"Wilful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... some wilful folk, lad," was Mr. Sutherland's remark, one evening after I was able to leave my room. "Ye hae risen frae y'r bed like the crocus frae snaw. An' Frances were hangin' aboot y'r pillow, lad, I'm nae sure y'd be up sae dapper ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... all right," observed David in a weak voice, but he spoke with his old cheeriness. "Wilful man, and wilful woman too, must have their way, and I have given in like ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... dashed all Paul's rising hopes, "that I hope you are returning this term with the resolve to do better things. You have caused your excellent father much pain in the past. You little know the grief a wilful boy can ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... change in the law, transportation only; unless, indeed, loss of human life occur in consequence of the felonious act; in which case, the English law construes the offence to be wilful murder, although the incendiary may not have intended the death or injury of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... of the lower classes in Cho-sen. The Coreans in general, and the women in particular, are at times extremely superstitious, which partly accounts for the violent scene in question, which arose out of a mere nothing, and nearly resulted in a most serious case of wilful infanticide. This is ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... days. I know that, Mr. George. He's been good to you; and you've your duty to do by him now, Mr. George; and you'll do it." So said Mr. Pritchett, having thoroughly argued the matter in his own mind, and resolved, that as Mr. George was a wilful young horse, who would not be driven in one kind of bridle, another must be tried ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... Till with her honey dew of inner lip she plies me: I brought the chess board and my liefest lover plays me * With white and black,[FN197] but black cum white ne'er satisfies me: 'Twas as if King for Castle I were fain to place me * Till wilful loss of game atwixt two queens surprise me: And if I seek to read intent in eyes that eye me * Oh man! that glance askance with hint of wish ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... hour at Mellor he could snatch from a conflict in which his party, his grandfather, and his own personal fortunes were all deeply interested. In vain—with a tardy instinct that it was to Mr. Boyce's dislike of himself, and to the wilful fancy for Wharton's society which this dislike had promoted, that Wharton's long stay at Mellor was largely owing—did Aldous subdue himself to propitiations and amenities wholly foreign to a strong character long accustomed to rule without ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a spinster) played a very considerable part; and as George had read his grandfather's manuscript many times over, he had learned to know his kinswoman long before he saw her,—to know, at least, the lady, young, beautiful, and wilful, of half a century since, with whom he now became acquainted in the decline of her days. When cheeks are faded and eyes are dim, is it sad or pleasant, I wonder, for the woman who is a beauty no more, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... give as favourable a view of the parental relations. They are undeniably the weak point of family life in the colonies. During childhood a certain obedience is of course enforced; but public feeling is strong in favour of the naughty boy and wilful girl, looking as it does upon these qualities as prophetic of future enterprise. So many of our best colonists, it must be remembered, were eminently wild in their younger days, that it is no wonder they think 'there is something' in the ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... of Botticelli and Rembrandt there is a close similarity. In temperament as well as in experience they seem to parallel each other. In boyhood Botticelli and Rembrandt were dull, perverse, wilful. Both were given up by teachers and parents as hopelessly handicapped by stupidity. Botticelli's father, seeing that the boy made no progress at school, apprenticed him to a metalworker. The lad showed the esteem in which he held his parent by dropping the family ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... "A wilful man must have his way," returned Chowles, hurrying up the main staircase. "It is not my fault if any ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... strange, and yet 'tis like the wilful Helen. Yet hath she left her wedding gift in my keeping. O a rare gift, a worthy gift and most acceptable. Strip me off his armour—yet no, as he came, so shall he bide until my lord Duke be come. Bring now shackles, strong and heavy, bring fetters and rivets, ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... about the horses having been worth enough to constitute a felony even if Johnson had unlawfully taken them. Other lawyers said that at the worst it was a civil offense, or trover, or trespass, or wilful negligence, or embezzlement, or conversion, but that the remedy was by civil process. One lawyer said it was an outrage, and Charlie Bramel said that if Johnson would put up $50 he would agree to jerk him out of the jug on a writ of ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... hurried Zadig to the Town-Goal; but they took care in the first Place to stop the Bleeding of his Wounds, and afterwards examin'd the suppos'd Delinquents apart, in order to discover, if possible, the real Truth. They acquitted Zadig of the Charge of wilful and premeditated Murder; but as he had taken a Subject's Life away, tho' in his own Defence, he was sentenc'd to be a Slave, as the Law directed. His two Beasts were sold in open Market, for the Service of the Hamlet; ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... Holy Father speaks ex cathedra, and defines any doctrine concerning Faith or Morals, we are bound to receive his teaching with the assent of divine faith: and cannot refuse obedience, without being guilty of heresy. By one such wilful act of disobedience we cease to be members of the Church of God, and must be classed with heathens and publicans: "Who will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican" ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... security for their persons which the laws of hospitality require, and which the British nation will surely not refuse, remains to be settled. In the mean time, there is one of these cases, wherein so wilful and so flagrant a violation has been committed by a British officer, on the person of one of our citizens, as requires that it be laid before his government, in friendly and firm reliance of satisfaction for the injury, and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... manifestly dictated by personal spite and jealousy, and which is expressed with the intention of doing mischief and giving pain to the person of whom the judgment is expressed. You will occasionally find such judgments supported by wilful misrepresentation, and even by pure invention. In such a case as this, the essential thing is not the unfavorable opinion; it is the malice which leads to its entertainment and expression. And the conduct ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... knew that nobody in the world had a legal right to the child until a guardian should be appointed. A plain and simple path was open before him: it was his only path. James Parsons had proved wilful and wrong-headed; there was nothing now but to take out letters as guardian of the boy. Then James would ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... perceived my queasiness, and advised me to seek my berth and lie down; and on my replying with haggard defiance, took my arm gently, as if I had been a wilful child, and led me below. I passed beyond one of the mahogany doors leading from the main cabin; and in that seclusion I ask you to leave me face to face with the next forty-eight hours. It ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flowed over the wrinkled cheeks were tears of gladness rather than of sorrow. It could scarcely at that time come as news to her that her son was dead, but it did come as a gladsome surprise that her wilful Willie had not only found the Saviour himself—or, rather, been found of Him—but that he had spent his latter days in striving to bring others to that ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... crimes against individuals, which were punished with the death penalty. Wilful murder, poisoning, and parricide were capitally punished. Adultery was punished by banishment, besides a forfeiture of considerable property; Constantine made it a capital offence. Rape was punished with death and confiscation of goods, as in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... into thought. Youths like Mahommed were apt to be wilful. How was he to be controlled? One expedient after another was swiftly considered and as swiftly rejected. At last the right one! Like his ancestors from Ertoghrul down, the young Turk was a believer in the stars. Not unlikely he was then in the Castle by permission of his astrologer. Indeed, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... experimenters awakened some doubts; Cromwell suggests that the bishops make a "perfect correction";[161] the patent granted him for the printing of the Bible advocates one translation since "the frailty of men is such that the diversity thereof may breed and bring forth manyfold inconveniences as when wilful and heady folks shall confer upon the diversity of the said translations";[162] the translators of the version of 1611 have to "answer a third cavil ... against us, for altering and amending our translations so oft";[163] but the conception of progress ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... He dances in and out of the gates of heaven: its floor is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields of ether. He chases the rolling world. He gets between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the lap of patient Nature and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred wilful fashions, to see how she will ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... than the preacher; poor servants of sacred Spring. A woman in a close-fitting green cloth dress passes me to meet a young man; a rich fur hangs from her shoulders; and they go towards Park Lane, towards the wilful little houses with low balconies and pendent flower-baskets swinging in the areas. Circumspect little gardens! There is one, Greek as an eighteenth-century engraving, and the woman in the close-fitting green cloth dress, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... out our hearts in thankful acknowledgment. From the life and the death of this our dear sister we should learn a lesson of patience with our fellow-creatures in their inborn peculiarities, of charity in judging what seem to us wilful faults of character, of hope and trust, that, by sickness or affliction, or such inevitable discipline as life must always bring with it, if by no gentler means, the soul which had been left by Nature to wander into the path of error and of suffering might be reclaimed and restored ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Rimsky composed in the course of a single month, complained that the latter "worshiped technique" and that his work was "Full of contrapuntal tricks and all the signs of a sterile pedantry." It was not that Rimsky was pedantic from choice, out of a wilful perversity. His obsession with intellectual formulas was after all the result of a fear of opening the dark sluices through which surge ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... for worlds. Neville only said the other day how much he disliked the Grants, and how he hoped Edna kept them at a distance. I think he has heard something to Captain Grant's disadvantage; but you know how wilful she is; you might have carried your point with a little tact and finesse, but you are always ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... with much virulence and malice. If what they call criticism had been founded on truth, the author would have had nothing to say. The book contains plenty of blemishes, some of them, by-the-bye, wilful ones, as the writer will presently show; not one of these, however, has been detected and pointed out; but the best passages in the book, indeed whatever was calculated to make the book valuable, have been assailed with abuse and misrepresentation. The duty of the true critic is to play the part ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... sympathise with you; but in committing your way to God in prayer, you do the best that we could recommend. It is best to avoid any exercise of authority over your sister, who is so wild and wilful; but should she do anything very wrong, you will have to lay the case before your father, painful and ungracious as the duty may be. You are right in regarding example as better ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... 'Eternal Fire,' or 'Eternal Punishment,' it seems to me, may mean simply, that long continued suffering, both negative and positive, which wilful imperfection brings. It does not seem to me that the time can ever come when the Everlasting Father will abandon His child that He has created. No; it is infinitely less likely that He would do this than an earthly parent. Christ has said ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... went on solemnly, "and I believe this to be one, where death has been pronounced to have been caused by wilful administration of a vegetable alkaloid, which toxicologists would now put down as ptomaine-poisoning cases. Innocent people have possibly already suffered and may in the future. But medical experts—" he laid especial stress on the word—"are much more alive to the danger ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... head, wetting the short hair as it was blown about by the wind, drenching her thin little cloak and old black silk frock. A very pitiful sight as she sat there, a desolate, homeless child, on this dark, wet autumn night, deaf in her excess of childish rage to Horace's words, shaking him off with wilful, passionate gestures whenever he touched her—a very perplexing sight to the young man, who stood and watched her, uncertain what to ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... crimes and misdemeanours, crimes that would have sunk an unregenerated person to perdition; but as I knew it to be only a temporary falling off, a specimen of that liberty by which the chosen and elected ones are made free, I closed my eyes on the wilful debasement of our principles, knowing that the transgressions could never be accounted to your charge, and that in good time you would come to your senses, and throw the whole weight of your crimes on the shoulders that had voluntarily stooped ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... a London merchant was committed to the Lollards' Tower for refusing to submit to an unjust exaction of mortuary;[99] and a few days after was found dead in his cell. An inquest was held upon the body, when a verdict of wilful murder was returned against the chancellor of the Bishop of London; and so intense was the feeling of the city, that the bishop applied to Wolsey for a special jury to be chosen on the trial. "For ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... mother, who at the first glance saw that it was her old, happy Paul who had come back to them, and that all the shadow which had come between them had been cleared away, felt happier than she had for many a long day. For one wilful mischievous boy can not only make himself thoroughly unhappy, but everyone about ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... spare the Law Courts. Soldiers were acquitted, even on fully proved indictments for wilful murder, until at last the judges and magistrates had to announce that what was called the Unwritten Law, which meant simply that a soldier could do what he liked with impunity in civil life, was not the law of the land, and that a Victoria Cross did not carry with it a ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... be given consideration in diagnosis is the fact that related history of the case is not always dependable, because of lack of accurate observation or wilful deceit on the part of the owner or attendant. The successful veterinarian soon acquires the faculty of obtaining information in a manner best adapted to his client,—either by direct interrogation or ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... precisely what she sought to prevent. Her presence irritated him; nevertheless, she knew that his safety lay in her remaining. Sam Kirby sober was in many ways the best of fathers; he was generous, he was gentle, he was considerate. Sam Kirby drunk was another man entirely—a thoughtless, wilful, cruel man, subject to vagaries of temper that were as mysterious to the girl who knew him so well as they were dangerous to friend and foe alike. He was drunk now, or in that peculiar condition that passed with him for drunkenness. Intoxication in his case was less a condition of body than ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... he amended. "My wife cannot bear the sound of his name when she is weak from fasting, so we call him 'IT' at this time of the year. He carried off our eldest daughter last summer. She was proud and wilful, and would not stay by her mother's side.... ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... so hard, so repellent, to believe a lover guilty even of a trivial error, we may readily suppose that Lucy never for a moment admitted the supposition that Clifford had been really guilty of gross error or wilful crime. True that expressions in his letter were more than suspicious; but there is always a charm in the candour of self-condemnation. As it is difficult to believe the excellence of those who praise ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hands of man, a work which has withstood so many wars in what we called "savage times," before any claims were made for "Kultur," should have been destroyed in our days. Men have come and men have gone (apologies to Tennyson)—it is the law of living. But the wilful, unnecessary destruction of the great works of man, the testimony which one age has left as a heritage to all time—for that loss neither Man nor Time has any consolation. It is a theft from future ages, ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... smoke and fire, Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire,— The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. All earthly powers confess your sovereign art But that one rebel,—woman's wilful heart. All foes you master, but a woman's wit Lets daylight through you ere you know you 're hit. So, just to picture what her art can do, Hear an old story, made ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they bid you, always treat them lovingly, and take care of them when they are sick and grown old. I never yet knew a boy who trampled on the wishes of his parents who turned out well. God never blesses a wilful boy. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... branch, or the fruits of this wilful murder. Indeed, sins carry in them not only a curse with respect to eternity, but are also the cause of all the miseries of this life. "God turneth—a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... (shonka), "a, dog," Ouasi (wahsee), "a pine-tree," Chinnen (shinnan), "a robe," or "garment," and other words, are given correctly, with their interpretations. The word Louis, affirmed by Hennepin to mean "the sun," seems at first sight a wilful inaccuracy, as this is not the word used in general by the Sioux. The Yankton band of this people, however, call the sun oouee, which, it is evident, represents the French pronunciation of Louis, omitting the ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... words were a fond husband's words: the tone was that of a master who took on himself his prerogative. Never had Angus spoken so before, and the wilful ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... he improved the opportunity to satisfy himself that the charge committed to him by the dying father was well cared for. On his arrival he was not pleased with the relations subsisting between Fanny Jane and her aunt. Mrs. Grant declared that the child was stubborn, wilful, and disobedient, needing frequent and severe punishment. On the other hand, Fanny said that her aunt abused her; worked her "almost to death;" did not give her good things to eat, and whipped her when she "did not ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... preserve them in it are very inadequate to the purpose. If criminality could be engraved on a graduated scale, their deaths ought in general to be written down at some intermediate point between accidental homicide and wilful murder. The persecution of this unfortunate race may be said to commence before they are born; and, though the strength of a nation depends much on its population, less care is taken to encourage it, than to produce mushrooms, or to preserve hares ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... Nature's children are wilful and selfish; and in their struggle for existence they live, if independent of their parents, only so long as they can take care of themselves. Among adult animals, however, selfishness seems to become inoperative in ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... these people related, they believed, cannot be known; for there are no bounds to the credulity of ignorance and folly. In the girl's relation, however, there are some things in which she could not be deceived; and therefore must have been guilty of wilful falsehood. Her father might perhaps give her a charge to feed a crocodile, in consequence of his believing that it was his sudara; but its coming to her out of the river when she called it by the name of white king, and taking the food she had brought it, must have been a fable of her own ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... my son, that the minister of God can forgive a sin before it is committed? and that sin wilful murder?" ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... righteously; but you think no more of this than if you were a bird, that may spread its wings and fly whither it will in search of food to its liking. And yet you have scorned the teaching of the Church, my daughter. As if you, a wilful wanderer, following your own blind choice, were not below the humblest Florentine woman who stretches forth her hands with her own people, and craves a blessing for them; and feels a close sisterhood with the neighbour who kneels beside her and is not of her own blood; and thinks of the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... following brilliant answer to the question, "What was the character of Queen Mary?'' must have suffered herself from the troubles supposed to be connected with the possession of a stepmother: "She was wilful as a girl and cruel as a woman, but'' (adds the pupil) "what can you expect from any one who ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... thy ship, and depart, ere I can reach my home. Well I know that my father will come down, and bid thee return with him to his house; nor, indeed, if he find thee here, will he go back without thee, so wilful is he ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... which are at present closed to him. To accept the artistic conscience, the artistic aim, as the highest ideal of which the spirit is capable, is to be a Pharisee in art, to be self-sufficient, arrogant, limited. It is a kind of spiritual pride, a wilful deafness to more remote voices; and it is thus of all sins, the one which the artist, who lives the life of perception, whose mind must, above all things, be open and transparent, should be loth to commit. ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... strong a word for the resentful spite, like the jealous rage of a spoiled child, which gleamed now and then in her eyes. I couldn't think of her as wicked any more than I could think of a bad child as wicked. She was merely wilful and undisciplined and—I hardly know how to convey what ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... And the slopes of Calvary, and Gethsemane hunched in the darkness, and the Christ kneeling in a faint starry light; he made me see Him kneeling there, His Spirit, like a great mother's loving heart, standing between an angry Father and the world, a wilful child——" ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... boy," I said at length, "from a long and profound experience of that wilful thing called human nature, allow me to tell you that every indication you have mentioned points to the fact that you have preached not only an edifying and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... the vast multitude contained in one of these flocks,—computed by Wilson to consist of more than twenty-two hundred millions,—yet to Booth the destruction seemed wasteful, wanton, and from his point of view was a wilful and barbarous murder. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... was a wilful thing, and though her name was Ruth, she objected to following the example of her ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... to think of any intellectual or spiritual habit more likely to give a man a bi-sexual or at least a cross-fertilising mind, than the habit of masterful, wilful, elemental, desultory reading. The amount of desultory reading a mind can do, and do triumphantly, may be said to be perhaps the supreme test of the actual energy of the mind, of the vital heat in it, of its ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... good and evil, of Mohammedanism are to be found in this, its central idea concerning God. It has taught submission, obedience, patience; but it has fostered a wilful individualism. It has made social life lower. Its governments are not governments. Its virtues are stoical. It makes life barren and empty. It encourages a savage pride and cruelty. It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion the submission to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... the contrary, he had gone down before me,' said Cyril; 'suppose I had been the death of your Swimming Rei, I should have been tried for the wilful murder of a prince of Little Egypt, the son of a Romany duke. Why, Helen of Troy was not half so ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... never been guilty of wilful meanness or cruelty in his life; though, upon occasion, he could display a certain rough brutality. His normal attitude of mind was one of careless, kindly good-humour. From Finn's point of view, he was an extremely ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... from the priesthood by St. John the Evangelist. No good end can, on any account, excuse the least lie; and to advance that pious frauds, as some improperly call them, can ever be lawfully used, is no better than blasphemy. All wilful lying is essentially a sin, as Catholic divines unanimously teach, with St. Austin, against the Prisciallianists. It is contrary and most hateful to the God of truth, and a heinous affront and injury offered to our neighbor: it destroys the very end and use of speech, and the sacred bond of ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... order signed by the King of England, superseded Thomas Kirke at Quebec on July 13,1632. On landing with the priests who were sent out on board De Caen's vessels, it was found that much injury had been done in the place. Fire, violence, and wilful neglect had been instrumental in destroying nearly all the buildings, including those of the Jesuits and Recollets. It was also found that the old friends of the French—the Montagnais and other Indians—had been much corrupted by the traders with whom they had held intercourse during the three ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... translation of Schiller's "Mary Stuart", a character which may be supposed especially to interest Americans and English, Rachel is not less excellent. The sad grace, the tender resignation, the poetic enthusiasm, the petulant caprice, the wilful, lovely womanliness of the lovely queen, are made tragically real by her representation. Perhaps it is not the Mary of Mignet nor of history. But Mary Queen of Scots is one of the characters which the imagination has chosen to take from history and decorate with immortal grace. It cares less for ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... "They call us hi Merionethshire the wilful Wynnes. You will find me a good friend if you don't want the things I want, I am like most younger brothers, inclined to want things. I thank you all for a pleasant hour. It is like home, or better." With ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... help me, they spake not a word; But, like dumb statues or breathing stones, Star'd each on other, and look'd deadly pale. Which when I saw, I reprehended them; And ask'd the mayor what meant this wilful silence: His answer was—the people were not us'd To be spoke to but by the recorder. Then he was urg'd to tell my tale again,— "Thus saith the duke, thus hath the duke inferr'd;" But nothing spoke in warrant from himself. When he had done, some followers of mine ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... quitted him, not more shocked at his situation, than indignant at the wilful extravagance which had ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... friends emerged and speedily found themselves in a very large hall, which was nearly full of very large powdered footmen. In the distance there was the sound of united frivolities, a band of twenty guitars thrumming a wilful seguidilla. Roses bloomed on every side, and beyond the hall they beheld a vision of illuminated vistas, down which vague ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... attempt made in the following pages to familiarise the reading public with what was once a famous knowledge-book of the Middle Ages. But the reader, before he can enjoy it, must cast away the exploded theory of the invincible and wilful ignorance of the days when it was written; the people of that time were eagerly desirous for knowledge, and their teachers were mostly single-hearted and intelligent men, of a diligence and laboriousness almost past belief. The "Properties of Things" of Bartholomew ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... with a degree of surprise that seemed to be tempered with the most pleasing and unaffected urbanity, replied, without being in the least disconcerted, sir, you mistake me: but I am sure you are too much of a gentleman to mean any wilful affront. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... under the name of Hippocrates cannot all be ascribed to him. Many were doubtless written by his family, his descendants, or his pupils. Others are productions of the Alexandrian school, some of these being considered by critics as wilful forgeries, the high prices paid by the Ptolemies for books of reputation probably having acted as inducements to such fraud. The following works have generally been ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae
... said, consolingly, "mother's often threatened and never done it before, and Elsie's a wilful child, with a spirit and temper that must needs be broken. But what ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... vices, forgetful that there are also feminine vices. Woman is the spoilt child of the age. No one tells her of her faults. The World with its thousand voices flatters her. Sulks, bad temper, and pig-headed obstinacy are translated as 'pretty Fanny's wilful ways.' Cowardice, contemptible in man or woman, she is encouraged to cultivate as a charm. Incompetence to pack her own bag or find her own way across a square and round a corner is deemed an attraction. Abnormal ignorance and dense stupidity ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... half German, half Dutch; the other of a degraded nobleman, in whom is revived some ancient 'condottiere'. Gorka has been brave and mad, like entire Poland; his wife implacable and loyal, like all of England. Maitland continues to be positive, insensible, and wilful in the midst of it all, as all America. And poor Alba ended as did her father. I do not speak to you of Baron Hafner's daughter," and he raised his hat. Then, in an ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... leader. Watusk had the air of a wilful child called by his parent. He pished and swaggered, and made some remark to his men with the obsequious smile with which child—or man—asks for the support of his ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... constituted her husband's nearest approach to life have been labour in vain; that the "great mind" has been toiling, with feeble uncertain steps, in a path which has already been trodden into firmness and completeness; toiling in wilful and obdurate ignorance that other and abler natures have more than anticipated all he has been painfully and abortively labouring to accomplish. Again a cry bursts from the wounded heart, seemingly of anger against her informant, really ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... needful services unto them. Wherefore, as I was greatly troubled for what I already had done in that case, though it was through ignorance, so I plainly felt I could no longer continue therein without drawing upon myself the guilt of wilful disobedience, which I well knew would draw after ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... ago, an hour ago, We rested in the shade; And now, why should we seek to know What way the wilful waters flow? There is no ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... For her wilful self-sacrifice had suddenly paled and dwindled down before her eyes into a hideous mistake—a mistake which yet had its roots so firmly knit into the past that it was hopeless to think of pulling it up now. To abide by a mistake is sometimes ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... of that spirit as depended on the relation between her and Terry, was dead; she was more conscious than Terry of the ups and downs of the human nerves and heart and the ever-present possibility of change, and she went to work in a wilful attempt to get back her lover. Her next ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... took no notice of the wilful maiden, and began to speak of other things, hoping that the guest would forget his ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... until 7.30 p.m., when Inspector Winter again put in an appearance, to announce that the coroner's jury had brought in a verdict of "Wilful murder by some ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... delighted to maintain the coldness which had grown up between the mother and son, hastened to insinuate to Marie de Medicis that Louis had expressed his gratification at her refusal, and to assure her that should she suffer the Prince to extort her consent to such an act of wilful revolt against the royal command she would inevitably ruin ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... even would not commit deliberate murder, although the penalty was only a few months' imprisonment and detection certain, unless under peculiar temptation or provocation. It is a crime naturally abhorrent even to the thief, and the majority of those men capable of committing wilful murder would on the whole, I believe, prefer to be hanged out of their misery, than remain in prison all their life. If all hope of release could be utterly extinguished, very few of such men would chance perpetual imprisonment, ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... the Sodomites are an example of impenitent wilful sinners; and Lot's wife of imperseverant and relapsing righteous persons."—Library of Ang.-Cath. Theology, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... one of the corridors between the House and Senate chambers, supplied it with the best suffrage literature and put it in charge of a committee of women who worked faithfully to convert some of that wilful and reactionary group of politicians. It was a hopeless task. The first bill was introduced in the House by Mr. Wohlwender of Muscogee county and in the Senate by Senators Dobbs and Buchanan and referred ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... Mirabell. She is a most brilliant girl, who says she "loves to give pain, because cruelty is a proof of power; and when one parts with one's cruelty, one parts with one's power." Millamant is far gone in poetry, and her heart is not in her own keeping. Sir Wilful Witwould makes love to her, but she detests "the superannuated lubber."—W. Congreve, The Way of the ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... had been possible to predict, from the mere look with which he had risen to his feet, the kind of cross-examination in store for each witness called by the prosecution, so it was obvious now that his own witness had come forward from her own wilful perversity and in direct defiance of ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... already abused my patience beyond all bounds. He is wilful, ungrateful, idle, and stupid; and all the blame will fall on me, whom you have ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... my brother, Prince," she said calmly, "I suffer to pass by me, knowing well to what a depth of wilful blind ignorance you are fallen. I pity you—and—I despise you! You are indeed a plain man, as you say—nothing more and nothing less. You can take advantage of the hospitality of this house, and pretend friendship to the host, while you slander him behind his back, and insult his sister ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... chair in meditative ease, leaning her cheek against one hand, whose elbow the rail of the seat sustains; the other is outstretched upon her knee, nipping its forefinger upon the thumb thoughtfully, as though some firm, wilful purpose filled her brain, as it seems to set those luxurious features to a smile as if the whole woman 'would.' Upon her head is the coif, bearing in front the mystic uraeus, or twining basilisk ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Whereupon wilful Kitty set off, her dainty little head in the air, at a hand- gallop in the direction of the Bandstand; fully expecting, as she herself afterward told me, that I should follow her. What was the matter? Nothing indeed. Either that I was mad or drunk, or that Simla was haunted with devils. I reined ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... found also guilty of a wilful concealment of such facts, as they knew, if communicated, would have invalidated their own testimony. I was instrumental in detecting them on one of these occasions myself. When Mr. Dalzell was examined, he was not wholly unknown to me; my Liverpool muster-rolls ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... admired these verses and said, Now, take up thy lute and sing me a song setting out my case with three damsels who hold the reins of my heart and make rest depart; and they are thyself and that wilful one and another I will not name, who hath not her like.'[FN366] So she took the lute and playing a lively measure, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... for seven weeks! I accepted the challenge, but I, for that purpose, adopted quite a new method. No artist is more matter-of-fact or businesslike than myself: to Carroll I was not Hy. F., but someone else, as he was someone else. I was wilful and erratic, bordering on insanity. We therefore got ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... better in the future that even my dreams were filled with these desires.... Although I have been guilty of much levity and nonsensical conversation, and have also admitted thoughts to occupy my mind which should have been far distant from it, I do not consider myself as having committed any wilful offense but perhaps the reason I cannot see my own defects is because my heart ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... any prisoner, Parker's initial impulse was to examine the place in which he was confined. At first, escape was in his mind. The more he pondered on the lawless performance of the old timber baron and on the wilful destruction of the company's property, the more eager he was to get ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... my volumes, the world's current times and deeds, and their spirit, must be first profoundly estimated. Out of the hundred years just ending, (1776-1876,) with their genesis of inevitable wilful events, and new experiments and introductions, and many unprecedented things of war and peace, (to be realized better, perhaps only realized, at the remove of a century hence;) out of that stretch of time, and especially out of the immediately ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... spring, A flock of wild swans passed, voyaging north To their nest-places on Himala's breast. Calling in love-notes down their snowy line The bright birds flew, by fond love piloted; And Devadatta, cousin of the Prince, Pointed his bow, and loosed a wilful shaft Which found the wide wing of the foremost swan Broad-spread to glide upon the free blue road, So that it fell, the bitter arrow fixed, Bright scarlet blood-gouts staining the pure plumes. Which ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... duels where the blood has once cooled, there is no doubt but he who kills another is guilty of wilful murder; or even in case of a sudden quarrel, if the person killing appear by any circumstance to be master of his temper at the time he slew the other, then it will be murder. Not that the English Law allows nothing to the frailties of ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... It doesn't matter how he had discovered it; it was by animal magnetism; it was by some look in Kenrick's eyes; it was his light-heartedness; it was by the mingled fire and refinement of his face which spoke of a wilful and impetuous, yet also of a generous and noble nature. Already he felt a sense of ease and pleasure in the certainty that Kenrick—evidently no cipher among his schoolfellows—was inclined to like him, and to show him the ways of ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... light is stealing, Portentous, red with unrelenting ire, Inhuman deeds, and secrets dark revealing! Ye guilty, who may quench the kindled fire! Fall, city of the Czars, to rise Ennobled by self-sacrifice, Than tower and temple higher and more holy! The wilful king appointed o'er mankind To plague the lofty heart, and prove the lowly, Is fled!—Avenger, mount the chariot of the wind! Be thine, to guide the rapid scythe, To blind with snow the frozen sun, Against th' invader ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Difficulty,' the 'Slough of Despond,' and 'Vanity Fair,' do not afford any ground for supposing that Bunyan had ever heard of this book; or that even if he had read it, he should have taken one hint from it. Here the incidents are, 1st that the wilful Pilgrim stops in a village crowd to see some juggler's tricks at a fair, and certain vermin in consequence shift their quarters from some of the rabble close to her, to her person. 2nd. That by following a cow's track instead of keeping the high ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... threatened calamity looming before her, the old Indian mother's hurt heart swelled with a certain pride in his wilful actions. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love.' The daughter of beauty wiped her pitying tears with her white veil, And said: 'Alas! I knew not this, and therefore did I weep. That God would love a worm I knew, and punish the evil foot That wilful bruised its helpless form; but that He cherished it With milk and oil, I never knew, and therefore did I weep; And I complained in the mild air, because I fade away, And lay me down in thy cold bed, and ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum |
