"Caprice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... idea of aristocratic society. It is divorced from the real body of democracy. It sets no authoritative standard of taste. If anything could reconcile the British Radical to his House of Lords, it would be the rankness of taste, the irresponsible freaks of individual caprice, that rule in a country where there is no carefully polished noblesse to set the pattern. George William Curtis puts the case well: "Fine society is no exotic, does not avoid, but all that does not belong to it drops away like water from a smooth statue. ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Caprice Build this golden portal; Graceful women, chosen men, Dazzle every mortal. Their sweet and lofty countenance His enchanted food; He need not go to them, their forms Beset his solitude. He looketh seldom in their face, His eyes ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... retorted Celia impetuously. "At first people were in doubt, and talked of little Pontecorvo and Lieutenant Moretta. But every one now knows that La Tonietta's caprice is Dario. Besides, he joined her in her box at ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... she professed to desire a portrait more peculiarly her own—one that should mark the precise epoch of our mutual happiness—a caprice which reminded me of the Salvation Army recruit who was photographed, by desire, 'before and after conversion'; and I demurred a little, until Iris insisted with such captivating pertinacity that—although my personal expenses ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... leaving your house and your protection, I was not governed by caprice or impulse. For some time I have seen that, sooner or later, it must come to this; that the cord uniting us was too severely strained, and must snap. I did not suppose the time so near at hand—that you would drag upon it ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... ordered counties—Armagh and Wexford—are the counties in which small farms most abound. I call a reluctant witness, Master Fitzgibbon, to testify that when the Irish tenant, be his holding ever so small, gets common justice and is not subjected to caprice, he gives no trouble. That gentleman informs us that there are 650 estates of all magnitudes, from 100 l. to 20,000 l. a-year, under the control and management of the court of chancery; the total rents of these amount to 494,056 l. a-year payable by 28,581 tenants. These estates are ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... had environed Mistress Pen wick with sacred influences, and she had absorbed its most potent authority, religion, yet even that was not efficacious to the annihilating that 'twas born within; and one can but excuse the caprice and wantonness of a coquette, when 'tis an inheritance. She adhered pertinaciously to the requirements of a lady of title, and loved opulence and luxury and admiration. She foresaw—young as she was and reared as she ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... stand all these months like a marble statue in a block of stone. I have punished you for your ill-conduct in going away in a ship without my permission, by showing you your two children, your two jewels, killed by their own father. And I have punished the King for the caprice he took into his head, by making him first the judge of his brother, and afterwards the executioner of his children. But as I have wished only to shear and not to flay you, I desire now that all the poison may turn into sweetmeats for ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... agricultural laborers were lives of incessant work and unrelieved misery; their complaints, if they ever dared to complain, were treated with insolent contempt. The courts of justice would always listen to a noble as against a peasant; bribes were notoriously accepted by the judges; and the merest caprice of the aristocracy had the force of law, by virtue of this system of universal corruption. Of the taxes wrung from the commonalty, by the secular magnates on the one hand, and the clergy on the other, not half ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... of the United States; and very especially was I unwilling that any such arrangement should be entered into with the United States, dependent on the frail tenure of reciprocal legislation, repealable at any moment at the caprice of either party." Unless a fair treaty for a definite term of years could be obtained, he thought it better that each country should take its own course and that Canada should ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... polish agreeable to the eye. The grooves in which the strings will have to rest must be marked out or pricked to measurement so that the spaces may appear regular when the violin is strung up. The distance apart being occasionally done to the caprice of the player, measurement should be kept of this matter of detail from some well regulated instrument as a standard to go by. When the exact spots for the grooves are marked or pricked, a very small, round or "rat-tailed" file may be used to work ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... with the present becomes local, and in the end is influenced by the constant caprice and change of fashion instead of by the deep, heart-stirring beliefs of a strong and ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... fellow-citizens as the manifestation of a pious and humble spirit. But in his own circles of the financial world the taking up of such a thing as the San Tome mine was regarded with respect, indeed, but rather as a subject for discreet jocularity. It was a great man's caprice. In the great Holroyd building (an enormous pile of iron, glass, and blocks of stone at the corner of two streets, cobwebbed aloft by the radiation of telegraph wires) the heads of principal departments exchanged humorous glances, which meant ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... proper place in which to insert the baseness with which he abused the delicacy and weakness of females. Fathers of families * * * *. Every man was intimidated. Every feeling man wept, because all were the victims of the caprice of this insolent upstart, who made an ostentation of atheism ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... plead again, for Dinah's was not the voice of caprice or insincerity. But it was very hard for him; his eyes got dim ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... fortune-hunter should marry a girl with wealth is considered in Europe at the present day not only just, proper and quite as it should be, but rather comme il faut than otherwise. Let the case be reversed, and a man of fortune permit himself the caprice of marrying a portionless girl, and society cries out in horror ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... sought around, For there were lasses of his own degree, With no more hatred to the state than he; But he had courted spleen and age so long, His heart refused to woo the fair and young; So long attended on caprice and whim, He thought attention now was due to him; And as his flattery pleased the wealthy Dame, Heir to the wealth, he might the flattery claim: But this the fair, with one accord, denied, Nor waived for man's caprice the sex's pride. There is a season when to ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... some sprightly caprice prompted Denry to raise his hat to two young women who were crossing the road in front of them. Neither of the two young women responded to ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... possible that here, too, language may have played some tricks. The number of people who used these names and kept them alive can never have been large, and hence they were exposed much more to accidents arising from ignorance and individual caprice than names of villages or towns which are in the keeping of hundreds and thousands of people. The monks of St. Michael's Mount may in time have forgotten the exact purport of "Cara cowz in clowze," "the old rock of the tomb," really ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... CROCKSTEAD. Call it caprice—call it a mere vulgar desire to let my magnificence dazzle you—call it the less vulgar desire to know that my money has made you happy with the man ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... indifferent topics she could converse with as much good sense as the rest of the world; but her own affairs she mismanaged terribly. All her other good qualities seemed unsettled by a certain infusion of caprice, and jealousy of influence; and yet she really meant well, and fancied herself a very prudent woman. She thought she was capable of making any sacrifice for those she loved, and therefore believed herself ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... delight in humouring therewith, the fancies of Dymock, and administering to the more sober and benevolent plans of Mrs. Margaret; for this lady's principal delight was, to assist the needy, and her only earthly or worldly caprice, that of restoring the Tower and its environs, and furnishing, to what she conceived had been its state, in the, perhaps, imaginary days of the ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... which Lady Theobald found herself placed, after these occurrences, was certainly a difficult and unpleasant one. It was Mr. Francis Barold's caprice, for the time being, to develop an intimacy with Mr. Burmistone. He had, it seemed, chosen to become interested in him during their sojourn at Broadoaks. He had discovered him to be a desirable companion, ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... allowed to object to Mr. Herbert Gladstone (or is it Lord Gladstone? This blaze of democracy blinds one) when he sought to abolish the Habeas Corpus Act, and leave the poorer sort of pickpockets permanently at the caprice of their jailers. Parliament is busy on the aristocratic fads; and mankind must mark time with a million stamping feet, while Mr. Herbert Samuel searches a gutter-boy for cigarettes. That is what you call the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... occur in highly-wrought situations, or they are used to convey a vivid sense of something exquisite in art or nature. We give one or two instances of these little eddies of song set like gems in the prose. Their introduction seems due to whim or caprice, but really is due to profound study of the situation, as if the tale-teller felt suddenly compelled to break into the rhythmic strain. The prose ripples and rises to dancing measure when the King of the Age, wandering in a lonely palace, comes ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... almost always stops, unable quite to enter their sphere. Subtile beauties puzzle him; the titles of the poems, for instance, giving by delicate allusion the key-note of each,—as "Astraea," "Mithridates," "Hamatreya," and "Etienne de la Boece,"—seem to him the work of "mere caprice"; he pronounces the poem of "Monadnoc" "poor and weak"; he condemns and satirizes the "Wood-notes," and thinks that a pine-tree which should talk like Mr. Emerson's ought to be cut down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... make one forswear the whole sex," the commissary angrily replied. "Nor am I the man to put up with such womanish humoursomeness. "I've stood your caprice till my patience is exhausted; now ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Convention was dissolved, in 1795, after lasting for three years, it was regarded with universal distrust. The perpetual plaything of popular caprice, it had not succeeded in pacifying France, but had plunged her into anarchy. The general opinion respecting the Convention is well summed up in a letter written in July, 1799, by the Swedish charge d'affaires, Baron Drinkmann: "I venture to hope that no people will ever be governed by the ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... this title may be given to the sultana of the states of Bokhara. But, queen or slave, this woman of Persian origin was wonderfully beautiful. Contrary to the Mahometan custom, and no doubt by some caprice of the Emir, she had her face uncovered. Her hair, divided into four plaits, fell over her dazzling white shoulders, scarcely concealed by a veil of silk worked in gold, which fell from the back of a cap studded with gems of the highest value. Under her blue-silk petticoat, fell the ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... which afterwards proved of great importance. It took place under singular circumstances, which placed both him and me in a situation of peculiar embarrassment, brought about in the most wanton fashion by Devrient's exasperating caprice. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... to inform you that fortune has given me a momentary respite from persecution. How soon she may think proper to stretch me on the rack again is more than I can foresee: though I greatly suspect her of cruelty and caprice. She seems at present to be in one of her best humours; and has given me a kind of promise to make me one of the sage legislators ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... "The kings and princes are falling from me, Edith; this new quarrel hath alienated them once more. I would do something for the Holy Sepulchre by composition, if not by victory; and the chance of my doing this depends, alas, on the caprice of a woman. I would lay my single spear in the rest against ten of the best lances in Christendom, rather than argue with a wilful wench who knows not what is for her own good. What answer, coz, am I to return to the Soldan? It ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... crimson was harsh and vulgar in comparison; it would have almost a chromo quality; he censured his pleasure in it as something gross and material, like that of eating; and on a sudden he felt hungry. He wondered what time they would give him supper, and he took slight account of the fact that a caprice of the wind had torn its hood of snow from the mountain summit, and that the profile of the Lion's Head showed almost as distinctly as in summer. He stood before the picture which for that day at least was lost to him, and questioned whether there would be a hearty meal, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... inevitable, he gave up the role of the actor to assume the functions of the professor. After his own shipwreck upon a bark without pilot or compass, he summoned up courage to search into the laws of an art which had hitherto subsisted only upon caprice and personal inspiration. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... master of. You may make use of my name to any extent as guarantor of the scientific value and importance of your undertaking and refer any one to whom you may apply to me. It may be, in fact, that this is all you want, but as you have taken to the caprice of writing in my tongue instead of in that vernacular, idiomatic and characteristically Dohrnian German in which I delight, I am not so sure about your meaning. There is a rub for you. If you write to me in English again I will send the letter back without ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... prevalent idea, that in due course of business, (competitive business) all lands everywhere, would belong to the city capitalist; therefore, that all farmers would then be tenants at will, who could be turned off the land at the caprice of the owner. In this fatal mistake, we discover the error which has vitiated all premises from which he has ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... certain quantity of alum to the dough; this improves the look of the bread very much, and renders it whiter and firmer. Good, white, and porous bread, may certainly be manufactured from good wheaten flour alone; but to produce the degree of whiteness rendered indispensable by the caprice of the consumers in London, it is necessary (unless the very best flour is employed,) that the dough should be bleached; and no substance has hitherto been found to answer this purpose ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... mantelpiece. There was a nicely fitted cabinet, and the Chinese flower-stands were handsomely filled. The bed, the toilet-table, the wardrobe with its mirror, the little sofa, and all the lady's frippery bore the stamp of fashion or caprice. Though everything was quite third-rate as to elegance or quality, and nothing was absolutely newer than three years old, a dandy would have had no fault to find but that the taste of all this luxury was commonplace. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... England and realised whence it came. I realised that it was our democracy which was the backbone of the country. I realised the injustice of those centuries of class government. I plunged into my old socialistic studies, which I had taken up at Oxford more out of caprice than anything, and I began to have a vision of what I have always since looked upon as the truth. I began to realise that there was some super-divine truth in the equality of all humans, notwithstanding the cheap arguments against it; that by steady and ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gay caprice Quaint sonnets doth she seize, Wedding them unto sweetness, falling from crimson lips; Holding the broidered flowers Of those enchanted hours, When she wound my will with her silk round ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... procured him a gun-brig, and with her he was still more fortunate; actually cutting out, with her boats, a French sloop-of-war, that was not half manned, it is true, but which was still considered a handsome prize. For this affair he got the sloop; thus demonstrating the caprice of fortune, by whose means he found himself a commander in less than three years after he had been a mate. Here he stuck, however, for a long time, until he got another sloop in fair fight, when he was posted. From that moment, we have ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Nov. 1. Chaikovsky's "Italian Caprice" for orchestra, played by the Philharmonic ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... wherein whether Gulbeyaz showed them both commiseration, Or got rid of the parties altogether, Like other angry ladies of her nation,— Are things the turning of a hair or feather May settle; but far be 't from me to anticipate In what way feminine caprice may dissipate. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... are debtors; your new calling, station, and nature require of you that, since ye have become Christians and have the Holy Spirit, ye should live as the Holy Spirit directs and teaches. It is not left to your own caprice to do or to leave undone. If ye desire to glory in the possession of grace and the Holy Spirit, ye must confess yourselves debtors to live, not after the flesh, the only desire of which is to continue in sin, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... rebellion, of the Janizaries. At the well-known voice of their master, they trembled and obeyed; and the reluctant sultan was compelled to support his splendid servitude, till at the end of four years, he was relieved by the angel of death. Age or disease, misfortune or caprice, have tempted several princes to descend from the throne; and they have had leisure to repent of their irretrievable step. But Amurath alone, in the full liberty of choice, after the trial of empire and solitude, has repeated his preference ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... days. She had no wish to go into society. Her wish was to be perfectly free. But as she lay in bed in her pretty, familiar room, she began to wonder what she was going to do. She had come to Paris suddenly, driven by an intense caprice, without making any plans, without even deciding how long she was going to stay. She had imagined that in loneliness she would keep a hold on liberty. But now she ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... fashion du Maurier's drawings in Punch are remarkable. It must not be imagined that the history of fashion is merely the tale of dressmakers' caprice. The very language of changing ideals is the variation of the toilet. When women were restricted to an oriental extent within convention, when to be "prim" was the aim of life, no feature of dress was lacking that could put "abandonment" of any ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... Hamilton, drily, "I am a mere creature of routine. I met you after my habits of work and domesticity were well established. You are the fairest thing on earth, and there are times when you consume it, but circumstances isolate you. Believe me, I am a victim of those circumstances, not of caprice." ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... against this rain-conjuring: "If I," indignantly observes the Emperor, "offering prayer in sincerity have yet room to fear that it may please Heaven to leave MY prayer unanswered, it is truly intolerable that mere common people wishing for rain should at their own caprice set up altars of earth, and bring together a rabble of Hoshang (Buddhist Bonzes) and Taosse to conjure the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... German Imperial Crown Prince during his projected visit to Darjeeling, a visit ultimately abandoned. I can imagine his chagrin at the waste of all his labours, expense to the Indian Government, etc. etc., due to the caprice of this apparently frivolous and not quite courteous young hopeful. Indeed, the Crown Prince, though a popular young fellow enough, was the source of trouble and tribulation to his hosts, breaking ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... of it in the affairs of life, a woman had always the worst of it in these enforced separations. But as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, so were divorces made acceptable to Roman ladies. No woman was disgraced by a divorce, and they who gave over their husbands at the caprice of a moment to other embraces would usually find consolation. Terentia when divorced from Cicero was at least fifty, and we are told she had the extreme honor of having married Sallust after her break ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... doubt, is true love, and includes every mode of loving; the love of the heart and of the head—passion, caprice, and taste—to accept Beyle's definitions. Didine loved him so wholly, that in certain moments when her critical judgment, just by nature, and constantly exercised since she had lived in Paris, compelled her to read to the bottom of Lousteau's soul, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... redeemed passive recipients of predestinated and exclusive grace. But they do not perceive that Calvinism destroys all ideas of grace, by making God the author of the misery which He affects to pity, and by tracing the divine conduct to mere motiveless caprice, to blind ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... The caprice of the winds, like the wilfulness of men, is fraught with the disastrous consequences of self-indulgence. Long anger, the sense of his uncontrolled power, spoils the frank and generous nature of the West Wind. It is as if ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... said equably, "the Duke is not yet dead. It is impossible to let him live. You may think he voiced only a caprice just now. I think so too, but I know the man, and I know that all this madman's whims are ruthless and irresistible. Living, Duke Alessandro's appetites are merely whetted by opposition, so much so that he finds no pleasures sufficiently piquant unless they have God's ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... commonwealth. On the sea she was strong, for the ocean is the best of frontiers; but on land her natural boundaries faded vaguely away, without strong physical demarcations and with no sharply defined limits of tongue, history or race. Accident or human caprice seemed to have divided German Highland from German Netherland; Belgic Gaul from the rest of the Gallic realm. And even from the slender body, which an arbitrary destiny had set off for centuries into a separate organism, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... nature cannot be altered; the petted child will one day grow into the wilful woman; and however it may have been only a pleasant task to follow the windings of the childish fancy ingenious in its caprice; and only amusing to submit to the childish tyranny which pursues its own beau-ideal of sport with reckless pertinacity; there sometimes comes a change when the spoiled darling takes her first step upon ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... fought. Of easiest habit among themselves, they left bad manners and the duello to political adventurers and cubbish peers, or to the gentlemen of the quarter sessions and the local ordinary. It was with a mighty disgust, therefore, that Sir George considered alike the predicament into which a caprice had hurried him, and the insufferable young Hector whom fate had made his antagonist. They would laugh at White's. They would make a jest of it over the cakes and fruit at Betty's. Selwyn would turn a quip. And yet the thing ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... scrapes, all his extravagances, and all his recklessness, she had ever been willing to assist him. With the view of doing this she had sought the intimacy of Miss Dunstable, and for the last year past had indulged every caprice of that lady. Or rather, she had had the wit to learn that Miss Dunstable was to be won, not by the indulgence of caprices, but by free and easy intercourse, with a dash of fun, and, at any rate, a semblance of honesty. Mrs. Harold Smith was not, perhaps, herself ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... obtains where the individuals are considered to be true Quakers. It matters not, how various the tempers of young persons may be, who come under it, they must submit to it. Nor does it signify what may be the disposition, or the whim, and caprice of their parents, they must submit to it alike. The Quakers believe that they have discovered that system of morality, which christianity prescribes; and therefore that they can give no dispensation to their members, under any circumstances whatever, to deviate from it. The origin of this system, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... send me away," said Colden, dismally and reproachfully. "I could have got longer leave of absence. You let me escort you here, because no gentleman of your family will lend himself to your reckless caprice. And then, having no further present use for me, you ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... the arcades at the back of the pavilion were darkened by long lines of the Ethiopian guard, each of height which, beside the slight Moorish race, appeared gigantic; stolid and passionless machines, to execute, without thought, the bloodiest or the slightest caprice of despotism. There they stood; their silver breastplates and long earrings contrasting their dusky skins; and bearing, over their shoulders, immense ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book II. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... counties in England, and to whom the ocean is an unseen wonder, that a new-comer to the tropical regions, his head loaded with these false views, will be very apt to mistake his own ignorance for the caprice of Nature, and perhaps call out, as I once heard a man do, in all the agony of impatience caused by a protracted head-wind,—"Now, this is really scandalous usage of the clerk of the weather-office!" ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... spelling is l-o-v-e. God is love. Love is of God. God is always controlled by a purpose in all His dealings with the race, and with you and me. There is no chance-happening with Him, no caprice, no shadow in His path that tells of His being swerved aside, by anything we ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... ambassador in the person of Lord Amherst to Peking in 1816. As he declined to kowtow before the emperor, he was not admitted to the imperial presence and the mission proved abortive. Destitute of all royal qualities, a slave to his passions, and the servant of caprice, Kia-k'ing died in 1820. The event fraught with the greatest consequences to China which occurred in his reign (though at the time it attracted little attention) was the arrival of the first Protestant missionary, Dr R. Morrison (q.v.), ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... happened at Schloss P-mp-rn-ckel, A strange mishap our sides to tickle, And set the people in a roar;— A strange caprice of Fortune fickle: I never thought at Pumpernickel To see a SPECK ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... occasion stated their demands, which were that they should be made free. They had hitherto been held as serfs, in a bondage which exposed them to all sorts of cruelties and oppressions, since they were amenable, not to law, but wholly to the caprice and arbitrary will of individual masters. They demanded, therefore, that Richard should emancipate them from this bondage, and make ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... be truth that wisdom's masterpiece Such aid could lack, such feebleness conceal, Suing its own constituents for release From wrong innate, throughout its texture wove, By hard necessity, not light caprice? But to what purport could premonished Love A system twined with mutual suffering weave, When but a word all suffering would remove? And wherefore yet delayeth the reprieve Of Love, that doth not willingly afflict ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... many, on very small and frivolous causes; or causing them to be thrown to the elephants, he himself commanding a sagacious elephant to toss the culprits so high and so often, as either to bruise or kill them, according to his caprice at the time. No one that arrives at his port may land without his chop or licence. On one occasion, a Dutch general came on shore without his licence, by desire of the principal factor, who presumed on his favour with the king. When the general came to the palace-gate, where another ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... relate all the fines due by apprentices and companions before they could reach mastership in their various crafts, nor have we yet mentioned certain fines, which, from their strange or ridiculous nature, prove to what a pitch of folly men may be led under the influence of tyranny, vanity, or caprice. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... though I buy with ye and sell with ye, and talk with ye, I will neither eat with ye, drink with ye, nor pray with ye. They made me, without my search, a species of popular idol; they, without reason or judgement, beyond the caprice of their good pleasure, threw down the image from its pedestal; it was not broken with the fall, and they would, it seems, again replace it,—but they ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... those who cannot compare it with the original. The epistle to Boileau is not so happy. The poems to the king are now perused only by young students, who read merely that they may learn to write; and of the Carmen Seculare, I cannot but suspect that I might praise or censure it by caprice, without danger of detection; for who can be supposed to have laboured through it? Yet the time has been when this neglected work was so popular, that it was translated into Latin by no ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... 'Twas a strange caprice, as you say, of Mrs. Harrison, but there is fate as well as love in those things. The Queen took the greatest pains to persuade her from it that could be; and (as somebody says, I know not who) "Majesty is no ill orator;" but all would not do. When she had nothing ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... "the sea had soaked his heart through," it is not the mere simplicity of the language, but the vivid conception which went before and compelled the simplicity, that is impressive. We believe Mr. Newman is right in refusing to sacrifice a good word because it may be pronounced mean by individual caprice, wrong in attempting the fatal impossibility of rescuing a word which to all minds alike conveys a low or ludicrous meaning, as, for example, pate, and dopper, for which he does battle doughtily. Mr. Newman is guilty of a fallacy when he brings up brick, sell, and cut as instances ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... wont to call himself, of milk to this large district—died. His dairies, which I fancy were lucrative things enough, were immediately sold, and taken by a person who, we were informed, would not only continue to supply Walworth with their produce, but, from motives of caprice or economy, would deliver it himself. Accordingly, the man you have seen pass this evening appeared; and all was uniform and punctual as before. In a few days, however, he came, attended by that mysterious female, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... adopted after any one has decided upon visiting Paris, is to provide himself with a passport, which he will procure at the French Ambassador's office in Poland street, for which there is no charge, but it is requisite to state by which port you mean to proceed; but in order to leave some latitude for caprice, you may mention two places, as Calais or Boulogne, or Dieppe or Havre, etc. There are now many different means of travelling to Paris; that which was once the most frequently adopted was by coach to Dover, then embarking for Calais, as those are ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... civilisation arrays against the lowly and the illegitimate. She is in a situation to-day, but on what security does she hold it? She is strangely dependent on her own health, and still more upon the fortunes and the personal caprice of her employers; and she realised the perils of her life when an outcast mother at the corner of the street, stretching out of her rags a brown hand and arm, asked alms for the sake of the little children. Esther remembered then that three months out of a situation and she ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... schooner, with the tale of the tragedy, supplied anecdotes for a lifetime. Every body was on the qui vive to see the "white fighter." Every body was crazy to feel the "white skin" she had healed. Then, with a sudden, childish freak of caprice, they ran off from me as if afraid, and at once rushed back again like a flock of glib-tongued and playful monkeys. I could not comprehend a word they said; but the bevy squealed with quite as much pleasure as if I did, and peered into ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... poets with a single couplet of vague eulogy. In the reactionary circles of the Empire, Lucretius found recognition; but the critics who, according to Tacitus, ranked him above Virgil may be reasonably suspected of doing so more from caprice than from rational conviction. Had the poem itself perished (and all the extant manuscripts are copies of a single original), no one would have thought that such a preference could be anything but ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... inalienable, or merely conventional, held by sufferance, dependent for a basis on location, position, color, and sex, and like government scrip, or deeds of parchment, transferable, to be granted or withheld, made immutable or changeable, as caprice, popular favor, or the pride of power and place may dictate, changing ever, as the weak and the strong, the oppressed and the oppressor, come in conflict or change places. Feeling that the subjects proposed for discussion are vitally important to the interests ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... one brief from Julius to the Signory of Florence. It is dated Rome, July 8, 1506, and contains this passage: "Michelangelo the sculptor, who left us without reason, and in mere caprice, is afraid, as we are informed, of returning, though we for our part are not angry with him, knowing the humours of such men of genius. In order, then, that he may lay aside all anxiety, we rely on your loyalty to convince him in our name, that if he ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Rowzee[2] wrote a treatise on their virtues. During the civil wars, the Wells were neglected, but on the Restoration they became more fashionable than ever.[3] Hence may be dated assembly rooms, coffee houses, bowling greens, &c.; about which time, to suit the caprice of their owners, many of the houses were wheeled upon sledges: a chapel[4] and a school were likewise erected. The accommodations have been progressively augmented; and the population has greatly increased. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... that O'Neill made with the Senora. He had seen her humor change swiftly in response to his appeal; what was surprising was that that new humor should maintain its nervous height. It was soon enough apparent that the Lola of twenty years before lived yet, her flamboyant energy, her unstable caprice, her full-blooded force conserved and undiminished. It was like the bursting of one of those squalls that come up with a breathless loom of cloud, hang still and brooding, and then flash without warning ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... to hurt you," returned Phillis, distressed at this, but determined not to yield an inch or bend to the sudden caprice of this extraordinary woman, who had made ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... reason. The whole affair was disastrously absurd. The art-master at the Wedgwood Institution had chanced, merely chanced, to suggest that the drinking-cup should be sent to South Kensington. And the result of this caprice was that she was sentenced to solitude for life! It was too monstrously, too ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... know the arts of cultivation, nor care to know them: for they live each man to himself, without laws or government, or any thing like a state or kingdom, but their dwellings are in caves, on the steep heads of mountains, every man's household governed by his own caprice, or not governed at all, their wives and children as lawless as themselves, none caring for others, but each doing as he or she thinks good. Ships or boats they have none, nor artificers to make them, no trade ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of countries which have been long subjected to a despotic government. Solomon says: 'When the imperious are in power, men hide away' in order to escape the cruelty of tyrants, nor is it astonishing; for a man governing without law, and according to his own caprice, differs in nothing from a beast of prey. Hence, Solomon designates an impious ruler as a roaring lion and a ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... he doffed his jewelled cap to the effigy, and knelt before it. Yes, Oro the Ancient, the Super-man, the God, as the early peoples of the earth fancied such a being, namely, one full of wrath, revenge, jealousy, caprice and power, knelt in supplication to this image of stone which he believed to be the home of a spirit, thereby showing himself to be after all not so far removed from the savages whose idol Bastin had destroyed. More, in a clear and resonant voice which reached us even across that ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... the time of its fall. The life of this woman had been a tissue of romantic adventures and strange vicissitudes. To her, oftener than to any other woman of her class, it had happened, thanks to the caprice of great lords struck with her extraordinary beauty, to be literally gorged with gold and jewels and all the delights of excessive wealth,—flowers, carriages, pages, maids, palaces, pictures, journeys (like ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... same association is by no means merely a negative social factor, but it is in many ways the only means through which coexistence with individuals intolerable in themselves could be possible. If we had not power and right to oppose tyranny and obstinacy, caprice and tactlessness, we could not endure relations with people who betray such characteristics. We should be driven to deeds of desperation which would put the relationships to an end. This follows not alone for the self-evident reason—which, however, is not here essential—that such disagreeable ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... caprice seized her. "Why, I think I'll wear it!" she answered. "Just help me on with it, Oskar. And thank you so much for helping me select it. Here comes Mr. Wentworth, now. I wonder whether he will like it. I'm crazy about it. What kind of a marten did you say ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... a miniature republic by themselves. They governed themselves in nearly all local matters. They bought, sold, and exchanged according to their own laws and regulations. They married and gave in marriage after their own caprice. Industrious, skilful, with little ambition, they bustled about their narrow streets, jostling those at their elbow and uttering slander against those out of hearing. In short, they led the humdrum life incident ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... wars that were neither of her making nor her choosing she has borne the hardest blows—a poor little buffer state thrust in between great and truculent neighbors. To strike at one another they must strike Belgium. By the accident of geography and the caprice of boundary lines she has always been the anvil for their hammers. Jemmapes and Waterloo, to cite two especially conspicuous examples among great Continental battles, were fought on her soil. Indeed, there is scarcely an inch of her for the possession ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... journalist as the German. M. Huret sang his praises in the Figaro. Even the arch-Germanophobe Monsieur Andre Tardieu was coaxed into writing a whole volume of panegyric on the irresistible Chancellor. Before the caprice of his Imperial master sent him into premature retirement, Buelow had succeeded in marshalling all the intellectual forces of the German Empire. Whilst Bismarck had frittered away his energies quarrelling with von Virchow, with Windhorst, and with the professors ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... dealt with romance he never gave the advantage of an inch to the wiles of bizarre witchery, the grotesque masks of wanton caprice in imagination—those elements which exhibit the intoxication of talent. His terrors were those of our own hearts; his playfulness had the merit of the sunlight. In short, he was artistically con-. secrated, guiding the forces he ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... moment to moment, for ever various, yet for ever the same. This great and yet most blessed paradox of the Changeless God, who yet can say "It repenteth me," and "Behold, I work a new thing on the earth," is revealed no less by nature than by Scripture; the changeableness, not of caprice or imperfection, but of an Infinite Maker and "Poietes," drawing ever fresh forms out of the inexhaustible treasury of His primaeval Mind; and yet never throwing away a conception to which He has once given ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... his curacies long, either losing them from the caprice of his principals, or being compelled to resign them from the parsimony which they practised towards him. In the year 1756 he was living in a garret in London vainly soliciting employment in his sacred calling, and undergoing with his family the greatest privations. At length ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... caprice of kind heart, as well as of mischief, Jacqueline interposed. "Your sergeant, Monsieur the American, is the Duke of Elchingen." But she might have called Ney a genus homo, for all the impression ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... child! His short sturdy figure and round rosy face spoke of the perfection of hearty boyish life, but nothing more. But his breathless eagerness, the intense interest in his eyes—most of all the look in his face as he listened to a little caprice which Ulric played on his own violin as a sort of introduction to the lesson, soon made ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... elder Pliny tells us that he himself saw Lollia Paulina dressed for a betrothal feast in a robe entirely covered with pearls and emeralds, which had cost 40,000,000 sesterces, and which was known to be less costly than some of her other dresses. Gluttony, caprice, extravagance, ostentation, impurity, rioted in the heart of a society which knew of no other means by which to break the monotony of its weariness or alleviate the anguish of ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... first secured the boat, and cantered home. We passed several smaller lakes; there is a perfect chain of them among these hills, and I was much amused at the names bestowed on them, according to the tastes or caprice of the station-owners whose runs happen to include them: for instance, two are called respectively "Geraldine" and "Ida," whilst three, which lie close together, rejoice in the somewhat extraordinary names of "the World," "the Flesh," ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... the passage of the so-called Change of Venue bill[74a]. This measure was introduced in the Assembly by Grove L. Johnson. Under its provisions a person charged with crime would have been permitted upon his whim or caprice to allege bias and disqualify the Judge before whom he was to be tried. The Legislature of 1907 was admittedly controlled by the machine, but even the Legislature of 1907 did not dare pass the Change of Venue bill. The reform Legislature of 1909, ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... hadn't to hear the whole programme begin. And the President preach international peace, And Parricide show an alarming increase, And a Justice at Bootle excuse the police, And how to clean trousers when spotted with grease, And a pianist biting his wife from caprice, And an eminent Baptist's arrival at Nice, And a banker's regrettably painless decease, And the new quarantine for the plucking of geese, And a mad millionaire's unobtrusive release, And a marquis divorced by a usurer's niece— If all of these ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... your carpenter is at the door. You will be so good as to dismiss him. I do not think proper to give my reasons for these orders; but you who KNOW me," said the doctor, and his eye turned towards De Grey, "will not suspect me of caprice. I ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... London, the day after my sentence, and sent in his resignation, assigning openly as the cause, that he would not continue in a service in which he was liable to be insulted with impunity, by the caprice of a superior officer, or liable to be prosecuted, if he resented a wanton insult with the spirit of a man of honour and a gentleman. But Wm. Tinker of Lavington, who had so often volunteered to resent what he called an insult ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... delight in the passion of so virile, graceful, glorious a lover, the man of whom she had heard other women speak for three long years, and now he was hers—hers to do with as she dared—to break or make as was her caprice. What—what if men looked stern and women shrank? This was a game well worth the candle, let ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... in the eyes of their countrymen, will go out, and quietly shoot at each other with firearms, till one of them is killed or wounded; and this too, in many cases, when the injury has been merely nominal. If you show such a contempt of death, in deference to a custom founded in mere caprice, can it be wondered that a woman should show it, in the first paroxysms of her grief for the loss of him to whom was devoted every thought, word, and action of her life, and who, next to her God, was the object of her idolatry? My dear Atterley," he ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... as Caliban would have done. And caprice is Setebos's method. He does things wantonly. No noble master passion flames in him. No goodness blesses him. Such a god Caliban makes, so that it is odds whether Caliban make God or God make Caliban. Be sure, a man-made god is like the man who made him. The sole explanation ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... all considered mankind; and the result of my thoughts has been, that amidst such an infinite diversity of laws and manners, they are not solely conducted by the caprice of fancy.[5] ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... itself, unless by Zeus we shall say that evil-doers are wise, but wherever the greedy love of wealth or pleasure or violent envy dwells with hatred and malignity, there will you also see and find stationed superstition, and remissness for labour, and cowardice in respect to death, and sudden caprice in the passions, and vain-glory and boasting. Those that censure them frighten them, and they even fear those that praise them as wronged by their deceit, and as most hostile to the bad because they readily praise those they think good. For as in the case ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... doubted his own recollections of the evening before, if such a thing had been possible, so absolutely unaltered was Hetty's treatment of him. She had been absolutely honest in all she said: she did honestly believe that his fancied love for her was a sentimental mistake, a caprice born of idleness and lack of occupation, and she did honestly intend to forget the whole thing, and to make him forget it. And so they went back to the farm, where the summer awaited them with overflowing harvests of every thing, and ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... which I have said are occasionally manifested by persons in trance, which sometimes attain an extraordinary vigour and compass, and which are maintained, or are maintainable, for several years, being manifested for that time, though not without caprice and occasional entire failures, on the patient reverting to the entranced condition. One of the most interesting features in what follows is, that it is evident M. Petetin was entirely unacquainted with mesmerism; and, at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... their energy by any forms of public opinion which bore hardly against the wanton expenditure of honestly got wealth. It would be hard if a man who has passed the greater part of his life at the desk or counter could not at last innocently gratify a caprice; and all the best and most sacred ends of almsgiving would be at once disappointed, if the idea of a moral claim took the place of affectionate gratitude in the mind ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... slurring of the word, "died three months ago I thought I had a reasonable amount of the world's goods. His lawyer exploded that theory in a sixty-minute fully illustrated lecture. I took to the sheep as a last resort. Do you happen to know of any fashionable caprice among the gilded youth of Manhattan that induces them to abandon polo and club windows to become managers of ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... to the ends of poetry, above the classic." "The greatest geniuses of our own and foreign countries," he affirms, "such as Ariosto and Tasso in Italy, and Spenser and Milton in England, were seduced by these barbarities of their forefathers; were even charmed by the Gothic romances. Was this caprice and absurdity in them? Or may there not be something in the Gothic Romance peculiarly suited to the view of a genius and to the ends of poetry? And may not the philosophic moderns have gone too far in their perpetual ridicule ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to hear if any sound from my companions could reach my ears. At the moment when I left the right road I had not noticed the absence of the stream. It is evident that at that moment a deviation had presented itself before me, whilst the Hansbach, following the caprice of another incline, had gone with my companions away ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... said that these laws, like all other laws of economics, are not to be taken in a narrow mathematical sense. We cannot study causes and effects dependent on the caprice of men's desires and wills with the minute exactness with which we solve numerical problems. Taken in the broad sense, however, the study we have made in the preceding chapters is sufficient ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... word was applied to natural phenomena had in it far more of truth than the modern one. It was the imperfect expression of the great truth that God is a God of order—that there is a uniform procedure in His works, because in Him there is no change, no caprice. And it is of great importance to us that we should realize this truth, because we are dependent upon the laws of nature every moment of our lives. Every conscious act is performed under the conviction that the natural forces which that act calls forth will operate in a certain prescribed ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... prime distinctions is his power to visualize scenes. The terror, beauty, caprice, and mercilessness of the sea; the silence and strangeness of the impenetrable tropical forest; atmospheres tense with storm or brilliant with sunshine,—these he records with strong effect. But though he has gained his fame largely as a chronicler of remote seas and shores, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... is no matter of carnal impulse or of emotional caprice.... Love is a kind of exalted but unspecialised Telepathy;—the simplest and most universal expression of that mutual gravitation or kinship of spirits which is the foundation of the telepathic law. ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... spite of the vast scale on which he worked his devilish will, his life presents a total picture of sordid vice, differing only from pot-house dissipation and schoolboy cruelty in point of size. And this of a truth is the Nemesis of evil. After a time, mere tyrannous caprice must become commonplace and cloying, tedious to the tyrant, and uninteresting to the student of humanity: nor can I believe that Caligula failed to perceive this to ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... their fulsome praise of "old master," the often unconscious note of grief and despair. He perceived, too, the debasing effects of slavery upon master and slave alike, crushing all semblance of manhood in the one, and in the other substituting passion for judgment, caprice for justice, and indolence and effeminacy for the more virile virtues of freemen. Doubtless the gentle hand of time will some time spread the veil of silence over this painful past; but, while we are still gathering its evil ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... intellect, in energy, and wisdom; else how had you dared to brave me thus, whom never man yet braved and lived to boast of it! And now for a mere girlish fancy, a weak feminine caprice for a man, who cares not for you; who has betrayed you; who, idiot and inconsistent that he is, fresh from your fiery kisses, was whimpering within an hour at the feet of his cold Julia; who has, I doubt not, boasted of your favors, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... District of Columbia and portions of four separate States, with all or part of some 39 counties and a number of independent cities—only accidentally and occasionally follow watershed ridges. More often they reflect the caprice of Stuart kings and Fairfax lords, the accidents of history, the fortunes of war, and the trampings of young George Washington and the Messrs. Mason and Dixon and hundreds of less renowned linemakers. These boundaries, ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... some of the most interesting relations of domestic life, so many strong and honorable testimonies remain. The pains he took to win back the estranged feelings of his father, and the filial tenderness with which he repaid long years of parental caprice, show a heart that had, at least, set out by the right road, however, in after years, it may have missed the way. The enthusiastic love which his sister bore him, and retained unblighted by distance or neglect, is another proof of the influence of his amiable ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... she consulted her sketch, and was so far convinced of her own instincts, and the profound impression the fountain had made upon her, that she was enabled to secretly finish her interrupted sketch from memory. For Miss Charlotte Forrest was a born artist, and in no mere caprice had persuaded her father to let her adopt the profession, and accepted the drudgery of a novitiate. She looked earnestly upon this first real work of her hand and found it good! Still, it was but a pencil sketch, and wanted the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... very kind to express so much interest in my movements. But you must permit me to remind you of a piece of advice I have often received, as a youngster, from your own lips, dear Mrs. Stanley; and that is, never to abandon merely from caprice, the path of life ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... continual interference of the Colonial Office in our domestic concerns. Bills passed by the Provincial Legislature for the regulation of our own internal affairs were disallowed with vexatious frequency, and sometimes, apparently, from mere caprice. Sometimes the irresponsible Executive, unwilling that their obedient servants in the Upper House should incur popular odium by opposing the will of the Assembly, permitted Bills to pass both Houses, and then, through their tool the Lieutenant-Governor, had ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... is your objection to the European trip, Sadie? I should think you would like it; I am sure you could have no better opportunity than to go with the Farnsworths," argued Katherine, who was more and more perplexed by her roommate's strange caprice. ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... economic service, received an equal share with all others of the national product, and such provision was made for the needs of children as should absolutely safeguard their interests from the neglect or caprice of ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... But the bean-growers, dependent chiefly on wind and weather, only speak of God's will. They have the same forgiveness for the shortcomings of nature as for a wayward child. And no wonder they are distrustful. Ages of oppression and misrule have passed over their heads; sun and rain, with all their caprice, have been kinder friends to them than their earthly masters. Some day, presumably, the government will wake up to the fact that Italy is not an industrial country, and that its farmers might profitably be taken ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... while too often children treat their mothers with irreverence or neglect, and instead of striving with loving zeal to lighten their labors and save their steps, they treat them more as though they were servants hired only to wait upon every whim and to humor every caprice. ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... Lady Hester, recommending him to leave his family at Beyrout till he could find a house for them at Sayda. 'For your sake,' she continued, 'I should ever wish to show civility to all who belong to you, but caprice I will never interfere with, for from my early youth I have been taught to despise it.' Here was signal proof that the past had not been forgotten, and that war was still to be waged against the unfortunate Mrs. ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... and romantic; and in so regarding it she had no ulterior thought whatever: she looked on it with the single-mindedness of an artist looking on his work. And was it not indeed astounding that by a swift caprice and stroke of audacity she should have changed and tranquillized the ominous future for her unsuspecting mother and herself? Was it not absolutely disconcerting that she and this Mr. Cannon, whom she had never known before and in whom she ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... he was drawn to the lilac-bushes by the sweet memory of his former home, or whether he was keeping a tryst with his mate of the nesting season and was calling her to come to him, or whether his coming was pure caprice, of course John Gayther could not know. But every day he came; and when the sky was clear he sang his merry song; and even when the clouds were overshadowing he could not help uttering little trills of melody. After a time ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... received with cheers, said that no one who had followed his recent speeches could be in any doubt as to the turpitude and sloth of the men whom a mischievous caprice had set at the head of this country's affairs. He for one should never cease to clamour for their dismissal. He begged to move a resolution that in the opinion of that important and representative meeting a complete change of Government was instantly necessary. (A ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... whom Theodora's lovers were wont to turn when suffering from her caprice, was on very friendly terms with the young Earl. He used to come and stand by her, and talk to her about Wrangerton, and seemed quite amused and edified by her quiet enthusiasm for it, and for Helvellyn, and her intimacy with all the pictures which he had sent home and almost ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and can any day and at any hour be observed in action in any Ministry of State, any mercantile office, any great warehouse, any public institution, in every scene, in fact, where one or many men are dependent for their living on the favour or caprice of another. On the other hand, let it not be forgotten that this innate tendency of human nature is at times replaced by another which has frequently the same outward manifestations, but is not the same feeling, the sentiment, namely, of embarrassment arising ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... draft for the money; when paid, send the copyrights. I release you from the thousand pounds agreed on for "The Giaour" and "Bride," and there's an end.... For all this, it might be well to assign some reason. I have none to give, except my own caprice, and I do not consider the circumstance of consequence enough to require explanation.... It will give me great pleasure to preserve your acquaintance, and to consider you as my friend. Believe me very ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... glance back at the mysterious picture. The captain of Castle William fancied that the girl's air and mien were such as might have belonged to one of those spirits of fable—fairies or creatures of a more antique mythology—who sometimes mingled their agency with mortal affairs, half in caprice, yet with a sensibility to human weal or woe. As he held the door for her to pass Alice beckoned to the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... contempt; but I have sturdily withstood his buffetings many a hard-laboured day already, and still my motto is—I DARE! My worst enemy is moi-meme. I lie so miserably open to the inroads and incursions of a mischievous, light-armed, well-mounted banditti, under the banners of imagination, whim, caprice, and passion: and the heavy-armed veteran regulars of wisdom, prudence, and forethought move so very, very slow, that I am almost in a state of perpetual warfare, and, alas! frequent defeat. There are just two ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... rouse them for a brief moment from their apathy, for they were not cruel, only satiated with every sight, every excitement and luxury which their voluptuous city and the insane caprice of the imperator perpetually offered them; and they thirsted for horrors as a sane man thirsts for beauty, that it might cause a diversion in the even tenor of their lives, and mayhap raise a thrill in their ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... reciprocates the sentiment. Now the question simply reduces itself to this: Shall this sentiment, this love, be founded on a complete and accurate knowledge of what is necessary to the complete gratification of the whole nature, or shall it be founded upon mere caprice or whim, the gratification of a mere fragmentary instinct which has never been educated to the comprehension of its true needs? Ponder on these questions for a few moments and you will realize that, instead of ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... did the world know of such a thing? Hardly. Now and then, for sake of its traditions, the world took some hapless boy, or some still yet unhappier woman, and pilloried one of them, and drove them out under a shower of stones, selecting them by caprice, persecuting them without justice, slaying them because they were friendless. But that was all. For the most part sin was an obsolete thing, archaic and ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... was the month of May—not May coming in as she does sometimes in her caprice, pouting, and out of humour—but May all in smiles. The weather was warm, and the sea was smooth and the men of the cutter had stowed away their pea-jackets, and had pulled off their fishermen's boots, and had substituted shoes. Mr Vanslyperken did not often appear on deck during the passage. ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... surprise of Springfield society, however, the courtship took a sudden turn. Whether it was caprice or jealousy, a new attachment, or mature reflection will always remain a mystery. Every such case is a law unto itself, and neither science nor poetry is ever able to analyze and explain its causes and effects. The conflicting ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... I think the child is insane upon the subject. Where could she have picked up such an idea? Is it a mere caprice, a mere piece of impertinence, invented to disconcert the sober ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... thing to see a fish turn towards the spot where he was struck, that Roswell did not know what to make of this manoeuvre in his bull. At first he supposed the animal meant to make fight, and set upon him with its tremendous jaws; but it seemed that caprice or alarm directed the movement; for, after coming within a hundred yards of the boat, the creature turned and commenced sculling away to windward, with wide and nervous sweeps of its formidable flukes. It is by ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... for pleasure," Khalid once said to Shakib; "nor for the light free love of an exquisite caprice. Those little flowers that bloom and wither in the blush of dawn are for the little butterflies. The love that endures, give me that. And it must be of the deepest divine strain,—as deep and divine as maternal love. Man is of Eternity, not of Time; and love, the highest attribute ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... Some of the stars rose and set like the sun; some were almost motionless in the sky; some described circles round a central star above the north horizon. The planets went on principles of their own; and in the elements there seemed nothing but caprice. Sun and moon would at times go out in eclipse. Sometimes the earth itself would shake under men's feet; and they could only suppose that earth and air and sky and water were inhabited and managed by creatures ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... is no analogy. Be reasonable; you are a being of will; you can do or not do. He is only a child who exercises no self-control, who is governed only by caprice, whim, or whatever passion of the moment. These follies, of which my mother makes account, and rightly, are beneath one of your age. There is in them nothing ennobling, charming; nothing that should gratify a mind that has the faintest ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee |
