"Wilfully" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Confession of the Dog Yarrow." In reality "Yarrow" was sold to a farmer in the neighbourhood of Peebles, but, strange to say, though as a thief he had been so supernaturally clever, as a dog employed in honest pursuits his intelligence was much below the average. Perhaps he was clever enough to be wilfully stupid; or maybe he had become so used to following crooked paths that the straight road seemed to him a place full of suspicion ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... go on? It was the old, old story of misplaced confidence. Neither F—— nor I could believe that our friends would wilfully over-reach us, so it was settled that the first thing next morning the money should be handed over and the Government lease transferred to us. We decided that as we were so far on the way to our new property, we would go and look at it before returning to ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... pay his fine: a mark a-piece if the fine be seven hundred shillings; less if the person killed be a clown or ceorle; the half of that sum, again, if he be a Welshman. But where any of the associates kills a man, wilfully and without provocation, he must himself pay the fine. If any of the associates kill any of his fellows in a like criminal manner, besides paying the usual fine to the relations of the deceased, he must ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... roam'd through many a clime. To whom the noble swine-herd thus replied. 150 Alas, old man! no trav'ler's tale of him Will gain his consort's credence, or his son's; For wand'rers, wanting entertainment, forge Falsehoods for bread, and wilfully deceive. No wand'rer lands in Ithaca, but he seeks With feign'd intelligence my mistress' ear; She welcomes all, and while she questions each Minutely, from her lids lets fall the tear Affectionate, as well beseems a wife Whose mate hath perish'd in a distant land. 160 Thou could'st thyself, no ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... that really and truly the most dreadful things have happened to children who have run away from their homes—things too dreadful for me to tell of. We know that the Gentle Shepherd has a special care for little lambs of His flock, but we can never expect God to take care of us when we have wilfully turned away from Him to follow our own wrongdoing, and refused to turn back. If the lambs will not listen to the voice of the Shepherd, but will stray far away from Him, they are ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... surprised her to a degree she could not account for. Her first thought was, how fortunate for her brother that Pierre had returned; her second, how agreeable to herself. Why? She could not think why: she wilfully drew an inference away from the truth that lay in her heart—it was wholly for the sake of her brother she rejoiced in the return of his friend and preserver. Her heart beat a little faster than ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... almost in excess. One little weakness, however, in their otherwise estimable characters had at times disturbed the even course of our friendship. I hardly know what to call it. It was not want of candour. More truthful women do not exist than they were, and I believe they never wilfully deceived anyone. I can only describe it as a habit of indulging in small plots and suspicions; a want of trust in other people, partly traceable, perhaps, to a lack of due confidence in themselves, but which was very provoking to ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... whether a canker of the mind was gradually eating, as such cankers do, from his moral system into the physical frame, which is but the shadow of the former. They looked for the root of this trouble in his shattered schemes of domestic bliss,—wilfully shattered by himself,—but could not be satisfied of its existence there. Some thought that their once brilliant friend was in an incipient stage of insanity, of which his passionate impulses had perhaps been the forerunners; others prognosticated a ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... boyhood, when blind deference to social precedents is apt to overcome our natural antipathies, and that those who have passed that period in safety, have generally escaped the danger of temptation. The same holds good of other dietetic abuses. If a child's natural aversion to vice has never been wilfully perverted, the time will come when his welfare may be intrusted to the safe-keeping of his protective instincts. You need not fear that he will swerve from the path of health when his simple habits, sanctioned by nature and inclination, have acquired ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... new leather boots, would cling to each successive step as if they could never, never make another venture; and then one boot would (there is but that word) hesitate out, and feel and feel around, and have such a pause of helpless agony as if indeed the next step must have been wilfully removed, or was nowhere to be found on the wide, ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... prerogative, shuts us up to the conclusion that He desired to be understood as exercising it. Unless His pardon is something quite different from the ministerial announcement of forgiveness, which His servants are empowered to make to penitents, He wilfully led the cavillers into error. His answer starts with a counter-question— another 'why?' to meet their' why?' It then puts into words what they were thinking; namely, that it was easy to assume a power the reality of which could not be tested. To say, 'Thy sins be forgiven,' and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... day. I ask only for one day, because I know that, in a character like yours, such an examination, once begun in all earnestness, will only cease with life. It is of sins of ignorance and carelessness alone that I accuse you; not of wilfully harbouring malicious and revengeful thoughts. You have never, probably, observed their existence: how, then, could you be aware of their tendency? Perhaps the following illustration may serve to suggest to you proofs of the danger of the practice I ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... the wrong way) signifies wilfully wrong or erring, unreasonably set against right, reason, or authority. The stubborn or obstinate person will not do what another desires or requires; the perverse person will do anything contrary ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... so dense," she whispered in his ear, "wilfully dense, perhaps. You will not understand that I wish to ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stay away," he had replied, with a look black as a thundercloud. Could there really be anything in those suspicions of Dockwrath, that his own lawyer had wilfully thrown him over once, and was now anxious to throw him over again? "I will not stay away," he said; and Dockwrath secured his lodgings for him. About this time he was a good deal with Mr. Dockwrath, and almost regretted that he had not followed that gentleman's advice at the commencement ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... yourself possess. Ah, you must prepare for disappointment!—for though the times are tending toward strange upheavals and terrors, when the trumpet-voice of an inspired Poet may do enormous good,— still the name of the wilfully ignorant is Legion,—the age is one of the grossest Mammon worship, and coarsest Atheism,—and the noblest teachings of the noblest teacher, were he even another Shakespeare, must of necessity be but a casting of pearls before swine. Still"—and his rare sweet smile brightened the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... temperate, it is true, but in which I endeavoured to maintain the extremest respect and reticence. I said I did not know by what motives she had been influenced, but that I held her answerable for the misery of my future life, which she had chosen wilfully to mar and render wretched. She had occasioned a separation between me and a virtuous and innocent young creature, whose own hopes, health, and happiness were cast down for ever by Mrs. Esmond's interference. The deed was done, as I ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of atonement. This is due to God; it can be performed only by living and suffering. Life is a duty because it is an ordeal. You must preserve life, as a sacred trust, for this reason. Even if you were a felon—one wilfully resolving and coldly executing crime—you were yet bound to preserve life! Throw it away, and though you comply with the demand of social laws, you forfeit the only chance of making atonement to those which are far superior. Rather pray that life may be spared you. It was with this merciful ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... inquest sate on the bodies, and came to a decision which strongly indicated the temper of the public mind. The jury found that certain loyal and well disposed persons, who had gone to put down the meetings of traitors and public enemies at a mass house, had been wilfully murdered by the soldiers; and this strange verdict was signed by all the jurors. The ecclesiastics at Clerkenwell, naturally alarmed by these symptoms of popular feeling, were desirous to place their property in safety. They succeeded in removing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thus plotting treason, stratagem, and massacre, is a dark and dreary one. The description of English sufferings for conscience' sake, under the Protestant Elizabeth, is even more painful; for it had unfortunately too much, of truth, although as wilfully darkened and exaggerated as could be done by religious hatred and Spanish bombast. The Queen was surrounded by legions of deadly enemies. Spain, the Pope, the League, were united in one perpetual conspiracy against her; and they relied on the cooperation of those subjects of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... expression to an obsolete idea; we have exposed, likewise, the inclination of the working-classes to trust to the protection, and, on every emergency, claim as a matter of right the aid of the wealthy, thus wilfully and deliberately returning to the condition of serfdom: we have now to trace the mediaeval mania in a department where, notwithstanding all this ominous conjunction of symptoms, its appearance is truly surprising—in the department of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... communications to me. God knows I wish to love and respect you, but when, under solemn circumstances, you utter, by your own admission, a deliberate falsehood to a man of the purest truth and honor; when you knowingly and wilfully mislead him for selfish and ambitious purposes;—nay, I will retract these words, and suppose it is from an anxiety to secure me rank and happiness,—I say, father, when you thus forget all that constitutes the integrity and dignity of man, and ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... preached for forty minutes." He not only disliked, but openly ridiculed all signs of a special pietistic bearing. It was said of him that he had been heard to swear. There can be no doubt that he made himself wilfully distasteful to many of his stricter brethren. Then it came to pass that there was a correspondence between him and the bishop as to that outspoken desire of his for a curate without the grace of godliness. ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... be very serious, a little inclined to melancholy, but will pay due regard to whatever responsibilities with which he may be entrusted, but again beware if this finger is crooked. In this case the owner would be, however, more subject to what may be called "a crooked fate" than wilfully "wrong." Such people are, as a rule, the children of strange circumstances over which they seem to have no control. They are continually getting themselves into trouble and into false positions, but, I must admit, ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... Thus, wilfully blind to a truth which was soon to become obvious to all the world, he let the insidious foe steal across his threshold, and guessed not how soon that dark and hidden enemy was to drive him from the hearth by which he sat, secure in self-approval and sagacious ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... the Royal Society as concerns myself. I must add that there is not a spark of party feeling against those who wilfully remain outside. The better minds of course know better; and the smaller savants look complacently on the idea of an outer world which makes elite of them. I have done such a thing as serve on a committee of the Society, and report on a ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... so little taste that I thought him a fool, and so I left him to talk to his dear plants, while I shot partridges for our supper. We spent six days in the woods, and the little man filled his black wallet with all sorts of rubbish, as if he wilfully shut his eyes to the beautiful flowers, and chose only to admire ugly, insignificant plants that everybody else passes by without noticing, and which, often as I had been in the woods, I never had observed before. I never pursued a deer with such earnestness as he continued ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... her mother, 'this is very odd. Making yourself miserable in trying to get a position on our account is one thing, and not necessary; but I think it ridiculous to rush into the other extreme, and go wilfully down in the scale. You may just as well exercise your wits in trying to swim as in ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... wanton cruelty, persistent and selfish disregard of the rights of others, but one must warn many times, and never try to triumph over a fault by the infliction of a shock of any kind. The shock is the most cruel and cowardly sort of punishment, and if we wilfully use it, then we are perpetuating the sad tyranny of instinctive fear, and using the strength of a great angel to do the work of a demon, such as I saw long ago in the old magazine, and felt its tyranny ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... within, we went to our daily roast-beef, and in the sweet simplicity of a blissful ignorance and a clear conscience assured our patient hostess that the dog-days and her unworthy guests should go out together. Yet we never told a lie or wilfully deceived any man, ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... whole prayer is {267} admirable, says the saint, but especially the close, the remembrance of the last day being a bridle and check to sensuality and concupiscence. (Ib.) The saint shows (Horn. 86, p. 810) the malice and danger of small faults wilfully committed, which many are apt to make slight of; but from such the most dreadful falls take their rise. The old Latin translation of St. Chrysostom's homilies on St. Matthew, is too full of words, and often inaccurate. Anian, the author, seems to have been the Pelagian deacon ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... sir, whether the success of the Spanish privateers may not be, in great part, attributed to this pernicious practice; whether captains, when their vessels are insured for more than their value, do not rashly venture into known danger? whether they do not wilfully miss the security of convoys? whether they do not direct their courses where privateers may most securely cruise? whether they do not surrender with less resistance than interest would excite? and whether they do not raise clamours against the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... is quite true—I have treated you badly. I have behaved wilfully and foolishly. But that ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sufficed to enable her to live removed from such discomforts; but she was one of those women who regard it as a duty to leave something behind them,—even though it be left to those who do not at all want it; and Lady Macleod was a woman who wilfully neglected no duty. So she pinched herself, and inhaled the effluvia of the stables, and squabbled with the cabmen, in order that she might bequeath a thousand pounds or two to some Lady Midlothian, who cared, perhaps, little for her, and would ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... happened, he did not at once know what; he turned the gas on full and lit it; the room was suddenly filled with the glare and he looked round. He gasped. The whole place was wrecked. Everything in it had been wilfully destroyed. Anger seized him, and he rushed into Mildred's room. It was dark and empty. When he had got a light he saw that she had taken away all her things and the baby's (he had noticed on entering that the go-cart was not in its usual place on the landing, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... jokes even more than of creeds, and understood them equally. "Miss Farringdon, you are not behaving fairly to me. You know what I mean well enough, but you wilfully misunderstand my words for the sake of laughing at them. But I will make you listen, all the same. I want to know if you will help me in my work by becoming my wife; and I think that even you can not help answering that ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... difficult to determine. It has been said that Cunningham acted on higher authority than any in America, and that Howe in vain endeavored to mitigate the sufferings of the prisoners. This, however, is not easy of belief. Howe must at least have wilfully blinded himself to the wicked and murderous violence of his subordinate. It was his duty to know how the prisoners at his mercy fared, and not to employ murderers to destroy them by the thousands as they were destroyed in the prisons of New York ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... the motive for your panic-stricken flight. I am young, ardent, impetuous; I attach no importance to certain social conventionalities, but I feel confident that I have never failed in a religious respect for the holiness of love and modesty. I love you—I could never, wilfully, have offended you. How could my eyes and lips have expressed what was neither in my head nor in my heart? If there is no fire without smoke, as a natural consequence there can be no smoke ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... protested, "because at heart we are all pacifists. There is not one of us who would wilfully choose war instead of peace. The only question is the price we ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hold her. He had deceived her, then, all along. Because she had—foolishly—relaxed a little towards him, permitted a certain intimacy, this was how he abused it. Ah, well, it would teach her a lesson. Men were like that. She might have known it would come to this. Wilfully they chose to misunderstand, to take advantage of her frankness, her ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... wilfully obtuse, you are wilfully, cruelly pigheaded!" she cried. "Pardon me, dear Richard, but your attitude is enough to exasperate a saint. And I am no saint as yet. I am still human—radically, for my own peace of mind lamentably, human. I am only too capable of being grieved, humiliated, hurt. But ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... But Grandpa Keeler remained wilfully indifferent to these broadly insinuating tactics. He fancied, poor, deluded old man, that here was a choice opportunity to tell a tale of the seas after a fashion dear to his own heart, unshackled by the restraints of ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... a few minutes. Mary thought she was dozing until she said in an animated voice: "Did you see the ring? It's a wonderful stone." Wilfully she thrust her skeleton-like fingers out from the ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... at the discomfiture of others, denotes that you will wilfully injure your friends to gratify your own ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... has no name in common parlance. Therefore, we may call him the Robustious Philistine. This man will cut the leaves of his own or his friend's volumes with the butter- knife at breakfast. Also he is just the person wilfully to mistake the double sense of the term 'fly-leaves,' and to stick the 'fly- leaves' of his volumes full of fly-hooks. He also loves dogs'-ears, and marks his place with his pipe when he shuts a book in a hurry; or he will set the ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... handed on to Christianity. Outside the borders of this Goshen the world had sunk into the darkness of Egypt. Where analogies between savage cults and the Christian religions were observed, they were explained as degradations; the heathen had somehow wilfully "lost the light." Our business was not to study but, exclusively, to convert them, to root out superstition and carry the torch of revelation to "Souls in heathen darkness lying." To us nowadays it ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Christ Jesus,' says St. Paul, when he gives a standing rule concerning prayer in the Christian church. And yet, notwithstanding all the care that our blessed Saviour and his apostles could take to prevent gross idolatry of the blessed mother of our Lord, how blindly and wilfully have the church of Rome run into it! and, in despite of the clearest evidence and conviction, do obstinately and impudently persist in it, and justify themselves in so abominable ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... is maliciously or foolishly inclined, will jeopardize the interests of his team by acting in a wilfully unjust manner toward a player who is cheerfully and uprightly offering his services. We may hear of occasional exceptions to this condition of things, but if these occasional exceptions chance to arise, it is inevitably certain that the owner in the long run will ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... affairs. They make no fuss about it. Theirs is always the hard and dirty work. They have always done it. If they don't do it, it will not be done. They fall with a will and without complaint upon the wreckage wilfully made of generations of such labour as theirs, to get the world right again, to make it habitable again, though not for themselves; for them, they must spend the rest of their lives recreating order out of chaos. A hopeless task; but they continue at it unmurmuring, giving their bodies without ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... have not, to my knowledge, expressed any one of their tenets invidiously. An attentive reader may deduce, I think, all the Subordinate points in their teaching from some one or more of the principles which I have given; but I have not wilfully omitted any doctrine of importance. And, in every point, the opposition to what I may be allowed to call the protestantism of the nineteenth century is so manifest, that we cannot but feel that the peculiar character of the system is ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... indignation in her heart—indignation at his inconstancy to the sweet lady who she knew loved him, and his impertinence in daring to address herself when she knew he loved that lady. She silently confessed that to this upshot his poor pretences of wooing had tended from the first, and that she had been wilfully half blind and wholly unbelieving—so unwilling are proud young creatures to imagine that their best feelings can be traded on—but she was none the less wrathful and scornful as she lifted her eyes, dilated with tears, to his, and sweeping ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... and, in case of assistance given, salvage shall be paid by the owners, to be assessed by three neighbouring justices. All persons that secrete any goods shall forfeit their treble value: and if they wilfully do any act whereby the ship is lost or destroyed, by making holes in her, stealing her pumps, or otherwise, they are guilty of felony, without benefit of clergy. Lastly, by the statute 26 Geo. II. c. 19. plundering any vessel either in distress, or wrecked, and whether any living ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... was the devil, you might be afraid indeed. But He is the loving, righteous Father, who knows your weakness, and remembers that you are but dust. Can you not trust Him to pardon your mistakes about the Sacrament, which you do not wilfully intend to commit, when He has borne with, and pardoned all the sins from your youth up until now, which you have wilfully committed? Surely, you may trust Him in such a thing as this,—He who has had long-suffering enough to keep you alive, with a chance of salvation all this time? ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... journeyman at weekly wages whose name was Orlick. He pretended that his Christian name was Dolge,—a clear Impossibility,—but he was a fellow of that obstinate disposition that I believe him to have been the prey of no delusion in this particular, but wilfully to have imposed that name upon the village as an affront to its understanding. He was a broadshouldered loose-limbed swarthy fellow of great strength, never in a hurry, and always slouching. He never even seemed ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... unrest stirred up by the war showed no signs of subsiding, but indeed, quite the contrary, there was trouble in the very air—ominous portents of a storm whose dull, grim growling down the horizon could be heard only too clearly by those who did not wilfully close their ears, grin fatuous complacence, and bleat like brainless ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... my dear young lady?" wilfully seeming to misunderstand her;—"most young gentlemen have so at one period or another, sure enough, but ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... any of these people in such crimes? If you have so far forgotten yourselves, the commands of God, and the curse that awaits you and those who deceive themselves the same way; reflect, before it be too late, on the evil into which you have willingly, wilfully, and without the least reasonable excuse, fallen, and on the guilt that must of necessity attach to your consciences thereby. Should you never meet those you encouraged to sin in this world, and therefore never have an opportunity of warning them of their danger, yet must you meet at ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... might forget that Vic was in the house, but Starr never forgot things of that sort, and he wilfully forestalled her intention to ask about the shooting. "I didn't have any supper, either, beyond a sandwich or two that was mostly sand after I'd packed 'em around all day. I just naturally had to turn tramp and ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... She had no recollection of anything seen by the way. Her senses swam in an ecstasy too great for words, too intense to allow of impressions from outside. Tears of joy obscured her vision. It was only when she arrived home, and saw her father, and recollected that he had deceived her wilfully, that she had room in her heart for ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Cousine Bette, 'A crime is in the first instance a defect of reasoning powers.' In the appreciation of this truth, Marcus Aurelius was, as usual, a bit beforehand with Balzac. M. Aurelius said, 'No soul wilfully misses truth.' And Epictetus had come to the same conclusion before M. Aurelius, and Plato before Epictetus. All wrong-doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do. Whatever sin a man does he does either for ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... evil-minded persons who wilfully transgress such (good usages) will certainly suffer great misery in this world as well as ...
— The Siksha-Patri of the Swami-Narayana Sect • Professor Monier Williams (Trans.)
... are those who, wilfully and intentionally separate themselves from the unity of the Church; for this is the chief unity, and the particular unity of several individuals among themselves is subordinate to the unity of the Church, even as the mutual adaptation ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... anger soon abated. A not too convincing light-heartedness took the place of this stormy ebullition. If Windebank had been more skilled in the mechanism of a woman's heart, he would have promptly divined the girl's gaiety had been wilfully assumed, in order to conceal from herself the anxiety that Windebank's words, with reference to the proper conduct of a true lover, had inspired. By the time they had reached her door, she had expended ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... hands to the gods; but the greater part convinced that there were now no gods at all, and that the final endless night of which we have heard had come upon the world. Among these there were some who augmented the real terrors by others imaginary or wilfully invented. I remember some who declared that one part of Misenum had fallen, that another was on fire; it was false, but they found people to believe them. It now grew rather lighter, which we imagined to be rather ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... position of belief in Southern success, had yet given both sides in the war fair accuracy in its reports—those of the New York correspondent, Mackay, always excepted. But from June, 1864, a change came over the Times; it was either itself deceived or was wilfully deceiving its readers, for steadily every event for the rest of the year was coloured to create an impression of the unlimited powers of Southern resistance. Read to-day in the light of modern knowledge of the military situation ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... the gentleman. Feet and hands were in motion; still the colonel played as well as usual; he had answers for all Jane's questions, and smiles for his partner; but no check-mate could she obtain, until wilfully throwing away an advantage he suffered the lady to win the game. The dowager was satisfied nothing could be ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... it; admitted everything save the imputation that my relations with Agatha Geddis had been in any sense wilfully immoral. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... though they had long ceased to incommode him. They were connected in his memory with atrocious tedium, pietistic insincerity, and humiliating contacts. At the bottom of his mind he still regarded them as a malicious device of parents for wilfully harassing and persecuting inoffensive, helpless children. And he had a particular grudge against them because he alone of his father's offspring had been chosen for the nauseating infliction. Why should his sisters have been ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... the district attorney arose from his desk under the bench, and represented to the court that as for some unforeseen reason the said Frank Stevens, who had been maliciously and wilfully assaulted and shot by the said Tom Muldoon, had refused to prosecute, the prosecution rested upon the government, which would rely upon the direct evidence of one ...
— McClure's Magazine, January, 1896, Vol. VI. No. 2 • Various
... people about the farm, who hardly waited till my father's back was turned before they rated the stepson. I am ashamed—my heart is sore to think how I fell into the fashion of the family, and slighted my poor orphan step- brother. I don't think I ever scouted him, or was wilfully ill-natured to him; but the habit of being considered in all things, and being treated as something uncommon and superior, made me insolent in my prosperity, and I exacted more than Gregory was always willing to grant, and ...
— The Half-Brothers • Elizabeth Gaskell
... misdemeanors towards his said master, unfortunately shall suffer in life or member, (which seldom happens) no person whatsoever shall be liable to any fine therefore. But if any man shall, of wantonness, or only of bloody-mindedness or cruel intention, wilfully kill a Negroe, or other slave of his own, he shall pay into the public treasury, fifteen pounds sterling." Now that the life of a man should be so lightly valued, as that fifteen pounds should be judged a sufficient ...
— Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants • Anthony Benezet
... their enemies: they have been accused of sacrificing a positive good to an uncertain hope,—of suffering their passions to hurry them into a war for which they had made no adequate preparation, and had not the means of making any,—that they wilfully, almost wantonly, incurred the fearful responsibility of staking the lives and fortunes of those who were looking to them for guidance upon the chances of a single cast. But the accusation is unjust. As far as human foresight could reach, they had calculated these chances carefully. They knew the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... begins things—friendship, for instance; but afterwards it is absurd to talk of anything but ourselves. We keep our friends, our chances, our—our joys,' she went on hurriedly, trying desperately to generalise, 'or we throw them away wilfully, because ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not, it is true, prolonged beyond a period of about sixteen years, albeit his name figured to a much later time on the list of living potentates. It is also true that when the seeds thrown by him had grown luxuriantly, and were bearing fruit, the sower was almost entirely forgotten or wilfully ignored. The generation, however, of the "Stuermer und Draenger,"[58] or, as they were pleased to denominate themselves, the "original geniuses," looked up to Herder as their leader and prophet. Some of them turned from him later on and went back to the exclusive ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... they resemble the kind of his former productions, so far in short as they are re-castings of himself, they do him injustice. We now feel that he is capable of stronger and loftier efforts, and are unwilling to overlook in his later compositions the flaws that are wilfully copied from his own volume. The public demand that he should go onward, and not wander back to dally among flowers that have been plucked before, and were then accepted for their freshness. He must devote himself to subjects ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... "Alas! how wilfully you misconstrue me!" said the Duke, kneeling on one knee; "and what right can you have to complain of a few hours' gentle restraint—you, who destine so many to hopeless captivity? Be merciful for once, and withdraw that envious veil; for the divinities ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... is one way out of many difficult situations, and the worst kinds of murder are by no means capital offences. It is true that all engagements are not made by the same vital bonds as that of Jenny's and Theophil's, but many are. For a man wilfully to break an engagement means sometimes that the whole love-life in a woman is atrophied, all that made her woman stabbed to ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... even too good natured a fellow, Henry," answered Simon. "But mark the difference betwixt these two men. The harmless little bonnet maker assumes the airs of a dragon, to disguise his natural cowardice; while the pottingar wilfully desires to show himself timid, poor spirited, and humble, to conceal the danger of his temper. The adder is not the less deadly that he creeps under a stone. I tell thee, son Henry, that, for all his sneaking looks and timorous talking, this wretched anatomy ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... have leapt into the waters, and frustrated God's purpose after they had been saved, so can any member of the human family, after it has been taken into the "Ark of Christ's Church," frustrate God's "good will towards" it, and wilfully leap out of its saving shelter. Baptism is "a beginning," not an end.[12] It puts us into a state of Salvation. It starts us in the way of Salvation. St. Cyprian says that in Baptism "we start crowned," and St. John says: "Hold fast that which ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... yourself to choose the good road? didn't you say you knew ours was the ould church as it stood always down from Christ? If you do go wrong, you don't do it from ignorance, but you do it wilfully, and your sowl will howl in ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... Linklater in astonishment; "why, will not that be rushing wilfully into danger?—scalding yourself, as I may ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... administration of civil justice; the eunuchs over that of criminal justice, public buildings, &c. The minister has the land revenue; and all are making enormous fortunes. The present King ought not certainly to reign: he has wilfully forfeited all right to do so; but to set him aside in favour of his eldest, or indeed any other son, would give no security whatever for any permanent good government A well-selected regency would, no doubt, be a vast improvement upon the present system; but ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... those faculties, but for the purpose of showing that which the moral darkness of man will not, without supernatural light, allow him to perceive. With disdain, therefore, must every considerate person regard the notion,—that God could wilfully interfere with his own plans, by accrediting ambassadors to reveal astronomy, or any other science, which he has commanded men to cultivate without revelation, by endowing them with all the natural powers ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... a very valuable thought, for it contradicts that aberration of Mysticism which calls God the Infinite, and thinks of Him as the Indefinite, dissolving all distinctions in the abyss of bare indetermination. When Ewald says, "the true mystic never withdraws himself wilfully from the business of life, no, not even from the smallest business," he is, at any rate, saying nothing which conflicts with the principles ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the repetition of these and similar acts of injustice too severely. Yet, are they not odious? I own the remembrance of them ever has been, and is, intensely painful; and the pain is almost unremittingly prolonged by what every man, who is not wilfully blind, must daily see passing in the world. [Mr. Wilmot sighed deeply] Well well! Would I could ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... as a pleasure to be found in the desert between El Arish and Egypt; I had no idea that the Bedouins on the east of Jordan were accessible. My delight was so great at the near prospect of bread and salt in the tent of an Arab warrior, that I wilfully allowed my guide to go on and mislead me. I saw that he was taking me out of the straight route towards Jerusalem, and was drawing me into the midst of the Bedouins; but the idea of his betraying me seemed (I know not why) so utterly absurd, ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... reckoned precisely a veracious man; on the other hand, this was not the kind of fable he was likely to tell. He was brought up under the regime of common-sense. "On all such subjects my father was very sceptical," he says. To disbelieve Lord Brougham we must suppose either that he wilfully made a false entry in his diary in 1799, or that in preparing his Autobiography in 1862, he deliberately added a falsehood—and then explained ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... property—dead and gone! ay, and by your act, which, from signs I had previously noticed, and from the tones of that young lady's exclamation at the instant, (and God bless her for a heart which could be kind in such company,) I shall always believe was wilfully committed. And if I can make good my suspicions and a court of law will not give me justice, I will have it elsewhere! There, sir, go," he added, relinquishing his hold on the horse, and stepping aside,—"go! but remember I claim a ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... little too easily comply'd with by the Lord Charlemont, then commanding Officer. True it is; for I heard an Officer, ready enough to take such Advantages, urge to him, that none of all those Posts we were become Masters of, were tenable; that to offer at it would be no better than wilfully sacrificing human Lives to Caprice and Humour; and just like a Man's knocking his Head against Stone Walls, to try which was hardest. Having over-heard this Piece of Lip-Oratory, and finding by the Answer that it was too likely to prevail, and that all I was like to say would avail ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... ourselves fallible, it becomes us to maintain a jealousy over ourselves, and be constantly on our guard. We should consider, that though we do not sin wilfully, and our own hearts do not condemn us, yet we are not hereby justified. We are conscious that we have often, erred, and made wrong conclusions, when we did not design to leave the right way. We are liable to do the same again. Our eye should therefore ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... "I only asked free passage for myself; they must have much misunderstood, if they did not wilfully misrepresent me." ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Wolfe waved his hand as a signal to sheer off. At some distance on the right, and little exposed to the fire, were three boats of light infantry under Lieutenants Hopkins and Brown and Ensign Grant; who, mistaking the signal or wilfully misinterpreting it, made directly for the shore before them. It was a few roads east of the beach; a craggy coast and a strand strewn with rocks and lashed with breakers, but sheltered from the cannon by a small projecting point. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... make a snare for mine own neck! and run My head into it, wilfully! with laughter! When I had newly 'scaped, was free, and clear, Out of mere wantonness! O, the dull devil Was in this brain of mine, when I devised it, And Mosca gave it second; he must now Help to sear up this vein, or we bleed dead.— ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... shall soon find out if this breeze holds," replied the skipper, who had been wilfully kept in ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... mistake to think of all of them as immeasurably superior to ourselves, since some have entered their ranks from a humanity in some respects less advanced than our own; of course the general average among them is much higher than among us, for all that is actively or wilfully evil has long been weeded out from their ranks; but they differ widely in disposition, and a really noble, unselfish, spiritually-minded man may well stand higher in the scale of evolution than some of them. Their attention can be ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... suspecting that the north star was somewhat wilfully shifting from the magnetic pole, now to a distance of 5 deg. and then of 10 deg., the calculations of modern astronomers have gauged the polar distance existing in 1492 at 3 deg. 28', as against the 1 deg. 20' of to-day. The confusion of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... seemed wilfully uncommunicative, and she and Henley were silent most of the way. As they were on the brow of the hill overlooking Chester, however, she drew a deep breath and said: "Well, Alfred, I certainly had a bang-up time. Carrie Wade may ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... glad to think that experiments on animals are never performed nowadays except upon some reasonable excuse for the pain thus wilfully inflicted. We are inclined to believe that the question will some day be asked, whether any excuse can make them justifiable? One cannot read without shuddering details like the following. It would appear from these that the practice of such brutality is the ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... now emerged—and at a moment when Europe was beginning perforce to take notice of what she had so far wilfully ignored. A lui la parole! No doubt he was preparing it, the bloody, exciting story which would bring him before the foot-lights again, and make him once more the lion of a day. More social flatteries, more ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with respect to his letters to M. Quesnel, she had many doubts; however he might be at first mistaken on the subject, she much suspected that he wilfully persevered in his error, as a means of intimidating her into a compliance with his wishes of uniting her to Count Morano. Whether this was or was not the fact, she was extremely anxious to explain the affair to M. Quesnel, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... that it were in their own hands, and this led to a statement of the condition of affairs, the same to which a year before he had been wilfully deaf, and to which he now attended chiefly for the sake of gratifying his father, though he better understood what depended on it. At least, it was making the Earl insensible to the space they were traversing, and the black outlines of Marksedge were rising on him before ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... eye to the discoveries of the rest of the pack, because they have no confidence in themselves. Another sort is over-confident—not letting the cleverer members of the pack go on ahead, but keeping them back with nonsensical clamour. Others will wilfully hug every false scent, (20) and with a tremendous display of eagerness, whatever they chance upon, will take the lead, conscious all the while they are playing false; (21) whilst another sort again will behave in a precisely ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... that—never mind. I am acquainted with the whole affair. I know that, wilfully or not, they have mixed you up with another ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... to emerge, more and more clearly and distinctly, from that circle. He begins an independent existence, controlled in an overwhelming degree by the life of the theatre and home-life, but also leading a life of his own at school and very wilfully taking a line or lines of his own there. We can now begin to trace the growth of the mental, and especially the artistic, nature of one of the most stupendous geniuses the earth has produced. It is altogether unnecessary to try to piece together anything approaching an elaborate sketch ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... register sound to be hung in a children's room beside the thermometer, I should not be alarmed if it indicated a pretty high degree, provided I could look around the room and observe the following conditions: a large room, full of contented children, no one of whom was wilfully noisy or annoying, most of them being quietly reading, the ones who were moving about asking in low tones the children's librarian or each other, perfectly legitimate questions that were to help them choose the right thing. ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... variance with the truth, by a mere defect of memory or observation, and without justifying any imputation on his veracity, but it is evident that no such latitude can be allowed him in respect to the La Mar Zarah, which, if not in substance true, must be knowingly and wilfully false. ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish |
