"Capricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Bess," as she has been miscalled, cared little for blunt honesty. She was a vain and selfish woman, fond of flattery and capricious in the extreme. She liked the soft speeches and fulsome compliments of such men as the Earl of Leicester far better than she liked the simple sincerity of the honest Sir Henry. Then, too, the queen was avaricious. The condition of Ireland was of less moment to her than the ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... would wait a little, Lady Adela," he said, "until I see how the land lies. He's a most curious fellow, Mangan: difficult to please and capricious. I fancy he is rather disappointed with himself; he ought to have done something great, for he knows everything—at least he knows what is fine in everything, in painting, in poetry, in music; and yet, with all his sympathy, he seems ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... tried it, by its good quality. The Catawba had during that time, been imported from Cincinnati, and the first partial crop from it, in 1848, was so plentiful, that every body, almost, commenced planting vines, and often in very unfavorable localities. This, of course, had a bad influence on so capricious a variety as the Catawba; rot and mildew appeared, and many became discouraged, because they did not realize what they had anticipated. A number of unfavorable seasons brought grape growing almost to a stand still here. Some ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... wounded and indignant feelings, I walked rapidly on, without deigning to look at one so heartless and capricious. Mr. Regulus was right. He was not a proper companion. I would never allow him ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... ideals of chastity because they have found attractiveness in more or less superficial studies of radical socialism. Many of these radical women frankly say that they would like to marry the "right man," but failing to find that rare species, they claim their right to sexual freedom in more or less capricious liaisons. Others of these women are so highly individualized that marriage is beneath their contempt, either because it will "interfere with a career" or because the legal aspects and ecclesiastical ceremonies still suggest the ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... as if a new throe of earth had torn its heights and made new steeps and obelisks. Moorea is never the same. Every hour of the day and every smile and frown of the sun creates valleys and spires, and alters the outlines of this most capricious ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... a mere capricious change of fate, that the exiled governor of the land whose name, four years ago, was scarcely known on your glorious shores, and which now (oh, let me have the blessings of this belief!) is dear to the generous ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... flexibility that left unimpeded her creative fancy. Handel, in whose operas she sang, composed airs calculated to display her charms, but she, confident of her supremacy, rewarded him with conduct so capricious that, finding her at last intolerable, he sent to Italy for the noble Venetian lady, Faustina Bordoni. She was elegant in figure, handsome of face, had an amiable disposition, a ringing mezzo-soprano, with a compass from B-flat to G in altissimo, and was renowned for her brilliant ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... as in a dream. Her mind was all with the animals. There was something splendid in it: she, herself, was a noble animal; and she seemed entirely in place where she was. The lions were fond of her, and she of them; but the first part of her performance had shown that they could be capricious. A lion's love is but a lion's love after all—and hers likewise, no doubt! The three seemed as one in their beauty, the woman superbly superior. Meyerbeer, in a far corner, was still on the trail of his sensation. He thought that he might get ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... lacked physical graces, this and many another story prove that she had a rare gift of diplomacy. She had, moreover, an unfailing cheerfulness and goodness of heart which quickly endeared her to the moody and capricious Peter. In his frequent fits of nervous irritability which verged on madness, she alone had the power to soothe him and restore him to sanity. Her very voice had a magic to arrest him in his worst rages, and when the fit of madness (for such ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... appendicitis is a dangerous disease. In his late book, "The Abdominal and Pelvic Brain," Dr. Byron Robinson of Chicago says, "Appendicitis is the most dangerous and treacherous of abdominal diseases—dangerous because it kills and treacherous because its capricious course can not be prognosed. . . . For years I have made it a rule to recommend appendectomy to patients having experienced two attacks. Fifty per cent of subjects who have had ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... remarkably the case with her pupils in America. Her little republic was completely governed by a system of equitable laws. On every alleged offence, a court-martial, as they termed it, was held, and the accused tried by her peers. There were no arbitrary punishments, no sallies of capricious passion. The laws were promulgated, and obedience was indispensable; the sentences of the courts-martial were always approved, and had a salutary effect. In short, there was a combination of authority, decision, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... know the dear capricious sky In every infinitely varied mood— Yet under her maternal wings can lie The smallest chick among her countless brood! Praise! that I hear the strong winds wildly race Their chariots on the sea, But feel them lift my hair and stroke my ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... quarrels and disputes of our company there ran the thread of the affair of Trenchard, Marie Ivanovna and Semyonov. Trenchard was lighted now with the pleasure of their affection, and Marie Ivanovna, who had been at first so popular amongst them, was held to be hard and capricious. She, at least, did not make it easy for them to like her. She had seemed in those first days in O—— as though she wished to win all their hearts, but now it was as though she had not time to consider any of us, as though she had something of far greater importance to claim ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... you feel and then see what you think." Briefly this amounts to saying: "Act on impulse, behave instinctively and not rationally." In too many cases, as we know, this is equivalent to a merely selfish "Down tools if you feel like it." Now so far from Bergson really giving any countenance to capricious behaviour, or mere impulse, he expressly condemns such action. Although the future is being made, he does not admit that it will be merely CAPRICIOUSLY made, and he condemns the man of mere impulse along with the dreamer, in a fine passage ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... face, suggestive of a horse. Stepan Trofimovitch hesitated more and more, he was tortured by doubts, he positively shed tears of indecision once or twice (he wept not infrequently). In the evenings, that is to say in the arbour, his countenance involuntarily began to express something capricious and ironical, something coquettish and at the same time condescending. This is apt to happen as it were by accident, and the more gentlemanly the man the more noticeable it is. Goodness only knows what one is to think about it, but it's most likely that nothing had ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in the dear old ballad had a truelove who was not captious and capricious and cold like Francesca. His love gave him a gay ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... took its well-known name of 'musty.' Nearer to our own time, a large tobacco warehouse having been destroyed by fire, in Dublin, a poor man purchased some of the scorched or damaged stock, and manufacturing it into coarse snuff, sold it to the poorer class of snuff-takers. Forthwith capricious fashion adopted it, endowing it with fabulous qualities, and Lundy Foot's Irish Black-guard (so it was termed) filled the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... industry; and that artless matter alone cannot perform what argues so much knowledge. Hence it appears that sound reason naturally concludes that matter alone cannot, either by the simple laws of motion, or by the capricious strokes of chance, make even animals that are mere machines. Those philosophers themselves, who will not allow beasts to have any reasoning faculty, cannot avoid acknowledging that what they suppose to be blind and artless in these machines is yet full of wisdom and art ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... grace about her movements, and such music in her voice, that little as her features seemed to harmonize with the disposition which Benassis had praised to the commandant, the officer recognized in her the capricious and ailing creature, condemned to suffering by a nature that had been thwarted ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... such an unexpected Repulse, said he, from a capricious Court-Lady, I am determin'd to marry some substantial Citizen's Daughter. He pitch'd accordingly upon Azora, a young Gentlewoman extremely well-bred, an excellent Oeconomist, and one, whose Parents were ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... land where logic is a foundling and compromise a darling, writes: "A weak government throws power to something which usurps the name of public opinion, and public opinion as expressed by the ventriloquists of the newspapers is at once more capricious and more vociferous than it ever was." This, strange to say, is exactly the opinion of the German autocrats, who maintain that no democracy can be a strong military power. It remains for England, and perhaps later America, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... almost fear that this denunciation of effects from causes so incompetent, as they will appear to those who have not had the experience which I have had of the quick sensibility which influences the habits of men placed in a state of polity so loose, and subject to the continual variations of capricious and despotic authority, will be deemed overcharged, or perhaps void of foundation; nor, if they should come to pass, will it be easy to trace them with any positive evidence to their connection: yet it is my duty to apprise you of what I apprehend, on grounds ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... dictatorship, he gave formal notice of his purpose to abdicate the imperial authority. Lafayette was at the head of the deputation appointed by the chamber of representatives, to wait on the Emperor, to accept and thank him for his abdication, A few days before this, when the deputies were accused of being capricious and ungrateful, by a friend of Napoleon, Lafayette observed, in reply, "go tell him that we can trust him no longer; we ourselves will undertake the salvation of ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... little of her power in favor of Pauline and Victor, intimate confidants who enforced her commands. This precious chit was for ever wanting to play at being mamma, undressing the smallest ones to dress them again, insisting on examining the others all over, messing them about and exercising the capricious despotism of a grown-up person with a vicious disposition. Under her leadership they got up tricks for which they should have been well spanked. The troop paddled in the colored water from the dyer's and emerged ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... presence of tape worm. The children may have pains in the abdomen, diarrhea, a capricious appetite, foul breath, and they may suffer from anemia, sometimes quite severely. The only positive symptoms is the presence of links of ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... it partakes of both characters—is indeed worthy of general admiration. It is oddly situated, being almost detached—and on the south side of the building. Indeed the whole structure has a very strange, and I may add capricious, if not repulsive, appearance, as to its exterior. The western and eastern ends have nothing deserving of distinct notice or commendation. The former has a porch; which is called "the Giant's porch;" it should rather be designated as that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... alive, but suffered a great deal from gout and the capricious young wife he had married in his old age. Hangemarx had grown melancholy and, after all, ended his life by the rope, though by his own hand. Dark-skinned Xaver had entered the priesthood and was living in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Born in December, 1600, she lost her mother at a very early age, and in 1617 was married to that audacious favourite of Louis XIII., De Luynes, who from the humble office of "bird-catcher" to the young King, rose to the proud dignity of Constable of France, and who, upon the faith of a king's capricious friendship, dared to undertake the reversal of the Queen-mother, Marie de' Medici's authority; hurl to destruction her great favourite, the Marshal d'Ancre; combat simultaneously princes and Protestants, and commence against ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the parliamentary limit is sui generis; for the metropolis here comprises the City of London, the city of Westminster, the borough of Southwark, and the five modern boroughs of Marylebone, Finsbury, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, and Lambeth—a very capricious limit, truly; for while it includes the far east at Woolwich, it excludes Pimlico, Brompton, and a vast adjoining area. Lastly, to give one more mesh to this net, we find the police metropolis ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... intend to be amongst them, and together, I think we can do some execution. How are the ladies at the Willows? And is pretty little Cousin Kate as capricious as ever?" And here Carlton gave his friend a poke in the ribs with his ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... description were scattered all about in the greatest profusion. A stuffed chair, on rollers, was near the boy, and a garden chair stood upon the steps, ready for immediate use, and every thing around seemed fitted to minister to a diseased body and a capricious will. The lad drew pettishly away from the caress of his fond mother, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... utterances are inscribed in bronze; the poor fellows remain historical and sublime in spite of themselves. And I do not find that all this is done in the ages of barbarism alone; it is still going on, and it molds the history of yesterday to the taste of public opinion—a Muse tyrannical and capricious, which preserves the general purport and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... mountains and adopted our mode of life, and they are so numerous that one would fancy the place had been turned into the pastoral Arcadia, so full is it of shepherds and sheep-folds; nor is there a spot in it where the name of the fair Leandra is not heard. Here one curses her and calls her capricious, fickle, and immodest, there another condemns her as frail and frivolous; this pardons and absolves her, that spurns and reviles her; one extols her beauty, another assails her character, and in short all abuse her, and all adore her, and to such a pitch has this general infatuation gone ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... had not improved on further acquaintance. She was not only a tyrant, but a capricious one. Not merely was penalty sure to follow on not pleasing her, but it was not easy to say what would please ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... the third period of his history. We are now to consider him as the tenant of a compelled solitude, in the dungeon of a capricious tyrant. Hitherto, by that rugged energy with which he battled with the temptations of this world, he has been shedding a glory round human life. We are now to look at him equally alone; equally majestic, shedding by martyrdom, almost a brighter glory round human death. ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... prudent resolution to follow their vain hopes and desires: weakness that would have been blamable ill the pilot of a ship, how much more in the sovereign commander of such an army, and so many nations. But he, though he had often commended those physicians who did not comply with the capricious appetites of their patients, yet himself could not but yield to the malady and disease of his companions and advisers in the war, rather than use some severity in their cure. Truly who could have said that health was not disordered and a cure not required in the case of men who ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... doorway that always in summer, after dinner, we passed out into the garden adjoining. As usual, therefore, when the hour came, Theresa led the way. That dreadful daytime brilliance that in my present state I found so hard to endure was now becoming softer. A delicate, capricious twilight breeze danced inconsequently through languidly whispering leaves. Lovely pale flowers blossomed like little moons in the dusk, and over them the breath of mignonette hung heavily. It was a perfect place—and ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... without troubling himself about the puling of men who creep about on the face of the earth like the ants on that of a pumpkin. And well for us that it should be so! Better a thousand times is it to be the servant of an iron law, than the slave of a capricious master who takes a malignant and envious ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a brilliant young man, monsieur, but he was of no importance to his generation—and he becomes so now through the whim of a capricious woman to disinherit her other heirs. After all this time she has decided to make ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the line of retreat Drew had stopped worrying about Boyd. And now, with the youngster already appointed horse holder for the day's battle, he need not think of him engulfed in action. Though any fighting future was decided mainly by the capricious chance which struck one man down and allowed his ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... coldly. "She has left me of her own choice; and, now, she must return. I gave her no cause for the rash act. Enough for me that I am willing to forgive and forget all this. But I am not the man to humble myself at the feet of a capricious woman. ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... other. Then he reflected as swiftly that women probably had their own rules about such matters. He seemed to have heard, or read, perhaps, that females liked and disliked each other with the most capricious alternations and on the least tangible of grounds. At all events, here they were together now. That was ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... political governments; and this excessive liberty soon brings the people collectively and individually to an excessive servitude. For, as I said, this extreme liberty easily introduces the reign of tyranny, the severest of all unjust slaveries. In fact, from the midst of this unbridled and capricious populace, they elect some one as a leader in opposition to their afflicted and expelled nobles: some new chief, forsooth, audacious and impure, often insolently persecuting those who have deserved well of the State, and ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... capricious! I never notice it in you young people; you do nothing but play lawn tennis, and say that romance is dead, while the Miss Alans are struggling with all the weapons of propriety against the terrible thing. 'A really comfortable pension at Constantinople!' ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... national pretensions that could ever have been regarded doubtfully merely through insufficient knowledge. Dr. Johnson, indeed, made it the distinguishing merit of the French, that they "have a book upon every subject." But Dr. Johnson was not only capricious as regards temper and variable humors, but as regards the inequality of his knowledge. Incoherent and unsystematic was Dr. Johnson's information in most cases. Hence his extravagant misappraisement of Knolles, the Turkish historian, which is exposed so severely by Spittler, the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... shorter or longer waves,—now fast, now slow—and sometimes in regular throbs or pulse-beats. The fall and winter rains are, as a rule, the most deliberate and general, but the spring and summer rains are always more or less impulsive and capricious. One may see the rain stalking across the hills or coming up the valley in single file, as it were. Another time it moves in vast masses or solid columns, with broad open spaces between. I have seen a spring snowstorm lasting nearly all day that swept down in rapid intermittent sheets ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." If Jesus referred to Jehovah as his Father in heaven, the standard of perfection advocated was very low, for Jehovah was, as Thomas Jefferson put it, "cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust." ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... that of Algiers, our affairs remain on the ordinary footing. The consul-general residing with that Regency has suddenly and without cause been banished, together with all the American citizens found there. Whether this was the transitory effect of capricious despotism or the first act of predetermined hostility is not ascertained. Precautions were taken by the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... those long-tried men and women submitted with unexampled patience for full eight-and-twenty years to the spoiling of their goods and the ruin of their prospects; but when it came to be a question of submission to the capricious will of the King or loyalty to Jesus Christ, thousands of them chose the latter alternative, and many hundreds sealed their testimony with ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mad Bell's wanderings did indeed reveal themselves to her neighbours confusedly and dispersedly in her fitful and capricious narrative, like glimpses of a landscape caught through a shifting mist. As this sometimes distorts the objects that loom within it, so Mad Bell's statements were occasionally misleading. Once, for example, she threw the Quigley family into most distracted concern by her accounts of ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... came home to Castlewood for his last vacation he found his old pupil shot up into this capricious beauty; her brother, a handsome, high-spirited, brave lad, generous and frank and kind to everybody, save perhaps Beatrix, with whom he was perpetually at war, and not from his, but her, fault; adoring his mother, whose joy he was. And Lady Castlewood was no whit less gracious and attractive ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... months Guy remained quietly at Summerley. Agnes, though nearly sixteen, was still but a young girl, while Katarina had grown still more womanly during the last six months. The former always treated him as a brother, but the latter was changeable and capricious. Occasionally she would laugh and chat when the three were alone, as she had done of old in Paris, but more often she would tease and laugh at him, while sometimes she would be shy ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... of that wing of our country that spreads its ambitious fallacies—its tempting attractions-shallow criticisms upon minute and isolated cases-redundant theories without measure or observation, and making a standard for the government of slaves upon foolish and capricious prejudices, we have been careful to preserve a conservative moderation toward the ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... laugh at his friend. He was funny, he was pathetic, so prone to be cast down one moment and the next raised aloft to the skies, according to the whim of the capricious young lady. Many times Pan had ridden and worked with a boy ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... progress from fetichism, of which so many evidences crop out in the early Jewish worship as shown in the Old Testament Scriptures, through polytheism, when Jehovah was but "a god above all gods," through the period when he was "a jealous God," capricious and cruel, until he is revealed in such inspired utterances as those of the nobler Psalms, the great passages in Isaiah, the sublime preaching of Micah, and, above all, through the ideal given to the world by Jesus ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... essayist must in a manner make them his own, if he would be an artist and survive among the masters, which there has been some doubt of his doing. It should be his care to shun every appearance of continuity; only in the practice of the fitful, the capricious, the desultory, can he hope to emulate the effects of the creative. With any other ideal he cannot hope to be fit company for the high minds who have furnished mankind with quotations. But for the prevalence of the qualities which we have been urging the essayist to cultivate, in the ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... which could be trained for purposes of sport. All other birds, without distinction, were declared ignoble, and no exception was made to this rule by the naturalists of the Middle Ages, even in favour of the strongest and most magnificent, such as the eagle and vulture. According to this capricious classification, they considered the sparrow-hawk, which was the smallest of the hunting-birds, to rank higher than the eagle. The nickname of this diminutive sporting bird was often applied to a country-gentleman, who, not being able to afford ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... grasping. The highest view we can form is nearest to the truth. If we acquiesce in any lower one, we acquiesce in an untruth. We feel that it is an affront and an indignity to Him, to conceive of Him as cruel, short-sighted, capricious and unjust; as a jealous, an ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... different in different mouths by negligence, unskilfulness, or affectation. The solemn pronunciation, though by no means immutable and permanent, is yet always less remote from the orthography, and less liable to capricious innovation. They have however generally formed their tables according to the cursory speech of those with whom they happened to converse; and concluding that the whole nation combines to vitiate language in one manner, have ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... must have been admirable. But Scotland Yard was a match for them. I sent officers to Dover and Calais to deal with the case, and the men were arrested on landing at Calais. But they were taken empty-handed. A capricious order of the railway company's marine superintendent at Dover had changed the steamer that night an hour before the time of sailing; and while upon the thieves was found a key for the treasure chest of the advertised ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... motif of the tale is the unconscious competition of the two friends, of whom Andy is very willing to play "second fiddle," did not character and brains force him to the front. The young squire of Halton is too selfish and capricious to succeed, and in spite of his loyalty to friendship, Andy finds himself driven to take his place both in love and in politics. A host of characters cross the stage, and the scene flits between Meriton and London. The book is so light in touch, so shrewd ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... of sunshine and smiles. But ladies are capricious: the countess suddenly discovered that I was heavy. Now, if she wished me to be light-headed, why did she order a landaulet? She declared, too, that I was unfit for town service; gave new orders to Houlditch; took possession of a chariot fashioned eight months later than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... certain, or he would not be the captain of Hannibal's bodyguard. Julia was fully as capricious as her mother, and might take as warm a fancy for Malchus as Flavia had done, while, now the idea of setting this Gaulish girl and the Carthaginian together had seized Flavia, it would render more distant ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... intended for the sons of poor and deserving clerics and laics, but many of the noble governors of the institution, with an enlarged and rather capricious benevolence, selected all sorts of objects for their bounty. To get an education for nothing, and a future livelihood and profession assured, was so excellent a scheme that some of the richest people did not disdain it, and not only great men's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... gradually concentrated around the unpromising domain those elements of ecclesiastical prestige, knightly valor, artistic and literary resources which enriched and signalized the Italian cities of the Middle Ages. Enlightened, though capricious patronage made this halting-place between Bologna and Venice, Padua and Rome, the nucleus of talent, enterprise, and diplomacy, the fruits whereof are permanent. But there are two hallowed associations which in a remarkable degree consecrated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... "Unkind! Oh, no; capricious, like all mistresses, but the kindest lady in the world, and generous! Besides, this is a rich house; nothing is counted—nothing at all. This is better than your village," continued Dacka, proud of belonging ...
— The Little Russian Servant • Henri Greville
... time of their voyage down the Mississippi "the science of piloting was not a thing of the dead and pathetic past," and wonderful accounts were written of the autocrats of the wheel and the characteristics of the ever-changing, ever-capricious river. "Accidents!" says an early steamboat captain. "Oh, sometimes we run foul of a snag or sawyer, occasionally collapse a boiler and blow up sky-high. We get used to these little matters ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... first canoe put out to sea, the mariner has been educated by the most practical of all schoolmasters, namely, danger. He has carried his life in his hand day and night; he has had to battle with the most formidable and the most seemingly capricious of the brute powers of nature; with storms, with ice, with currents, with unknown rocks and shoals, with the vicissitudes of climate, and the terrible and seemingly miraculous diseases which change of climate engenders. He has had to fight Nature; and to conquer her, if ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... and dare not qualify it. They are evil, for God and Christ declare it, who judge and live after the maxims of the society around them, and not after Christ; they are evil who are careless; they are evil who live according to their own blind and capricious feelings, now hot, now cold; they are evil who call evil good, and good evil, because they have not known the Father nor Christ. This, and nothing less, we say, lest we should be found false witnesses of God: but if this ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... worth clear to every reader. They have put nothing into the lines which was not there already, but they have shown fine insight in their choice of subjects and in conveying delicate and far-reaching meanings. They have subordinated—as designers do not invariably do—their instinctive methods and capricious inclinations to a careful study of their subject. The result is—instead of a pretty but chaotic decorativeness interspersed with florid and meaningless exaggerations—a complete and beautiful whole marred by no redundancy or incongruity. Their full play of intelligence ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... stranger was prepared to give for the mere gratification of his whim. The mine itself, indeed, had scarcely been mentioned in the transaction; it merely formed a portion in the lot comprising the few barren acres on which this capricious purchaser had expressed his fancy to build a home. "Disposed of by private contract" was the marginal note written in the auctioneer's catalogue which dashed Solomon's long-cherished hopes to ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Browning wished to sketch the beginning of a new theological period, Caliban represents a more advanced thought than savage man conceives. This is Caliban's imagination of a higher being than Setebos who is the capricious creator and power of the earth—of the "Quiet," who is master of Setebos and whose temper is quite different; who also made the stars, things which Caliban, with a touch of Browning's subtle thought, separates from the sun and moon and earth. It is plain from this, and from ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... ablest finesse of Italian subtilty. The old Italian romances were made real in a moment. The dim chambers, the dusky passages, the sliding doors, the vivid contrast of gayety and gloom, the dance in the palace and the duel in the garden, the smile on the lip and the stab at the heart, the capricious feeling, the impetuous action, the picturesque costume of life and society—all the substance and the form of our ideas of characteristic Italian life, are comprised ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... Coward, and Hurcot, and many others, were for a number of years, as familiar to me as the names of my own servants. The editors of the venal hireling press, and the enemies of Mr. Cobbett's political writings, have always represented him as a bad master, and as being capricious, cruel, and tyrannical amongst his servants and poorer neighbours; and by means of as foul a conspiracy against him as ever disgraced the age in which we live, or as ever disgraced the courts of justice in any country. The calumny about ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... stopped beside his companion, who was very intent upon the matter at hand. It took some figuring to make a hit when the range was so great and the sun so blinding and the wind so capricious. He lowered the rifle and peered through the smoke at the confusion he had caused by dropping the nearest warrior. He was said to be the best rifle shot in the Southwest, which means a great deal, and ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... he said, "comprehend the conduct of the Goodwins. Their daughter, if we are to judge from appearances, has discarded her accepted lover, poor Charles, here. Now, this doesn't look well. There seems to be something capricious, perhaps selfish, in it. Still, knowing the goodness of their hearts, as I do, I cannot but feel that there is something like a mystery in it. I had set my heart upon a marriage between Charles and Alice before ever she came into the property ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... grotesques. She always thus visited her husband at breakfast, picking bits off his plate like a bird, and proving to him that her chief preoccupation was ever his well-being and the satisfaction of his capricious tastes. ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... absolute submission to an almighty fate and joyful acceptance of the inevitable a moral duty, and were satisfied to worship the superior power that ruled the universe, without demanding anything in return. They considered themselves at the mercy of even the most capricious fate, and were like the intelligent slave who guesses the desires of his master to satisfy them, and {181} knows how to make the hardest servitude tolerable.[53] The masses, however, never reached that height of resignation. They looked at astrology far ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... received him cordially—Susan civilly, and with a somewhat feeble smile. The former soon engaged him in agricultural talk. Susan, meanwhile, made the tea in silence, and Meadows began to think she was capricious, and had no sooner got what she asked for than she did not care for it. After a while, however, she put in a word here and there, but ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... of making enemies, of being thought ill-natured and capricious, or even of making the objects of their aversion persons of too much consequence, by keeping them aloof, are some of the reasons we have heard alleged for ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... arms and was covering her face with kisses. Carlotta's cheeks flamed. She was no longer a lily, but a red, red rose. Never in her life had she been so frightened, so ecstatic. With all her dainty, capricious flirtations she had always deliberately fenced herself behind barriers. No man had ever held her or kissed her like this, the embrace and kisses of a ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... and capricious creature, is, oftentimes so easily offended that if the maid rise from her before the milk is all withdrawn, the chances are that she will not again stand quietly at that milking; or, if the vessel ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... Those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you— Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!" Among the windings of the violins And the ariettes Of cracked cornets Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone That is at least one definite "false note." —Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments Discuss the late events, Correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour and drink ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot
... are excellences or developed powers of the reason as such—of that in us which sees and formulates laws, rules, regularities systems, and is content in the vision of them, while the latter involve a submission or obedience to such rules of something in us which is in itself capricious and irregular, but capable of regulation, viz our instincts and feelings, (2) the former are acquired by study and instruction, the latter by discipline. The latter constitute "character," each of them as a ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... to all our pitched battles except one, grew a standing schism between my brother and me. My unlimited obedience had respect to action, but not to opinion. Loyalty to my brother did not rest upon hypocrisy: because I was faithful, it did not follow that I must be false in relation to his capricious opinions. And these opinions sometimes took the shape of acts. Twice, at the least, in every week, but sometimes every night, my brother insisted on singing "Te Deum" for supposed victories which he had won; and he insisted also on my bearing a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... before my imagination curvetting on her proud steed with the lute in her hands, like Art herself disguised in romance. Without thinking of it consciously, I wrote several songs of a high and serious nature. Lauretta, it is true, played with her notes like a capricious fairy queen. There was nothing upon which she ventured in which she had not success. But never did a roulade cross Teresina's lips; nothing more than a simple interpolated note, at most a mordent; but her ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... spoilt. Indeed, had any one seen the sudden rage which would gather on her beautiful young forehead when she was engaged in a heated dispute with her father, he would have thought her one of the most capricious beings in the world. Yet that rage gathered only when she had heard of injustice or harsh treatment, and never because she desired to argue on her own behalf, or to attempt to justify her own conduct. Also, that anger would disappear as soon as ever she saw any one whom she had ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... windows. Later attention was bestowed upon the form of the stonework, which was made lighter and richly moulded (bar-tracery), rather than upon that of the openings (Fig. 111). Then the circular and geometric patterns employed were abandoned for more flowing and capricious designs (Flamboyant tracery, Fig. 112) or (in England) for more rigid and rectangular arrangements (Perpendicular, Fig. 134). It will be shown later that the periods and styles of Gothic architecture are more easily identified ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... few precepts from the gods and me! "Be not too eager in the arduous chase; Who pants for triumph seldom wins the race: Venture not all, but wisely hoard thy worth, And let thy labours one by one go forth: Some happier scrap capricious wits may find On a fair day, and be profusely kind; Which, buried in the rubbish of a throng, Had pleased as little as a new-year's song, Or lover's verse, that cloy'd with nauseous sweet, Or birth-day ode, that ran on ill-pair'd feet. Merit not always—Fortune feeds the bard, And as the ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... be said that no government can render all its subjects happy; without doubt it cannot flatter itself with contenting the capricious humours of some idle citizens who are obliged to rack their imagination, to appease the disgust arising from lassitude: but it can, and it ought to occupy itself with ministering to the real wants of the multitude, with ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... aunt's home in the East. She had been very restless and capricious just before she went. All women were thus, he supposed. But ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... nevertheless contrived to find a spare moment for investigation. On the pretext of seeking a lady who had dropped a handkerchief he had crossed the ball room and was therefore in a position to give an accurate account of the waltzes he had heard, dulcet, undulating, capricious measures, far more provocative than Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata" which Tolstoy has denounced. The lady that Mr. Coote sought was not in the ball room, and so he had an opportunity of investigating ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... of all harmonies and the sentiment of love is innate. Woman is a delightful instrument of pleasure, but it is necessary to know its trembling strings, to study the position of them, the timid keyboard, the fingering so changeful and capricious which befits it. How many monkeys—men, I mean—marry without knowing what a woman is! How many of the predestined proceed with their wives as the ape of Cassan did with his violin! They have broken the heart which they did not understand, as they might dim and disdain the amulet whose ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... their abodes all together; but the more forward birds get abroad some days before the rest. These approaching the eaves of buildings, and playing about before them, make people think that several old ones attend one nest. They are often capricious in fixing on a nesting place, beginning many edifices, and leaving them unfinished; but when once a nest is completed in a sheltered place, it serves for several seasons. Those which breed in a ready finished ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... governed by a capricious Being who blows first hot and then cold or who favours one person and tortures another. The Supreme Being works through laws that are absolutely just and unchanging. Therefore all disaster and trouble in the life is the effect of certain causes. These causes are our own wrong doing ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... of the day there is often—but not invariably—a right of way between the Porta della Carta and the Riva, across the courtyard, while the first floor gallery around it, gained by the Giants' Stairs, is also open. For one of those capricious reasons, of which Italian custodians everywhere hold the secret, the delightful gallery looking on the lagoon and Piazzetta is, however, closed. I once found my way there, but was pursued by a frantic ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... consists of two parts, the one corresponding to the other. In Johnson's famous parallel we read: "The style of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and uniform; Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... too vulnerable Pryme, or racing down the field under one of Harris's punts, he had no time to think of it and so was spared the mortification of suspended animation at what would have been a most unfortunate time. His appetite became decidedly capricious. And the capriciousness increased as Saturday drew near. Also, the sinking sensations to which he had become a prey attacked him more often. He drove Amy to despair by predicting all sorts of direful things. He was sure that he wouldn't be able to do anything with Terrill, ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... none of him. Bill eventually gave over trying to talk. But he lost none of his cheerfulness. He lay on his own side of the fire, regarding her with the amused tolerance that one bestows upon the capricious temper of a ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... somewhat of a diplomatist. Perhaps a little natural reserve of character might have been the beginning of it, but the habit had certainly grown from Daisy's experience of her mother's somewhat capricious and erratic views of her movements. She could not but find out that things which to her father's sense were quite harmless and unobjectionable, were invested with an unknown and unexpected character of danger or disagreeableness in the eyes of ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was cross, capricious, ill-tempered, and of a haughtiness in everything which, readied to the clouds, and from the effects of which nobody, not even the King, was exempt. The courtiers avoided passing under her windows, above all when the King was with her. They ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... but she knew—I should rather have said she was aware; for it was a matter more of sensation than thought—a conviction that had grown up in her mind without reflection—she was aware that her mother was somewhat capricious in her friendships. She had seen it in the case of servants and of some of the governesses she had had when she was quite young. One day they would be all that was estimable and charming in Lady Hastings' eyes, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... the poet's school life. Although "very studious," and not unambitious of academical honours—within a few months of his entering at Jesus he won the Browne Gold Medal for a Greek Ode on the Slave Trade [3]—his reading, his friend admits, was "desultory and capricious. He took little exercise merely for the sake of exercise, but he was ready at any time to unbend his mind in conversation, and for the sake of this his room was a constant rendezvous of conversation-loving friends. I will not call them loungers, for they ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... materially diminished. But satisfied that he had formed no other tie, with her ever the test of her position, she had not thought it expedient, and certainly would have found it irksome, to maintain that influence by any ostentatious means. She knew that Lord Monmouth was capricious, easily wearied, soon palled; and that on men who have no affections, affection has no hold. Their passions or their fancies, on the contrary, as it seemed to her, are rather stimulated by neglect or indifference, provided that they are not systematic; ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... conditions has a kind of famine—for one special food, so the mind has its wants, which do not always call for what is best, but which know themselves and are as peremptory as the salt-sick sailor's call for a lemon or a raw potato, or, if you will, as those capricious "longings," which have a certain meaning, we may suppose, and which at any rate we think it reasonable to satisfy ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at him, and wondered why he was so much disturbed. But his words gave her an opportunity of speaking to him about her own decision. She did not wish him to think her capricious, much less to imagine that she looked upon the marriage as a mere piece of sentiment, which was not to change her life at all, except to bind her as a nurse to the bedside of a hopeless invalid. That idea itself was beginning to be repugnant ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... somewhat capricious by nature. As to the horse, as you say, my dear Patout, he wants nothing. You need only remove his bridle; leave him saddled. Oh, wait; put this pistol back in the holsters and take care of these other two for me." And the young man removed ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... beautifully on their masts and drove the ship, that under a cloud of white canvass looked like a stately queen, onward. Sometimes she would lie motionless on the waves for a time, then urged by the breeze she would glide forth like a capricious beauty, cutting the water at the rate of more than four miles an hour. So gentle was the motion, that in the cabin one could scarce hear the murmur of the waves as the ship kissed them with her bowsprit, or raised ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... capricious, whimsical, fine lady, till the smallpox, which she got here, by lessening her beauty, lessened her humors too; but, as I presume it did not change her sex, I trust to that for her having such a share of them left, as may contribute ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... of which Mr. J. M. Merrick writes: "It is perhaps the most famous berry ever raised in England, where it is a favorite for market." Unfortunately, it does not come to full perfection here, and is not only tender but very capricious in choice of soils. It is the parent of many excellent kinds. The fruit is of the largest size and ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... he lectures, he harangues. But if a subject is started which does not interest him it falls flat. He makes no attempt to return the ball. Although, when he is amused, his amusement is intense and long sustained, his sense of humour is highly capricious. It is impossible for even his most intimate friends to guess beforehand what will amuse him and what will not; and he has a most disconcerting habit of taking a comic story in grim earnest, and arguing some farcical fantasy as if it was a serious proposition of law or logic. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... dart into the barn-door, through the barn, and out into the yard, before Missy realized the capricious creature's intent. And, as luck would have it, the Reverend MacGill was sitting on the porch, calling on Grandma Shears. If only it had been anybody but Rev. MacGill! Missy cherished a secret but profound admiration for Rev. MacGill; he had come recently to Cherryvale and was younger ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... liberty must leap with delight upon the disincumbered earth, where once stood that gloomy abode of "broken hearts," and reflect upon the sufferings of the wretched Latude, and the various victims of capricious pique, or prostitute resentment. It was here that, in the beautiful lines of Cowper, the ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... an uncommonly mild winter, without, I think, more than a fortnight of severe weather, and in March the sun was positively summer hot. I am out of doors almost all day. Our spring, however, has made up for the lenient winter, by being as cold and capricious as possible, and at this moment hardly a fruit-tree is in blossom or a lilac-tree in bud; and looking abroad over the landscape, 'tis only here and there that I can detect faint symptoms of that exquisite ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... expressionless moon for company. To-day why not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip round corners and bluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I can lead you the best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong capricious one, the lord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and unprincipled, and obey no law." And for me, I was ready enough to fall in with the fellow's humour; was not this a whole holiday? So we sheered off together, arm-in-arm, so to speak; and with fullest confidence ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... from ear to ear, and is marked only by a sharp thin curve, which fails to spread over the countenance, and neither dimples the cheek nor lights the eye. I suppose Monsieur did not see her, or he had taken a whim that he would not notice her, for he was as capricious as women are said to be; then his "lunettes" (he had got another pair) served him as an excuse for all sorts of little oversights and shortcomings. Whatever might be his reason, he passed by Zelie, came to the other side of the table, and before I could start up to clear the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... that in the eye of the law the husband and wife are one person, that person being the husband; that this falsehood itself, the deposit of barbarism, tends perpetually to brutalize the marriage relation by subjecting wives as irresponsible tools to the capricious authority of husbands; that this degradation of married women re-acts inevitably to depress the condition of single women, by impairing their own self-respect and man's respect for them; and that the final result is that system of tutelage miscalled protection, by which the industry of women ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... corner on the street, not too conspicuous, and yet commanding the avenue) was vacant. He slipped into the chair which the waiter drew out for him, and took up the bill of fare. With the sight of the menu, he felt his flickering appetite revive; but it was still capricious, and would not brook the thought of meat. Little-Neck clams, of course. They seemed to convey a delicate intimation to the waiting stomach of favors to come. Soup? No, too hot for soup. Frogs' legs a la McVickar? Yes, he would have those, though he did not exactly know what "a la McVickar" ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... of good understanding, a nimble fancy, a little eater, but weak of body, and of a timorous disposition. A loud and shrill voice, which sounds clearly denotes a person provident, sagacious, true and ingenious, but withal capricious, vain, glorious and too credulous. A strong voice when a man sings denotes him to be of a strong constitution, and of a good understanding, a nimble fancy, a little eater, but weak of body, and of a ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... undergoes a sudden change of many degrees at the time the storm sets in, the perspiration is checked, and the system receives an instantaneous shock, against which it requires great vital energy to bear up. Men and animals are not, in this mild climate, prepared for these capricious meteoric revolutions, and they not unfrequently perish under ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... again plunging down in mimic waterfalls, a sheet of iridescent foam. The sound of its rush and its ripple was like a laugh. Never was such happy water, Clover thought, as it curved and bent and swayed this way and that on its downward course as if moved by some merry, capricious instinct, like a child dancing as it goes. Regiments or great ferns grew along its banks, and immense thickets of wild roses of all shades, from deep Jacqueminot red to pale blush-white. Here and there rose a lonely spike of yucca, and in the little ravines to right ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... noble mornings, opened by prayer or by readings of Plato, or whatsoever else is dearest to the Morning Muse.' Yet he could not wholly escape the recluse's malady. He confesses that he sometimes craves 'that stimulation which every capricious, languid, and languescent study needs.' Carlyle's potent concentration stirs his envy. The work of the garden and the orchard he found very fascinating, eating up days and weeks; 'nay, a brave scholar should shun it like gambling, and take refuge in cities and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... destination. After passing farm-houses peering from clumps of trees, meadows, grainfields, and woodlands, we came to a by-road leading through a field. Here the little brook (Fawn of the "Bounding Deer") sparkled by our track, crossing in its capricious way the road, thereby forcing us to ford it, and then recross its ripples. We now came to the end of our road; and alighting, we tied our steeds to the willows and alders scattered along the streamlet's bank. Each one (laden with the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... Fashion is capricious. When lunch was over I went to one of the charcoal fires, quite in the background, to light a cigarette. An aide-de-camp immediately pounced upon me, with the information that this was not permitted in company with the Empress. It reminded one at once of the ejaculation ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... goats, thiller harts, and other such counterfeited pictures, at pleasure, to excite people unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious caskets called Sileni, were carefully preserved and kept many rich and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergreese, amomon, musk, civet, with several kinds of precious stones, and other things of great price. Just such another thing was Socrates; for to have ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... advancing step, as if to admonish us to abandon the vain project of seeking a knowledge of language without an acquaintance with the great principles on which it depends. To look for the leading rules of speech in set forms of expression, or in the capricious customs of any nation, however learned, is as futile as to attempt to gain a knowledge of the world by shutting ourselves up in a room, and looking at paintings and drawings which may be furnished by those who know as little of it as we do. ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... the publishers of the first folio, lies open to a new regulation, if any more commodious division can be proposed. The story is itself so wildly incredible, and the changes of the scene so frequent and capricious, that the probability of action does not deserve much care; yet it may be proper to observe, that, by concluding the second act here, time is given for ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... on, but that, as the poet of the Seasons lay in bed, because he 'had no motive for rising,' Joe Atlee felt that there need be no urgency about taking a degree which, when he had got, he should be sorely puzzled to know what to do with. He was a clever, ready-witted, but capricious fellow, fond of pleasure, and self-indulgent to a degree that ill suited his very smallest of fortunes, for his father was a poor man, with a large family, and had already embarrassed himself heavily by the ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... this Herod, surnamed Antipas, is a sufficiently common and a sufficiently despicable one. He was the very type of an Eastern despot, exactly like some of those half-independent Rajahs, whose dominions march with ours in India; capricious, crafty, as the epithet which Christ applied to him, 'That fox!' shows; cruel, as the story of the murder of John the Baptist proves; sensuous and lustful; and withal weak of fibre and infirm of purpose. He, Herodias, and John the Baptist make a triad singularly like the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... even to its declension; for whatsoever new, upstart, out-of-the-way messes some humourists have invented, such as stuffing a roasted leg of mutton with pickled herring, and the like, are only the sallies of a capricious appetite, and debauching rather ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... liberty. We have all the most implicit faith in Thiers' honour. We are assured that the words, "French Republic" will head the white Government placards as long as he remains in power. But when Thiers is withdrawn from power—National Assemblies can be capricious sometimes—what assures us that we shall not fall victims to a monarchical or even an imperial restoration? Ghosts can appear in French history as well as in Anne Radcliffe's novels. To attempt to consider the elected members who sit at Versailles as sincere ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... and selfish pleasure indulged in on the borderland of a kind of aristocratic Bohemia, but, behold! they were fighting and dying with the bravest. We had thought too many of their young women (as thoughtless and capricious creatures of fashion) had sacrificed the finest bloom of modest and courageous womanhood in luxury and self-indulgence; but, lo! they were hurrying to the battlefields as nurses, and there facing without flinching the scenes ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... scholastic philosophy that it went on one brazen leg and one of an ass. This seems to be our plight to-day. Our scientific leg is lusty and grows in strength daily; its fellow member—our thought of man and his sorry estate—is capricious and halting. We have not realized the hopes of the eighteenth-century "illumination", when confident philosophers believed that humanity was shaking off its ancient chains; that the clouds of superstition were lifting, and that with the new achievements of science man ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... Augustus, Monti, Mme. Recamier, and many other distinguished visitors of various nationalities. The most prominent figure perhaps was Benjamin Constant, brilliant, gifted, eloquent, passionate, vain, and capricious, the torturing consolation and the stormy problem of her saddest years. She revived the old literary diversions. At eleven o'clock, we are told, the guests assembled at breakfast, and the conversations took a ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... advice was adopted. They remained for a month at an Indian village near the eastern point of the island, living on the substance of the natives, and treating them in the most arbitrary and capricious manner. When at length the weather became serene, they made a second attempt, but were again driven back by adverse winds. Losing all patience, therefore, and despairing of the enterprise, they abandoned their canoes, ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... enemy, Taxation, and started rejuvenescent. But the Radicals were in power to legislate and crush agriculture, and "I've got a miser for my brother-in-law," said the farmer. Alas! the hundred pounds to back him, he could have sowed what he pleased, and when it pleased him, partially defying the capricious clouds and their treasures, and playing tunefully upon his land, his own land. Instead of which, and while too keenly aware that the one hundred would have made excesses in any direction tributary to his pocket, the poor man groaned at continuous falls of moisture, and when rain was prayed for in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... friendship; and closer still, perhaps, clings little Hannibal, a boy about whose parentage nothing is known until the end of the story. Hannibal is charmed into tolerance of the Judge's picturesque vices, while Miss Betty, lovely and capricious, is charmed into placing all her affairs, both material and sentimental, in the hands of this ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... They lay fallow for seventy-five years, and then gave the best of accounts of themselves. England did not quite know what to make of the Virginians; to judge by the reports of the governors, they were changeable as a pretty woman. But they were simply capricious humorists, full of life and intelligence, who did what they pleased and did not take themselves too seriously. They indulged themselves with the novel toy, the post-office; and founded William and ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... these processes struck Carthew as unsound; and he was at times altogether thrown out by the capricious starlings of the prophet's mind. These plunges seemed to be gone into for exercise and by the way, like the curvets of a willing horse. Gradually the thing took shape; the glittering if baseless edifice arose; and the hare still ran on the mountains, but the soup was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that any doctrinal statement of Andrew or Peter or John, or any anecdote of the Saviour which could be traced distinctly to their authority, would be far more valuable to elucidate his text than the capricious interpretations which he found in current books. If his critical judgment had corresponded to his intention, the work would have been ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... violently backwards and forwards, as a person does washing clothes in a stream. The German naturalists call him the washing-bear. Though savage and bloodthirsty in his wild state, he is frequently tamed; but he is somewhat capricious in temper, and not easily reconciled when offended. It is curious that he should, when domesticated, change his usual custom of sleeping in the daytime and wandering about at night; but this he does, remaining quiet all night, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... who had been one of her first admirers, was not one of the last to desert her; this beauty, less famous for her conquests than for the misfortunes she occasioned, placed her greatest merits in being more capricious than any other. As no person could boast of being the only one in her favour; so no person could complain ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... parasites which are the only plants they tolerate, the Listera Nidus-avis, birds'-nest orchis, the Monotropa Hypopitys, or yellow birds'-nest, the beautiful lily-like Epipactis Grandiflora; while helleborine and the curious and capricious tooth-wort, Spiraea Filipendula or drop-wort, Gentiana Amarella, and other distinctive ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... work; two limp, discouraged pillows that had evidently been "banting," and a few towels a foot long with a surface like sand-paper, completed the fittings of the room. Baths were unknown, and hot water was a luxury distributed sparingly by a capricious handmaiden. It is only fair to add that everything in the room was perfectly clean, as was the coarse table ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... is, this great man had found out that animal and intellectual vigour,[21-*] are much more entirely dependent upon each other than is commonly understood; especially in those constitutions whose digestive and chylopoietic organs are capricious and easily put out of tune, or absorb the "pabulum vitae" indolently and imperfectly: with such, it is only now and then that the "sensorium commune" vibrates with the full tone of accurately considerative, or creative energy. "His favourite dainties were, a leg of pork boiled till ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... rising, this will generally be retained, and prove very grateful, even though the morning sickness be troublesome. Any food or medicine that will confine or derange the bowels is to be forbidden. The taste is, as a rule, a safe guide, and it may be reasonably indulged. But inordinate, capricious desires for improper, noxious articles, should of course, be opposed. Such longings, however, are not often experienced by those properly brought up. It is a curious fact, that the modification in the digestive system during pregnancy is sometimes so great that substances ordinarily the most ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... not like to become one of those worthless drones in the great hive of human life, who exist daintily on their husbands' energies, making him the slave of capricious wants that would never arise but for the idea that it is refined and feminine to be useless. I would be a wife; a companion; a help ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... despondency, he formed in his mind a thousand visions, displaying the joys of his 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 ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... are not faithfully transcribed. On the contrary. They exhibit every possible degree of deflection from the original standard. And lo, the Apostles of CHRIST are thought not to have quite understood Greek,—to have mistaken the sense of the Hebrew,—and to have been the victims of a most capricious memory.—For the last time. Certain narrative portions of Holy Scripture, (it is assumed,) could have been written without the aid of Inspiration; and therefore it is unphilosophical, (we are told,) to assign to them a divine original. But the marvellous parts of Holy ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... wind though often sighing in capricious languor never quite deserted those who trusted to it, and at a good hour next morning the pinnace dropped her anchor beside the Anne, and her dory carried the two mew ashore just as Plymouth woke to ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... and interested the king that, when he was only nineteen years of age, Louis made him master of the wardrobe and grand equerry of France. M. Le Grand he was called, and grand enough he seemed, in his independent and capricious dealings with the king. Louis went so far as to complain to Richelieu of the humors of his ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... quoted above is variously interpreted, if we may judge by the various ways in which the injunction is obeyed. To some people, "make yourself at home" is a free permit to take possession of everything on the premises; to cut the choicest roses in the garden, to call for the carriage at capricious will, to consult no one's comfort but their own, and to impose upon the polite forbearance of every one else, regardless—in short, to behave as no one can behave at home for any length of time without disrupting ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... most capricious, the most beautiful woman in the world," cried Talbot, "whose smile intoxicates, ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... delicate fibres within me as this home-scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows—such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... great admirer of Fulkerson," said Beaton, with a capricious willingness to humor her wish to talk about Fulkerson. "He's a capital fellow; generous, magnanimous, with quite an ideal of friendship and an eye single to the main chance all the time. He would advertise 'Every Other ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... happened. The rudder, with all the broad Atlantic to sail in and the coasts of two continents to search for a resting-place, came bobbing back into our cove. With anxious eyes we watched it as it advanced, receded again, and then advanced once more under the capricious influence of wind and wave. Nearer and nearer it came as we waited on the shore, oars in hand, and at last we were able to seize it. Surely a remarkable salvage! The day was bright and clear; our clothes were drying and our strength was returning. Running water made ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... bumpkins; and for 'sweet mouths,' he has culled with curious taste among the prettiest lasses in the neighbourhood; though these last, he affirms, are the most difficult to keep in tune; your pretty female singer being exceedingly wayward and capricious, ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... king was rather the keystone of an arch. But to this tradition of a level of dignity was added something unearthly that was from Rome, but not of it; the privilege that inverted all privileges; the glimpse of heaven which seemed almost as capricious as fairyland; the flying chalice which was veiled from the highest of all the heroes, and which appeared to one knight who was ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... counted on. The King loves business, economy, order, and justice, and wishes sincerely the good of his people; but he is irascible, rude, very limited in his understanding, and religious, bordering on bigotry. He has no mistress, loves his queen, and is too much governed by her. She is capricious like her brother, and governed by him; devoted to pleasure and expense; and not remarkable for any other vices or virtues. Unhappily the King shows a propensity for the pleasures of the table. That for drink has increased lately, or, at least, it ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson |
