"Fickle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Christ, their glaring divisions, irreconcilable differences, and internal dissensions emphatically prove that the truth is not in them: and that they have been built, not on the rock, but on the shifting sand, and are the erections, not of God, but of feeble, fickle men. ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... "Beauty is a fickle goddess," remarked Ducwitz tritely, settling himself firmly in the saddle. "In giving, she is as blind as a bat. I know a ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... master. The public—they who live in the present, not the past. They who swear by triumph, achievement; not effort. They who have no memory for the deeds that have been done unless they vouch for future conquests. The public—fickle as woman, weak as infancy, gullible as credulity, mighty as fate. Yes, Garrison knew it, and deep down in his heart, though he showed it not, he gloried in the welcome accorded him. ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... they began to build their dwelling-house; and some wicked people endeavoured to raise suspicions in the minds of their countrymen, as to the intentions of the Missionaries. The latter were, for some time after, in danger of their lives, from the fickle disposition of their new friends; but the Lord preserved them. Their upright intentions were at length acknowledged, and ever after all due respect and confidence shown to them by ...
— Letters on the Nicobar islands, their natural productions, and the manners, customs, and superstitions of the natives • John Gottfried Haensel
... the excited state of the poet at this period. 'I fear,' wrote Clare, 'I shall get nothing ready for you this month; at least I fear so now, but may have fifty subjects ready tomorrow. The muse is a fickle hussy with me; she sometimes stirs me up to madness, and then leaves me as a beggar by the wayside, with no more life than what's mortal, and that nearly extinguished by melancholy forebodings.' Further on he breaks out into the exclamation: 'I wish I could live nearer you; at ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... believed me determined to do my duty," and he dismissed the envoy with the assurance that if the post fell into Proctor's hands it would be in a manner to do him more honor than any surrender could do. The fight then continued until the British general found his fickle savage friends deserting him, and on the 12th day ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... said, musingly—"public favor, it is light as zephyr, as fickle as the seasons, it passes away like the latter, and when the north wind moves it, it will disappear." [Footnote: Le Normand, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... age: but when I love, then I am young. I loved when I was in Paris. Bathilde, Bathilde, I loved thee—ah, how fondly! Wine, I say, more wine! Love is ever young. I was a boy at the little feet of Bathilde de Bechamel—the fair, the fond, the fickle, ah, the false!" The strange old man's agony was here really terrific, and he showed himself much more agitated than he had been when speaking ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the city near that on which he stood, called the Pnyx, where standing on a block of bare stone, Demosthenes and other distinguished orators had addressed the assembled people of Athens, swaying that arrogant and fickle democracy, and thereby making Philip of Macedon tremble, or working good or ill for the entire civilized world. Immediately before him looking upon the crowded city, studded in every part with memorials sacred to religion or patriotism, and exhibiting the highest achievements ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... friends; for she was firmly resolved to have no communication with one who had used her so cruelly, and exposed her to the ridicule of her friends and acquaintances. This unjust answer had quite an opposite effect from what I could have conceived a few hours before; pity and contempt for the fickle creature took the place of love; my mind became once more tranquil; I recovered rapidly, and soon began to walk about and enjoy the sweets of summer. I met my fickle fair by accident more than once ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... had the Goddess clearly seen, His form had fixed her fickle breast, Her countless hoards would his have been, And none remain'd to ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... decision, vigour, and invariability, seldom found even among philosophers. Of late years he had, in real life, seen striking instances of the treachery of courtiers, and had felt some symptoms of insecurity in the smile of princes. Fortune had been favourable to him—she was fickle—he determined to quit her before she should change. Ambition, it is true, had tempted him—he had risen to her highest pinnacle: he would not be hurled from high—he would descend voluntarily, and with ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Faber Street being no place to dream. By night an endless procession moved up one sidewalk and down another, staring hypnotically at the flash-in and flash-out electric, signs that kept the breakfast foods and ales, the safety razors, soaps, and soups incessantly in the minds of a fickle public. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the touch of fresh and holy Earth. Too long has our love of picture and poem, and of all that the glorious impulse to create in beauty achieves, been fickle as the wind; based on discordant fancies and distorted tradition. Symbolism in art, at present means only an arbitrary and puerile substitution of one object or caprice for another. The most successful poetic simile is often as ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "You're plucky, considering the cards you've had; but if Fortune's fickle, she's supposed ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... prospect can charm, If you feel emulation arise, If your juvenile bosom is warm, With the hope to be wealthy and wise; O cherish the noble design, The maxims of Prudence pursue, Application and Industry join, 'Tis the way fickle Fortune to woo. ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... he does. He is not a fickle man. At present he has put himself into his brother's hands, and we must wait till the tide turns. He will learn by degrees to know how unjust he ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... influence is enormous, so much so that almost any cause to which they devote themselves will in the long run succeed; unless, indeed, their attention is diverted to some other need, for it may be suggested that they are somewhat fickle of purpose. For example, their success in the antislavery movement makes the American history of the nineteenth century; in the prohibition movement they were, in the middle decades of that century, almost entirely successful, and while apparently there was a set-back in the twenty ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... the aborigines of Australia. We have seen that it is the duty of the pirrauru husband to protect the wife during the absence of the tippa-malku husband. Clearly this is a sort of insurance against the too bold suitor or the too fickle wife, unless indeed the pirrauru himself is the offender, a point on which Dr Howitt has nothing to say, though Mr Siebert's evidence may be fairly interpreted to mean that such occurrences are ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... Southern line seemed to recover itself at once. The remainder of Ewell's troops reached the field and enabled their comrades to turn and attack. The Stonewall Brigade in the center, where Jackson was, returned to the charge. In a few minutes fickle fortune had faced about completely. The Union men saw victory once more snatched from their hands. Their columns in the plain were being raked by powerful batteries on the flank, many of the guns having recently been theirs. They must ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from that queenly presence? If so, 'twas but another cunning device intended to pave the way to complete success; to catch the fickle fancy of his audience by rendering his retort all the ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... OF THE WOODS will wander afar, And the fickle moon will fade, and the stars disappear, Then, cheerless will they be, tho' they fairies are, If I, with my ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... island of Jamaica and sink it at once. Don't you think certain heads might be found heavy enough for the purpose? No insinuation, I assure you, against the Administration, in spite of the dagger in their right hands. Mr. Atwood seems to me a demi-god of ingratitude! So much for the 'fickle reek of popular breath' to which men have erected their temple of the winds—who would trust a feather to it? I am almost more sorry for poor Lord Grey who is going to ruin us, than for our poor ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... I had convinced my friend that a letter from me ought not to be expected earlier than Monday. I left her to gratify no fickle humour, nor because my chief pleasure lay anywhere but in her company. She knew of my design to make some stay at this place, and that the business that occasioned my stay would leave me no ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... And who thy beauteous face hath seen, Or ever near thy dwelling been, Shall push about the flowing bowl, And be the matter of the whole. And ev'ry woman for thy sake, Though proud and cruel, as they're weak, Shall in my walls protection find, Thou fairest of a fickle kind. ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... he probably thought that he was leaving behind him forever, not only the fickle Aloysia, but the rest of the Weber family as well. How slight our premonition of fate! For, if ever the inscrutable ways of Providence brought two people together, those two were Mozart and Constance Weber. Nor was Aloysia without further influence on his career. She married an actor named Lange, ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... of womanhood not very high. Even Graydon, in his allusions, had suggested a character repulsive to Madge. A woman "as hard to capture and hold as a 'Bedouin'" was not at all her ideal. The words presented to her one who was either calculating or capricious, either heartless or fickle. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... imagination she could hear Pixie putting the question in the years to come, and Bridgie would remember quite well, because she had not the faculty of forgetting, but other people—other people were reputedly fickle, and tempted to forget old friends in favour of new! Other people would probably be in love with a fair-haired beauty by that time, and have ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Venus rising from the fickle sea, or Hope descending from a carriage," rejoined his companion, putting ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... to speak, at her mercy, he had loved and been faithful to her. There are letters which seem to show that Mathilde had the defects of those qualities of buxom light-heartedness, of eternal sunshine, which had kept a fickle Heine so faithful. Sometimes, one gathers, she as little realized the tragedy of Heine's suffering as she understood his writings. As such a woman must, she often left Heine very lonely; and seemed to feel more for her cat, or her parrot ...
— Old Love Stories Retold • Richard Le Gallienne
... said the Moor Maiden. 'No Gottmar but is fickle and inconstant. Well it is for thee, youth, that thou art here of thy own free-will, and didst not tarry for my summons. Thou hast kept thy promise badly, and thou wilt keep it so again, if I give thee no monitor to aid thee. Take this, and carry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... to play, and oft begun in wanton mischief ends in woeful madness. In the first flush of shame and rage Mrs. Potiphar was eager to punish the slave's presumption, even though herself o'erwhelmed in his ruin; but hate, though fierce, is a fickle flame in the female heart, and seldom survives a single flood of tears. Already Joseph's handsome face is haunting her—already she is dreaming o'er the happy hours by Nilus' bank, where first he praised her wondrous beauty—beneath the nodding palms when the fireflies blazed and the bulbul ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... mood is no less fickle than melting. Already he is up and away, almost dancing along the shadowed, romantic tree-aisle, his eyes glistening black in the starlight,—no longer with a lover's luxurious sorrow, but with the happy anticipation of an artless child, promised a holiday and playthings. So lightsome ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... the other; low hills far away before her; out of them all, the dark torrent of the river showing the swift way to freedom and the great sea? She drew in a full breath, as if close air oppressed her.—A bird flew over her then, high above her head, careering in fickle circles, and at length sailing down out of sight far into other heavens. Flor watched him bitterly; she comprehended Zoe's scorn of her past content;—if only she had wings to spread! But Sarp had told her, that, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... they had been always each where the other was, and had run each where the other ran, wished each what the other wished, and wept and laughed each when the other wept or laughed. Nature indeed, before it came into her fickle head to make two of them, had in all probability intended these little sisters—"little cherries on one stalk"—to be but one; and they could only be said not to be one, because of their bodies being two—a circumstance of no great importance, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... point in his career does the speaker give his story? What have been his motives? How was he at first treated? What indicates that the change is not in him, but in the fickle mob? How does he view his downfall? In what thought lies his sense of triumph? How does ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... uphold Law, the slow product of centuries of growth, the sheet anchor of Society in a time of change. Where could we look for solidity, or permanence, if judicial decisions could be recalled at the caprice of the mob—the hysterical, the uninstructed, the fickle mob? The opinion of one trained and honest judge outweighs the whims of ten ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... King, who not long ago did say of Bristoll, that he was a man able in three years to get himself a fortune in any kingdom in the world, and lose all again in three months, do now hug him, and commend his parts every where, above all the world. How fickle is this man [the King], and how unhappy we like to be! That he fears some furious courses will be taken against the Duke of York; and that he hath heard that it was designed, if they cannot carry matters against the Chancellor, to impeach the Duke of York himself, which God forbid! ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... How did Sophia know anything about the obscure Christian captive? WHY did she leave home exactly in time for his marriage? How came Lord Bateman to be so fickle? The Annotator replies: 'His lordship had doubtless been impelled by despair of ever recovering his lost Sophia, and a natural anxiety not to die without leaving an heir to his estate.' Finally how was the difficulty ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the female heart is so capricious and fickle! You pressed it upon me, I assure you. I own that I was not ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said to answer description of murderer. A humorous situation. A "guard of honor" from the vigilantes while in custody. Upon release his expenses all paid. Enjoyed a holiday from hard work. Tendered a present and a handsome apology. Public opinion in the mines a cruel but fortunately a fickle thing. Invitation to author to breakfast at Spanish garden. The journey thereto, along river, with its busy mining scenes. The wing-dam, and how it differs from the ordinary dam. An involuntary bath. Drifts, shafts, coyote-holes. How claims are ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... she did regret the change in her name, though she was by no means indifferent to the rank. As Lady Glencora she had made a reputation which might very possibly fall away from her as Duchess of Omnium. Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes. As Lady Glencora Palliser she was known to every one, and had always done exactly as she had pleased. The world in which she lived had submitted to ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... There were fifty or a hundred persons there who will testify in any court that John and I were there. I will give you the names of some of them: Simeon C. Bruce, John S. Wilson, James Van Allen, Rev. Mr. Smith and lady. Helvin Fickle and wife of Greenton Valley were attending the springs at that time, and either of them will testify to the above, for John and I sat in front of Mr. Smith while he was preaching and was in his company for a ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... it was said, of Henry's preference for foreigners over his own countrymen. In 1239 Henry turned upon his brother-in-law, brought heavy charges against him, and drove him from his court. In 1240 Simon was outwardly reconciled to Henry, but he was never again able to repose confidence in one so fickle. In 1242 Henry resolved to undertake an expedition to France to recover Poitou, which had been gradually slipping out of his hands. At a Great Council held before he sailed, the barons, who had no sympathy with any attempt to recover lost possessions in France, not only rated ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... by my asseveration, my father knew not whose veracity to impeach; but, charitably concluding there was some mistake, or that I was, as heretofore, a fickle, thoughtless being, considered himself bound in honour to communicate the substance of our conversation to Mr Somerville; and the latter no sooner received it, than he placed the letter in Emily's hands—a very comfortable kind of avant-courier for a lover, after an absence from ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... said Davies. It was nine o'clock on the next day, 22nd October, and we were on deck waiting for the arrival of the steamer from Norddeich. There was no change in the weather—still the same stringent cold, with a high barometer, and only fickle flaws of air; but the morning was gloriously clear, except for a wreath or two of mist curling like smoke from the sea, and an attenuated belt of opaque fog on the northern horizon. The harbour lay open before us, and very commodious and civilized ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of these departments than usually attends men of less varied gifts, but of more tranquil and phlegmatic composition. But who is ignorant that there is a class of minds characterized by qualities like those I have mentioned; minds with many bright and even beautiful traits; but aimless and fickle as the butterfly; that settle upon every gayly-colored illusion as it opens into flower, and flutter away to another when the first has dropped its leaves, and stands naked in the icy air ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Fortune, all men call thee fickle, If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him That is renown'd for faith? be fickle Fortune: For then I hope thou wilt not keepe him long, But send ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... are fickle, and the excuses they make to break away from her are both varied and ingenious. During the War, of course, they always had the pretext of being ordered to the Front at a moment's notice, and were ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick
... moment to whisper to himself for his own consolation, that he had never sworn to be true to Clarissa. And, indeed, he did feel, that though there had been a kiss, the scene on the lawn was being used unfairly to his prejudice. "I am afraid you are very fickle, Mr. Newton, and that your love is ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... incompatible with the effects attributed to it? Let them do what they will, it is necessary either to invent another God, or to grant, that he, who, for so many ages, has been held up to the terror of mortals, is at the same time very good and very bad, very powerful and very weak, unchangeable and fickle, perfectly intelligent and perfectly void of reason, of order and permitting disorder, very just and most unjust, very skilful and unskilful. In short, are we not forced to confess, that it is impossible to reconcile the discordant attributes, ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... Blas. The hero lives by his wits, has many vicissitudes, and plays and suffers many cruel practical jokes. The Spanish stories of Quevedo and Perez are coarse but never obscene. The view of women, however, is low. They are fickle, shallow, vain, and cunning. The church is "gingerly handled," but the clergy are derided ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... speedily to be eradicated: The holy teaching of Confucius is now in the ascendant. There is but one most sacred religion: There can be but one Mean. By their great virtue Yao and Shun led the way, Alone able to expound the "fickle" and the "slight;"[*] Confucius' teachings have not passed away, Yet working wonders in secret[] has long been in vogue. Be earnest in practising the ordinary virtues: To extend filial piety, brotherly love, loyalty, and considerateness, is to benefit ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... not repudiate the depths for the sake of the surface. His people are not splashes of appearance, but living minds. Jenny and Emmy in this book are realities inside and out; they are imaginative creatures so complete that one can think with ease of Jenny ten years hence or of Emmy as a baby. The fickle Alf is one of the most perfect Cockneys—a type so easy to caricature and so hard to get true—in fiction. If there exists a better writing of vulgar lovemaking, so base, so honest, so touchingly mean and so touchingly full of the craving for happiness than this that ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... the finished thread, Or clean and pick the long skeins white as snow. And all her fickle gallants when they wed, Will say, "That old one ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... why the character of Rienzi should be so essentially altered from history as it has been; neither do we think that any desirable effect has been gained by this change. In history, Rienzi is a master-spirit of reckless and atrocious daring, but in the drama, he is softened down to a fickle liberty brawler, and the sternest of his vices are glossed over with an almost inconsistent show of affection and tenderness. As he there stands, he is rather like an injured man, than one who so liberally dealt oppression and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... refused to accept the sacrifice, though she pressed it upon him, at last, as a "peace-offering," on her knees, and weeping like a penitent. "It is too late," he said, bitterly. "The deed is done. You are mine no longer,—you belong to the public;—I wish you joy of your fickle master." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... necessity throughout much of Alaska. There is a small government Indian reservation on Afognak Island, near Kodiak. The white population is extremely mobile, and few towns have an assured or definite future. The prosperity of the mining towns of the interior is dependent on the fickle fortune of the gold-fields, for which they are the distributing points. Sitka, Juneau (the capital) and Douglas, both centres of a rich mining district, Skagway, shipping point for freight for the Klondike country (see these titles), and St Michael, the ocean port ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... regiments, glowing with revenge and brandy, decided the fate of the day. The Prussians were completely routed. Frederick lost his splendid guard and the whole of his luggage. Seated on the verge of a fountain and tracing figures in the sand, he reflected upon the means of realluring fickle Fortune to his standard. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... off as charmingly—with sketching in the morning, on days you can't hunt, and anything you like in the afternoon, and fifteen courses in the evening; there'll be bishops and ambassadors staying—as if you were a 'well-known,' awfully clever amateur. Take care, take care, for, fickle as you may think me, I can read the future: don't imagine you've come to the end of me yet. Mrs. Dallow and your sister, of both of whom I speak with the greatest respect, are capable of hatching together the most conscientious, delightful plan for you. Your ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... prejudiced against him also. It required no deep dive into the mysteries of Nomenology to augur ill from the nickname of 'Terrible Tommy.' The title was, of course, satirical; the man an imbecile and fickle windbag. Still, this name was better than ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... left in the world; I'll see him hanged first.] Why hast thou changed thy attorney? Can any man manage thy cause better for thee? [Very pleasant! because a man has a good attorney, he must never make an end of his law-suit.] Ah, John! John! I wish thou knewest thine own mind. Thou art as fickle as the wind. I tell thee, thou hadst better let this composition alone, or leave ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... fickle in his passions is shown by an anecdote of George Sand's. According to her, he was in love with a young Parisienne, who received him very kindly. All went well until one day he visited her with another musician, who was at that time better known than Chopin in Paris. Because the young lady offered ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... hapless nymph! Doomed for a time to bear The badge which none but fickle lives should wear. How oft the envious tongue creates the dart That cleaves the saintly soul and breaks the heart: How oft the hasty ear full credence gives To words in which no grain of truth survives: Were Juno just, her heart would now delight Turning thy dappled wings to waxen white, Where ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... she had been seen walking miles from home, and blooming as a Hebe. Then his deep anxiety ceased, his pride stung him furiously; he began to think of his own value, and to struggle with all his might against his deep love. Sometimes he would even inveigh against her, and call her a fickle, ungrateful girl, capable of no strong passion but vanity. Many a hard term he applied to her in his sorrowful solitude; but not a word when he had a hearer. He found it hard to rest: he kept dashing up to London and back. He plunged furiously into study. He groaned and sighed, and ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... a "New Woman" in her tribe, exclaimed, "If I fell in love with a wild beast, no one should prevent me marrying it." In this Eastern clime, Brooke declares, "love is like the sun's rays in warmth." He might have added that it is as fickle and transient as the sun's warmth; every passing cloud chills it. The shallow nature of Dyak attachment is indicated by their ephemeral unions and universal addiction to divorce. "Among the Upper Sarawak Dyaks divorce is very frequent, owing to the great extent of adultery," says ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... in this world in more senses than one. As was said in the last chapter, the romantic pair who were in search of the Indians did not find those for whom they sought but as fickle fortune willed it, those for whom they sought found them. ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... was fair and free— Fair, and fickle, and false, was she! She slighted the journeyman, (meaning me!) And smiled on a gallant of high degree. Degree! degree! She smiled on a gallant of high degree. Ha! ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... adopt their standards, and shrank always with innate refinement from everything gross. No one thought of shooting her now. She had not only lived down her unpopularity, but, by dint of her natural fearlessness, her cheerful audacity of speech, and quick comprehension, had won back the fickle hearts of the people, who weighed her words again superstitiously, and made much of her. The workmen, with the indolent, inconsequent Irish temperament which makes it irksome to follow up a task continuously, and easier to do anything than the work in hand, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... on the close herbage of the cliff, and the crystal stream leapt down, and the waves broke upon the rocks below, till he saw the breasts of the nymphs shine in the whiteness of the foam and their hair spread wide in the weed, and the fair Galatea, the enticing and the fickle, mocked the clumsy suit of the Cyclops, as she tossed upward the bitter spray from off her shining limbs. All these memories he recorded with a loving faithfulness of detail that it is even now possible to ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... I try'd each fickle art, Importunate and vain; And while his passion touch'd my heart, I triumph'd ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... deceitful and treacherous wanton, in whom no man of a generous and honorable nature could or ought to place confidence, and who was unworthy even of an explanation. Mary M'Loughlin could have borne everything but this. Yes; the abandonment of friends—of acquaintances—of a fickle world itself; but here it was where her moral courage foiled her. The very hope to which her heart had clung from its first early and innocent impulses—the man to whom she looked up as the future guide, friend, and partner ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... went among the servants and saw that the feast was made, and all things were in order, concealing her aching heart under a face which tried to smile. When at evening she heard the fickle people shouting in the streets, and saw the roses strewn as they had been on her wedding-day, then the tears began to fall, and her soul sank within her. But at that moment the duke called, "Griselda, ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... while yet it is in view, For fortune is a fickle fair: Days fade, and others spring anew; Then take the moment still in view. What boots to toil and cares pursue? Each month a new moon hangs in air. Take, then, the moment still in view, For ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... facts; had precipitated what could only be coaxed. "I die by my own hand," he said. If he had only married Rosalie Zander, who still lived on, loving him! These Russian and Bavarian minxes were neurotic, fickle, shifting as sand; the daughters of Judaea were sane, cheerful, solid. Then he thought of his own sister married to that vulgarian, Friedland. He saw her, a rosy-cheeked girl, sitting at the Passover table, with its picturesque ritual. How happy ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... newspaper. It was positively the worst blast from the black trumpet of the wind-god AEolus then possible for any inhabitant of England; and not even that poor company of suitors to whom, in Chaucer's poem, fickle Queen Fame awarded this black blast from the wind-god, instead of the blast of praise from his golden trumpet which they were expecting, can have been more discomfited than most persons would have been had they been in Milton's place a day or two after Palmer's sermon. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... giving him a crown? It is hard to quit the trodden way, and seek a better—to give up a half-executed plan and take a more promising one; it is hard, I say, for the individual man, and makes him seem fickle in the eyes of others; but we cannot see to the right hand and the left, and if we pursue a great end we cannot remain within the narrow limits which are set by law and custom to the actions of private individuals. We draw back just as we seem to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... his heart beat heavily, his breath came thick and fast with fear. In his passion for Ela he felt sure that Lovelace could choose no one but her, his heart's fickle queen. ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... fickle of all fickle things in this world, had turned all at once against its favourite. This Lenoir had predicted, and the transition had been even more rapid than he ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... out of the windows of its world-wide Edifice, was proudly aware. And that was but fair. The Navy is the armed man at the gate. An existence depending upon the sea must be guarded with a jealous, sleepless vigilance, for the sea is but a fickle friend. ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... you will not be able to realise that there was a time when I was "the one woman in the world" for you. I am not harping on your youth in order to vex you—your youth that you hate for my sake! I know that you are not fickle; but I know, too, that the laws of life and the march of time are ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... himself on his knees and mastering his wife's hand. "Grisell, Grisell, dost think I could turn to the feather-pated, dull-souled, fickle-hearted thing I know now Eleanor of Audley to ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... management and thriftless. If the yoke of bondage galls and becomes so painful that in his distress the debtor turns from the struggle in one direction to struggle in another in hope of relief, he calls him fickle; and if at last, after a long and hard service, he is unable to return the loan in full, he calls him dishonest. His ear is deaf to the voice, "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... one of us, La Fontaine will regale you with two new stories, which, I am told, do not disparage his former ones. Come Marquis—But, again a scruple. Have I nothing to fear in the undertaking we contemplate? Love is so malicious and fickle! Still, when I examine my heart, I do not feel any apprehension for myself, it being occupied elsewhere, and the sentiments I possess toward you resemble love less than friendship. If the worst should happen ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... up, perhaps, as far as Pistoia. Going to see the new altarpiece." He took up the hat and whip. He waited, fingering them indecisively. "She seems to me more fickle than ever, ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... some of our modern scientists, their religion has not kept pace with their intellect. Their emotions have overbalanced their reason in this field. Professor H. Levy, of the University of London, tersely remarks: "The assertion of contemporary scientists, who state that the universe is a fickle collection of indeterminate happenings, and a great thought in the Mind of its Architect, a Pure Mathematician, serves merely to divert the activity of the scientific brain from its concentration on the contradictions and confusions of the all too real outward ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... 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, and ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... splendor. If I then struggle and strive to become queen, this is done, not because the vain pomp and glory allure me, but solely because through me the Church, out of which is no salvation, may find a fulcrum to operate on this weak and fickle king, and because I am to bring him back again to the only ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... fair coquette of the skies, Thou, who with fickle, sweet inconstancy Receives the smile from the admiring sun, And straight transmits it to the sordid earth,— How many cycles of the silent past Hast thou beheld the rise and fall of man, His proud ascendency and ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... together and explained that he came as their ally, and not as their foe, and that if they would join with him they should be citizens of the American republic, and treated in all respects on an equality with their comrades. The Creoles, caring little for the British, and rather fickle of nature, accepted the proposition with joy, and with the most enthusiastic loyalty toward Clark. Not only that, but sending messengers to their kinsmen on the Wabash, they persuaded the people of Vincennes likewise to cast off their allegiance to the British king, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... an uncertainty as there is of when it may be completed. Years may pass before he is independent; you like him well enough to marry, but not well enough to wait; the unpleasantness of appearing fickle is certainly great; but if you think you want punishment for past illusions, there it is, and nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound without love—bound to one, and preferring another; that is a punishment which you do ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... never been to my taste. His features were so refined as to be almost effeminate, and so regular that they would have been perfect if it had not been for that ill-fitting, slabbing mouth. It was a clever, and yet it was a weak face, full of a sort of fickle enthusiasm and feeble impulsiveness. I felt that the more I knew him the less reason I should probably find either to like him or to fear him, and in my first conclusion I was right, although I had occasion to change my ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they lived, in deeds of arms excell'd, And after death for deities were held. 520 But those who wear the woodbine on their brow, Were knights of love, who never broke their vow; Firm to their plighted faith, and ever free From fears and fickle chance, and jealousy. The lords and ladies, who the woodbine bear, As true ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... himself to the training of her voice, to writing operas for her exploitation, and to journeying in Italy for the production of these operas and the promulgation of her talents. Yet after breaking his heart, as he supposed, for the gifted and fickle woman who became a successful prima donna,—after losing her, he did that most impossible thing which could never happen in real fiction, and sought his consolation in the arms and in the heart of Aloysia's younger sister, who was not especially ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... thence to the town of Zebu to take the four vows. On his journey he brought back into the way the Indians everywhere, who were turning aside to their madness and their idols. He reestablished Christian customs, baptized children and adults, made stable their fickle and inconstant marriages, and did many more things of the same kind—which, though unwritten, are understood. The following event should not lack a pen. A man entangled by lewd delights, but moved by the fact ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... the father of his people!" shouted the fickle multitude; and glad that the attention of the crowd had been diverted from himself, Count Podstadsky-Liechtenstein slunk away to ruminate over the mortifying ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hid itself and the fickle spring clouds were dripping over the desolate garden. But at the fireside, curled up in the winged chair with her bandaged foot propped comfortably on a foot- stool, Felicia sat through the long afternoon and chattered and laughed and clapped ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... fleeting legends made to hold the soul a moment on its way, and keep it here in fickle permanence, one is more dramatic than all, more charged with power and pathos. Years ago there came into Tiverton an unknown man, very handsome, showing the marks of high breeding, and yet in his bearing strangely solitary and remote. He wore a cloak, and had ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... commented Professor Bolton, "in making up your mind to live. I congratulate you on your common sense. And perhaps, as the years go by, you will realize that had you married your Arabella, you would not have found life all honey and roses. She was fickle, unworthy of you. Soon you will forget. Youth—ah, youth throws off its sorrow like a cloak. A figure not original with me. And now—the gentleman in the—er—the bed quilt. Has he, too, ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... youthe remarked, "Thou'rt fickle as my star! By far ye worste I ever sparked, You are! ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... ladies which he had hitherto stifled in his breast. Sometimes he would feign himself too deeply taken with a passing beauty to remain quiet, and would make his friend follow with him in chase of her to the Public Gardens. But he was a fickle lover, and wanted presently to get back to his caffe, where, at decent intervals of days or weeks, he would indulge himself in discovering a spy in some harmless stranger, who, in going out, looked curiously ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... their anchors. We could count thirteen fiercely raging fires in various parts of the city, which looked like one vast funeral pyre. Only the brick chimneys of the houses remained standing blackened and charred. Smoke and occasional flame would burst out here and there as the fickle eddies of wind, influenced, no doubt, by the heat, whirled around as if in sport over the scene of man's discomfitures. On the hillside stood a solitary house almost untouched, which, had there been any reason for its being held sacred, might well have served ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that they are conferring honor upon themselves and their art in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes and fickle appetites of their own creation."—Wordsworth, ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... French stage had lost a comedian of the first magnitude. Much, therefore, we felt, was to be condoned in one who doubtless felt so great a talent itching for expression. When next he smiled, we had revived to a keener appreciation of baffled genius ever on the scent for the capture of that fickle goddess, opportunity. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd |
