"Whim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plunged into them. His only rule was not to be misled by the spelling. That was no guide anyhow. He avoided every recognised phrase in the language and mispronounced everything in order that he shouldn't be suspected of ignorance, but whim. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... communities," I told him, "which the founder, for some inexplicable whim, united in one domain, of an ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... at the case in the Advance office the following morning, one of those who constantly drifted in and out of that exciting nowhere into which they so lightly disappeared by whim; a gaunt, silent man, almost wholly deaf, who stood in Dave Cowan's place and set type with machine-like accuracy or distributed it with loose-fingered nimbleness, seizing many types at a time and scattering them to their ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... You're quite right not to fall in love. I never did, and, truth to tell, I don't think it respectable. The man can't understand it, too. He likes to be in love with you, But scarce knows how, if you love him, Poor fellow. When 'tis woman's whim To serve her husband night and day, The kind soul lets her have her way! So, if you wed, as soon you should, Be selfish for your husband's good. Happy the men who relegate Their pleasures, vanities, and state To us. Their nature seems to be To enjoy themselves by deputy, For, seeking ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... whim of his—that this great treaty should be signed there. We had to humour him, or he might have grown suspicious. I think he ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... is the effect of his bringing up on a plantation in Louisiana, surrounded by his father's slaves, for though they are now free by law the nature of the negro is unchanged, and servitude is his natural position. The little white master is treated like a god, every whim is humored, and there being no restraining hand upon him, it would be strange if he did not become hasty and ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... of his tutor. Soon after this, the young man fell in with Bossuet's controversial writings, and was speedily converted by them to the Roman Catholic faith. The apostasy of a gentleman-commoner would of course be for a time the chief subject of conversation in the common room of Magdalene. His whim about Arabic learning would naturally be mentioned, and would give occasion to some jokes about the probability of his turning Mussulman. If such jokes were made, Johnson, who frequently visited Oxford, was very likely to hear of them.' Though Gibbon's Autobiography ends with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... chagrin, though not daring to confess his disappointment, he suddenly quitted her, and walked, in much disorder, about the room. But soon recovering some composure, from the assistance of pride, "Pardon, madam," he said, "a trial such as no man can be vindicated in making. I have indulged a romantic whim, which your better judgment disapproves, and I receive but the mortification ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the fete next door. There were no signs of a struggle in the garden, nor had there been the slightest noise to attract the attention of the waiting maid. It was not impossible, after all, that she had slipped away of her own accord, possessed of a sudden whim or impulse. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... shook her head doubtfully: "My father sometimes eats bread dipped in kvass," she said. "It's a fancy, a whim!" ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the harbour to your enemies. Lastly, he was most undisguisedly a tyrant, who made not free men only, but free fellow-citizens his slaves; who put to death, or drove into exile, or robbed of their wealth and property, not malefactors, note you, but the mere victims of his whim and fancy; and these were ever the better folk. Once again restored by the help of your sworn foes and antagonists, the Athenians, to his native town of Sicyon, the first thing he did was to take up arms against the governor from Thebes; but, finding himself powerless ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... any interest in scenery, and Alan stared at her for a moment with a puzzled look. If Henry de Hauteville had been likely to join her at Culoz he could have understood this whim of hers; but de Hauteville was safely lodged by this time in the nearest Swiss canton, and not at all likely to intercept their journey. He did her bidding, however, without comprehension of her reasons, as he had done ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... unable to move or to raise a hand in his own defence; scourged on his bare back, with a cowhide, until the blood flows in streams from his quivering flesh? And for what? Often for the most trifling fault; and, as sometimes occurs, because a mere whim or caprice of his brutal overseer demands it. Pale with passion, his eyes flashing and his stalwart frame trembling with rage, like some volcano, just ready to belch forth its fiery contents, and, in all its might and fury, spread death and destruction ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... but question-provoking psychology. Into such parts and situations as the drama could afford are impressed every possible revelation of our motives; but his model was always reality and he never yielded truth to whim ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... drawing-room almost took away her breath. It was not so much the richness of the furniture which astonished her, as the daring scheme of decoration and the profusion of expensive nicknacks scattered about the room; these last were eloquent of Mrs Hamilton's ability to satisfy any whim, however costly it might be. The walls were panelled in white; white curtains were drawn across the windows; black bearskins covered the floor; the furniture was dark, formal, much of it carved; here and there on the white panelling of the walls were black Wedgwood plaques; black Wedgwood china ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... Tichborne, wife of the Sir Roger who flourished in the reign of Henry II., was lying on her death-bed, she besought her husband to grant her the means of leaving behind her a charitable bequest in the form of an annual dole of bread. To gratify her whim, he accordingly promised her the produce of as much land in the vicinity of the park as she could walk over while a certain brand was burning; for, as she had been bedridden for many years, he supposed that she would be able to go round only a small portion of ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... earl who, in the days of the seventh Henry, had stabbed his wife with a dagger to cure her tendency to lecture him at night; or of that other earl who, at a previous date in the annals of the family, had caused two aunts and a sister to be poisoned apparently from a mere whim. At any rate, Lord Marshmoreton produced from some source ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... authority.—"As the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do." Every soul must have a supreme source of authority in its life, if it is to have peace. Its own whim, the suggestion of passion, the vagrant impulse of the moment, are inconsistent with tranquillity. There must be for each of us one voice which is imperative, one command which is indisputable, one authority which admits of no gainsaying. If you will search your heart you will see that ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... head full of wine, and his hair crown'd, Touching his harp as the whim came on him, And praised and spoil'd by master and by guests, Almost as much as the ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... knowledge of modern languages and of the classics; a liking for mathematics and physics, especially all that related to electricity and magnetism; a fancy for the occult sciences, if there is any propriety in coupling these words; and a whim for odd and obsolete literature, like the Parthenologia of Fortunius Licetus, the quaint treatise 'De Sternutatione,' books about alchemy, and witchcraft, apparitions, and modern works relating to Spiritualism. With these were the titles of novels and now and then of books of poems; but it ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of colloquy between the Warden and Braithwaite, in which the former jocosely excused himself for having yielded to the whim of the pensioner, and returned with him on an errand which he well knew to ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his desire', says Wordsworth, 'I sat to him, but as he did not satisfy himself or my friends, the unfinished work was destroyed.' He was more successful with Charles Lamb, whom he painted (for a whim) in the dress of a Venetian Senator. As a friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth he had inevitably made acquaintance with the Lambs. He first met Lamb at one of the Godwins' strange evening parties and the two became ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... performed? If for his silence, what had the captain done which made him desire to conceal the fact that he had been to the island? The strange man had explicitly denied having killed, robbed, or stolen from anybody. All the skipper could make of it was, that his desire for silence was only a whim of the captain, and he was entirely willing to accommodate him. If there had been any mischief done on the island, he should hear of it; and in that event he would take counsel of some one older and wiser than himself. ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... I to him; of passports We never had the whim. Strong ones I believe it would need To recall, to our side of the limit, Subjects of Pluto King of the Dead: But, from the Germanic Empire Into the gallant and cynical abode Of Messieurs your pretty Frenchmen,—A jolly and beaming air, Rubicund faces, not ignorant ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... she said carelessly, "you manage so cleverly that I am beginning to trust implicitly to your guidance and knowledge. But there is one thing that puzzles me. It must be more than a whim which makes you think that Herr Renwick will follow ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... to him that they should spend a few weeks in Paris for the gratification of any praiseworthy intention of her own, or of any harmless whim, he would have unhesitatingly refused, and opposed any number of objections to the proposition; but she had introduced the subject in its most favorable light, and was sure ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... on the rose. This is not a wager, but only a strong expression of opinion. The rose will win. It does not look so now. To all appearances, this is the age of the chrysanthemum. What this gaudy flower will be, daily expanding and varying to suit the whim of fashion, no one can tell. It may be made to bloom like the cabbage; it may spread out like an umbrella—it can never be large enough nor showy enough to suit us. Undeniably it is very effective, especially in masses of gorgeous color. In ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Campbell," said Captain Lumley, "so you have joined us at last; better late than never. You're but just in time. I thought you would soon get over that foolish whim of yours, which you mentioned in your letter to me, of leaving the service, just after you had passed, and had such good chance of promotion. What could have ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... for her Highness in some whim had insulted him with his origin, caused pork to be removed from before him at table, or injured him in some such silly way; and he had a violent animosity to the old Baron de Magny, both in his capacity of Protestant, and because the latter in some ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Why, you don't know how to ride. Lord save us, what might happen! What whim is this has come over you ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... desire any other worthy man, makaira," said Hermippus, once, "you shall not find me obstinate. Can a loving father say more? But if you are simply resolved never to marry, I will give you to him despite your will. A senseless whim must not blast your ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... by the pouched turkey had been devoted to her whim. Every stitch was neatly set. I praised her beautiful needlework, and she said she ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... he couldn't tell her that illogically, but instinctively, he wanted to keep the matter as a locked secret—and especially to keep it locked from Henry Devereux—until the minister had said: Amen. He admitted to himself that this was probably a foolish whim, a needless precaution, but nevertheless it obsessed him, so that he tried to argue Mirabelle away from the Herald. His most cogent argument was that the announcement might weaken their position in the League—the League ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... outdoor sports and sometimes the lads would go out for a game of baseball, or football, just as the whim seized them. Of course the college had its regular teams on the diamond and the gridiron, but the Rovers did not care enough for the sport to try for these, even though they had made creditable records at ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... etherealised by age. She had the elfish look of a little withered fairy godmother. And yet through it all it was clear that she was a great lady. There were certain poses and gestures about her, which made her thread gloves and rusty skirts seem a mere whim and masquerade, adopted, perhaps deliberately, from a high-bred love of congruity, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to take from their hiding-place, and examine once more—partly for her mother's amusement, partly for her own; for it was a whim of hers to judge of character by hand-writing, and she really had been quite interested in the character which both Miss Vanbrugh ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... at the elasticity of my character. "Well, in the first place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that," said she. "He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a silly girl's whim. But, above all, he must be a man who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that I should love, ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and last demand of Art is that it shall give us the artist's best. Art is the mintage of the soul. All the whim, foible, and rank personality are blown away on the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... one meaning in my words, and answered, "It was then mere whim to see me do this thing, a lady's curious mind, eh? My faith, I think your sex are the true scientists: you try experiment for no other reason than to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... said he, as we watched the rear carriages of our train disappearing round a curve, "I am sorry to make you the victim of what may seem a mere whim, but on my life, Watson, I simply CAN'T leave that case in this condition. Every instinct that I possess cries out against it. It's wrong—it's all wrong—I'll swear that it's wrong. And yet the lady's story was complete, the maid's ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... they who followed him Were bent upon a high and holy aim; Their undertaking was no foolish whim, Nor had they come for honour or for fame. A Jesuitic band, they sought to win Those Indians from a life ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... appears a strange whim, but had I waited for it, Richmond had been lost. It is not without trouble I have made this rapid march. General Phillips has expressed to a flag officer the astonishment he felt at our celerity; and when on the 30th, as he was going to give ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... and foolish whim that they came to me, then?" he interrupted suddenly. "Had I not done enough for them to be of some account, por Dios? Is it that the hombres finos—the gentlemen—need not think as long as there is a man of the people ready to risk ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... know, in effect, if, led away by the various situations in which you were placed, I may not have appeared to destroy what I had advanced on different occasions? How do I know, if, seeing you ready to yield to a whim, I may not have carried too far, truths, which, feebly uttered, would not, perhaps, have brought you back? How do I know, in a word, if, being interested in the happiness of a friend, the desire to serve her may not ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... "Why, this whim of my husband's. He has been away for over a week, and the child imagines that he is still in London, that he will return at any instant and spoil her, ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... shall be remedied. In the meantime, a simple little surgical operation would make your smile a permanent one, reaching from ear to ear. But there, my orders are to deliver you and your equipment, all we have of it, intact. The Heaven-Born has had a whim." ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... year 1245, for his tardiness in joining the King's army in Wales, he was succeeded by the false-hearted Geoffrey de Mountmorres, who held the office till 1247. During the next twenty-five years, about half as many Justices were placed and displaced, according to the whim of the successive favourites at the English Court. In 1252, Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I., was appointed with the title of Lord Lieutenant, but never came over. Nor is there in the series of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... approaching him at a gait varied by the indifferent behavior of a barrel-hoop which she was disciplining with a stick held in her right hand. When the hoop behaved well, she came ahead rapidly; when it affected to be intoxicated, which was most often its whim, she zigzagged with it, and gained little ground. But all the while, and without reference to what went on concerning the hoop, she slowly and continuously fed herself (with her left hand) small, solemnly relished bites of a slice of bread-and-butter ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... chamber; next with sweepings of dust, under which every vestige of the subterranean house disappears. It is now done: the Tachytes will come here no more. Other burrows will occupy her, distributed at the whim of ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... analysis, until, under the higher powers, it disappeared, and the grainings of the card superseded the planet. Had I not proved that my principle was good in the case of the Swiss sign-board, I should now have given it up as the whim of an over-excited brain. But now I thought only of the assertion of the daguerrotypist, that "the nitrate was limited in sensitiveness only by the imperfection of the materials," (i. e. plates, glass, reflectors, etc.,) and I had heard the same repeated by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... as the romancer who has given an atmosphere to the hard outlines of our stern New England; as that unique individual, half college-graduate and half Algonquin, the Robinson Crusoe of Walden Pond, who carried out a school-boy whim to its full proportions, and told the story of Nature in undress as only one who had hidden in her bedroom could have told it. I need not lengthen the catalogue by speaking of the living, or mentioning the women whose names have added to its distinction. It has long been an intellectual centre ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in a curiously impersonal and detached fashion. The whimsical humor that twinkled in his eyes occasionally was interesting and pleasing; and Dan imagined that he was enjoying the situation. Silk socks and overalls were probably a part of some whim; they certainly added picturesqueness to the scene. But the city editor must be informed that Edward G Thatcher was beyond his jurisdiction and Dan rose and moved toward the door. Allen jumped down and crossed to ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... rose," continued the duke; "but one hundred thousand francs! Zounds! That is a round sum to pay for such a whim. But, if you ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... are generally two or three stories high, are quite plain, simply constructed of stone, without the least ornament; so that in walking past them a stranger might fancy himself in the galleries of a vast prison. The windows are very few and extremely small; and, by a singular whim, the doors are so low that it is commonly requisite to bend the body nearly double in order to enter them. Some families have gardens of moderate dimensions; but, upon the whole, the ground within the walls is fully occupied ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... did not understand Strickland at all. I racked my brain, but could in no way account for an action so contrary to my conception of him. It was not strange that he should so heartlessly have betrayed his friends' confidence, nor that he hesitated not at all to gratify a whim at the cost of another's misery. That was in his character. He was a man without any conception of gratitude. He had no compassion. The emotions common to most of us simply did not exist in him, and it was as absurd to blame him for not feeling ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... too happy to find her without any reward at all. But the mystery remained a mystery. Application to the authorities would have been useless: the fugitive had done no wrong, broken no law; and the vast machinery of the imperial police-system was not to be set in motion by the passionate whim of a boy. Months grew into years; but neither Kimika, nor the little sister in Kyoto, nor any one of the thousands who had known and admired the beautiful dancer, ever ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... usefulness as a laborer; then, that education turns his head and makes him discontented with the plantation where wages reach the high water mark of six dollars a month, which may or may not be paid according to the whim of his employer; and finally that the privilege of respectable accommodations furnished by common carriers which enjoy unusual public franchises makes him impudent, noisy and self-respecting, the proper remedy for which is a system of "Jim Crow Cars." Thus with the passing away of the Negro's ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... that about a hundred years before Mr. Ellison's coming of age, there had died, in a remote province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison. This gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no immediate connections, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a century after his decease. Minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... conqueror only for having favored or even for having spurned the writer. "When the great Sultan died, his power and glory departed from him, and nothing remained but this one fact, that he knew not the worth of Ferdousi." There is a slight delusion in this dazzling glory. What a fantastic whim the young lieutenants thought it, when General Wolfe, on the eve of battle, said of Gray's "Elegy," "Gentlemen, I would rather have written that poem than have taken Quebec." Yet, no doubt, it is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... was wholly undeveloped—thin and pale, and with rough hair that fell over her frightened eyes; yet Farmer wanted her, and he settled his money on her, just as he would have spent the same amount to gratify any other sudden whim. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... perhaps more secure from misconduct while single, than she will be when married. Her father, I fear, will leave her too much to herself, and in that case I scarce know what may become of her; she has neither judgment nor principle to direct her choice, and therefore, in all probability, the same whim which one day will guide it, will the next lead her to ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... secondary schools have now opened to them careers which have heretofore been closed. There is in truth a silent, but certain to be effective, educational and social revolution begun in Egypt. No more will every whim and caprice of those who seek to obstruct the advance of the Egyptians be tolerated. In 1899 for the first time examining educational centres will be established at Assouan and Suakin. All those south ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... like driving over ruts and through puddles—the usual Russian rural thoroughfare. Not because Prince Pavlo wanted to give the peasants work, not because he wanted to save them from starvation—not at all, although, in the gratification of his own whim, he happened to render those trifling services; but merely because he was a great "barin"—a prince who could have any thing he desired. Had not the other barin—Steinmetz by name—superintended the work? Steinmetz the hated, the loathed, the tool of ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... "That was merely a whim. I was disgusted with London and society after my return from the front. Those who have been through this terrible war learn to see most things at their true worth, and the frivolity, the snobbishness, and the shams of London society at such a time sickened and disgusted me. They tried ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... headquarters; but out a bit there's nothing, Monsieur—not the ghost of a road at all. We get along as best we can over hill and dale, over dwarf palms and mastic-trees. Ne'er a fixed change of horses, the stopping being at the whim of the guard, now at ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... Our provisions were purchased, cooked, and brought to us regularly by a woman in the neighborhood, who had from me a list of forty dishes, which she prepared for us at different times, in which there entered neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. This whim suited me the better at this time from the cheapness of it,—not costing us above eighteen pence sterling each per week. I have since kept several lents most strictly, leaving the common diet for that, and that for the common, abruptly, without the least inconvenience. So that, I think, ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... as much rooted as one of the old poplars," I said to myself as some whim made me go down the steps and out into the garden, along the walks with their budding borders of narcissus and peonies, down through Nickols' sunken garden to the two oldest of all the poplars that now seemed ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... endure that for a whim? Who courts torment? Already they drew near with the cunning instruments. Let me say it, and what then? Nothing worse than torture. Let me not say it, and certainly torture. Oh, I was weaker than a child! my body ruled my spirit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... the fishermen suffered severely. Crowded together on the banks, they were easy prey for the British cruisers, who, in time of peace or in time of war, treated them about as they chose, impressing such sailors as seemed useful, and seizing such of their cargo as the whim of the captain of the cruiser might suggest. And even before the colonies had attained the status of a nation, the jealousy and hostility of Great Britain bore heavily on the fortunes of the New England fishermen. It was then, as it has been until the present ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... renounced the ambition of being the first statesman of Athens in order to show himself its most restless, impudent and unscrupulous trickster; and, subjecting all public objects to the freaks of his own vanity and selfishness, ever ready to resent opposition to his whim with treason against the state, he stands in history a curious spectacle of transcendent gifts belittled by profligacy of character, the falsest, keenest, most mischievous, and most magnificent demagogue ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... their nearest choices, their instantaneous desires, than conform the moment to some regulated and considerate, some comprehensive scheme of life and action. The life of unreason is their desire; the experience whose bent is determined by every whim, the expression which has no rational connection with the past and no serious consideration for the future. This is of the very essence of lawlessness because it is revolt against the normal sequence of law and effect, in mind and conduct, in ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... representative art, which can be said to live, is both realistic and ideal; and the realism about which we quarrel is a matter purely of externals. It is no especial cultus of nature and veracity, but a mere whim of veering fashion, that has made us turn our back upon the larger, more various, and more romantic art of yore. A photographic exactitude in dialogue is now the exclusive fashion; but even in the ablest hands it tells us no more—I think it even tells us less—than Moliere, ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which did not follow a cause or causes. It has taken man a long time to find this out. The recurrence of the seasons, the seed-time and harvest, the common phenomena of Nature, were once supposed to be outside the realm of cause and effect and due to the whim of some powerful being. But the laws of matter are now coming to be understood. Chance, accident and whim have been banished from the physical world. The acts of men alone are supposed to be outside the ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... thought her husband to be superior to other men. The same thing applied to men in their relationships with women other than their wives. Marriage was a social contract that could be made or broken at the whim of the individual. It served no purpose because it meant nothing, neither party gained anything by the contract that they couldn't have had without it. But a wedding was an excuse for a gala party ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... to you he would go, khee—khee—khee,... and there were tears in his eyes. He kept rushing about like this with petitions for eight years, but now he has grown brighter and more cheerful again: he has found another whim to give way to. You see, his daughter has grown up. He looks at her, and she is the apple of his eye. And to tell the truth she is all right, good-looking, with black eyebrows and a lively disposition. Every Sunday he used to ride ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... not so. To-day hath this man's eyes been a candle to me, that I may see myself truly; and I know that though I am a queen and not uncomely, I am but coarse and little-minded. I rage in my household when the whim takes me, and I am hot-headed, and masterful, and slothful, and should belike be untrue if there were any force to drive me thereto. And I suffer my husband to go after other women, and this new thrall is especial, so that I may take my pleasure ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... execution of the death penalty for any criticism. Men ought not to be shot for criticisms of public institutions. It would be foolish to argue against the fact that men occasionally feel called upon to resent criticism by an appeal to battle without weapons. The killing of critics at the whim of the criticized is the evil against which protest is made. Plain assault and battery is easily defensible on the ground that no one can be expected always to have his temper in control. It makes writers careful, and it is not followed by the regret which follows killing. ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Herr Schurz, warmly, 'that's the doctrine of the one-eyed economists; that's the capitalist way of looking at it; but it isn't our way—it isn't ours. Is it nothing, think you, that all that toil of mine—of a sensible man's—goes to waste, to gratify the senseless passing whim of a wealthy nobody? Is it nothing that he uselessly monopolises the valuable product of my labour, which in other and abler hands might be bringing forth good fruit for the bettering and furthering of universal humanity? I tell you, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... son-in-law's kindness, M. Chebe had succeeded in gratifying his latest whim. For three months past he had been living at his famous warehouse on the Rue du Mail, and a great sensation was created in the quarter by that shop without merchandise, the shutters of which were taken down in the morning ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... On that wily galoot Soon dropped, and you'll say that he leathered him — Not he; with a grim Sort of humorous whim, He took him and tarred ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... object, I can stake my all upon a greater purpose. Let him go where he will, with the means that my love has secured to him! Does he think to reduce me by long absence? He knows his mother very little if he does. Let him put away his whim now, and he is welcome back. Let him not put her away now, and he never shall come near me, living or dying, while I can raise my hand to make a sign against it, unless, being rid of her for ever, he comes humbly to me and begs for my forgiveness. This is my right. This is ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... by a sentry. When he had received the password he stood back and let us pass. Alone, in that bleak and exposed position in front of the trenches, always in full view as he paced back and forward, carbine on shoulder, with not even a tree trunk or a hedge for shelter, the first to go at the whim of some German sniper or at any indication of an attack, he was a pathetic, almost a tragic, figure. He looked very young too. I stopped and asked him in a whisper how old ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... their little hearts made glad by novelty and colour. Great was the surprise of the older folk, who said, 'It is a new thing in the world when so great a show as this comes out of the accustomed track of shows to erect its tent in our small town!' Yet so it was; from some whim of the manager, or of some one who had the ear of the ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... wait till that wretched Marneffe was dead; and I agreed, and forgave her for having admitted the attentions of Hulot. Whether the devil had her in hand I don't know, but from that instant that woman has humored my every whim, complied with all my demands —never for one moment has she given me cause ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... brought mischief enough upon them, and had very near been the ruin of the whole colony. The three new associates began, it seems, to be weary of the laborious life they led, and that without hope of bettering their circumstances: and a whim took them that they would make a voyage to the continent, from whence the savages came, and would try if they could seize upon some prisoners among the natives there, and bring them home, so as to make them do the laborious part of ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... so, we must exercise care not to be carried away by a yearning for novelty. Least of all should any subject be admitted to the course of study that does not have behind it something more substantial and enduring than whim ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... of doubt, this olde poore man Was ever in suspect of her marriage: For ever deem'd he, since it first began, That when the lord *fulfill'd had his corage,* *had gratified his whim* He woulde think it were a disparage* *disparagement To his estate, so low for to alight, And voide* her as soon ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Joseph hated black so well that he had put a clause in his will against its appearance even at his own funeral. Marie Louise loved him dearly, but she feared his prejudices. She had an abject terror of offending him, because she felt that she owed everything she had, and was, to the whim of his good grace. Gratitude was a passion with her, and it doomed her, as all passions do, good or bad, to the penalties human beings pay for every excess of virtue or vice—if, indeed, vice is anything but ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... needn't trouble yourself! We can look after the children ourselves. You better save what you get to look after yourself when those two get over this whim!" ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... would have been my husband. In a month, here, underneath this lime, We would have broke the pattern; He for me, and I for him, He as Colonel, I as Lady, On this shady seat. He had a whim That sunlight carried blessing. And I answered, "It shall be as you have ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... entirely oblivious of the existence of such a person as Grace Parsloe, when, much to his irritation, he heard the voice of that young lady, mingled with others, approaching along the veranda. At the same moment he experienced acute regret at the whim of fortune which had made himself and that sprightly young lady fellow-passengers from Panama, and at the idle impulse which had prompted him ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... care. She was having a wonderful time—a new kind of wonderful time. No longer gazing, big-eyed like little Cinderella at a pageant some fairy godmother's whim had admitted her to, but consciously gazed upon; she was the show to-night, and she knew it. Her low, finely modulated voice so rich in humor, so varied in color, had to-night an edge on it that carried it beyond those she was immediately ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... thought relating to amendment of the Constitution. One need not be committed to the belief that amendment is weakening the fundamental law, or that excessive amendment is essential to meet every ephemeral whim. We ought to amend to meet the demands of the people when sanctioned ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the least extraordinary feature of his appearance. He constantly wore a full-trimmed scarlet waistcoat of most uncommon dimensions, a light grey coat, which altogether gave him an air of singularity and whim as remarkable ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... following day. If again my imagination did not lead me astray, I fancied this occurred later and later in the course of the meal as the week went on; as if his state required more stimulus as time progressed. One evening, when I expected it to flag altogether, I had a whim to order champagne and observe the effect; but I am glad to say that I reproved ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... she manifested a sort of dread to return, saying that she did not want to stay there, that they were not satisfied with her, that she preferred to return to them. They would reply that it had already cost them enough to bring her to Paris, that it was a silly whim on her part and that she was very well off where she was, and they would send her back to the cafe in tears. She dared not tell all that she suffered in the company of the waiters in the cafe, insolent, boasting, cynical fellows, fed on the remains of debauches, tainted with all the vices ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... Platonic of liaisons. She is as high-strung as an Arabian steed,—proud, heroic, romantic, and French! and such must be permitted to take their own time and way, which we in our gaucherie can only humbly wonder at I have ever professed myself her abject slave, ready to follow any whim, and obeying the slightest signal of the jewelled hand. As that is her sacred pleasure, I have been inhabiting the most abstract realms of heroic sentiment, living on the most diluted moonshine, and spinning out elaborately ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... was prepared. It was not the scorn, for she had often faced that. Was it the almost merriment? Yes, there was the sting. She had felt it so keenly when as a little girl Kate had taken to making fun of some whim of hers. She could not see why Kate should find cause for fun just now. It was as if she by her look ignored Marcia's relation to David in scornful laugh and appropriated him herself. Marcia's inmost soul rebelled. The color came back as if by force of her will. She would show Kate,—or ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... have taken too much for granted, you and Betty. Ten years ago your sister gave herself to me. She is mine. I will not for a whim, for a passion, for a temporary alienation, let her go. Neither will I have my good name and the name of a good woman besmirched for the sake of this impertinent desire for a release. I love my wife"—his voice was especially Hebraic and ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... sister, sire, your whim should be my law. Trust me, I shall make her worthy of our ancient rites. But, sire, forgive me if I doubt this fierce resistance. We women are all ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... against the coming of the dawn that her husband might sleep in the day instead of the night. She herself went downstairs with the earliest stir of footsteps. Because of a whim that seized her, she helped to prepare the breakfast that was to be served to the household at sunrise, and then she partook of it heartily, looking out of a southern window as she ate, watching the ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... day-time, she often found Lalie tied to the foot of the iron bedstead; it was an idea of the locksmith's, before going out, to tie her legs and her body with some stout rope, without anyone being able to find out why—a mere whim of a brain diseased by drink, just for the sake, no doubt, of maintaining his tyranny over the child when he was no longer there. Lalie, as stiff as a stake, with pins and needles in her legs, remained whole days at the post. She once even passed a night there, Bijard having forgotten ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... most authoritative places, the demands of the workers for political, social, and economic reform. The whole is a struggle for democracy, both political and industrial, that is by no means founded merely on whim or caprice. It has gradually become a religion, an imperative religion, of millions of workingmen and women. Chiefly because of their economic subjection, they are striving in the most heroic manner to make their ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... haranguing, handing, and shoving at the same time. The alacrity with which he and his merry little dog Carlin did the honours of the vehicle, and the stout active appearance of the horse (to say nothing of the whim of the moment, and the fine morning), reconciled us to a mode of conveyance no better than that which calves enjoy in a butcher's cart; and for the first few miles we forgot even the ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... la!" Fenella exclaimed. "It was a whim of mine, that is all. I liked having you both there. Some day you must come again, and, if you are very good, I may let you bring the young lady, though I'm not so sure of that. Do you know that my brother was asking me questions about her until I thought my head ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his head was swimming after the toasts that had been drunk in his honor; probably, he thought, the letter merely contained a request to gratify some boyish whim, so he left it unopened on the table. The next morning, when the fumes of champagne had passed off, he took it up ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... A whim seized the fair wearer of the negligee. "Come in and sit down, I want to talk to you. There, leave the clothes, boy. I'll pay your mother next time," and she pushed the boy out, and drew the young girl in ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... newcomers a thousand buildings of various sorts have been erected,—much as a child takes his toy-village from the box and sets it here or there, as the whim of the moment dictates. Here is also a large oil-refinery belonging to Mr. Downer of Boston, where a good many of the four thousand find employment; and here, too, are several inns, the best one called ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... fascinating than that magic city of Az-Zahra, the wonder of its age, of which now not a stone remains? It was made to satisfy the whim of a concubine by a Sultan whose flamboyant passion moved him to displace mountains for the sake of his beloved; and the memory thereof is lost so completely that even its situation till lately was uncertain. Az-Zahra the Fairest said to Abd-er-Rahm[a]n, her ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... bestido. When kiam. Whenever kiam ajn. Where kie. Wherefore kial. Wherever kie ajn. Wherry barketo. Whet akrigi. Whether cxu. Whey selakto. Which (rel. pron.) kiu, kiun. Which kio, kion, kiu, kiun. Whiff subitventeto. While dum. Whim kaprico. Whimper ploreti. Whimsical kaprica. Whine ploreti, bleketi. Whinny cxevalbleketo. Whip vipi. Whip vipo. Whip, riding vipeto. Whir turnigxadi. Whirl turnigxadi. Whirlpool turnakvo. Whirlwind turnovento. Whisk fojnbalao. Whiskers vangharoj. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... certain days for visiting certain houses, and cleaning the lamps in them. The housewives had at first granted him as a privilege the indulgence of his whim, and as such alone had Duncan regarded it; but by and by, when they found their lamps burn so much better from being properly attended to, they began to make him some small return; and at length it became the custom with every ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... weakness, as the prey of a predaceous and unscrupulous woman who had intrigued and would continue to intrigue against his happiness, a woman away from her own world, a self-complacent and sensual privateer who for a passing whim, for a momentary appeasement of her exile, stood ready to sacrifice the last of his self-respect. She was self-complacent, but she was also a woman with an unmistakable physical appeal. She was undeniably ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... night men dropped down without particularity as to couch or bedchamber. Nature and the time combined to spread for them a long and echoing series of sleeping rooms, carpeted and tapestried according to Nature's whim, vaulted with whistling storm or drift of clouds or pageantry of stars. The troops took the quarters indicated sometimes with, sometimes without remark. To-night there was little speech of any kind before falling into dreamless slumber. "O hell! Hungry as a dog!"—"Me, too!"—"Can't ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... had renewed old acquaintances, laughed over the ancient jokes, and said he was sorry for those who had had misfortune. When he met Irene Straley he hardly recalled his love, except to smile at it as a boyish whim. He had forgotten the pangs of that as one forgets almost all his yester aches. He had forgotten the pains he had seen others suffer, even more easily than he ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... it was a whim, and nobody could persuade her to lay it aside; whereat the young man laughed, but kept his ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... no ordinary King: that one can see even from the scanty extracts from his letters given in "Bunsen's Memoirs." Nor was his love of Bunsen a mere passing whim. He loved the man, and those who knew the refreshing and satisfying influence of Bunsen's society will easily understand what the King meant when he said, "I am hungry and thirsty for Bunsen." But what constitution can resist the daily doses ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... liberty; for it must be owned that as Jack's taste in female beauty, and in the disposition and colours of dress, are borrowed from a very questionable model, his labours in adorning the figure-head are apt to produce strange monsters. I once heard of a captain who indulged his boatswain in this whim of representing his absent love as far as the king's allowance of paint could carry the art; and it must be owned, that, as the original Dulcinea owed her roses to the same source, the representation "came very close aboard of the original," as the delighted boatswain expressed it. This ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... her little girl's confidential friend as well as her mother. The child, quite unreservedly, told her what she wanted and why she wanted it. It was no weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a genuine respect for another person's rights as an individual—even though that individual was merely a little child—that led that mother to allow her daughter to have what she wanted. May not some subtle sense of this have been the basis of the child's happiness in the ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... a whim but for a good reason that the King had given this donkey a particular and distinguished place. The special qualities of this rare animal deserved the distinction, since nature had made it in so extraordinary a way that its litter, instead of being like that ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... Pratscha-Paramita, the peace that is beyond all knowledge and which Nirvana provides. That peace is—or was—the complete absence of anything, extinction utter and everlasting, a state of absolute non-existence which no whim ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... therefore have seemed most expedient to carry on the methods of its former chief. But Mohbrinck considered that to do so would make him appear an officer without military distinction or views of his own. He posed as having studied to a nicety every little whim and peculiarity of the major-general commanding the brigade, and had made up his mind that at the review his regiment should have no fault found with it, not even if for months everything more important should be set aside in order ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... your plutocrat of a master, that never does a handsturn of work himself, takes it for granted that any whim that comes into a man's head can be gratified: yes, he counts that the fair thing, and never takes account of how much the work is. Ah, I tell you, there's a great deal of injustice this slavery lets you in ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... idea of carrying up his blankets and three or four days' food. He ended by transporting up that steep slope everything but his canoe and the small tent. It might be, he said to himself as he lugged load after load, just a whim, a fancy, but he was free to act on a whim or a fancy, as free as if he were in the first blush of careless, adventurous youth,—freer, because he had none of the impatient hopes and urges and dreams of youth. He was finished, he told himself in a transient mood of bitterness. ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... This sudden whim of conferring on him a degree in divinity, and her change of manner—implying that she had been laughing at him before—irritated him. "I presume," he said, "that you are acquainted with the movements ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... a better understanding of him, it would be impossible to make the rest of the world, of the world in which she lived and to which she clung, see anything of what she saw. They would laugh if her new position were a passing whim; they would be scornful and angry if it ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... time seem short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she would do any modest office to help her cousin to a ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... a man, not a romantic girl, as you are. He has always had a reputation for pride and austerity, for being just before he would let himself be generous; and it may be that to one of his nature, a wild whim ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... That is always dangerous. If the student lacks earnestness, or insight, or balance, he is bound to make mistakes. He is likely to make them anyway; and he may merely pick and choose according to comfort or whim, and do the most desultory, careless studying. It would be easier for him to "look out for all the little things" than to discriminate among them, for intelligent ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... of a heathen goddess, and would not go well with the idea of a holy palmer. COCOA, PHOENIX, and ARECA, one after the other, went in at his eyes and through his head; none of them pleased him. His wife, however, who in her smiling way had fallen in with his whim, helped him out of his difficulty. She was the daughter of nonconformist parents in Lancashire, and had been encouraged when a child to read a certain old-fashioned book called The Pilgrim's Progress, which her husband had never seen. He did not read it now, but accepting her suggestion, ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... had wrapped the discovery of his uncle's secret had faded out with time. By slow degrees he had learned—partly from his own observation, partly from the old man's occasional fanatic outbursts—that the strange chapel with its metal symbol and marble floor was not the outcome of a private whim, but the manifestation of a creed that boasted a small but ardent band of followers. He had learned that—to themselves, if not to the world—these devotees were known as the Mystics; that their articles of faith were preserved in a secret book designated the Scitsym, ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... ugly, the ignoble: in a word, das Gemeine, die Gemeinheit, that curse of Germany, against which Goethe was all his life fighting. The excellence of a national spirit thus composed is freedom from whim, flightiness, perverseness; patient fidelity to Nature, in a word, SCIENCE,—leading it at last, though slowly, and not by the most brilliant road, out of the bondage of the humdrum and common, into the better life. The universal dead-level ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... I were to do what you wish, it would be a caprice, a mere whim. In displaying such an impatient humor I show my whole court that I have no control over my own feelings. Do not people already say that I am dreaming of the conquest of the world, but that I ought previously to begin by achieving ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hall. This contained an exquisite Colonial four-poster, with a lowboy and dresser to match, and was papered and carpeted in accordance with these, its chief ornaments. Newmark bathed in the adjoining bathroom, shaved carefully between the two wax lights which were his whim, and dressed in what were then known as "swallow-tail" clothes. Probably he was the only man in Monrovia at that moment so apparelled. Then calmly, and with all the deliberation of one under fire of a hundred eyes, he proceeded to the dining-room, where waited the man who had a short ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... Prioress left them, Sister Cecilia told Evelyn that she would have to work very hard indeed, for it was the Prioress's whim not to use the ordinary altar cloths with an embroidered hem, but always cloths on which lace frontals were lightly tacked; and Evelyn was warned that the sewing on of the lace, without creasing ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... help it," says Terence, wrathfully. "I wasn't going to let the rabbit go for the sake of a mere whim." ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... few evenings later, Faraday again saw Miss. Ryan. On the first of these occasions this independent young lady was dressed simply in a high-necked gown and a hat. This evening with her habitual disregard of custom and convention, some whim had caused her to array herself in full gala attire, and, habited in a gorgeous costume of white silk and yellow velvet, with a glimmer of diamonds round the low neck, she was startling in ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... he who quickly learned to purge His fancy of the tender whim That she was floating at the verge Of womanhood, half hid to him, Saw her with ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... dead?" she cried. "Have you no pity for me? Do you think that I have followed you here to grovel at your feet for mere whim? Am I acting like a woman sane and sound? Don't you see that I am mad, and why I am mad? Must I tell you before her? Dick—" She staggered towards him, and the fine cloak slipped from her shoulders; and then it was that Tommy changed from a child into a woman, and raised the other ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... these prints; and the order was implicitly obeyed; but it was not Fouche's police. Fouche saw the absurdity of interfering with trifles. I recollect that immediately after the creation of the Legion of Honour, it being summer, the young men of Paris indulged in the whim of wearing a carnation in a button-hole, which at a distance had rather a deceptive effect. Bonaparte took this very seriously. He sent for Fouche, and desired him to arrest those who presumed thus to turn the new order into ridicule. Fouche merely ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... impertinence of speech was John Edwin, a comedian who enjoyed great popularity late in the last century. A contemporary critic describes him "as one of those extraordinary productions that would do immortal honour to the sock, if his extravasations of whim could be kept within bounds, and if the comicality of his vein could be restrained by good taste." Reynolds, the dramatist, relates that on one occasion he was sitting in the front row of the balcony-box at the Haymarket, during the performance of ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... lover what she had done and take the consequences, believing in her power over him to come scatheless out of the adventure. In those days, when human life was so cheap, she might have asked for the death of almost any one, and her whim would have been gratified by a lover who had not hesitated to put to death his own son at her dictation. But with Ibrahim it was another matter; he was the familiar of the Sultan, his alter ego in fact, It says much ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... to be present at the examination, but a sudden whim made William say that he would prefer to be alone with the doctor, and she returned to the gardens. Mr. Alden had not yet gone. He stood with his back turned to her. The little girl she had seen ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... twenty-five below zero and falling. Wherefore, it was necessary to organize gangs of life-savers, who patrolled the streets to pick up drunken men from where they fell in the snow and where an hour's sleep would be fatal. Daylight, whose whim it was to make them drunk by hundreds and by thousands, was the one who initiated this life saving. He wanted Dawson to have its night, but, in his deeper processes never careless nor wanton, he saw to it that it was a night without accident. And, like ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Constitution, and no longer parts of the nation, they rested their action, so far as they deigned to account for it, on the ground that the United States were nothing more than a confederation, constituted such by a mere compact, which could be broken when the interests or the whim of any party so dictated. The loyal States, on the other hand, straightway took up arms in defence of the integrity of the nation, constituted such by organic law, which is supreme forever throughout the length and breadth ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and freedom from all petty whim and prejudice set Spinoza apart as a marked man. Withal he was eminently religious, and the reference to him by Novalis as "the God-intoxicated man" seems especially applicable to one ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... colours will dance before my eyes. I shall soar from terraces of stone upon dragons with shining wings and make war upon Olympus. From the peaks of hills I shall swoop into recondite valleys and drive the pigmies, shrieking little curses, to their caverns. It may be my whim to wander through infinite parks where the deer lie under the clustering shadow of their antlers and flee lightly over the grass; to whisper with white prophets under the elms or bind a child with a daisy-chain or, with a lady, thread my way through the acacias. I shall swim down rivers into the ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... a client; to-night you are my guest. All who enter here leave their business, with their hats, in the hall. Look; there isn't a law book on those shelves; that table never was defaced by a title deed or parchment. You look puzzled? Well, it was a whim of mine to put my residence and my work-shop under the same roof, yet so distinct that they would never interfere with each other. You know the house above is let out to lodgers. I occupy the first floor with my mother and sister, and this is my parlor. I do my work in that severe ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... particular branch of research, and was, moreover, provided with that long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student's energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its aggressive nose, and its somewhat loose and ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... were reasonable," said the other. "Any sudden whim of the keeper might be our doom. But this we must be prepared for. In times like this we must be ready to meet death at any moment. What says our Lord? 'Be ye also ready.' We must be able to say when the time comes, 'I am now ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... depended on the whim of this man. He might one day find Loewestein dull, or the air of the place unhealthy, or the gin bad, and leave the fortress, and take his daughter with him, when Cornelius and Rosa ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... enamel on silver, done with infinite pains by hand labor, perhaps centuries ago, grown beautiful with age. In the White House georgette flowers, exquisite things made for the passing minute, a whiff and a whim and off they go. Just in these two there is a meeting of the centuries, Handcraft Days and the Machine Age—B. C. and A. D.—the oldest civilization in ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... in experience, in aims we were. And while I made a mock in my heart of their high-flown sentiments—or thought I did—I laughed no less at the folly which had led me to dream, even for a moment, that I could, at my age, go back—go back and risk all for a whim, a scruple, the fancy of a ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... art censors, has stuck fast in its rut because of the observance of rules purely arbitrary. Many of the conventions of modern European music are no more scientific or original or consistent; most of them are based upon the principle that the whim of a great dead composer is worthy to be the law of any living composer. These Blue Laws of music are constantly assailed surreptitiously and in detail; and yet they are too little attacked as a whole. But music should be a democracy and not an aristocracy, ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... not one word of reproach, against Madame von Marwitz for her disconcerting change of plan. It was not surprising to him; it was what he had expected of Madame von Marwitz, that she would put Karen aside for a whim. Karen would not see her guardian's action in this light; yet she must know that her beloved was vulnerable to the charge, at all events, of inconsiderateness, and she had been grateful to him, no doubt, for showing ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick |
