"Mutable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... senses vanishes. And must one bleed to death when it becomes clearer and clearer that those are not eternal laws against which war is being waged? How can I, dwarf that I am, attack eternal laws? No, it is the frail, mutable customs of human society—? Are ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... hath deserved a perpetual laud and thank of all this noble royaume of England, and especially of them that shall read and understand it. For in the said book they may see what this transitory and mutable world is, and whereto every man living in it ought to intend. Then forasmuch as this said book so translated is rare and not spread ne known as it is digne and worthy, for the erudition and learning as such as be ignorant ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... was he very eager about the matter—if he failed here, he should succeed elsewhere. This real indifference gave him advantages with Dora, which a man of feeling would perhaps never have obtained, or never have kept. Her father, though he believed in the mutable nature of woman, yet could scarcely think that his daughter Dora was of this nature. He could scarcely conceive that her passion for Harry Ormond—that passion which had, but a short time before, certainly affected ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... thus received one minute a favour, at another a threat, now a pat on the face, and now a kick, now a kind word, now a cruel one, reflected how mutable court fortune is, and would fain have been without the acquaintance of the King. But knowing that to reply to great men is a folly, and like plucking a lion by the beard, he withdrew, cursing his fate, which had led him to the court only to curtail the ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... on an annual vote, was obviously uncertain; and it became necessary to declare the terms on which it was enjoyed. The minister of the day notified to the officers of the Anglican and Scotch churches that incomes dependent on variable resources and mutable opinions were liable to casualties. He therefore warned them that, beyond the fair influence of the crown and the equitable claims of existing incumbents, no guarantee could be given.[223] During a financial crisis these views were reiterated by one governor, who reminded the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... of man's excelling dignity in the inexhaustible depth of his nature and in his noble discontent with every finite and mutable thing. The soul of man is "too big for earthly designs and interests." There is forever a restless appetite within man for some infinite Good without which he can never be satisfied. Everything which he attains or achieves ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... peculiarly mutable temperament he was not remiss in his duties toward Lorelei during the period that led up to the birth of their child. Utterly careless and improvident in his own affairs, he was naturally considerate of others and possessed a surprising depth of sympathy. Hence ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... and we cannot comfort a sister if she cannot divine the thought; but to brood over these inevitable changes is as idle as it is to lament that we were born into this mutable world. After all, it is because of the losses, the sadnesses, that the world is so infinitely sweet to us. The thought is in Cory's ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... whilst we shall always be liable to these fluctuations of feeling, it is possible for us to have, deep down below these, a central core of our personality, in which unchanging continuity may abide. The depths of the ocean know nothing of the tides on the surface that are due to the mutable moon. We can have in our inmost hearts steadfastness, immovableness, even though the surface may be ruffled. Make your spirits like one of those great cathedrals whose thick walls keep out the noises of the world, and in whose still equability ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... advance had shrunk in his recollection to the dimensions of "vague doubts." The letter to Zacharias shows I think some forgetting of the past where the author says, "But I did not become convinced that species were mutable until, I think, two or three years had elapsed." It is impossible to reconcile this with the contents of the evolutionary Note Book of 1837. I have no doubt that in his retrospect he felt that he had not been "convinced that species were mutable" ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... detect the manifest effects of any disturbance, each particle of existing matter must be a register of all that has happened. * * * The air itself is one vast library on whose pages are forever written all that man has ever said or whispered. There in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with, the earliest as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand forever recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united movements of each particle the ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... fire and fickleness, a child Most mutable in wishes, but in mind A wit as various,—gay, grave, sage, or wild, - Historian, bard, philosopher combined: He multiplied himself among mankind, The Proteus of their talents: But his own Breathed most in ridicule,—which, as the wind, Blew ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... rolling mists; I have but copied the names that appear upon the pointers, the names of definite and famous cities far distant, and now perhaps basking in sunshine; but Christina remained all these hours, as it were, at the foot of the post itself, not moving, and enveloped in mutable and blinding wreaths ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... arras, they descry Fables with truth, fancy with history. So that thou hast, in this thy curious mould, Cast that commended mixture wished of old, Which shall these contemplations render far Less mutable, and lasting as their star; And while there is a people, or a sun, Endymion's story with ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... great prince were taken prisoner upon the field, and in the hand of a Christian king, such as are accustomed, in such cases, for the consideration of their former estate and mutable chance of war, to show much humanity to them, and treat them in very favourable wise—for these infidel emperors handle oftentimes the princes that they take more villainously than they do the poorest men, as the great Tamberlane kept the great Turk, when he had taken him, to tread on ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... have given me youth, and I accept it," he said aloud, perhaps addressing that mutable goddess who presides over all follies. "Regret it in my old age? Not I! I shall have lived for one short month. Youth was given to us to enjoy, and I propose to press the grape to the final drop. And when I grow old this adventure ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... to be in this state of unstable equilibrium are called mutable. They may be either latent or active, being in the former case derived from old active ones or produced as new ones (by the process, designated premutation). They may be inherited in this mutable condition during a long series of generations. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... one day, and one house, different things to be fit for different members, and a thing formerly lawful, after a certain time not so; in one corner permitted or commanded, but in another rightly forbidden and punished. Is justice therefore various or mutable? No, but the times, over which it presides, flow not evenly, because they are times. But men whose days are few upon the earth, for that by their senses they cannot harmonise the causes of things in former ages and other ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... round the hearts of those that love, These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs Uniting their close union; the woven leaves Make net-work of the dark blue light of day, And the night's noontide clearness, mutable As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns Beneath these canopies extend their swells, Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... relation or friend, that I had lost her. A mother's love for the child of her body differs essentially from all other affections, and burns with so clear and steady a flame that it appears like the one unchangeable thing in this earthly mutable life, so that when she is no longer present it is still a light to our steps ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... mostly come through French and change the suffix into -ble. Disyllables lengthen the penultima, as 'able', 'stable', 'noble', while 'mobile', as in French, lengthens its latter vowel. Trisyllables shorten and stress the antepenultima, as 'placable', 'equable', but of course u remains long, as in 'mutable'. Longer words throw the stress further back, except mere negatives, like 'impl['a]cable', and words with heavy consonants such as 'delectable'. Examples are 'miserable', 'admirable', 'intolerable', 'despicable'. The Poet Laureate holds that in these words Milton kept the long ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... back to the township before the moon went down. He was very heavy with his own reflections. How magnificent! It had all surpassed his most extravagant imaginings—in audacity, in expedition, in simple mastery of the mutable many by the dominant one. He forgave Stingaree his gibes and insults; he could have forgiven a horse-whipping from that king of men. Stingaree had been his imaginary god before; he was a realized ideal from this night forth, and the ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung |
