"Inconstant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... virtue have ensued, but he thought things would be brought to a climax were Temple to visit her. A long letter of commission follows, the envoy is instructed to appear as his old friend, praising him to Miss Blair for his good qualities. Temple is adjured to dwell upon his odd, inconstant, impetuous nature, how he is accustomed to women of intrigue, and he is to ask of the fair one if she does not think there is insanity in the Boswell family. She is to hear of his travels, his acquaintance with foreign princes, Voltaire and Rousseau, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... (says story) I lov'd you, For which you call me most inconstant now; Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man; For I am not the same that I was then: No flesh is now the same 'twas then in me; And that my mind is chang'd yourself may see. The same thoughts to retain still, and intents, Were more inconstant far; for accidents ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... until a belt of broad flame bounded the water, diffusing itself more faintly towards the zenith, where it melted into the pearl-colored sky, or played on the fantastic volumes of a few light clouds with inconstant glimmering. While these beautiful transitions were still before the eyes of the youthful admirers of their beauties, a voice was heard above them, crying as if from ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... not have had the chance of doubling it, as I might have done," answered Mowbray, "had that inconstant jade, Fortune, but stood a moment faithful to me. I tell you, Mick, that I have been, within this twelvemonth, worth a hundred thousand—worth fifty thousand—worth nothing, but the remnant of this wretched estate, which is too little to do one good while it is mine, though, were it sold, I could ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... accord, do not immediately pronounce anything upon their friendship, though they should affirm it with an oath, though they should declare, "For us to live apart in a thing impossible!" For the heart of a bad man is faithless, unprincipled, inconstant: now overpowered by one impression, now by another. Ask not the usual questions, Were they born of the same parents, reared together, and under the same tutor; but ask this only, in what they place their real interest—whether ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... Indian war. It was fear that predominated with her, there were many moments when she would have given worlds to be secure that the newcomer was not the man she thought of, who, whether constant or inconstant, could bring nothing but pain and disturbance to the calm tenour of her sister's life. Everything was an oppression to her; the children, in their wild, joyous spirits and gladsome inattention, tried her patience almost beyond her powers; the charge of the younger ones ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... weariness thou seemest spent, And toiling on the dusty road all day, Weary and pale, yet with inconstant step, Hither and thither turning,—seekest thou To find aught lost, or what dark care pursues thee? If thou art ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... it forfeits the respect and confidence of other nations, and all the advantages connected with national character. An individual who is observed to be inconstant to his plans, or perhaps to carry on his affairs without any plan at all, is marked at once, by all prudent people, as a speedy victim to his own unsteadiness and folly. His more friendly neighbors may pity him, but all will decline to connect their fortunes with his; and not a few will seize ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... is to be expected - as far as it does not hang by that inconstant quantity, my want of health. Remember me to Madam with the best thanks and wishes; and believe me ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... known that her husband, who played the lover of the piece, was dying to marry her again. Apropos, Mad. St. Germain is acting one of her own romances, in the high sublime style, and threatens to poison herself for love of her perjured inconstant—but ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... of the gallantry of the French ladies, and not entirely without reason; yet, though sometimes inconstant wives, they are, for the most part, faithful friends—they sacrifice the husband without forsaking him, and their common interest is always promoted with as much zeal as the most inviolable attachment could inspire. Mad. de C, whom we often meet in company, is the ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... to plead your cause, by giving unselfish devotion so unstintedly that like the rain and dew of heaven, it has fostered a new life in my heart, different from the old, yet sweet, real, and precious. I have learned that I can be happier in making you happy. Oh, I shall be no martyr. Am I inconstant because time and your ministry have healed the old wound—because the steady warmth and glow of your love has ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... certain observable facts, viz., it prevails mostly near the arctic circle rather than the pole; it takes on various forms—cloud-like, arched, straight; it streams like banners, waves like curtains in the wind, is inconstant; is either the cause or result of electric disturbance; it is often from four hundred to six hundred miles above the earth, while our air cannot be over one hundred miles. It almost seems like a revelation to human eyes of those vast, changeable, panoramic pictures by ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... blazed out, flashing and scintillating with a splendour indescribable. At times the whole heavens seemed aglow with their fickle, inconstant beauty, and then various portions of the sky were illumined in succession by their ever-changing bars, or columns of coloured light. Man's mightiest pyrotechnic displays dwarfed into insignificance in the presence of these celestial visions. For hours ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... de tous les sens, l'oeil etait le plus superficiel; l'oreille, le plus orgueilleux; l'odorat, le plus voluptueux; le gout, le plus superstitieux et le plus inconstant; le toucher, le plus ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... you out here where we are alone, and where only Nature can interrupt us, to tell you that I adore you. Let the inconstant moon and twinkling stars laugh as they please. I know that true love exists, for my soul is full of it at this moment. Speak, dearest, ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... and a woman looks out for a lover as soon as she's married, as part of her equipage, without which she could not be genteel; and the first article of the treaty is establishing the pension, which remains to the lady, in case the gallant should prove inconstant. This chargeable point of honour, I look upon as the real foundation of so many wonderful influences of constancy. I really know some women of the first quality, whose pensions are as well known as their annual rents, and yet nobody esteems ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... a bad lad, though inconstant. Give me a kiss, and good luck go with you. Be a man,' she added in a whisper. 'Say a few kind words to the poor ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... wanting to his vocation if he endeavoured this exchange, and stopped in the beginning of his race; that his zeal would find a more ample field, wherein to exercise itself, than in Socotora, and people of better inclination than those islanders, naturally inconstant, and as ready to forsake the faith, as they ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... huf-shouldered, hauing flatte and short noses, long and sharpe chinnes, their vpper iawes are low and declining, their teeth long and thinne, their eyebrowes extending from their fore-heads downe to their noses, their eies inconstant and blacke, their countenances writhen and terrible, their extreame ioynts strong with bones and sinewes, hauing thicke and great thighes, and short legs, and yet being equall vnto vs in stature: for that length which is wanting in their legs is supplied in the vpper parts ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... that it seemed as if he had foreseen or desired them. He knew how to put a good gloss upon his failings, and oftentimes verily believed he was really the man which he affected to be only in appearance. He was a man of bright parts, but no conduct, being violent and inconstant in his intrigues of love as well as those of politics, and so indiscreet as to boast of his successful amours with certain ladies whom he ought not to have named. He affected pomp and splendour, though his profession demanded simplicity and humility. He was continually shifting parties, ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... come, let's haste away, each spoken word A moment shorter makes our waiting joy. Come, all's prepared! Ellide stretches now Her shadowy eagle wings for eager flight,— And freshly blowing winds now guide the way Henceforth from this inconstant land forever. Why ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... who will ever enter these doors. I will send the children away, for I hate to be bothered with them, and it would be a great relief to have them out of my sight. I will make speedy arrangements to that effect. Of course nothing further will be heard of this girl. Men are proverbially inconstant, and Wilfred will soon forget all about this Miss Graystone. It was but a passing fancy, and I have taken the wisest course to get rid of her. I dare say she will get along well enough, and marry somebody in her own sphere in life. She was pretty and dignified with that reserved manner, and the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... characteristic of Horace that in the very next satire he makes his own servant Davus tell him that his rhapsodies about the country and its charms are mere humbug, and that, for all his ridicule of the shortcomings of his neighbours, he is just as inconstant as they are in his likings and dislikings. The poet in this way lets us see into his own little vanities, and secures the right by doing so to rally his friends for theirs. To his valet, at all events, by his own showing, he ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... An Inconstant Lover, called Phaon, occasioned great Calamities to this Poetical Lady. She fell desperately in Love with him, and took a Voyage into Sicily in Pursuit of him, he having withdrawn himself thither on ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the poor fellows on reaching home found domestic trouble—a wife had proved inconstant and married another man. As the men had generally more wives than one, Livingstone comforted them by saying that they still had ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... self-appointed companion could only surmise. He had determined to save this young fool in spite of his madness, and never had he failed to bring his enterprises to their fore-arranged end. And there was sentiment between all this, sentiment he would not have been ashamed to avow. Upon chance, then, fickle inconstant chance, depended the success of the seven years' labor. If by this time the wine had not loosened their tongues, or ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... speculative interest; but a moral system would not be needed as it is for a great practical purpose. The law, as we all know, has arisen because of transgressions, and the moralist has to meddle with human nature mainly because it is inconstant and corrupted. It is a wild horse that has not so much to be broken, once for all, as to be driven and reined in perpetually. And the art of the moralist is, by opening the mind's eye to the true end of life, to make us sharply conscious of what we lose by losing it. And the men to whom we ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... they made an excellent and well-matched pair. Of course they had their disagreements. Newts are by nature fickle and inconstant. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... Didn't I feel for eight-and-forty hours as if something too delightful was going to happen to me the week that Brilliant was bought and sent home, looking like an angel in a horse's skin? That reminds me I never go to see him now; I hope I am not inconstant to my old friends. And what was it but a presentiment that made my heart beat and my knees knock together when I entered my own room to-day before luncheon and saw a brown paper parcel on the table, addressed, evidently by the shop people, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... Thus we call weather good and bad, the wind mad (pazzo) or furious, the sea treacherous, the waters insidious; a stone is obstinate, if we cannot easily move it, and we inveigh against all kinds of material obstacles as if they could hear us. We call the season inconstant or deceitful, the sun melancholy and unwilling to shine, and we say that the sky threatens snow. We say that some plants are consumed by heat, that some soils are indomitable, that well cultivated ground is no longer wild, that in a good season the whole landscape smiles ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... {uns[ae]lic} ({-ec}), aj. unhappy, cursed. {unschulde}, sf. innocence. {unschuldigen}, wv. proclaim one's innocence. {unsegel[i]ch}, aj. unspeakable. {unsenfte}, aj. painful, hard. {unser}, pr. our, 7, 67. {unst[ae]te}, aj. inconstant, fickle. {unst[ae]te}, sf. inconstancy, fickleness. {untriuwe}, sf. faithlessness, deceit. {untr[oe]sten}, wv. dishearten, discourage. {untr[o]st}, sm. despondency, discouragement. {untugent}, ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... did not agree with them," he replied, taking up his own defence; "the point is not that men are more inconstant than women, but that women have more excuse for inconstancy. If I remember correctly, Desmond, in a letter to Rosamond, says: 'Inconstancy in a woman, because of the present social conditions, is often pardonable. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... inspiration would seem to be a confluence of forces outside of the individual consciousness or will, focused at the instant into desire, which becomes the urge to creation. "The mind in creation," says Shelley, "is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power rises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure." The artist does ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... remember and love him still? For the first time it occurred to him that he must himself be somewhat changed,—changed certainly, since old Taft did not recognize him, after all the hogsheads of rum he had sold him! For the first time he felt a little thrill of fear, lest Dorcas should have been inconstant,—or lest, seeing him now, she might not love him as she once did. A faint blush passed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... was far more delightful, than to recline in his soft-cushioned box at the Opera, listening even to the delicious notes of a Pico, with bright jewels, and still brighter eyes flashing around him, and his cheek kissed by the inconstant air wafted from the coquettish fan in the hands of smiling beauty. And, moreover, that the book of human nature, to be studied in the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... tended, whom his angry nymph, "To stone transform'd (such fury fires the breast "Of those who desperate love!) I shall not tell: "Nor yet of Scython, of ambiguous form, "Now male, now female; nature's wonted laws "Inconstant proving: thee, O Celmis! too "I pass; once faithful nurse to infant Jove, "Now chang'd to adamant: Curetes! sprung "From showery floods: Crocus, and Smilax, both "To blooming flowers transform'd: unnotic'd ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... misapprehension, Thaddeus with a glowing countenance expressed his regret for having doubted his friend, and repeating the assurance of having been punctual to his promise of correspondence, even when he dreamed him inconstant, acknowledged that nothing but a premeditated scheme could have effected so ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... with them; at least they will do no harm, for nobody will follow my advice. But the last word is of more concern. Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. They have been so tried among the inconstant squalls and currents, so often sailed for islands in the air or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they will risk all for solid ground below their feet. Desperate pilots, they run their sea-sick, weary bark upon the dashing rocks. It seems as if marriage were the royal ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... And what work, among others, was he elaborating at this time, but the notorious "First Blast"? So that he may have rolled out in his big pulpit voice, how women were weak, frail, impatient, feeble, foolish, inconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel, and how men were above them, even as God is above the angels, in the ears of his own wife, and the two dearest friends on earth. But he had lost the sense of incongruity, and continued to despise in theory the sex he honoured ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... which the subclavian vessel is located. The form or position of the clavicle in the depressed condition of the shoulder, as seen in Plate 8, is invariable; whereas that of the trapezius and sterno-mastoid muscles is inconstant, these muscles being found to stand at unequal intervals from each other in several bodies. The space between the insertions of both these muscles is indefinite, and may vary in degrees of width from the whole length of the clavicle to half an inch; or, as in some instances, leaving no ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... Fl. out of Thom. Walsi. Hypod. pag. 161.] In this yeare Roger of Walden departed this life; who hauing bene tossed vp and downe with sundrie changes of fortune, tried in a short time how inconstant, vncerteine variable, wandering, vnstable, and flitting she is; which when she is thought firmelie to stand, she slipperinglie falleth; and with a dissembling looke counterfaiteth false ioies. [Sidenote: ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... but a big child completely developed in his passions. He acts not from conscience but from fear; he is moved not by reasons but by impressions; a friend of novelties and spectacles, he acts to the tune of the various impressions which he receives. Naturally he is inconstant and flighty, desiring one thing and another, now liking what he formerly disliked, without firmness nor stability in anything, without knowing many times what to like, nor what befits him. Such is the Indio ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... that we esteem neither right, nor order, nor equity, nor justice; that we give the bridle to all naughtiness, and provoke the people to all licentiousness and lust; that we labour and seek to overthrow the state of monarchies and kingdoms, and to bring all things under the rule of the rash inconstant people and unlearned multitude; that we have seditiously fallen from the Catholic Church, and by a wicked schism and division have shaken the whole world, and troubled the common peace and universal quiet of ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... No, for, my lord, had you beholde the traine That fained loue had coloured in his lookes When he in campe consorted Balthazar, Farre more inconstant had you thought the sunne, That howerly coasts the center of the earth, Then Alexandros purpose ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... British-Indian system, a proposition which responsible Indian Officials viewed with a marked lack of enthusiasm. The Czarevitch was courteous, gentle and sincere, but though full of good intentions, he was fatally inconstant of purpose, and his mental endowments were insufficient for the tremendous responsibilities to which he was to succeed, and in that one fact lies the pathos of the story of this ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... state in its domestic institutions? A foremost statistical authority, Jacques Bertillon, has devoted considerable space to proving that some relation between the two exists. Confronted by the preceding facts, his explanation is this: that the people of the southern departments, inconstant perhaps and fickle, nevertheless are quickly pacified after a passionate outbreak of any kind. Husband and wife may quarrel, but the estrangement is dissipated before recourse to the law can take place. On the other hand, the Norman peasant, Teutonic by race, cold and reserved, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... is about to commence, which ordinarily happens towards the ninth or tenth day of the eruption. The desiccation and the desquamation occupy an exceedingly variable length of time; and so, indeed, do all the different periods of the disease. What is the least inconstant, is the duration of the serous eruption, which is about four days, if it has been distinctly produced and guarded from all friction. If the general character of the pustules is considered, it will be observed, that, while ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... Thoughts, or Mentall Discourse, is of two sorts. The first is Unguided, Without Designee, and inconstant; Wherein there is no Passionate Thought, to govern and direct those that follow, to it self, as the end and scope of some desire, or other passion: In which case the thoughts are said to wander, and seem impertinent one to another, as in a Dream. Such are Commonly the thoughts of men, that are not ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... development the crystal will begin to cloud over, first becoming dull, then suffused with milky clouds, among which sparkle a large number of little specks of light like gold dust in the sunlight. The focus of the eyes is inconstant, the pupil rapidly expanding and contracting, the crystal at times disappearing entirely in a haze or film which seems to pass before the eyes. Then the haze will disappear, and the crystal will loom up into full view again, accompanied by a lapse of the seer into ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... danger that he would be betrayed. The Irish had many faults—we may not refuse them credit for their virtues. However treacherous they were to their enemies, however inconstant in their engagements, uncertain, untrue in ordinary obligations, they were without rivals in the world in their passionate attachments among themselves; and of all the chiefs who fell from Fitzgerald's banner, and ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... is this, that, through a long public life, and through frequent and violent revolutions of public feeling, he almost invariably took that view of the great questions of his time which history has finally adopted. He was called inconstant, because the relative position in which he stood to the contending factions was perpetually varying. As well might the pole star be called inconstant because it is sometimes to the east and sometimes to the west of the pointers. To have defended the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... union with Lady Matilda; but her father's implacability confounded them all. Lord Elmwood was a man who made few resolutions—but those were the effect of deliberation; and as he was not the least capricious or inconstant in his temper, they were resolutions which no probable event could shake. Love, that produces wonders, that seduces and subdues the most determined and rigid spirits, had in two instances overcome the inflexibility of Lord Elmwood; he married Lady Elmwood contrary to his determination, because he ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. [underlined: You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine.] I can hardly write. ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... maidens." "I will give thee good counsel," said he. "All my Earldom will I place in thy possession, if thou wilt dwell with me." "That will I not, by Heaven," she said, "yonder man was the first to whom my faith was ever pledged; and shall I prove inconstant to him?" "Thou art in the wrong," said the Earl; "if I slay the man yonder, I can keep thee with me as long as I choose; and when thou no longer pleasest me, I can turn thee away. But if thou goest with me by thy own good will, I protest that our union ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... then, it is my turn to state mine for the advice I have given you. But first, I must presume to ask a few questions.—Did Agatha, through artful insinuation, gain your affection? or did she give you cause to suppose her inconstant? ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... person . . . can make very little of his environment. However he may attempt to circumscribe it in certain directions, there will always remain a wide and ever-changing area to stimulate his irascibility. His environment, in short, is an inconstant quantity, and his most elaborate calculations and precautions must often and suddenly fail him. Natural Law, ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... inconstant wave," he mused, "these captives from the inscrutable depths of ocean—the cook ought to bone them before she sends them to table, ought n't she? Labor et amor. The warrant for life is labour, and the business of ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... in his enterprise upon Antwerp citadel; they quit him incontinently and call upon me. No sooner do I come than, against their oath and without previous communication with the states or myself, they call upon the Archduke Matthias. Are the waves of the sea more inconstant—is Euripus more uncertain than the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... like that varied gleam, Is our inconstant shape, Who now like knight and lady seem, And now ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... Blackwood's, the British Review, and the Quarterly, quoted at length the most objectionable passages from these writers and made malicious attacks on Americans and American institutions. American men were described as "turbulent citizens, abandoned Christians, inconstant husbands, unnatural fathers, and treacherous friends." Our soldiers and sailors were charged with cowardice in the War of 1812. It was stated that "in the southern parts of the Union the rites of our holy faith ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... commenced the precarious existence which the composer was for the future destined to lead. For, not only was the taste of Vienna then, as now, proverbially variable and flippant—not only was concert-giving an uncertain speculation, and teaching an inconstant source of income—but in a man, who, like Mozart, had, from time to time, strong impulses to write for the theatre, it frequently happened that the order and regularity of his engagements were made to yield ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... Put your hair round your mamma's neck, and give me one good long kiss, and I won't talk any more in that way about your lover. After all, some young men are not so fickle as others; but even if he's the ficklest, there is consolation. The love of an inconstant man is ten times more ardent than that of a faithful man—that is, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... that men only praise those whom they love. If they sought its own praise, they were as much mistaken as Ixion when he embraced a cloud instead of Juno; for there is nothing so fleeting, so changeable, and so inconstant as popular applause; it is but a pompous shadow, and hath no manner of solidity and duration in it. But a wise man, if he design to engage in business and matters of state, will so far aim at fame ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... two natures in her and those were their reflections; two lodestars set above her that by turns brightened and drew her gaze; two lodestones set within her that claimed her banners as claim the moon and earth the inconstant sea; one of head, one of heart; one of choice, one of dower; one of will, ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... who that is inconsta[n]te A waueryng eye / glydyng sodeynly [Sidenote: an inconstant man with a wavering eye and a wandering foot] Fro place to place / & a foot varia[n]te 108 That in no place / abydeth stably These ben [th]^e signes / the wiseman seith sikerly Of suche a wight / as is vnmanerly nyce And ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... that weary life-gnawing suspense, which is ten times more hard to bear than any evil, however great, of which we can ascertain the nature and discern the limits. Could Philip be ill? Could he—No, he could not be inconstant. Ought she to write to him again? But to this question her parents answered "No. It would be unfeminine, unladylike, undignified. If Mr. Hayforth were ill, he would doubtless write as soon as he ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... which Ethel had caught from Leonora took a misty form and substance, only to be immediately dispelled in that inconstant mind by the sudden refreshing sound of Milly's voice: 'We've called to take Ethel home, papa—oh, mother, here's ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... ed. 1651, p. 53) has some lines, entitled, "In the person of a Lady to her Inconstant Servant," which are of nearly similar purport to Lovelace's poem, but are both shorter ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... boys, too green and idle For girls of nine,—O, think what they have done, And then run mad indeed,—stark mad! for all Thy by-gone fooleries were but spices of it. That thou betray'dst Polixenes, 'twas nothing; That did but show thee, of a fool, inconstant, And damnable ingrateful; nor was't much Thou wouldst have poison'd good Camillo's honour, To have him kill a king; poor trespasses,— More monstrous standing by: whereof I reckon The casting forth to crows thy baby daughter, To be ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... of wax, as a bloom on the branchlet, is associated with trees in arid localities, especially Mexico, where it is very common. With several species the character is inconstant, apparently dependent on environment, and is a ...
— The Genus Pinus • George Russell Shaw
... your mistakes there ill opinion gain, No merit can their favour re-obtain: And if they're not vindictive in their fury, 'Tis their inconstant temper does secure ye: Their brain's so cool, their passion seldom burns; For all's condensed before the flame returns: The fermentation's of so weak a matter, The humid damps the flame, and runs it all to water; So though the ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... in each courtly art That can please and win a woman's heart; And many a girl of lineage high Had looked on his wooing with fav'ring eye: Inconstant to all, in hall or in bower, What chance of escape ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... through the city and the principal promenades, often eclipsing the wife of the General-in-chief. On his return to Paris, the latter obliged his wife to dismiss the beautiful Louise, who, abandoned by her inconstant lover, fell into great destitution; and I often saw her afterwards at the residence of Josephine begging aid, which was always most kindly granted. This young woman, who had dared to rival Madame Bonaparte in elegance, ended by marrying, I think, an English jockey, led a most ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... observances are merely the formality of lip service; if she be petulant to her friends, pert and disrespectful to her parents, overbearing to her inferiors; if pride, vanity, and affectation be her characteristics; if she be inconstant in her friendships; gaudy and slovenly, rather than neat and scrupulously clean, in attire and personal habits: then we counsel the gentleman to retire as speedily but as politely as possible from the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... the melancholy mountains," the ever-ready Angelica burst forth. "I loathe the inconstant sea. The breezy plain for a gallop! It is ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the home where she, who had been called the handsome Madame de Maurillac, was spending her monotonous existence, like some unfortunate doll which inconstant, childish hands have thrown into a corner in a loft, she who, almost passed for a professional seductress, and whose coquetries, at least so the Faithful ones of the Party said, had been able to excite a passing and last spark of desire in the dull ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... as whether the covering of the body consists of hair or feathers, whether the nostrils communicated with the mouth{432} &c., &c., are of the highest generality in classification; even colour, which is so inconstant in many species, will sometimes well characterise even a whole group of species. Lastly, the fact, that no one character is of so much importance in determining to what great group an organism belongs, as the forms ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... conceal her amusement. She attributed his seriousness to sudden infatuation—an infatuation which made him seem ridiculously inconstant after his recent professions ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... their descent. The scene was certainly impressive; but the road was in that part very securely walled in; the mule went steadily forward; and I was astonished to perceive the paleness of terror in the face of my companion. The voice of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower as if in weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones; momentary freshets seemed to swell its volume, sweeping down the gorge, raving and booming against the barrier walls; and I observed it was at each of these accessions to the clamour that my driver more particularly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I was inconstant, cruel, I cannot excuse myself. But, O Silvestre, in the name of the love you once bore me, have pity on us! Reform, abjure your evil courses! Do not, I implore you, condemn my husband to this abyss ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the sun is subject to continual change; and perhaps there is nothing which can be called more inconstant than human opinion, which turns round in an everlasting circle like the wheel of fortune. He who reaps great praise to-day is overwhelmed with biting censure to-morrow; to-day we trample under foot the man who to-morrow will ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... only a certain nimbleness in nature, you women have, to be first inconstant; but if you had not made the more haste, the wind was veering too upon my weathercock: The best on't is, Florimel is ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... faction to deal with the crisis he had brought about. For some years he dragged out an ignoble life in obscurity, and died at last, as Varchi puts it, more by his own carelessness than by the watchful animosity of others. Over the wild, turbid, clever, incomprehensible, inconstant hero-artist's grave we write our Requiescat. Clio, as she takes the pen in hand to record this prayer, smiles disdainfully and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... himself uses of a book by one of his opponents, as calculated "to gain a short, contemptible, and soon-fading reward, not to stir the constancy and solid firmness of any wise man ... but to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... hardship, dirtiness, and disagreeableness almost equals that of colliers; and from the unavoidable irregularity in the arrivals of coal-ships, the employment of the greater part of them is necessarily very inconstant. If colliers, therefore, commonly earn double and triple the wages of common labor, it ought not to seem unreasonable that coal-heavers should sometimes earn four or five times those wages. In the inquiry made into their condition a few years ago, it was found that, at the rate ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... From his doubtful perch on the ladder he endeavored to push the obstacle from its insertion. Two or more equal difficulties made this impossible. The box had no handle, and it was slippery with the ooze and mucus of the sea. The leverage of pushing only wedged it faster in the orifice. The inconstant ladder swayed from it as a fulcrum. Again and again by art and endeavor and angle of push he essayed, and the ladder made sport of it. It was deadly sport, that swing and seesaw on the slippery rungs in the immeasurable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... systems upon facts. The grand and consistent theory of Newton will be placed upon the same footing as the wild and eccentric hypotheses of Descartes. In short, if the laws of nature are thus fickle and inconstant, if it can be affirmed and be believed that they will change, when for ages and ages they have appeared immutable, the human mind will no longer have any incitements to inquiry, but must remain fixed in inactive torpor, or amuse itself only in ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... gxeni. Incomparable nekomparebla. Incompatible nekunigebla. Incompetent nekompetenta. Incomplete neplena. Incomprehensible nekomprenebla. Inconceivable neimagebla. Inconsistent nekonsekvenca. Inconsolable nekonsolebla. Inconstant sxangxema. Incontestable nedisputebla. Inconvenient maloportuna. Incorporeal spirita. Incorrect malkorekta. Incorrigible plimalobea, nerebonigebla. Incorrupt honesta. Incorruptible neputrebla. Incorruption senputreco. Increase (grow) kreskigxi. Increase plimultigi. Incredible ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... me still your Life.—Oh! change the word— Life is as transient as the inconstant sigh: Say rather I'm your Soul; more just that name, For, like the soul, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... her voice—she was now aware of it—many of the best things in her life had also ceased to exist. Her singing might perhaps have lured back her inconstant lover, and had she come to Brussels possessing the mastery of her voice which was hers during that happy time in May, her life would have assumed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... make a rule of conduct, and do not say that you wish to be loved exclusively, for in saying that, as you are a man and inconstant yourself, you are forced to add tacitly: 'As ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... reasons to hope for success. The armies of Charles had invaded Italy and threatened Rome, and the papal minister, Giberti, enchanted with the zeal of the great English cardinal, wished that he had him at the Vatican in the place of the tremulous and inconstant Clement. Spain was the enemy; England was the ally. It was probable that the Pope would do what he could in the interest of England, to keep up its enmity with Spain. The case was a difficult one, not to be decided on evidence. Something would remain uncertain, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... literature,—complained of his pen having caught up a hair, and forthwith begins, with more eloquence than common sense, an affectionate expostulation with that useful implement, upbraiding it with being the quill of a goose,—a bird inconstant by nature, as frequenting the three elements of water, earth, and air indifferently, and being, of course, 'to one thing constant never.' Now I protest to thee, gentle reader, that I entirely dissent from Francisco de Ubeda in this matter, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... necessarily come as a friend to those whose lives are wretched, he begins to speculate whether, after all, he ought not to rejoice rather than mourn over his son's death. "Certes he is rid of this miserable life of danger and difficulty, vain, sorrowful, brief, and inconstant; these times in which the major part of the good things of the world fall to the trickster's share, and all may be enjoyed by those who are backed up by wealth or power or favour. Power is good when it is in the hands of those who use it well, but it is ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... master, talk with me as you have so often talked; come, great King, forget your court for the smile of a true friend; come, great man, consult me concerning ambitious Austria; come, inconstant chevalier, speak to me of the lightness of thy love, and of the fidelity of thine inconstancy; come, heroic soldier, complain to me again that I obscure you in combat. Ah, had I only done it in Paris! Had I only received thy wound? With ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... enough to feel a genuine passion. For her sake he had been a cruel husband, an insolent tyrant to an inoffensive wife; for her sake he had squandered his people's money, and outraged every moral law; and it may be that she remembered these things, and hated him the more fiercely for them when he was inconstant. She was a woman of extremes, in whose tropical temperament there was no medium between hatred ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... and inconstant than the multitude" is affirmed not by Titus Livius only, but by all other historians, in whose chronicles of human actions we often find the multitude condemning some citizen to death, and afterwards lamenting him and grieving ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... is gathering fast, Loud roars the wild inconstant blast, Yon murky cloud is foul with rain, I see it driving o'er the plain; The hunter now has left the moor, The scatter'd coveys meet secure, While here I wander, prest with care, Along the lonely banks ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... first placed in Donaldson's hands the means by which he became afterward best known. Fearless as he undoubtedly was, an ascension was undertaken with the misgivings which usually preface an initial stepping from terra firma to the inconstant air. Once aloft, however, with the widespreading splendor and endless immensity of the earth's surface unrolling beneath him, and an exquisite physical exhilaration thrilling along his nerves, Donaldson became heart and soul an aeronaut. The novel and sensational expedients ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... and in a few minutes Patience came to him. There had been no arrangement between her and Mary as to the manner in which he should be received. Mary on a previous occasion had given him an answer, and really did believe that that would be sufficient. He was, according to her thinking, a light, inconstant man, who would hardly give himself the labour necessary for perseverance in any suit. Patience at once began to ask him after his brother and the doings at the Priory. He had been so intimate at the house, and so dear to them all, that in spite of the disapprobation ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... by the time they reached the village he cared no more for the poor girl. Soon thereafter she became the subject of fits and was finally considered to be quite insane. The only lucid intervals she had were in the presence of her inconstant husband. Whenever he came near her, her reason would return, and she would appear the same as before her illness. Flattered by what he deemed so strong an evidence of his influence over her, the Canadian felt a return of kindness toward her, and was finally induced to renew his attentions, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... any warmer supporter than that kind lady of Castlewood, in whose house Esmond was brought up. She influenced her husband, very much more perhaps than my lord knew, who admired his wife prodigiously though he might be inconstant to her, and who, adverse to the trouble of thinking himself, gladly enough adopted the opinions which she chose for him. To one of her simple and faithful heart, allegiance to any sovereign but the one was impossible. To serve King William for interest's sake would have been a monstrous ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the faithless, inconstant plebeian rabble!" said Crevecoeur. "When they took arms against a Prince who had no fault, save that he was too kind and too good a master for such a set of ungrateful slaves—when they armed against him, and broke into his peaceful house, what could there be in ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... certain product, confers some additional value on that material in the estimation of those who are engaged in manufacturing that product, the ratio of that accumulated value, at any stage of the process, to the value of the finished product is extremely inconstant, and often small; while, to other persons, the value of the unfinished product may be nothing, or even a minus quantity. A house-timber merchant, for example, might consider that wood which had been worked into the ribs of a ship ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... determined to pay attentions to Miss Caroline Percy: his experience in the tactics of gallantry supplying the place of knowledge of the human heart, he counterfeited the symptoms of a new passion, and acted "The Inconstant" so well, that Lady Angelica had no doubt of his being what be appeared. She was not prepared for this turn of fate, well as she thought she knew her game, and at this unlucky moment, just when she wanted to play off ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... his former officials, Fleury de Chaboulon, landed in Elba, and informed him of the hatching of a plot by military malcontents, under the lead of Fouche, for the overthrow of Louis XVIII.[463] Napoleon at once despatched his informant to Naples, and ordered his brig, "L'Inconstant," to be painted like an English vessel. Most fortunately for him, Campbell on the 16th set sail for Tuscany—"for his health and on private affairs"—on the small war-vessel, "Partridge," to which the British Government had intrusted the supervision of Napoleon. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of all the privileges of citizens, would indeed be a title to glory all our own. The sceptre may pass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our most profound schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to our arms. But there are triumphs which are followed by no reverse. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and parent passing dear, Whose force I am enforced to know and 'knowledge everywhere, This care of mine, though it be bred within my breast, Yet it is not so ripe as yet to breed me great unrest, So run I to and fro with hap luck as I find, Now fast, now loose: now hot, now cold: inconstant as the wind, I feel myself in love, yet not inflamed so, But causes move me now and then to let such fancies go, Which causes prevailing sets each thing else in doubt Much like the nail, that last came in, and drives the former out. Wherefore my suit is this: ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... what a plague is love! I cannot bear it, She will inconstant prove, I greatly fear it; It so torments my mind, That my heart faileth, She wavers with the wind, As a ship saileth; Please her the best I may, She looks another way; Alack and ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... sorrow, and that the cup of bitterness was not drained to the dregs. While every one about her contemplated the future with serene confidence, she reflected on the extreme mobility of the French character, and still distrusted inconstant fortune. The morrow of the birth of the Duke of Bordeaux one of ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... is going, where the barge is floating, where the dead are lying, where the factory is smoking, where the stream is running, where the village clusters, where the great cathedral rises, where the bleak moor lies, and the wild breeze smooths or ruffles it at its inconstant will; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, and no trace to leave behind but dust and vapour: like as in the track ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... long time continuously read, and it was reprinted again and again even in the reign of Charles I. It was translated into Dutch in the same century,[101] and was modernized in the following, under the title: "The false friend and the inconstant mistress: an instructive novel ... displaying the artifices of the female sex in their amours."[102] High praise is rendered by the editor to Lyly, who "was a great refiner of the English tongue in those days." The book appeared not very long before Richardson's "Pamela," a fact worthy of notice, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... September, 1901, and written the very day before his death. We purposed to forward that letter, but the following day the bag was retaken. Not only was it taken, but also the gun, while 20 burghers were captured and one—Myburgh—was killed. We were again surprised. Inconstant are the ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald |
