I am not therefore at all astonished at an American finding fault with the climate of England; nevertheless, our climate, although unprepossessing to the eye, and depressive to the animal spirits, is much more healthy than the exciting and changeable atmosphere, although beautiful in appearance, which they breathe ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the dint of their ill attempts (for the Irish used to bless all they fear harm of), and are said to be of a middle nature betwixt man and angel, as were demons thought to be of old, of intelligent studious spirits, and light changeable bodies (like those called astral), somewhat of the nature of a condensed cloud, and best seen in twilight. These bodies be so pliable through the subtlety of the spirits that agitate them, that they can make ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Land not changeable for as much labor as it has cost. "J'ose affirmer qu'il n'est pas un champ en France qui vaille ce qu'il a coute, qui puisse s'echanger contre autant de travail qu'il en a exige pour etre mis a l'etat de productivite ou il ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... man, dressed in black broadcloth, his rigid hands incarcerated in yellow kid gloves. On the back seat was a lady who triumphed over the June heat. Her stout form was armoured in a skin-tight silk dress of the description known as "changeable," being a gorgeous combination of shifting hues. She sat erect, waving a much-ornamented fan, with her eyes fixed stonily far down the street. However Martella Garvey's heart might be rejoicing at the pleasures of her new life, Blackjack had done ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... was first-rate, original, or strange. As she was quite independent in mind, and always took her own line, she had become an arbiter, a leader of taste. What she liked soon became liked in London and Paris throughout a large circle. Unfortunately, she was changeable and apt to be governed by personal feeling in matters connected with art. When she cast away an artist she generally cast away his art with him. If it was first-rate she did not condemn it as bad. She contented herself with saying that she was "sick of it." And very soon a great many ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... if some misfortune were awaiting me there. Why? Is it a cold shiver which, passing over my skin, has upset my nerves and given me low spirits? Is it the form of the clouds, or the color of the sky, or the color of the surrounding objects which is so changeable, which have troubled my thoughts as they passed before my eyes? Who can tell? Everything that surrounds us, everything that we see without looking at it, everything that we touch without knowing it, everything that we handle without ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... remarks on all sides. Her head, which bore itself as if quite unaware that a suit for three hundred and fifty thousand francs damages was suspended over it like the sword of Damocles, was covered with a mass of rich auburn-colored hair. She is as changeable as a chameleon in the matter of her hair: I never see her twice with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... doth he stroke his beard, and now againe He wipes the drivel from his filthy chin; Now offers he a kisse, but high Disdaine Will not permit her hart to pity him: Her hart more hard than adamant or steele, Her hart more changeable than ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... and sometimes feel sorrowful at his changeable appearance; perhaps if one of influence and authority came in, he would put on peculiar airs of suavity, and expatiate upon how things were and should be in prison, while one without that influence ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... determined, were none of the best, being obliged to make use of such as we could get, during the very few and short intervals when the sun appeared. A few penguins were seen this day, but not so many islands of ice as usual. The weather was also milder, though very changeable; thermometer from 36 to 38. We continued to have a N.W. swell, although the wind was unsettled, veering to N.W. by the W. and N., attended with hazy sleet ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... the silky blossoms of the grandiflora pea; the beds filled with dahlias, salvias, calceolarias, and carnations of every hue, with the rich purple and the pure white petunia, with the many-coloured marvel of Peru, with the enamelled blue of the Siberian larkspur, with the richly scented changeable lupine, with the glowing lavatera, the dark-eyed hybiscus, the pure and alabaster cup of the white Oenothera, the lilac clusters of the phlox, and the delicate blossom of the yellow sultan, most elegant amongst flowers;—all these, with a hundred other plants too long to name, and ...
— The Beauty Of The Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... new beauty here, for the face of the sea is as changeable as a human countenance. Then, too, it is interesting to try and separate the motley throngs into their various elements. You find it useless to attempt to catch and paint its fluctuating character. It is as capricious as the hues of the ocean. Here, as at Atlantic City, from ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... of the wondrous journey, "I felt easier and stopped at noon to partake of a light dinner. I knew I was in for a tough job and made up my mind to go through with it. The river ran all over the country and was as changeable in temper as a novelist's heroine. Sometimes it was a mile wide, running slowly, with as calm and smooth a surface as a lake. Again, at the next bend it would dart toward a range of hills, and instead of going around them ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... me. Its flavor can not compare with that of the pecan, hickory, or black walnut. Besides, it is too exacting as to climate and soil. We have tried all the supposedly hardy ones but so far only one will withstand our changeable climate. This one came from a New York nursery and the name was lost. We list it as the Schmidt for the man who owns the tree. This tree is now some twenty years old and bearing well. So far it is remaining healthy as also are the trees grafted from it. Our trouble with all ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... informs us that this always-existing Being is unchangeable and independent. One unavoidable inference from which is that Deity is itself immoveable, as well as unconnected with the universe—for a moveable Being must be a changeable Being, by the very fact of its motion; while an independent Being must be motiveless, as it is evident all motives result from our relationship to things eternal; but an independent Being can have no relations, and consequently must act without motives. Now, ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... pleasure, instead of cultivating the sail. They have many ships, but they do not even catch fish enough for their own consumption, but purchase of their neighbours. They dress very elegantly. Their costume is light and costly, but they are very changeable and capricious, altering their fashions every year, both the men and the women. When they go away from home, riding or travelling, they always wear their best clothes, contrary to the habit of other nations. The English language is broken Dutch, mixed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sighs, And that tender, and gracious, and fond coquetterie Of a woman who knows her least ribbon to be Something dear to the lips that so warmly caress Every sacred detail of her exquisite dress, In the careless toilet of Lucile—then too sad To care aught to her changeable beauty to add— Lord Alfred had never admired before! Alas! poor Lucile, in those weak days of yore, Had neglected herself, never heeding, or thinking (While the blossom and bloom of her beauty were shrinking) That ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... a roving experience, which had given him a smattering of half a score of the more common handicrafts, Hughie was an invaluable comrade on such a quest, and as such had been hired by his young employer. It may be added, that a more plausible liar never mixed the really interesting facts of a changeable life with well-disguised fiction; and it may be doubted if he always knew himself which part of some of his favorite "yarns" were truths, and which were due, as a phrenologist would say, "to language and imaginativeness large, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall |
