"Caprice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Indians as scouts and skirmishers was of the last importance to an army so weak in the arts of woodcraft, and efforts were made to engage the services of the friendly Cherokees and Catawbas, many of whom came to the camp, where their caprice, insolence, and rapacity tried to the utmost the patience of the commanders. That of Sir John Sinclair had already been overcome by his dealings with the provincial authorities; and he wrote in good French, at the tail of ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... smile? Is it less sweet because it is withdrawn from me? Did I not adore her every grace? Does she bend less enchantingly, because she has turned from me to another? Is my love then in the power of fortune, or of her caprice? No, I will have it lasting as it is pure; and I will make a Goddess of her, and build a temple to her in my heart, and worship her on indestructible altars, and raise statues to her: and my homage shall be unblemished as her unrivalled symmetry of form; and ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... fear that Maria Theresa may prove less an empress than a woman. I fear that the persuasions of the handsome Francis of Lorraine may outweigh her own convictions of right. What if her husband's caresses, her confessor's counsel, or her own feminine caprice, should blind her to the welfare of her subjects and the interest of her empire? Oh, what a giant structure will fall to the earth, if, at this crisis, the empress should fail me! Think what a triumph it would be to dash aside my rivals ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... appealed in comradely fashion to Katherine and Rachel. Betty alone she utterly, though quite unostentatiously, ignored; and Betty, too much hurt to make any effort, stood aside and tried to solve the riddle of Eleanor's latest caprice. On the way up-stairs Eleanor spoke to her for the first time. She went up just ahead of her and at the top of the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... to the homely art of pottery, to introduce those high qualities into common things, to adorn and cultivate daily household life. In this he is profoundly characteristic of the Florence of that century, of that in it which lay below its superficial vanity and caprice, a certain old-world modesty and seriousness and simplicity. People had not yet begun to think that what was good art for churches was not so good, or less fitted, for their own houses. Luca's new work was in plain white earthenware at first, a mere rough imitation of the costly, laboriously ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... woof. Many of its most prominent standard-bearers are clad in the motley garb of theorists. Their flag may be seen wandering to and fro, hither and thither, up and down, swayed by every breath of popular caprice; so it move to the mere cry of "Progress!" its followers are content. To-day, in the hands of the skeptical philosopher, it assaults the heavens. Tomorrow it may: float over the mire of Mormonism, or depths still ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... independence more absolute, more complete, and more effective." Yet France is a republic with manhood suffrage and with an elective legislature. But its courts are not vested with any power to conserve any rights of the people against legislative caprice. ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... is their error, and not their crime. But with the governing part of the State it is far otherwise. They certainly may act ill by design, as well as by mistake. "Les revolutions qui arrivent dans les grands etats ne sont point un effect du hasard, ni du caprice des peuples. Rien ne revolte les grands d'un royaume comme un Gouvernoment foible et derange. Pour la populace, ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se souleve, mais par impatience de souffrir." These are the words of a great man, of ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... was the landfall advocated by Washington Irving and Humboldt, mainly on the ground that it was called San Salvador on the West India map in Blaeu's Dutch atlas of 1635. But this was done for no known reason but the caprice of the draughtsman. D'Anville copied from Blaeu in 1746, and so the name got into some later atlases. Cat Island does not meet a single one of the requirements of the case. Guanahani had a reef round it, and a large lagoon in the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... stated.[614] The Deity has limitless power, and therefore is the natural object of our instinctive fears. The character of the Deity is absolutely incomprehensible, and incomprehensibility in human affairs is identical with caprice and insanity.[615] The ends and the means of the Deity are alike beyond our knowledge; and the extremes both of wisdom and of folly are equally unaccountable. Now, we praise or blame human beings in order to affect their conduct towards us, to attract ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... depends upon the caprice of the Pope, or upon his good pleasure, to make such and such a doctrine the object of a dogmatic definition. He is tied up and limited to the divine revelation, and to the truths which that revelation contains. ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... woods, craggy rocks, falls of water, are all looked upon as improvements; and the stately avenues, the canals, and rectangular lawns of our ancestors, which afforded the beauty of contrast in ruder times are now exploded. This difference of taste is not merely the effect of caprice, nor entirely of refinement, but results from the change of circumstances. A man who should attempt to exhibit in Sumatra the modern or irregular style of laying out grounds would attract but little attention, as the unimproved scenes adjoining on every side would probably ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... finds nothing in his Diary to publish concerning visits to places. But he saw a number of distinguished persons, of whom he gives pleasant accounts, so singularly different in tone from the rough caricatures in which Carlyle vented his spleen and caprice, that one marvels how the two men could have talked ten minutes together, or would wonder, had not one been as imperturbable as the other was explosive. Horatio Greenough and Walter Savage Landor are ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... looking child! His short sturdy figure and round rosy face spoke of the perfection of hearty boyish life, but nothing more. But his breathless eagerness, the intense interest in his eyes—most of all the look in his face as he listened to a little caprice which Ulric played on his own violin as a sort of introduction to the lesson, soon made the ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... Peter's advice regarding her White Minorcas and respectfully promised to act upon it, and Cherry showed him a new side, an affectionate, little sisterly deference and confidence quite different from her old childish sulkiness and pretty caprice. ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... temptation, they had refused to adopt in the first hour—were this the true portrait of the case, would it be ourselves that erred, or Government?—ourselves in counting on steadiness, or Government in acting with caprice? Meantime, is this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... nothing was lost on him, and often the mocking shaft, so carelessly discharged, went straight to his heart. You can have no idea of the point to which he carried submissiveness. I had only to tell him to go and leave me alone, and the caprice, however wounding to him, would be obeyed without a murmur. His last breath was spent in blessing me and in repeating that a single morning alone with me was more precious to him than a lifetime spent with another woman, were she even the Marie ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... I resent it fiercely. Humble when I must be so; fierce when I've got the power. Is not this unmanly—childish—humbug? There is no principle here. Principle! I do believe I never had any principle in me worthy of the name. I have been drifting, up to this time, before the winds of caprice and selfish inclination. (A long pause here.) Well, it just comes to this, that whatever happens I must submit with a good grace—at least, as good grace as I can—and hope that an opportunity to escape may occur before long. I have made up my mind to do it—and ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... clearly taken by England. It is she who pre-eminently stimulates the voyage, and plants the colony, and establishes the commerce, and civilizes the people. And all this has been done in a manner so little due to popular caprice or national ambition, to the mere will of a sovereign, or the popular thirst of possession, that it invests the whole process with a sense of unequaled security. Resembling the work of nature in the simplicity of its growth, it will probably also resemble the work ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... "Boy and Dolphin" in the court of the Palazzo Vecchio, and to the "David" of this sculptor: but the first is spoiled by heaviness and angularity of drapery; the second, though fanciful and marked by fluttering movement, is but a caprice; the third outdoes the hardest work of Donatello by its realism. Verocchio's "David," a lad of some seventeen years, has the lean, veined arms of a stone-hewer or gold-beater. As a faithful portrait ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... false policy to check their energy by any forms of public opinion which bore hardly against the wanton expenditure of honestly got wealth. It would be hard if a man who has passed the greater part of his life at the desk or counter could not at last innocently gratify a caprice; and all the best and most sacred ends of almsgiving would be at once disappointed, if the idea of a moral claim took the place of affectionate gratitude in the mind ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... period there should be fetched from as far as the Pontus, certain sausages and certain salted fish that were, it appears, very good; and that there should be introduced into Italy from Greece the delicate art of fattening fowls. Even to drink Greek wines seemed for a long time at Rome the caprice of an almost crazy luxury. As late as 18 B.C., Augustus made a sumptuary law that forbade spending for banquets on work-days more than two hundred sesterces (ten dollars); allowed three hundred sesterces (fifteen dollars) for ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... him always in Nyssia's path. A chance had enabled him to behold her beauty, though walled up from all other eyes. Among many princes and satraps she had chosen to espouse Candaules, the very king he served; and through some strange caprice, which he could only regard as fateful, this king had just made him, Gyges, his confidant in regard to the mysterious creature whom none else had approached, and absolutely sought to complete the work of Boreas on the plain of Bactria! Was not the hand of the gods visible in all these circumstances? ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... themselves, their past history and their present character, the sacrifices offered to them, and the benefits aimed at in intercourse with them, all must grow up as man himself grows, from rudeness to refinement and from caprice to order. At its lowest, religion is perhaps an individual affair between the savage and his god, and has to do with material individual needs. At a higher stage (not always nor even commonly later in time) it is the affair of a family, of a tribe, or of a combination of ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... charity among civilized peoples. Under my coarse exterior my heart no doubt merely felt passing shocks of fear and disgust at the sight of punishments which I myself might have to endure any day at the caprice of my oppressors; especially as John, when he saw me turn pale at these frightful spectacles, had a habit of saying, in a ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... anything but an attractive look, and the handlers of them still less so, it was, therefore, to tell the truth, not without some lurking reluctance, or even shrinking, it may be, that Captain Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his host's invitation. The more so, since, with an untimely caprice of punctilio, rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don Benito, with Castilian bows, solemnly insisted upon his guest's preceding him up the ladder leading to the elevation; where, one on each side of the last step, sat for armorial supporters and sentries two of ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... grow out of endearing words and actions and companionship. But afterward, when I was restored to my human heritage, Mildred and I grew into each other's hearts, so that we were content to go hand-in-hand wherever caprice led us, although she could not understand my finger language, ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... interesting relations of domestic life, so many strong and honorable testimonies remain. The pains he took to win back the estranged feelings of his father, and the filial tenderness with which he repaid long years of parental caprice, show a heart that had, at least, set out by the right road, however, in after years, it may have missed the way. The enthusiastic love which his sister bore him, and retained unblighted by distance ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... she rested from her labours, saying, "Henceforward let the poor man have a haven of rest for ever; a rest from his work for one day in seven; a rest from his anxieties by a legal and a fixed relief." Being legal, it could not be open to disturbances of caprice in the giver; being fixed, it was not open to disturbances of miscalculation in the receiver. Now, first, when first Christianity was installed as a public organ of government, (and first owned a distinct ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... board these floating prisons to keep each man's crime a secret from his fellows, so that if he chose, and the caprice of his gaolers allowed him, he could lead a new life in his adopted home, without being taunted with his former misdeeds. But, like other excellent devices, the expedient was only a nominal one, and few out of the doomed hundred and eighty ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... desirous to see and hear Crassus, though they were sensible that he was the cause of all their mischief. But he wrapped his cloak around him, and hid himself, where he lay as an example, to ordinary minds, of the caprice of fortune, but to the wise, of inconsiderateness and ambition; who, not content to be superior to so many millions of men, being inferior to two, esteemed himself as the lowest of all. Then came Octavius, his lieutenant, and Cassius, to comfort him, but he being ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... have been effected during a century would be almost miraculous, did we not consider that they had been produced by the spirit and intelligence of the people, and were in no degree dependant upon the apathy or caprice of the ruling power. The first turnpike-road was established by an act of the 3rd Charles II. The mob pulled down the gates; and the new principle was supported at the point of the bayonet. But long after that period travelling was difficult and dangerous. In December, 1703, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... supposed that the relation is already, in some manner, attracted into the objects; it must be admitted that our intelligence does not apply its categories haphazard or from the caprice of the moment; and it must be admitted that it is led to apply them because it has perceived in the objects themselves a sign and a reason which are an invitation to this application, and its justification. On this hypothesis, therefore, contiguity and resemblance ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... Jewish Rabbis. But subject to this verbal veneration, the Rishis, or learned divines, used the utmost freedom in regard to the forced and fanciful interpretations extorted from the sacred text, a freedom which again reminds us of the paradoxical caprice shown by some schools of Jewish Rabbis in their treatment of the volume they professed to regard with awe. The various finite gods, such as Vishnu, Indra, Krishna, Marut, or Varuna, were not the ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... as we see at our theatres, a multitude represented by a few players, who alone speak in the name of an absent or inattentive crowd: they alone are in action whilst all are stationary; they regulate everything by their own caprice; they change the laws, and tyrannize at will over the manners of the country; and then men wonder to see into how small a number of weak and worthless hands a ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... wine glass; an instant's perplexity, a slackening of the tension, and those flaccid intellects would relax into native inertia. Incapable of self-amusement, depending utterly upon superior minds for a respite from ennui, their caprice controlled his fate; and he ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... of a new capital by Constantine was not an act of personal caprice or individual judgment. It was the result of causes long in operation, and had been foreshadowed, forty years before, in the policy of Diocletian. After the senate and people of Rome had ceased to be the sovereigns of the Roman world, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... of him who wishes to oppress him; and by the servitude and debasement of all his faculties, it degrades and diminishes his means of existence, so far as the seeing his life depend on the will and caprice of another man. ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... now be a thing of the past? The knight fumed a good deal as he thought of neglected opportunities. But there was just the chance that Sanghurst might be faithful to his old love, whilst surely Joan would have forgotten her girlish caprice, and cease to attempt a foolish resistance to her father's will. Had he been as much in earnest then as he now was, the marriage would long ago have been consummated. But in old days he had not felt ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... landscape, and immensely serviceable to the agriculturist. But one cares for other things as well. And I had always fancied that the crowning virtue of this bit of water (since you mention it) was its amenability to the caprice of man." ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... or steel, the gracefulness of a plough-share is more indestructible than the metal, yet pliant (in the limits of its type) as a line of English blank verse. It changes for different soils: it is widened out or narrowed; it is deep-grooved or shallow; not because of caprice at the foundry or to satisfy an artistic fad, but to meet the technical demands of the expert ploughman. The most familiar example of beauty indicating subtle technique is supplied by the admired shape of boats, which, however, is so variable ...
— Progress and History • Various
... also in characters of caprice and affectation, from the high-bred Lady Fanciful to the vulgar Mrs. Heidelberg; in country girls, romps, hoydens and dowdies, superannuated beauties, viragos and humourists; she had an inimitable talent in ridiculing the extravagant action and impertinent consequence ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... thought we could be frank, Lance. After all, our habit is to take Bernard's cleverness for granted. He has a bitter humor and the thing may only be an old man's caprice." ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... appears as a ruling power from without, which can be disobeyed as well as obeyed. We ourselves live in the period of "completed sinfulness," of absolute license and indifference to all truth, of unlimited caprice and selfishness. But however far removed from the moral ideal this age appears, in which the individual, freed from all restraints, heeds naught except his egoistic desire, and in his care for his own welfare forgets to labor for the universal, yet this ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... and at last she had given both her hands to Mrs. Vivian, and sat looking at her with a singular mixture of earnestness and jocosity. It was hard to know whether Blanche were expressing a real desire or a momentary caprice, and whether this abrupt little petition were to be taken seriously, or treated merely as a dramatic pose in a series of more or less effective attitudes. Her smile had become almost a grimace, she was flushed, she showed her pretty teeth; ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... then, when Miss Blake was just beginning to wonder what new caprice her guest had fallen victim to, she broke ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... the calculation of pleasure; neither is he arguing that pleasure is the chief good, but that we should have a principle of choice. He did not intend to oppose 'the useful' to some higher conception, such as the Platonic ideal, but to chance and caprice. The Platonic Socrates pursues the same vein of thought in the Protagoras, where he argues against the so-called sophist that pleasure and pain are the final standards and motives of good and evil, and that the salvation of human life depends upon a right ...
— Philebus • Plato
... who has long found the benefit of falsehoods at his utmost need, will have formed too profound a reverence for this powerful resource in a moment of perplexity ever to throw away a falsehood, or to squander upon a caprice of the moment that lie which, being seasonably employed, might have saved him from confusion. The artist in lying is not the man to lie gratuitously. From the first, therefore, satisfied ourselves that there was a lurking motive—the key to this falsification ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... had been standing during the whole proceedings), returned thanks. The processions reformed, the carriages rolled slowly through the crowd, and its members screeched and shouted after them as their feelings or caprice dictated. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... William Wirt, "will do neither. The man who resolves, but suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend—who fluctuates from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weather-cock to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows,—can never accomplish anything great or useful. Instead of being progressive in anything, he will be at best stationary, and, more probably, retrograde ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale that Grigneure has lost, the appetite which we all of us so cruelly abused last night at the Ambassador's gala. On my honor, my dear fellow, everybody was of a caprice prestigieux and a comfortable mirobolant. Fancy, for a banquet-hall, a royal orangery hung with white damask; the boxes of the shrubs transformed into so many sideboards; lights gleaming through the foliage; and, for guests, the loveliest women and most brilliant cavaliers of Paris. Orleans and ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gave this church a blow was statistics. Away went special providence. We found by taking statistics that we could tell the average length of human life; that this human life did not depend upon infinite caprice; that it depended upon conditions, circumstances, laws and facts, and that those conditions, circumstances, and facts were ever active. And now you will see the man who depends entirely upon special providence ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... until they gave him back some books which they had brought him from other prisoners, but had then taken from him for some caprice, that he says he felt his heart warm towards them. They pretended that the books had been lost, but declared that they were glad they had been found, for they knew that he was grieved at the loss of them. "Though they had been exceedingly kind ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... need of that! This duteous lady yields To your caprice as she has ever done: She stands a monument ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... an equal right to value ourselves on that noblest of empires, the empire we gained over the minds of our countrymen. Force or caprice may give power, but nothing can give a lasting authority except wisdom and virtue. By these we obtained, by these we preserved, in our respective countries, a dominion unstained by usurpation or blood—a dominion conferred on us by the public esteem and the public ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... Sometimes he smiled to himself, and once or twice he laughed a little, but for the most part his pleasant, impassive face reflected no emotion and he sat with his useless eyes tranquilly fixed on an unseen distance. It was a fantastic caprice of the man to mock his sightlessness by a parade of light, and under the soft brilliance of a dozen electric brackets the room was as bright as day. At length he stood up and ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... privileges. They have yet to learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy and relative: it is great by their allowance; its proudest gates will fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. For the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. For the advantages which fashion values are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets namely. Out of this precinct they go for ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... peerage, but which once formed a distinguished peculiarity in the aristocracy of England—families of ancient birth, immense possessions, at once noble and untitled—held his estates by no other tenure than his own caprice. Though he professed to like Philip, yet he saw but little of him. When the news of the illicit connection his nephew was reported to have formed reached him, he at first resolved to break it off; but observing that Philip no longer gambled, nor ran ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Lenore, is really an original character, drawn only as a woman could draw her, who had looked deeply into the mysterious recesses of the feminine heart. She is a creation totally beyond the scope of a man's pen, unless it were the pen of Shakespeare. Her beauty, her wilfulness, her caprice, her love, and her sorrow, are depicted with marvellous skill, and invested with an interest of which the reader never becomes weary. Miss Broughton, in this work, has made an immense advance on her other stories, clever ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... after my habits of work and domesticity were well established. You are the fairest thing on earth, and there are times when you consume it, but circumstances isolate you. Believe me, I am a victim of those circumstances, not of caprice." ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... having no mind to appear in his eyes dependent on Madame's favour or caprice, I thus checked his familiarity, I am free to confess that my calmness was partly assumed; and that, though I knew my position to be unassailable—based as it was on solid services rendered to the King, my master, and on the familiar affection with which ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... posts from their sovereign and get the money back out of his subjects. They spent their money in the capital, and recuperated themselves in the provinces. And as there was no other law than their master's pleasure, so there, was no other guarantee than his caprice. They had therefore to set quickly to work; the post might be lost before its cost had been recovered. Thus all the science of administration resolved itself into plundering as much and as quickly as possible. To this end, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... earliest scrape; but whether I shall proceed with his adventures is Dependent on the public altogether; We'll see, however, what they say to this: Their favour in an author's cap's a feather, And no great mischief's done by their caprice; And if their approbation we experience, Perhaps they'll have some more ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... [xx] It would seem to be the destiny of a race to achieve material prosperity at the expense of its morality. When conditions render possible the fulfilment of every human desire, the race exhausts its vitality in a surfeitment of caprice. The animal instincts predominate, and the potential vigor of the people is exhausted in contributing to its own amusement. Each succeeding civilization has reached this epochal period, and has fallen, victim of the rapacity of stronger and younger invading ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... persons who composed the party—whom they seemed to have always known—and who, in the innocent caprice of children, had become to them more actual than the dead had even been. There was Mr. Peyton, who they now knew owned the train, and who was so rich that he "needn't go to California if he didn't want to, and was going to buy a great deal of it if he liked it," and who was also a lawyer ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... time, mademoiselle," he said, "will you speak? Will you assign a reason for this change, this fickleness, for this caprice?" ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in all its diverse manifestations is found to be only a repetition of responses seen in the inorganic. There is in it no element of mystery or caprice, such as we must admit to be applied in the assumption of a hypermechanical vital force, acting in contradiction or defiance of those physical laws that govern the world of matter. Nowhere in the entire range of these response-phenomena—inclusive as that is of metals, plants, and animals—do we ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... Royal, sir," she replied, trying to increase her stature to the utmost. It was an unusual caprice in one whose nature was so childlike and playful; but the recent knowledge that she was a slave had made her, for the first time, jealous of her dignity. She took it into her head that he knew the humiliating ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... proportion, composition, which, if not absolutely organic, is at any rate the reverse of haphazard. We may not always be able to define the principle, to put it clearly in words; but if we feel that the author has been guided by no principle, that he has proceeded on mere hand-to-mouth caprice, that there is no "inner law of harmony and proportion" in his work, then we instinctively relegate it to a low place in our esteem. Hauptmann's Weavers certainly cannot be called a piece of dramatic architecture, like ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... grounds of preference, which I have wanted The leisure to examine—learn the choice, These grounds have motived, that it may be mine. In confidence I ask it. How you startle, And weigh me with your eye! It may well be I'm the first sultan to whom this caprice, Methinks not quite unworthy of a sultan, Has yet occurred. Am I not? Speak then—Speak. Or do you, to collect yourself, desire Some moments of delay—I give them you - (Whether she's listening?—I must know of her If I've done ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... the harem, and her visit to the schooner, with the tale of the tragedy, supplied anecdotes for a lifetime. Every body was on the qui vive to see the "white fighter." Every body was crazy to feel the "white skin" she had healed. Then, with a sudden, childish freak of caprice, they ran off from me as if afraid, and at once rushed back again like a flock of glib-tongued and playful monkeys. I could not comprehend a word they said; but the bevy squealed with quite as much pleasure as if I did, and peered into my eyes for answers, with impish ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... he regarded as a new caprice, the valet obeyed. He gathered up the garments strewn over the floor, and eventually drew a key from one of the waistcoat pockets. Mademoiselle Marguerite took it from him, and then in a ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... custom of these promiscuous caravans. A captain was proclaimed elected, but his powers were not defined by any constitutional provision; consequently, they were very vague and uncertain. Orders being only viewed as mere requests, they are often obeyed or neglected at the caprice of the subordinates. It is necessary to observe, however, that the captain is expected to direct the order of travel during the day and to designate the camping-ground at night, with many other functions of general ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... start to explain how Oxford and Cambridge in particular came to be chosen for sites. My own conjecture, that they were chosen for the extraordinary salubrity of their climates, has met (I regret to say) with derision, and may be set down to the caprice of one who ever inclines to think the weather good where he is happy. Our own learned historian, indeed—Mr J. Bass Mullinger—devotes some closely reasoned pages to proving that Cambridge was chosen as the unlikeliest spot in the world, and is driven ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... weakness," said Ferrand; then turning to the viscount, with an expression of which he comprehended all the signification, he continued, "There, seriously, it is impossible; I will not suffer that, through caprice, you should commit such an absurdity. M. le Vicomte, I regard myself as the mentor of my clients; I have no other family, and I should regard myself as an accomplice of any errors I should ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... called, he saw faces suddenly turn cold as soon as he explained the purpose of his visit. "What! you are no longer with Hemerlingue and Son? How does that happen?" He would explain the condition of affairs as best he could, attributing it to a caprice of his employer, that violent-tempered Hemerlingue whom all Paris knew; but he was conscious of a cold, suspicious accent in the uniform reply: "Come and see us after the holidays." And, timid as ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... question between great and small is totally distinct from the question between good and evil. Number and extension cannot exercise or illustrate the moral character either of God or of man. We should ourselves despise the mischievous caprice which should give to the biggest man in the city the honours that are due to the best. Right and wrong are matters that move on other lines and at higher levels than great and small, before ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... thoughtless passion!—he WOULD have righted it, I know, and been a loyal husband to you, and a good father to his child. For whatever his faults were he was neither callous nor brutal. You prevented him from doing this,—you were tired of him —your so-called 'love' for him was a mere selfish caprice of the moment—and you preferred deceit and a rich marriage to the simple duty of a woman! Well!—you may find excuses for yourself,—I cannot find them for you! I could not remain by your side as a husband and run the risk of coming constantly ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... when she'll condescend to come down," he said to himself, examining his boots with a speculative smile. "Of course it was mere caprice that she didn't go to Malford; ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... madrigals and indulging in rural pleasures. The public, however, had begun to look for beauty; the traditions which had formed round the decorative schools were giving way to the appreciation of original work. Tiepolo, sincere and spontaneous even when he is sacrificing truth to caprice, struck the taste of the Venetians, and without emancipating himself from the tendencies of the time, contrives to introduce a fresh accent. All round him was a weak and self-indulgent world, but within himself he possessed a fund of buoyant and inexhaustible ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... unprepared or unable to adapt themselves to rural conditions, such a movement is injurious. On the basis of the data now available, we are warranted in concluding that the "back to the land" movement is founded upon sentiment and caprice rather than upon sound principles. It attacks the rural problem at the wrong end. If the natural leaders of the country are repelled by rural life and attracted by urban conditions, the remedy is not to create an artificial movement toward the ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... quarrelling, and Mr. Van Torp had taken it upon himself to defend her and to reconcile them, using the unlimited power his position gave him over his partner to force the latter to submit to his wife's temper and caprice, as the only alternative to ruin. Her friendship for Van Torp grew stronger, till they spent many hours of every day together, while her husband saw little of her, though he was never altogether estranged from her so long as ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... of imagination is often shifting the scenes of expectation, are frequently subject to such sallies of caprice as to make all their actions fortuitous, destroy the value of their friendship, obstruct the efficacy of their virtues, and set them below the meanest of those that persist in their resolutions, execute what they design, and perform what ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... the money; when paid, send the copyrights. I release you from the thousand pounds agreed on for "The Giaour" and "Bride," and there's an end.... For all this, it might be well to assign some reason. I have none to give, except my own caprice, and I do not consider the circumstance of consequence enough to require explanation.... It will give me great pleasure to preserve your acquaintance, and to consider you as my friend. Believe me very truly, ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... quietly shoot at each other with firearms, till one of them is killed or wounded; and this too, in many cases, when the injury has been merely nominal. If you show such a contempt of death, in deference to a custom founded in mere caprice, can it be wondered that a woman should show it, in the first paroxysms of her grief for the loss of him to whom was devoted every thought, word, and action of her life, and who, next to her God, was the object of her idolatry? My dear Atterley," he continued, with emotion, "you little ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or globules like bubbles of light, many colored—green, yellow, fire-red, azure. Up and down, to and fro, hither, thither, as tiny Will-o'-the-wisps, the sparks moved, slow or swift, each at its own caprice. A chair (as in the drawing-room below) was now advanced from the wall without apparent agency, and placed at the opposite side of the table. Suddenly, as forth from the chair, there grew a shape—a woman's shape. It was distinct as a shape of life—ghastly as a shape of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... the natural progress of life. They paralyse all of it that is not devoted to their tyranny and caprice. This makes the difference between the laughing innocence of childhood, the pleasantness of youth, and the crabbedness of age. A load of cares lies like a weight of guilt upon the mind: so that a man of business often has all the air, the distraction and restlessness ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... gone over to sit to you. She wanted a little fresh air? I should say enough of it came in through these windows. How like a woman, when she's agreed to do a certain thing, to make up her mind at once that she's got to do another! They don't call it caprice—it's always duty: that's the humour of it. I'll be bound Kate alleged a pressing engagement. Sorry she should waste your time so, my dear fellow. Here am I with plenty of it to burn—look at my hand shake; I can't do a thing! Well, luckily nobody ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... him for these offenses, the young king seized him and delivered him into Gaveston's hands as a prisoner, and at the same time confiscated his estates and gave them to Gaveston. Gaveston sent the bishop about from castle to castle as a prisoner, according as his caprice or ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a storm clouds the sky, it gathers, mutters and disperses, leaving the sky bluer, the atmosphere purer, and Nature more smiling than before. What use is there in reflecting on this storm that passes swift as a caprice, ephemeral as a fancy? Before we have discovered the secret of the meteorological enigma, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... nothing acrid in his attack. Genuine flashes of rhetorical fire were occasionally struck by that plain and simple man, who knew what straightforward conduct was, and who did not know the illimitable caprice of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the window. His hand went to his forehead. It was damp and cold. He was afraid! If she were in earnest! And she spoke like a woman who knew her mind. She was always, he remembered, a creature of caprice. If she were ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... so diabolical, that, when first announced, it was treated as a caprice of certain hot spirits, irritated by the declamations of the Abolitionists. But it is idle to refer to transient heat thoughts which bear all the signs of cool atrocity; and needless to seek for the causes of actions in extraneous sources, when they are plainly but steps in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... everything that heart could wish for, lying there wan, peevish, irritable, dissatisfied with everybody and everything, seemingly because his doting parents had gratified his every whim and humoured his every caprice. It was quite evident that he regarded me with almost if not quite as great distaste as ever; he even seemed to consider it a grievance that he owed his life to a despised Britisher; and seeing how acutely his mother was distressed at his ungracious manner ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mold frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... much happier than I had dared expect. The attention with which Lord Orville honours me, is as uniform as it is flattering, and seems to result from a benevolence of heart that proves him as much a stranger to caprice as to pride; for, as his particular civilities arose from a generous resentment at seeing me neglected, so will they, I trust, continue, as long as I shall, in any degree, deserve them. I am now not merely easy, but even gay in his presence: such is the effect of true politeness, ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... a power that I do not know the worst and the fullest extent of. This is the third time of your hinting and threatening. You must speak explicitly, or you may go where you will, and do what you will. It is better to be torn to pieces at a spring, than to be a mouse at the caprice of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... you knew! I—I am actually wicked! Would you believe it, I sometimes think and think and wish that my father could spend more time with me—with me!—a most silly and thoughtless girl who would sacrifice the welfare of France to her own caprice. Think of it! I pray—very often—that I may learn to be unselfish; but I must be very bad, for I often cry myself to sleep. Is ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... suffer and half starve in their old age, and even fails to give them decent support while they are working in their prime? Why should a doctor reach his highest professional value at seventy, and a parson be past the "dead-line" at forty-five? Here he was, subject to the caprice and ill-will of a sour and miserly Senior Warden, and a cowed and at least partially "bossed" vestry—and he, the rector, with no practical power of appeal for the enforcement of his legal contract. It was only thanks to Jonathan Jackson, the Junior Warden, that any revenue ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... was miserable. They could make nothing of this caprice of the German's, and the most far-fetched ideas tortured their minds. The whole party remained in the kitchen engaging in endless discussions, imagining the most improbable things. Were they to be kept as hostages?—but ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... caprice of the physician." (In a word, instead of being dependent upon blind chance, that there is an infallible law, guided by which; the physician MUST select the proper remedies.') ['Ibid.,' in a notice of Menzel's ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... would see over the tree-tops into the outer and airy world. With all its natural beauties is intermingled an agreeable quaintness, that shows the owner has occasionally been working in the spirit of fancy, almost caprice; the tool-house in the garden is not without its ornaments—the barn seems habitable, and the byre has somewhat the appearance of a chapel. You see at once that the man who lives here, instead of being sick of the world, is attached to all elegant ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... means a mutual exchange, and having performed our home duty will be in no mood to tolerate a whim or a caprice. Non-intercourse has been proposed in Congress. That may be a final resort when a conference, practical discussion, and even arbitration have failed. A graver subject measured by dollars may yet engage the statesman diplomat than the Geneva arbitration, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... days' detention, whence quarantines derive their name, was not dictated by caprice, but probably had a medical origin, which is derivable in part from the doctrine of critical days; for the fortieth day, according to the most ancient notions, has been always regarded as the last of ardent diseases, ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... is always more or less surprising, and to make the meeting less likely, Buffington is even farther from Oxenbridge than Barbury Green. The creature was well mounted (ominous, when he came to override my caprice!) and he looked bigger, and, yes, handsomer, though that doesn't signify, and still more determined than when I saw him last; although goodness knows that timidity and feebleness of purpose were not in striking ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... more than balanced it. A ball-room is an epitome of all that is most worthless and unamiable in the great sphere of human life. Every petty and malignant passion is called into play. Coquetry is perpetually on the alert to captivate, caprice to mortify, and vanity to take offence. One amiable female is rendered miserable for the evening by seeing another, whom she intended to outshine, in a more attractive dress than her own; while the other omits no method of giving stings to her triumph, which she enjoys with all the secret arrogance ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... caprice? It played with Goethe's silvered hair, And many a Holy Father's "niece" Has softly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... like lightning above two hours in the Park. We have generally one fair day, and then a great deal of rain for three or four days together. All things are at a stop in Parliament for want of Mr. Harley; they cannot stir an inch without him in their most material affairs: and we fear, by the caprice of Radcliffe, who will admit none but his own surgeon,(6) he has not been well looked after. I dined at an alehouse with Mr. Lewis, but had his wine. Don't you begin to see the flowers and blossoms of the field? How busy ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... years. It is not to be supposed that Catherine was moved to give her warning by anything save her true womanly instincts. She stood between two races, and in her love and bravery cut short a struggle that might have proved too full of caprice and cruelty on both sides. She was civilization's angel, and should have a ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... be touched by your cares and attention. I explain myself plainly with you, and my confession ought in no way to hurt your feelings. The love which springs up in the heart is not, as you know, the effect of merit, but is partly decided by caprice; and oftentimes, when some one pleases us, we can barely find the reason. If choice and wisdom guided love, all the tenderness of my heart would be for you; but love is not thus guided. Leave me, I pray, to my blindness; and do not profit by the violence which, for your sake, is imposed on ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... "One Thousand and One Nights." It rarely happens that any two copies of the Alif Lila va Lilin resemble each other. This title is bestowed upon any collection of Eastern tales divided into the same number of parts. The compilation depends upon the taste, the caprice, and the opportunities of the scribe, or the commands of his employer. Certain popular stories are common to almost all copies of the Arabian Nights, but almost every collection contains some tales which are not found in every other. Much depends upon the locality of the scribe. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Ohio inflationists, in a time of peace, on grounds of mere expediency, propose an inconvertible paper currency, with its volume limited only by the discretion or caprice of its issuers, or their judgment as to the wants of trade. The most distinguished gentleman whose name is associated with the subject once said "the process must be conducted with skill and caution, ... by men whose position will enable them to guard against any evil," ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... her own instincts, and the profound impression the fountain had made upon her, that she was enabled to secretly finish her interrupted sketch from memory. For Miss Charlotte Forrest was a born artist, and in no mere caprice had persuaded her father to let her adopt the profession, and accepted the drudgery of a novitiate. She looked earnestly upon this first real work of her hand and found it good! Still, it was but a pencil sketch, and wanted the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... friends did what they could to break off the negotiations and give battle: it was already too late; the soldiers knew that they were defending the cause of one man, and that they were going to fight for a woman's caprice, and not for the good of the country: they cried aloud, then, that "since Bothwell alone was aimed at, it was for Bothwell to defend his cause". And he, vain and blustering as usual, gave out that he was ready to prove his innocence in person against whomsoever would dare to maintain that ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... light.' We should have expected this, if we are really Christians. If we have faith in God; if we believe that God is worthy of our faith—a God whom we can trust; in whom is neither caprice, deceit, nor darkness, but pure and perfect light;—if we believe that we are His children, and that He wishes us to be, like Himself, full of light, knowing what we are and what the world is, because we know who God is;—if ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... illustrious one, and my heart is dead within me, O sinless one. O foremost of all persons endued with penances, I am in capable of bearing thy seed any longer. I shall cast it off, compelled by the distress that has overtaken me, and not by caprice. There has been no actual contact of my person with thy seed, O illustrious deity of blazing flames! Our union, having for its cause the distress that has overtaken the deities, has been suitable and not of the flesh, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of the bread very much, and renders it whiter and firmer. Good, white, and porous bread, may certainly be manufactured from good wheaten flour alone; but to produce the degree of whiteness rendered indispensable by the caprice of the consumers in London, it is necessary (unless the very best flour is employed,) that the dough should be bleached; and no substance has hitherto been found to answer this purpose better ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... rise to its feet. The beast either deemed the burden inequable and unjust,—for the Arabian camel, like the Peruvian llama, has a very acute perception of fair play in this respect,—or a fit of caprice had entered its mulish head. For one reason or another it exhibited a stern determination not to oblige its owner by rising to its feet; but continued its genuflexion in spite of every effort ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... desire a portrait more peculiarly her own—one that should mark the precise epoch of our mutual happiness—a caprice which reminded me of the Salvation Army recruit who was photographed, by desire, 'before and after conversion'; and I demurred a little, until Iris insisted with such captivating pertinacity that—although my personal expenses (always slightly in excess of my income) had ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... shipped in the Delaware, a vessel bound to Savannah and Liverpool. Southern fashion, I ran from this vessel in Savannah, owing her nothing, however, but was obliged to leave my protection behind, as it was in the captain's hands. I cannot give any reason but caprice for quitting this ship. The usage was excellent, and the wages high; yet run I did. As long as the Delaware remained in port, I kept stowed away; but, as soon as she sailed, I came out into the world, and walked about the wharves as big ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... by the very expression of devout gratitude for happiness already enjoyed, it would not be easy to estimate the amount of positive misery which must result from the mere contemplation of a tyrant in the heavens, and of a creation subject to his cruelty and caprice." [272] The above quoted line from Lucretius—To such evils could religion persuade!—is more than the exclamation of righteous indignation against the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon, at the bidding of a priest, to propitiate ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... too happy to feel the sting of it. He felt, of course, greatly drawn to the Queen for her ready clemency; and yet there was something repellent about her too in spite of it. He felt in his heart that it was just a caprice, like her blows and caresses; and then the assumption of youth sat very ill upon this lean middle-aged woman. He would have preferred less lute-playing and sprightly innuendo, and more ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson |
