"Fickleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... qualities of the man, especially of those qualities which she knows are pleasing to the girl. She should, moreover, speak with disparagement of the other lovers of the girl, and talk about the avarice and indiscretion of their parents, and the fickleness of their relations. She should also quote samples of many girls of ancient times, such as Sakuntala and others, who, having united themselves with lovers of their own caste and their own choice, were ever happy afterwards in their society. And ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... startling if somewhat factitious beauty. To say that the plot now thickens would be to use too coarse a word; it becomes slightly tinged with incident, inasmuch as Euphues falls in love with Lucilla, the destined bride of Philautus. She reciprocates his passion, and the double fickleness of mistress and friend forms an excellent opportunity, which Lyly does not fail to seize, for infinite moralizings in euphuistic strains. Philautus is naturally indignant at the turn affairs have taken, and the former friends exchange letters of recrimination, in ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... honest George "as she loves him still—I must set his mind right about the other woman." And with this charitable thought, the good fellow began to tell more at large what Bows had said to him regarding Miss Bolton's behaviour and fickleness, and he described how the girl was no better than a little light-minded flirt; and, perhaps, he exaggerated the good-humour and contentedness which he had himself, as he thought, witnessed in her behaviour in the scene with ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... internal discord, was not less so in 1848. The history of the court was one of scandal, and of the government one of weakness, fickleness, and incapacity. The year 1847 closed by a change of ministry, when the infamous Narvaez was in the ascendant, and his creatures were gathered around him in the guise of a cabinet. The queen-mother, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... normal type of the men of the early Renaissance. It may be added parenthetically that even in respect to his moral character he will not be fairly judged if we listen solely to the complaints of the German Church, which his fickleness helped to balk of the council it so ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Case of Mathematicians and other learned Men; or are wholly taken up with some Violent Passion, such as Anger, Fear, or Love, which ties the Mind to some distant Object; or, lastly, these Distractions proceed from a certain Vivacity and Fickleness in a Man's Temper, which while it raises up infinite Numbers of Ideas in the Mind, is continually pushing it on, without allowing it to rest on any particular Image. Nothing therefore is more unnatural than the Thoughts and Conceptions ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... change.—In the present chapter, I have annexed to my Letters from Germany, with particular reference to that, which contains a disquisition on the modern drama, a critique on the Tragedy of BERTRAM, written within the last twelve months: in proof, that I have been as falsely charged with any fickleness in my principles of taste.—The letter was written to a friend: and the apparent abruptness with which it begins, is owing to the omission of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... earnestness of Valentine's nature in this devotion to Silvia with the fickleness ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... degree: for there can be no presumption in saying of most readers, that it is not probable they will be so well acquainted with the various stages of meaning through which words have passed, or with the fickleness or stability of the relations of particular ideas to each other; and, above all, since they are so much less interested in the subject, they may decide ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... a green gown he clothed was full fair, Which underneath did hide his filthiness; And in his hand a burning heart he bare, Full of vain follies and new fangleness; For he was false and fraught with fickleness; And learned had to love with secret looks; And well could dance; and sing with ruefulness; And fortunes tell; and read in loving books; And thousand other ways to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... away, dreading the fickleness which is customary with women. Then, on the threshold, he murmured softly, as if it were a thing ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the end of chap. 37 of Book ix. in the touching passage, surely inspired by personal experience, as to the sickness "that is the greatest pain a prisoner may have"; and the reflections on English fickleness in the first chapter of Book xxi., though the Wars of the Roses might have inspired them in any one, come most naturally from an author ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... coldness. Mr. Pelham, who foresaw the storm, had prudently prepared himself for the breach by all kind of invectives against the house of Leveson. The ground of all, besides Newcastle's natural fickleness and jealousy, is, that the Bedford and Sandwich have got the Duke. A crash @as been expected, but people now seem to think that they will rub on a little longer, though all the world seems indifferent whether they will or not. Mankind is so ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... and particularly the saliva, assist in the formation and change of taste. This accounts not only for the different tastes of different persons, but also for the varying taste of the same persons, and for that fickleness of taste which is so common in sickness, when the fluids of the mouth, in a disordered and deranged state, mix with the food, and produce the disagreeable taste so often complained of at such times, and which, moreover, occasionally create a permanent dislike for ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... track as on the one they have left, regardless of the fact that no two careers have the same gage, that every man builds his own road upon which another man's engine can not run either with speed or safety. This fickleness, this disposition to shift about from one occupation to another, seems to be peculiar to American life, so much so that, when a young man meets a friend whom he has not seen for some time, the commonest question to ask is, "What ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and vegetables, in greater perfection, and at a lower rate, than they had heretofore been supplied by the English gardeners. For this purpose he built large and high walls, and very extensive hot-houses and conservatories; but, being unable to contend against the fickleness of our climate, he found it necessary to abandon this scheme also; when the glasses, the frames, &c. were sold by auction; and no vestiges now remain of his labours, but his vines and the ruins of ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... luxury and sports to good account. There were moments of grave danger in her reign when the country remained indifferent to its perils, as it saw the Queen give her days to hawking and hunting, and her nights to dancing and plays. Her vanity and affectation, her womanly fickleness and caprice, all had their part in the diplomatic comedies she played with the successive candidates for her hand. If political necessities made her life a lonely one, she had at any rate the satisfaction of averting war and conspiracies ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... of the demi-monde, he was not likely to regard the fairest face, after the first heyday of his youth was past, as worth the pain its owner's caprices could inflict. For, as seen under that phase, woman was apt to be both mercenary and capricious; and if the poet suffered, as he did, from the fickleness of more than one mistress, the probability is—and this he was too honest not to feel—that they had only ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... priests shall not go without an answer, that will, I am sure, induce them to place a great confidence in the benefit arising from Christians, who damn themselves every hour of the day. For while they speak of the vainness and fickleness of oaths, as an objection against our project, they little consider that this fickleness and vainness is the common practice among all the people of this sublunary world; and that consequently, instead of being an objection against the project, is ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... this day, hoping to be able to double Cape Round during the night; but in this they were disappointed, for a little after midnight, very suddenly the wind got round to the S.W., the coast became foggy, and the weather altogether exceedingly foul; an evidence of the fickleness of the climate. Having split their main-sail, they had to ply to windward as well as they could, endeavouring to get shelter in Port Famine; but this they were unable to effect; and, as in consequence of the short tacks they had to make, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... gold, or strung soft rhymes together Upon a lady's tress.... And one there was alone, Who with wet downcast eyelids threw aside The remnants of a broken heart, and looked Into my face and bid me 'ware of love, Of fickleness, and woe, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... Discussion. (1) The dangers of fickleness (1:6; 4:9; 15:16). (2) The methods of false teachers: (a) Their chief method is to attack men prominent in the movement, (b) They usually put forward some one else for leader; They would supplant Paul with Peter, (c) One may well consider how a man will often allow ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... little hurt by this proof of the rapidity of feminine fickleness, I began to congratulate her effusively on having obtained such an excellent substitute for my worthless self, and to wish the happy couple all earthly felicities, when she explained that he was not a fiance, but merely a sort of friend, and Mrs MANKLETOW severely added that they ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... they made an effort to make up for lost time, and they set out early. Altamont and Bell were ahead, choosing the way and looking out for game. Duke was with them. The weather, with its surprising fickleness, had become very clear and dry; and although the guides were two miles from the sledge, the doctor did not miss one of their movements. He was consequently very much startled to see them stop suddenly, and remain in a position of surprise; they seemed to ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... encouraged; and, above all, pawned integrity redeemed! And why? Because enfranchised woman then will feel the burdens of her responsibilities, and can strive for elevation, and will reach all knowledge within her grasp.... If all this is accomplished, man need not fear pomposity, fickleness, or an unhealthy enthusiasm at his dear fireside; we can be as dutiful, submissive, endearing as daughters, wives, and mothers, even if we hang the wreath of domestic harmony upon the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... one, "I am opposed to fickleness and change." Ah! indeed; does it betray fickleness to leave a church to become a missionary? Did God favor fickleness and change when he prevented the permanent location of the apostles in Palestine, by a voice from heaven, and ...
— Thoughts on Missions • Sheldon Dibble
... than Moby Dick. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had hailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable—they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness—and when retained for any object remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and passion in the end, it is above all things requisite that temporary interests and employments should intervene and hold them healthily ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... had learnt that Kinraid was married, her heart had still more strongly turned to Philip; she thought that he had judged rightly in what he had given as the excuse for his double dealing; she was even more indignant at Kinraid's fickleness than she had any reason to be; and she began to learn the value of such enduring love as Philip's had been—lasting ever since the days when she first began to fancy what a man's love for a woman should be, when she had first shrunk ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... to another. It corresponds to activity on the physical plane. The next is the confused stage, Mudha, equivalent to the stage of the youth, swayed by emotions, bewildered by them; he begins to feel he is ignorant—a state beyond the fickleness of the child—a characteristic state, corresponding to activity in the astral world. Then comes the state of preoccupation, or infatuation, Vikshipta, the state of the man possessed by an idea—love, ambition, or what not. He is no longer a confused youth, but a man with a clear aim, and ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... is held Fast for my ear alone— Stays with me always, well content, With Darby to be Joan. No fickleness disturbs our lot; No jars its peace to smother; Ah, no; my faithful pipe and I ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... without ever a look at Henri Quatre. That was a pity. The sarcastic Bearnais grin might have revealed some of the pitfalls that lay ahead. At any rate, the King of Navarre could have given him many instances of a woman's fickleness—and fickleness was the ugly word that leaped into Alec's puzzled brain when an ancient dame at Joan's lodgings told him that Mademoiselle and her maid had gone ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... more self-sustaining and brings about a higher life, with a better code of morals. Even political groups have their reactions, in which, notwithstanding the great room for improvement, they stand for morality and justice. The relations of man to man are becoming better understood every day. His fickleness and selfishness are more readily observed in recent than in former times, and as a result the evils of the present are magnified, because they are better understood; in reality, social conditions are ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... D. Nicolai Villagagnonis, equitis Rhodii, adversus novitium Calvini ... dogma de sacramento Eucharistiae, opuscula tria, Coloniae, 1563." In the preface of the first of these treatises, Villegagnon denies the reports of his fickleness and cruelty as slanders of the returning Protestants, and defends his conduct in throwing the three monks into the sea. In a dedication to Constable Montmorency (dated 1560) he clears himself from the charge of atheism brought against him because he expelled the ministers "on discovering the vanity ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... heart upon his sleeve," or in other words, is trusting, non-secretive, and very fond of company. If the "y" has a specially long finish, this shows affectation, but if the same person is also careless about crossing the "t's," the combination is an unhappy one, as it points to fickleness in work and to affectation. A curved cross to the "t," or the incurving of the first letters of a word shows an affectionate and good-natured disposition if taken separately; but if the two are indulged in by the same writer it is a sign ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... one, perhaps too bold When hollow fortune called him favourite,— Now by her fickleness perforce reduced To take an humble tone, ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... prefer their liberty to all else, and are not slaves, except to their wives. Today they reject that religion, which yesterday they professed. I ascribe this fickleness to the situation of their country; they are islanders and seamen, and probably become affected by the variable element that surrounds them. They inquire very often after each other's health, so that one would suppose them to be all doctors; but the question: how do you do? is merely ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... love. With something of fancy, and a share of the weakness, no doubt, it was yet an affection to which every better quality of her nature had contributed its share. Hazlehurst's determination never to forgive himself for the sorrow he had caused her, was a just one. His fickleness had deeply wounded a heart, warm, true, and generous, as ever beat ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... an excuse to wander about the gardens in the moonlight, saw the golden locks shining through the open windows, and Lord Ivinghoe standing over them, went home, and cried herself to sleep over the fickleness of the nobility, when she had better have cried over her own unjustified romance, excited by a few kindly speeches ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him for daring to stay away so long!' she exclaimed as soon as she got upstairs. 'It is as bad to show constancy in your manners as fickleness in your heart at such a time ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... was haunted by a jealousy that, instead of being diminished by time and absence, increased with each passing day, even waking up in her a vital force of imagination she had not suspected she possessed. She knew men as a race au fond—knew their fickleness, swift forgetfulness, readiness to be content with the second best, so different from the far greater Epicureanism of women; knew their uneasy appetites, their lack of self-restraint; and, adding to this sum of knowledge her personal knowledge ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... we dreamed, A Titan planet. Earth begins to fade And dwindle; yes, the heavens are opening now. Perhaps up there, this night, some lonely soul Gazes at earth, watches our dawning moon, And wonders, as we wonder." In that dark We knelt together . . . Very strange to see The vanity and fickleness of princes. Before his enemies had provoked the wrath Of Rome against him, he had given the name Of Medicean stars to those four moons In honour of Prince Cosmo. This aroused The court of France to seek a lasting place Upon ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... fixed principles," he would say, "should express them in the looks of his house. New York changes its domestic architecture too rapidly. It is like divorce. It is not dignified. I don't like it. Extravagance and fickleness are advertised in most of these new houses. I wish to be known for different qualities. Dignity and prudence are the things that people trust. Every one knows that I can afford to live in the house that suits me. It is ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... last met you, I have become satisfied that a marriage between us cannot prove a happy one. This conclusion is far more painful to me than it can possibly be to you. You, I trust, will soon be able to feel coldly towards her whose fickleness, as you will call it, so soon led her to change her mind; but a life-shadow is upon my heart. If you can forget me, do so, in justice to yourself. As for me, I feel that—but why should say this? Charles, do not seek to change the resolution I have taken, for you cannot; do not ask ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... Madame de Tecle and M. des Rameures all the duties of respectful gratitude. Yet avoiding all allusion to the past, guarding himself scrupulously from confidential converse, and observing a frigid politeness to Mademoiselle Marie, there remained doubt in his mind that, the fickleness of the fair sex aiding him, the young mother of the girl would renounce her chimerical project. His error was great: and it may be here remarked that a hard and scornful scepticism may in this world engender as ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... always the sea without a moment's weakness; in brief, not the stuff of which friends are made! When the knight appears and kills her monster, he loses his halo for Andromede, who cherishes her monstrous guardian. Perseus, a prig disgusted by the fickleness of the Young Person, flees, and the death of the monster brings to life a lovely youth—put under the spell of malignant powers—who promptly weds his ward. In Lohengrin, Son of Parsifal, the whole machinery of the Wagner opera is transposed to the key of lunar parody. What ambrosia from the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... willing to forget the whole episode and even more than willing that she should forget it, there had been a time when he had moped in wretched melancholy because of what he had then considered her utter fickleness. Shortly after this he had been sent East to college and had borne the separation with a fortitude that had rather surprised him when he recalled how bitter a thing her ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... daughters—have you not watched those dear to you in the many moods of which a feminine heart is capable; have you not seen them affectionate, tender, and impulsive? Would you love them so dearly but for the fickleness of their moods? Have you not worshipped them in your hearts, for those sublime impulses which put all man's plans and calculations to shame? Look on the accused, citizens. She loves the Republic, the people of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... from a German source that the resignation of Count TISZA was procured by Marshal VON HINDENBURG. It is a curious commentary on the fickleness of the multitude that the KAISER isn't even mentioned as having taken a hand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... he turns its contents over in his mind, and gradually falls into a fit of musing on the fickleness of fortune, the vicissitudes of his own life, and the evils that had overtaken him even in his tender youth. Suddenly he hears the bell ringing to matins, but its sound, chiming in with his melancholy fancies, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... gravestones. He—man or people—who, putting his trust in the friendship of the sea, neglects the strength and cunning of his right hand, is a fool! As if it were too great, too mighty for common virtues, the ocean has no compassion, no faith, no law, no memory. Its fickleness is to be held true to men's purposes only by an undaunted resolution and by a sleepless, armed, jealous vigilance, in which, perhaps, there has always been more hate than love. Odi et amo may well be the confession of those who consciously or blindly have surrendered their existence to ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... his attempted bribery, his broken-hearted sorrow when he failed, he seemed to be now content. Indeed, he had made no opposition to the match. When Caroline had freely spoken to him about it, he made some little snappish remark as to the fickleness of women; but he at the same time signified ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... succeeded his father and was the third caliph of the house of Abbas. He was at Baghdad when his father expired near Mecca, but, despite his absence, was immediately proclaimed caliph. El-Mahdi betrayed in his deeds that same fickleness which had signalised the caliphate of his father, El-Mansur. He appointed a different governor of Egypt nearly every year. These many changes resulted probably from the political views held by the caliph, or perhaps he already perceived the tendency shown by each of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... belief. The primary question respecting men is this,—How far are they affected by the original axiomatic truths? Truths are like the winds. Near the earth's surface winds blow in variable directions, and the weathercock becomes the type of fickleness. So there is a class of little truths, dependent upon ever-variable relations, with which it is the function of cunning, shrewdness, tact, to deal, and numbers of men seldom or never lift their heads above this weathercock region. Yet the upper air, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... shoulder your birch canoe, as the old sea-kings used, and thrid the deep forests, and scale the purple hills, till you come to water again, when you will unroll your lead and line for another essay. Is that fickleness? What else can you do? Must you launch your bark on the unquiet stream, against whose pebbly bottom the keel continually grates and rasps your nerves—simply that your reputation suffer no detriment? Fickleness? There is no fickleness about it. You were trying an experiment ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... Legislature demands their protection against the assaults of the Executive; they defend the Union from the disobedience of the States, the States from the exaggerated claims of the Union, the public interest against private interests and the conservative spirit of stability against the fickleness of the democracy." The contrast between these observations and the disheartened words in which Jay declined renomination to the chief justiceship in 1801 gives perhaps a fair ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... favourable wind, came hither in the palmy days of mediaeval Portugal, but returned discomfited. Goths from the Northern bounds of Thuringian pine forests followed in their turn, but the power and prestige of Hindu Java remained invincible until destroyed by the wayward fickleness of her own children. Brahminism was finally discarded for the specious promises of Arabian invaders, and the lightly-held faith succumbed to the creed of Islam. Mosques were built, Hindu temples were forsaken, and Nature's veil of vegetation was once more suffered to hide altar and ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... One-third of Jim Polk may be human, but the other two-thirds is politician. He will flatter that lady into confidences. She is well nigh distracted at best, these days, what with the fickleness of her husband and the yet harder abandonment by her old admirer Pakenham; so Polk will cajole her into disclosures, never fear. In return, when the time comes, he will send an army of occupation into her ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... masses. Admirable adaptation, 144. Swarming necessary. Circumstances in which it takes place. June the swarming month. Preparations for swarming. Old queen accompanies the first swarm. No infallible signs of 1st swarming, 145. Fickleness of bees about swarming. Indications of swarming. Hours of swarming, 146. Proceedings within the hive before swarming. Interesting scene. Bells and frying-pans useless, 147. Neglected bees apt to fly away in ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... high position, easier to obtain than to keep. Charms are sufficient to make a man amorous; to render him constant, something more is necessary; skill is required, a little management, a great deal of intelligence, and even a touch of ill humor and fickleness. Unfortunately, however, as soon as women have yielded they become too tender, too complaisant. It would be better for the common good, if they were to resist less in the beginning and more afterward. I maintain that they never can forestall loathing without leaving ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... street-corners and peristyles, did not in his eyes deserve the term "human." Hence he gave no answer whatever to the applause, or the kisses sent from lips here and there to him. He was relating to Marcus the case of Pedanius, reviling meanwhile the fickleness of that rabble which, next morning after the terrible butchery, applauded Nero on his way to the temple of Jupiter Stator. But he gave command to halt before the book-shop of Avirnus, and, descending ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Glover was obliged to remain contented, though extremely anxious for the postponed explanation. It could not be levity or fickleness of character which induced his daughter to act with so much apparent inconsistency towards the man of his choice, and whom she had so lately unequivocally owned to be also the man of her own. What external force there could exist, of a kind powerful enough to change the resolutions she had so decidedly ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... we are now considering his lordship announced to all the princes of India his resolution to set up these gates at Somnauth. The gates, it is now universally admitted, will not be set up there. All India will see that the Governor General has changed his mind. The change may be imputed to mere fickleness and levity. It may be imputed to the disapprobation with which his conduct has been regarded here. In either case he appears in a light in which it is much to be deplored that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... imperial aristocracy. Even in the first steps of his enterprise he was made to feel the need of caution, and it was by statute, after all, not by decree, that the whole matter was finally regulated. So curious is popular fickleness that an Emperor who could boldly tyrannize in almost any other direction felt that he dared not take the risk of constituting himself a fountain of honor, such as ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... most profaning to talent, the most desecrating to beauty. There was neither justice nor gentleness in the paragraph, but it briefly condemned the work, and promised at some future period, a more detailed notice of its defects. It was the first time that Theresa had felt the fickleness of popular favor; and who does not know the morbid sensitiveness with which the poet shrinks from censure? To have her fair imaginings thus degraded, her glowing theories prostrated, the golden pinions of her fancy dragged ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... offends the divine will, which desires that all be happy as far as it is possible. I will say as much of the fourth section, where there is mention of the source of wrong elections, which are error or ignorance, negligence, fickleness in changing too readily, stubbornness in not changing in time, and bad habits; finally there is the importunity of the appetites, which often drive us inopportunely towards external things. The fifth section is designed to reconcile ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... supplied by Moslem priests; but their confidence is based upon the supposed magic of the writing, irrespective of its religious meaning.[46:1] The failure of a charm to perform a cure is attributed to the ingratitude and fickleness of the spirits.[46:2] In Algeria it is not an uncommon experience of physicians who have prescribed for native patients, to meet such an one some days after, with the prescription either suspended from his neck, or carefully hidden in his ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... away, leaving her there hurt and bewildered at his apparent fickleness, at the stiffness with which he had beaten back the ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... himself to inflict misery on his fellow-creatures with indifference, with satisfaction, and at length with a hideous rapture, deserves to be regarded as a portent of wickedness; and such a man was Barere. The history of his downward progress is full of instruction. Weakness, cowardice, and fickleness were born with him; the best quality which he received from nature was a good temper. These, it is true, are not very promising materials; yet, out of materials as unpromising, high sentiments of piety and of honour ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of these simple nomads to the institutions of a far-away human father, how it put to shame Judah's delinquency from the commands of her Divine Father! This contrast is in line with the others, which we have seen Jeremiah emphasising, between his people's fickleness towards God and the obdurate adherence of the Gentiles to their national gods, or the constancy of the processes of nature: the birds that know the seasons of their coming, the unfailing snows of Lebanon and the streams of the hills. The whole ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... should be written, unless preceded by a biographical note of the author of "Spadacrene Anglica," to whom and to whose work Harrogate doubtless owes its position as the premier Spa of this country; and it is with no little sense of the fickleness of fame that one finds his name so little known, and his worth as a writer unrecognized. As far as I know, no biography has been written heretofore, nor is his life given in the various collective records of the lives of British medical men, such as Aikin, etc.[2] The same ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... and the sadness of its tone, are caused by their sudden perversion from the doctrine which the Apostle had taught them, and which at first they had received so willingly. It is no fancy, if we see in this fickleness a specimen of that 'esprit impretueux, ouvert a toutes les impressions,' and that 'mobilite extreme,' which Thierry marks as characteristic of the Gaulish race." At all events, the language of the Gauls disappeared in Central France to make way for the language or the Capital—the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... was hated, and it was not the multitude so much as the rulers that hated him. Many of those now shrieking 'Crucify Him!' had shouted 'Hosanna!' a day or two before till they were hoarse. The populace was guilty of fickleness, blindness, rashness, too easy credence of the crafty calumnies of the rulers. But a far deeper stain rests on these rulers who had resisted the light, and were now animated by the basest self-interest in the garb of keen ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... misfortune? Those whose heads are turned by prosperity cannot endure reverses. For society, as for individuals, nothing is more baneful than outbursts of joy and pride. The vaster a monarch's power, the greater his need to meditate on the fickleness of fate; but the lessons of wisdom are never recalled till they are useless; they are whispered into his ears only when they can but add ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... took refuge with the Czarina and the two young princes in the fortified monastery of Troitsa, and summoned around her the gentlemen-at-arms. Khovanski was invited to attend, was arrested on the way, and put to death with his son. The streltsi attempted a new rising, but, with the usual fickleness of a popular militia, suddenly passed from the extreme of insolence to the extreme of humility. They marched to Troitsa, this time in the guise of suppliants, with cords round their necks, carrying axes and blocks for the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... mother had the most pitiful experience of all, child," she replied. "She married. Shortly after you were born, she died, fortunately spared all knowledge of your father's faithless fickleness. Adnah, he, too, married again! You, Adnah, was too young to protect yourself from a stepmother, but we came to your rescue. Your great uncle, Peter, had just died and left us this fine estate, and here we are, trying to shield you from the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... The 5th, the interpreter, who was a bramin, or priest of the Banians, came off with a letter from Bangham, and the letter from Captain Hawkins, dated from Agra in April last, giving an account of the fickleness of the Mogul, who had given a firman to the Portuguese, by which our trade, formerly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... of the term was one of unalloyed depression. No one dared to joke, for if she did her companions instantly accused her of "apeing Tom" and snubbed her for the feebleness of the attempt; no one dared to be cheerful, lest she should be charged with fickleness, and want of heart. And Irene, the beautiful, reigned in Tom's stead! It would have been a difficult post for any girl to have succeeded Thomasina Bolderston, but, curious though it may appear, Irene's flaxen locks and regular features were for the time being ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... know of the difference between love and friendship? And when the development of her understanding disclosed the true nature of this intercourse to her, her affections were already engaged to her friend, and all she feared was lest other attractions and fickleness might make him ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... this that Jael had quarreled with Grace for her fickleness, and gave her a look of beaming affection; then fell into a dead silence, and soon tears were seen ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... perseverance is the cause of many a failure. We do not stand by our plans faithfully. Fashion, or criticism, or temporary weariness, or fickleness of taste, leads us off; and we have to begin our work all over. Look at the history of every noted invention; read the lives of musicians who were born with genius, but wrought out triumph by perseverance; and you will find abundant proof that without perseverance ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... dreamed once upon a night, that the figure of Proserpina, whom he had long worshipped, visited his slumbers with an angry and vindictive countenance, and menaced him with vengeance, in resentment of his having neglected her altars, with the usual fickleness of a polytheist, for those of some more fashionable divinity. Not that goddess of the infernal regions herself could assume a more haughty or more displeased countenance than that with which Lady Binks looked from time ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... changed attitude of the world; he could not stay at home without seeing his noble wife uncomplainingly nursing a child that was not hers. He cursed himself for his sins and follies; he cursed the world for its fickleness and want of sympathy. 'His wit,' says Heron, 'became more gloomy and sarcastic, and his conversation and writings began to assume a misanthropical tone, by which they had not been before in any eminent degree distinguished. But with all his failings his was ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... of women!" he sighed. "There's a new word for you, Selim—ficklety. I like it better than fickleness, don't you? Sounds like frailty, too. Was there any shooting after I went to bed?" His manner changed suddenly from ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... prospect of seeing her dear Margaret again completely obliterated any thought of her stepmother from Janetta's mind; and when she was snugly ensconced in her own little, white bed, she could not help shedding a few tears of relief and joy. For Margaret's apparent fickleness had weighed heavily on Janetta's mind; and she now felt proud of the friend in whom she had believed in spite of appearances, and of whose faithfulness she had steadily refused to hear a doubt. These feelings enabled her to bear with ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... then," said Miss Mills. "Oh, don't talk to me about it, children. May you never understand what I am suffering! Oh, the fickleness of some people! The promises that are made only to be broken! You trust a person, and you are ever so happy; and then you find that you have made a great, big mistake, and you ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... While all this was occurring, the struggle in Peru had continued to show the fickleness of the fortunes of war. Rondeau had been appointed General-in-Chief of the Army of Peru; he, however, had proved himself a General of slow movements, and suffered several defeats. He also fell out with Guemes, and a battle ensued between the two sections of the Argentine forces. In this Rondeau ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... her duty, and was ready to receive the man whom he had selected for her husband. They were married: but she deceived herself; as soon as the ceremony was over, the courage which had supported her gave way, her former feelings returned stronger than ever, and she hated herself for her fickleness. Her heart whispered that it was impossible that one possessing every great and every amiable quality, as did her lover, could ever have proved faithless, or would have abandoned one who loved him so dearly. As she sat in the garden and wept, a slight noise attracted her attention, and she found ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... probably wise, for unless the change had been made, the book might never have been read at all.' So writes the author in his last pages; and returning to his first love, it is hard to say whether from fickleness or from constancy he adds, 'So far as I am concerned, I regretted the change then, and ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... cooling of the original Republican fervency was owing to the recent experience of the public fickleness and of the necessity of not "confining Providence" too much in the decision of what to-morrow should bring forth, there was a special cause in the relations now subsisting ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... ancient authors mostly at secondhand. I remember, when I first came to London, and began to be a hanger-on at the theatres, a great desire grew in me for more learning than had fallen to my share at Stratford; but fickleness and impatience, and the bewilderment caused by new objects, dispersed that wish into ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... lamentable thing that every Man is full of Complaints, and constantly uttering Sentences against the Fickleness of Fortune, when People generally bring upon themselves all the Calamities they fall into, and are constantly heaping up Matter for their own Sorrow and Disappointment. That which produces the greatest ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Plant Your looks freeze me. Ivy Friendship. Iris, German Flame. Iris, Common Garden A message for thee. Jonquil Affection returned. Jessamine, White Amiability. Jessamine, Yellow Gracefulness. Larkspur Fickleness. Lantana Rigor. Laurel Words though sweet may deceive. Lavender Mistrust. Lemon Blossom Discretion. Lady Slipper Capricious beauty. Lily of the Valley Return of happiness. Lilac, White Youth. " Blue First emotions of love. Lily, Water Eloquence. May Flower Welcome. Marigold Sacred ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... stranger; but I desire your majesty to believe that I would not have come from so remote a country as I have done, the name of which perhaps may be unknown in your dominions, if I had not been certain of the cure I propose. What would not the world say of my fickleness, if, after such great fatigues and dangers as I have undergone on this account, I should abandon the enterprise? Even your majesty would soon lose that esteem you have conceived for me. If I must die, sir, I shall die with ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... fog-swept wilderness of swamp and lake beset with dwarfish growths of lehua, is used as the symbol of a woman, impulsively kind, yet in turn passionate and disdainful. The physical attributes of the mountain are ascribed to her, its spells of frosty coldness, its gloom and distance, its fickleness of weather, the repellant hirsuteness of the stunted vegetation that fringes the central swamp—these things are described as symbols of her temper, character, and physical make-up. The bloom and herbage of the wilderness, much pelted by the storm, are figures to represent her physical charms. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... frontiers, and arrange about the marching of his troops. His constant word to them was forward! forward! For the precious time for action was slipping away, and he feared their Indian allies, so important to their security while on the march, might, with their usual fickleness, lose ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... horrible certainty!—Egmont condemned!—what tribunal has the right to summon him?—And they dare to condemn him!—Does the king condemn him, or the duke? And the Regent withdraws herself! Orange hesitates, and all his friends!—Is this the world, of whose fickleness and treachery I have heard so much, and as yet experienced nothing? Is this the world?—Who could be so base as to hear malice against one so dear? Could villainy itself be audacious enough to overwhelm with sudden destruction ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... song of another passion. It is very hard to answer a woman in such circumstances, because her womanhood gives her so strong a ground of vantage! Lady Laura might venture to throw in his teeth the fickleness of his heart, but he could not in reply tell her that to change a love was better than to marry without love,—that to be capable of such a change showed no such inferiority of nature as did the capacity for such a marriage. She could hit him with her argument; but he could only remember ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... was built after a fashion much in vogue a century since, and which, by a fickleness that influences marine architecture as well as less important things, is again coming into use, for vessels of her force. The accommodations of the commander were on the same deck with the batteries ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... as it was of surprises. Delsarte was born good, generous, above the petty tendencies which deform and degrade the human type. On these diverse points, religious faith could scarcely show its effect; but he also declared himself to be irritable and violent—he confessed to a dangerous fickleness—still, he would readily have slandered himself in the interests ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... non-development. An Oriental thinks that women are by nature peculiarly voluptuous; see the violent abuse of them on this ground in Hindoo writings. An Englishman usually thinks that they are by nature cold. The sayings about women's fickleness are mostly of French origin; from the famous distich of Francis the First, upward and downward. In England it is a common remark, how much more constant women are than men. Inconstancy has been longer reckoned discreditable to a woman, in England than ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... he had undertaken; how easy the deed was; how soon it would be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw contempt on his change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender it was to love the babe that milked her; but she would, while it was smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform that murder. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... looking into their modes of living and of thought, we find a nature just like our own, not better indeed, but in no respect worse. Those evil tempers which the people displayed in the desert, their greediness, selfishness, murmuring, caprice, waywardness, fickleness, ingratitude, jealousy, suspiciousness, obstinacy, unbelief, all these are seen in the uneducated multitude now-a-days, according to ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... see by this that I preserve still that sincere friendship which has united our hearts from our tenderest years:—recognize at least, my dear Sister, that you did me a sensible wrong when you suspected me of fickleness towards you, and believed false reports of my listening to tale-bearers; me, who love only you, and whom neither absence nor lying rumors could change in respect of you. At least don't again believe such things ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... thoughts, as usual, began to take a wider range, and I commenced to recall to my memory those whom I had worked with in this court and in that. I found I was the only one left who had practised in both, so sweeping were the changes effected by the slenderness of human life and the fickleness of fortune. Some of those who used to plead in my young days are dead, others are in exile; age and ill health have convinced others that their speaking days are over; some are enjoying of their own free will the pleasures of retirement, or are in command of ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... incapacity for any public employment. Vicissitudes of fortune are commonplaces of history. Many a man once seemingly pinnacled on the top of greatness has "shot from the zenith like a falling star," and become a proverb of the fickleness of fate. Some are torn down by the very traits of mind, passion, or temper, which have raised them: ambition which overleaps itself, rashness which hazards all on chances it cannot control, vast abilities not great enough to achieve ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... finished when the Ministers sent to tell him[243] that they would willingly receive him, but not as Ambassador from Sweden, because that kingdom was of a different persuasion. "I am surprised (he writes to his brother) at the fickleness of people, who invite the Lutherans to partake with them, and say they cannot receive me in quality of Ambassador from Sweden, on account of their differing in opinion from that kingdom." To go to sermon ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... enlargements and embellishments of Westminster Hall, Richard reopened it with "a most royal Christmas feast" of twenty-eight oxen and three hundred sheep, and game and fowls without number, feeding ten thousand guests for many days. Yet but a few years afterwards (such is the fickleness of fortune and the instability of human affairs) this same king, who had seen the "Merciless Parliament," who had robbed Hereford of his estates, who had been robed in cloth of gold and precious stones, and who had alienated his subjects by his own extravagance, was himself deposed and sentenced ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Chester—my fair father's great enemy—interceded with the Lord King in his behalf. We heard that my Lord of Chester spoke very plainly to him, and told him not only that he would find it easier to draw a crowd together than to get rid of it again, but also that his fickleness would scandalise the world." ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... on the starboard how, and warn other vessels off the course, the Medway on the port, and the Albany on the starboard quarter, to drop or pick up buoys, and make themselves generally useful. Despite the fickleness of the weather, and a 'foul flake,' or clogging of the line as it ran out of the tank, there was no interruption of the work. The 'old coffee mill,' as the sailors dubbed the paying-out gear, kept grinding away. 'I believe we shall do it this time, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... mistaking the object of this singular and characteristic procession. The tenants of the Lagunes, with the fickleness with which extreme ignorance acts on human passions, had suddenly experienced a violent revolution in their feelings towards their ancient comrade. He who, an hour before, had been derided as a vain and ridiculous pretender, and on whose head bitter imprecations had been ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... entirely too late for such unionising suggestions. They had gone out of fashion for sixty years to come. Reaction had set in. Public sentiment, frequently reproached for its fickleness, but in reality protective in its vacillation, demanded a change. Federalism had lost prestige. Its leaders were at enmity. Washington, ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... action implies a principle from which it proceeds. Fluctuating opinions and feelings produce fickleness of conduct; while settled convictions, stability of affections, and fixedness of purpose, give birth to persevering and methodical action. A system of beneficence must be founded ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark |
