"Whim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night can say, "My life is lived: the morn may see A clouded or a sunny day: That rests with Jove: but what is gone, He will not, cannot turn to nought; Nor cancel, as a thing undone, What once the flying hour has brought." Fortune, who loves her cruel game, Still bent upon some heartless whim, Shifts her caresses, fickle dame, Now kind to me, and now to him: She stays; 'tis well: but let her shake Those wings, her presents I resign, Cloak me in native worth, and take Chaste Poverty undower'd for mine. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... a long talk which lasted far into the night. At first both my mother and father were rather against the idea—as they had been from the beginning. They said it was only a boyish whim, and that I would get tired of it very soon. But after the matter had been talked over from every side, the Doctor turned ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... manners were so agreeable and so courteous during the first months after his arrival in India, began now to show symptoms of a haughty and overbearing spirit. He had adopted, for reasons which the reader may conjecture, but which appeared to be mere whim, at Fort St. George, the name of Tresham, in addition to that by which he had hitherto been distinguished, and in this he presisted with an obstinacy, which belonged more to the pride than the craft ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... our promise, let the regret sent be prompt, that your hostess, especially if the entertainment be a dinner or luncheon may possibly, even at the eleventh hour, be able to supply the vacancy. Make it explanatory as well, that she may feel positive that no mere whim has caused the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... people by their best hopes of a permanent home, much satisfaction may come from the plan. But even in this country or suburban life the shadow of fashion falls sooner or later, and the savings vanish with the years. Some deeper principle must come into play, some stronger force than mere whim of society leaders, before our young people can be released from the bondage of living on the right side of a street under penalty of ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... sickest fancies; I've humoured your crackedest whim— Dick, it's your daddy—dying: you've got to listen to him! Good for a fortnight, am I? The doctor told you? He lied. I shall go under by morning, and—— Put that nurse outside. Never seen death yet, Dickie? Well, now is your time to learn, And you'll wish ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... have to wait more than three hours for the Grand Prix to be run. When the landau had drawn up beside the barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she were in her own house. A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and Louiset with her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering with cold despite the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of ribbons and laces the child's poor little face looked waxen ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... he said. "I'm worth nothing when a whim of hers is in question. But in a losing game at Port Said we used to double the stakes and go on. She do a Melancolia! She hasn't the power, or the insight, or the training. Only the desire. She's cursed with the curse ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... have been expecting; because of Anna's beauty and accomplishments, which I own might well merit a man of higher birth and fortune. But the little hussy has been so nice, and squeamish, that I began to fear she would take up her silly spend-thrift brother's whim, and determine to live single: therefore I shall not balk her, now she ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... are blacker than any negro," she remarked. "Eh, bien! I thank you, Keed, mon ami, for your complaisance. You are very amiable to submit to the whim of a silly girl who suddenly becomes afraid ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... more secure from misconduct while single, than she will be when married. Her father, I fear, will leave her too much to herself, and in that case I scarce know what may become of her; she has neither judgment nor principle to direct her choice, and therefore, in all probability, the same whim which one day will guide it, will the next lead her to ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... are without any recourse, since they dare not interpose that plea before the Audiencia, as it is so powerless to exercise its functions; consequently, to state the case in few words, the archbishop does whatever suits his whim, without there being any ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... whim had desired me to copy the Duke's portrait upon glass, and thinking possibly that I might break the slip, had given me two of precisely the same size. On one of these I was impelled to paint for myself the miniature of this adorable child in the court costume of white satin doublet and white ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... of a Hampshire gentleman, was born at Putney, near London, April 27, 1737. After a preliminary education at Westminster, and fourteen "unprofitable" months at Magdalen College, Oxford, a whim to join the Roman church led to his banishment to Lausanne, where he spent five years, and acquired a mastery of the French language, formed his taste for literary expression, and settled his religious doubts in a profound scepticism. He served some years in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... appeal to your gratitude; I remind you that I saved your life—leaped into the cold water and seized you, not knowing whose life I was striving to save at the risk of losing my own. Isn't that worth some sort of return? Isn't it worth even the sacrifice of a whim? Louise, don't look at me that way. Is it possible that you don't grasp—" He hesitated and turned his face toward the parlor whence came again the cough, hollow and distressing. The sound died away, echoing down the hall, and a hen clucked on the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... love of ornaments included for a while antique curiosities, cut stones, and medals. M. Denon flattered this whim, and ended by persuading the good Josephine that she was a perfect connoisseur in antiques, and that she should have at Malmaison a cabinet, a keeper for it, etc. This proposition, which flattered the self-love of the Empress, was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... his palace, and bothered little about affairs outside, and Zaphnath must have been at the bottom of an edict which was shortly issued. Nothing that I remember in Kem better illustrated the absolute power of the Pharaoh and the unrestrained enforcement of his merest whim. The edict referred to the scarcity of bread and the multitude of foreigners who were flocking to the city to secure it, and provided (ostensibly for the good of the Kemish people) that no man in the city of Kem should give bread or any sort of food to any ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... disciple of his in this world must be like Tantalus, tormented with a burning thirst, which he is not allowed to quench. Does not such morality give us a wonderful idea of the author of nature? If, as we are assured, he has created all things for his creatures, by what strange whim does he forbid them the use of the goods he has created for them? Is pleasure then, which man continually desires, only a snare, which God has maliciously laid to surprise ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... thirty pages, and may be read whilst smoking a cigar. It is all quaint fun, whim, humour, and frolic, and one of those merry morsels which amuse us more than the whole leaven of utilitarianism; and if to laugh and learn be your maxim, why read the "Epping Hunt." After this, hold your sides, and look at the cuts, designed by George ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... he is in all the smuggling expeditions, as well in those that bring a suitable remuneration as in those where one risks death for a hundred cents. And ordinarily, Arrochkoa accompanies him, without necessity, in sport and for a whim. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... that my old bones would have a rest, I am bundled off to this howling wilderness to strip, and jibber, and be ugly and hairy, and pull down fences and waylay sheep, and waltz around with a club, and play 'Wild Man' generally—and all to gratify the whim of a bedlam of crazy newspaper scribblers? From one end of the continent to the other, I am described as a gorilla, with a sort of human seeming about me—and all to gratify this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Mademoiselle gently. "Must you continue this after it has turned into a farce? Must you continue acting from pique, when the thing has been over for more years than you care to remember? Must you keep on now because of a whim to make your life miserable and the lives of others? Will you threaten fifty men with death and ruin, because you once were called a thief? It is folly, sir, and you know it, utter useless folly! Pray ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... at the examination, but a sudden whim made William say that he would prefer to be alone with the doctor, and she returned to the gardens. Mr. Alden had not yet gone. He stood with his back turned to her. The little girl she had seen him speaking to was sitting on a bench under ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... IV. was no ordinary King: that one can see even from the scanty extracts from his letters given in "Bunsen's Memoirs." Nor was his love of Bunsen a mere passing whim. He loved the man, and those who knew the refreshing and satisfying influence of Bunsen's society will easily understand what the King meant when he said, "I am hungry and thirsty for Bunsen." But ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... society." He believed that the foundations of society had taken, and would still take, a great deal of "sapping," without detriment to the superstructure. He believed that, as we may read in Herodotus of ancient communities established on all sorts of principles, or even whim-principles, and yet managing to get on, and as these crude polities had been succeeded by other and better ones, to the latest known in the world, so these last need not look to be permanent. Of a tendency to this state of feeling Milton had given evidences from early youth; but I do ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... show their contempt for the Hindu social order, as this ornament was formerly forbidden to the lower castes. Under native dynasties any violation of a rule of this kind would have been severely punished by the executive Government, but in British India the Chamar women can indulge their whim with impunity. It was also a rule of the sect not to accept cooked food from the hands of any other caste, whether Hindu or Muhammadan, but this has fallen into abeyance since the famines. Another method by which the Satnamis show their contempt for the Hindu religion is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... any method of working. When he was strong and well he had always rather suffered from his superabundance than been disturbed at seeing it diminish: he followed his whim: he used to work first as the fancy took him, as circumstances chanced, with no fixed rule. As a matter of fact, he was always working everywhere: his brain was always busy. Often and often Olivier, who was less richly endowed and ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... bad for a girl, only it was the name of a heathen goddess, and would not go well with the idea of a holy palmer. COCOA, PHOENIX, and ARECA, one after the other, went in at his eyes and through his head; none of them pleased him. His wife, however, who in her smiling way had fallen in with his whim, helped him out of his difficulty. She was the daughter of nonconformist parents in Lancashire, and had been encouraged when a child to read a certain old-fashioned book called The Pilgrim's Progress, which her husband had never seen. He did not read it now, but accepting her suggestion, named ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... fate and recriminations touching his own selfishness. On the other hand, however, the journey daunted him. He was not a man to sacrifice his creature comforts, and to be asked to sacrifice them to a mere whim, a shadow, added weight to his ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... her that there was no whim of hers but should be gratified, the fancy took her that, if she might find apt means, she would, before she died, make her love and her resolve known to the King: wherefore one day she besought her father ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... any thing but novelty, and that the greatest novelty to her would be to remain a whole summer in town. Most of her friends, amongst whom she had successfully established a character for caprice, were satisfied that this was merely some new whim, practised to signalize herself by singularity. The real reason that detained her was her dependence upon the empiric, who had repeatedly visited and constantly prescribed for her. Convinced, however, by the dreadful situation to which his prescriptions had lately reduced her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... I can do all the giving! I've never told you, Esteban, but I'm quite rich." Holding the man away, she smiled into his eyes. "Yes, richer than I have any right to be. I had no need to come to Cuba; it was just the whim of an irresponsible, spoiled young woman. I gave a huge amount of money to the New York Junta and that's why I was ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... forward amongst my seniors and those who were my superiors in everything but worldly position; and as I grew older, and became inconveniently self-asserting, I was alternately snubbed and humoured according to the whim or temper of those who claimed authority over me. And what was the result? Alas! Early reckless extravagance followed by ruin, and a character which might have been moulded into something noble, now for a long time ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... the lives, liberty and property of the people are at the command of the ruler, subject to his whim. [6] For an illustration of the method of securing private property for public ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... of youth in some fashion that shall be through our modern mechanisms as effective as were the old "Fraternities" of primitive life, and as are still the outworn but persistent forms of military discipline, that idea of subordination of private whim to public well-being which lies at the base of all true and ordered social advance. The Children's Courts are a response to the effort of society to give each child a fair chance in life. There are needed, also, devices of education and of compulsory social service ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... of you—get up, dress yourself. It is for your own sake I ask it, for your comfort, for your own welfare. What would become of you if, for a caprice, a stupid whim, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... you so. Got another of those whim-whams in his head, and making a litter of some kind—skinning snakes or something that he's ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... responded to her slightest whim, but suddenly her own particular quarry had eluded her; did not even pine for her; was able to keep silent while he left her and his mother to think what ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Perdita "now grown in grace." Youth and beauty are the faithful companions of poets; but those charming phantoms scarcely visit the rest of us, even for the space of a season. We do not know how to retain them with us. If the fair shade of some Perdita should ever, through some inconceivable whim, take a notion to traverse my brain, she would hurt herself horribly against heaps of dog-eared parchments. Happy the poets!—their white hairs never scare away the hovering shades of Helens, Francescas, Juliets, Julias, and Dorotheas! But the nose ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... Before the Passing-bell begun, The news thro' half the town has run. "O! may we all for death prepare! What has he left? and who's his heir?"— "I know no more than what the news is; 'Tis all bequeath'd to public uses."— "To public use! a perfect whim! What had the public done for him? Mere envy, avarice, and pride: He gave it all—but first he died. And had the Dean, in all the nation, No worthy friend, no poor relation? So ready to do strangers good, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... hers, or a kind of magnetic power she could give out;—at any rate, I cannot help thinking she wills her strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may have been a whim, very probably. ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... for a time at the embers reflectively. "'T is folly to want her," he said finally, as he rose and began the removal of his coat, "now that ye need not her money; but she's enough to tempt any man with blood in his veins, and I can afford the whim. Keep that blood in check, however, till ye have her fast; and do not frighten her as ye have done. To think of Lord Clowes, cool enough to match any man, losing his head over a whiffling bit of woman-flesh! What devil's baits ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... ring, Not without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing Through whose heart in such an hour 295 Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 300 But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all,— Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, 305 Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... lodging beggars, sometimes in his very bed, continually breaking his night's rest for prayer, and devotional exercise of undue length; "weeping one moment, then smiling in joy the next;" meandering about, capricious, melodious, weak, at the will of devout whim mainly! However, that does not concern us. [Many LIVES of the Saint. See, in particular, Libellus de Dictis Quatuor Ancillarum, &c.—(that is, Report of the evidence got from Elizabeth's Four Maids, by an Official Person, Devil's-Advocate or whatever he was, missioned ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... beside him, stroked his face with caressing fondness, whispered something smilingly in his ear, and in this manner smoothed the wrinkles that were gathering on his brow. But the moment after, some wild whim would make her resume her antic movements; and ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... on perfection, but on the second best of experience. She would accept the milder joys, the daily miracles, the fulfilled adventures. And so, partly because she liked the girl, and partly because of a generous whim, she said presently: ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... husband he has, I think, what you call the wander fever. For myself, I am tired of it. In Rome we settle down, we stay five days, all seems pleasant, and suddenly my husband's whim carries us away without an hour's notice. The same thing at Monte Carlo, the same in Paris. Who can tell what will happen here? To tell you the truth, Monsieur," she added, a little archly, "I think that if he were to come back at ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... no heart, perversity had killed his courage. It exasperated him beyond all measure to recall what little things his luck had hinged upon, what straws had turned his feet. A moment of pique with Lois, a broken piece of steel, a match, a momentary whim when Guth offered him payment. It was well that he did not know what part had been played by his quarrel with Harkness, that wet muk-luk, that vicious lead dog, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... suddenly set free, glanced about him, and saw a few feet away an open door, felt the fresh breeze of evening upon his hot forehead, and knew the upper back fire-escape was close at hand. By some strange whim of a panic-maddened crowd but few had discovered this exit, high above the seats in the balcony; for all had rushed below and were struggling in a wild, frantic mass, trampling one another underfoot in a mad struggle to reach the doorways. The flames were sweeping over the platform ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sung by a Norfolk man, always seems to me a great curiosity, as the last line is lengthened out and twisted about in a most grotesque manner, apparently to suit the whim or fancy of the singer, for no two of them seem to conjure vocally with it in the same way. Everyone present is supposed to join in the last line as a kind of chorus, and not only join in, but "give it ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... had not been caught by that ghastly war! He might so easily have been killed, like poor Jolly twenty years ago out in the Transvaal. Jon would do something some day—if the Age didn't spoil him—an imaginative chap! His whim to take up farming was but a bit of sentiment, and about as likely to last. And just then he saw them coming up the field: Irene and the boy; walking from the station, with their arms linked. And getting up, he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... easy to die. Men have died For a wish or a whim— From bravado or passion or pride. Was ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... but a short distance below him, though it had gained a little while he was struggling so hard to make land. It was turned on its side, spinning sometimes one way and then whirling the other, according to the whim of the current; then sea-sawing up and down, until all at once it shot upward like a huge sturgeon, which sometimes flings its whole length out ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... sporting expeditions were of this casual character, sandwiched in among other occupations. Guns were handy, as was the game. To seize the one and pursue the other on the whim of the moment was the normal and usual thing. Thus one day Mrs. Kitty drove me over to look at a horse I was thinking of buying. On the way home, in a corner of brush, I hopped out and bagged twelve quail; and a little farther ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Chioggia!" sprang to Odo's lips. At the same instant the Columbine turned about and swept him a deep curtsey, to the delight of the audience, who had no notion of what was going forward, but were in the humour to clap any whim of their favourite's; then she turned and darted off the stage, and the curtain fell on a ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... to-night. I've got a consultation at Decker's—the old lady is dying. It's no sort of use dragging a tired man out there; I can't do her any good; but they will have it. I'm at the beck and call of every whim. Isn't that dinner ready? I wish I had time to change my boots! They are wet through. My head aches horribly. Brake telegraphed me to get down to Stock Street before two o'clock to save what is left of that Santa Ma stock. I couldn't go. I had an enormous office—forty people. I've lost ten thousand ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... design, a mill for any standard line of manufacture is not a building whose arrangements and proportions are fixed upon at the whim of the owner, but it must conform to certain conditions of dimensions, stability, light and application of power to satisfy the requirements essential for furnishing every advantage necessary for producing the desired results ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... writing day and night. His wife, on the other hand, who was a Frenchwoman, was passionately fond of travel, and change, and gaiety. Her life was consequently very like a prison, and it is stated, too, that besides denying her every whim and forcing her to live in a manner she utterly disliked, her husband ill-treated her shamefully. Well, she made a few friends here and went to see them pretty often, and just at that time an English milord—you can guess who he was—came here to see the statue, and met Mrs. Martival, whom he seems ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... little girl's confidential friend as well as her mother. The child, quite unreservedly, told her what she wanted and why she wanted it. It was no weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a genuine respect for another person's rights as an individual—even though that individual was merely a little child—that led that mother to allow her daughter to have what she wanted. May not some subtle sense of this have been the basis of the child's ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... see that it was only the whim of an economist? I cry out against money, just because everybody confounds it, as you did just now, with riches, and that this confusion is the cause of errors and calamities without number. I cry out against it because its function in society is not understood, and very difficult to explain. I cry ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... won't supply her with all the money she wants to spend. What if she does throw it away? That's her privilege now. I've worked twenty-five years to get enough so that she can do just that. There's not a whim in the world she can't satisfy. And the man who marries her must give her every single thing I'm able to give ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... doing without sleep for ten nights in order to nurse you; capable of dying and seeing you die rather than give way about the tint of a necktie; capable of laughter and tears simultaneously; capable of never being in the wrong except for the idle whim of so being. She had a big mouth and very wide nostrils, and her years were thirty-five. It was no matter; it would have been no matter had she been a hundred and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... there had been a dance at Piping Tree, and because she had danced twice with Gay (who had ridden over in obedience to a whim), Abel had parted from her in anger. For the first time she had felt the white heat of his jealousy, and it had aroused rebellion, not acquiescence, in her heart. Jonathan Gay was nothing to her (though ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... previous spring he must refuse no more orders: he must not let Mrs. Van Orley slip away from him. He knew there were competitors enough ready to profit by his hesitations, and since his success was the result of a whim, a whim might undo it. With a sudden gesture of decision he caught up his ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... It was only in her husband's presence that she made any pretence of being pleased or interested in things. With him she was always the same—always deferential, affectionate, and attentive; while he, on his side, was the devoted slave of her every whim ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... curiosity,—but, which is the most extraordinary, he is not quite sure that he had any motive for it at all, which his memory can trace. The whole of this is a period of a year and a half; and here is a man who keeps his account upon principles of whim and vagary. One would imagine he was guessing at some motive of a stranger. Why he came to take bonds for money not due to him, and why he enters some and not others,—he knows nothing of these things: he begs them not to ask about it, because it will be of no use. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... said, "is oddity. For instance, I do not mix up affections with politics; let us talk politics,—business, if you will,—the rest can come later. However, it is not really oddity nor a whim that forbids me to mingle ill-assorted colors and put together things that have no affinity, and compels me to avoid discords; it is my natural instinct as an artist. We women have politics of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... division of the line where she stood from that one where the world places girls who are affianced wives; her father could hardly be with her; it had gone too far. He loved her, but he would certainly take her to be moved by a maddish whim; he would not try to understand her case. The scholar's detestation of a disarrangement of human affairs that had been by miracle contrived to run smoothly, would of itself rank him against her; and with the world to back his view of her, he might behave like a despotic father. How could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from Athens or Corinth, he would certainly have invited to his court the most skilful painters and sculptors, and have given them the queen for their model, as did afterward Alexander his favourite Campaspe, who posed naked before Apelles. Such a whim would have encountered no opposition from a woman of the land where even the most chaste made a boast of having contributed—some for the back, some for the bosom—to the perfection of a famous statue. But hardly would the bashful Nyssia consent to unveil herself in the ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... sacrifice was useless. The sudden whim for Radicalism at home, and revolution abroad, which seized British statesmen in the first frenzy of the Reform Bill, instead of punishing the revolt of the Belgians, suffered the dismemberment of the kingdom of the Netherlands; a measure of the most shortsighted policy, which has now placed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... faith new-stablished would stand, and be No longer vext of this infirmity. And so that night, ere lying down to sleep, There came on him, half making him to weep And half to laugh that such a thing should be, A mad conceit and antic fantasy (And yet more sad than merry was the whim) To crave this boon of Sleep, beseeching him To send the dream of dreams most coveted. And ere he lay him down upon his bed, A soft sweet song was born within his thought; But if he sang the song, or if 'twas nought But the ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... the oldest reigning houses had come to regard as an honor a marriage with, the plain daughter of a French senator,—a girl not united by any ties of blood with Napoleon, but only by adoption; that is to say, by a whim. One might have supposed that the Empire of the new Charlemagne was centuries old, and the German Princes bowed before it like devoted vassals before their suzerain. What a vast power he had attained, and how easily he could have kept it, if he had limited ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... I have suffered. Like you, I loved, not a pure, noble girl, yet a girl fair to look upon. For three years I was at her feet, a slave to her every whim; when, one day she suddenly deserted me who adored her, to throw herself in the arms of a man who despised her. Then, like you, I wished to die. Neither threats nor entreaties could induce her to return to me. Passion never reasons, and she ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... strength and latent force that could only be guessed at. Their talks had been less intimate during the time of their preparations, and she understood that it was the result of the purpose that preoccupied him. Now she speculated as to that which was in his mind. What was the boyish whim that had brought them to the place he had selected as their tryst? What was it that had ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... favorite anecdote of General Scott, and it appealed to me then as well as now, as I regard country life a forlorn fate for all women excepting possibly those who are endowed with large wealth with which to gratify every passing whim. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... eliminated the loop upon which the town stood. Fortunately, however, the Yazoo emptied into the Mississippi above Vicksburg, and it was found possible, by digging a canal, to divert the latter river from its course and lead its waters into the loop left dry by the whim of the greater stream. Thus the river life, out of which Vicksburg was born, and without which the place would lose its character, was retained, and the wicked old Mississippi, which has played rough pranks on men and cities since men ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... therefore, that dictates many of these actions; no serious cause or feeling, indeed, of any kind; but rather an ever-spreading restlessness and levity, a readiness to tamper with the very foundations of society, for a whim, a nothing!—in the interests, of ten, of what women call their 'individuality'! No foolish talk here of being 'members one of another'! We have outgrown all that. The facilities are always there, and the temptation of them. 'The women—especially—who do these things,' she writes me, 'are moral ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she confessed. "He comes and goes as the whim seizes him, and I very seldom know where he is. One week it is whiting and another codling. Lately he seems to have shown some partiality for ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were so much abroad on horseback that they had become known as the "Saddle Boys." They loved nothing better than to ride the plains, mounted on their pet steeds, and go almost everywhere the passing whim tempted them. ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... a whim, a fancy, a notion. I do not know that anything will ever come of it. I could wish there might—but that is a very cloudy and misty chateau en Espagne, and I do not much look at it. The present thing is practical. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... has had some kind of whim," replied Mrs. Dinks, shaking her shoulders as if to settle ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... in the road diverted our attention. It was the cut-under and the horse. They were standing by the roadside where it makes a great turn to enter the village from the south. There is a wide border to the road at this point, clear of underbrush, where the forest edges it, and there are here, at the whim of some one, or by chance, two great flat stones, one lying upon the other, but not fitting by a hand's thickness by ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... over, all's well? Gad, my head begins to whim it about. Why dost thou not speak? Thou art both as drunk and ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... been an exceedingly anxious one from the beginning. Notwithstanding his flabbiness, one cannot but regard him with a certain amount of pity—not unmixed with amusement. Most of life's dramas can be viewed as either farce or tragedy according to the whim of the spectator. The actors invariably play them as tragedy; but then that is the essence of ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... served by his walking a few paces more or less. Similarly whatever be the certainty that the laws of nature have been intentionally established, there is in that certainty no proof of their having been established for any purpose beyond that of gratifying some whim or humour of the lawgiver. For indications of design in the universe we must look rather to organic than to inorganic nature, rather to structure than to law. We shall find applying to the former the same reasoning as to the latter, and ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... syriaca, and its common name is the rock nuthatch, an appellation that is most appropriate, for its chosen haunts are rocky cliffs, over the faces of which it scuttles in the most approved nuthatch fashion, head up or down, as the whim seizes it, clinging with its sharp claws to the chinks, ledges, protuberances, and rough surfaces of the rocky walls. A little larger than its European cousin, its markings are quite similar. In Syria it is common as far north as the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... new and respectful interest. "I wouldn't dare do it," she acknowledged at last. In this lay confession of the reason for her change of whim; but Bobby could not be expected to realize that. With masculine directness he seized the root of his grievance and brought ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... said. "You are a mighty good friend, Mr. Big Beech Tree, and as a mark of gratitude I shall kiss you right in the middle of your honest barky old forehead," and he touched his lips lightly to the great trunk. Paul was an imaginative boy, and his whim pleased him. Such a thought would not have come to Henry, but he ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... church bell attracted his attention, and, following a sudden whim, he went into the tin building and sat down near the door. Mr. Heath did not look down the sparsely-filled church as he read the evening service, and he prayed with an almost violent fervour. Certainly to-night the Rev. Francis Heath was praying as though ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... suitable. Thither one fair June night, for the sake of showing the dowager countess and her beautiful cousin, the French nobleman, Sir Meeson Corby, and others, what were the pleasures of the London lower orders, my lord had the whim to conduct them,—merely a parade of observation once round;—the ladies veiled, the gentlemen with sticks, and two servants following, one of whom, dressed in quiet black, like the peacefullest of parsons, was my lord's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... saw him tangled in her toils, A shame, said I, if she adds just him 10 To her nine-and-ninety other spoils, The hundredth for a whim! ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... says this man, is the real Herself! But (I maintain) she does not know it. She goes her way, unconscious—or, if conscious, blind to its deepest implication. Caprice, mood, whim: these indeed she uses, for fun, as it were, but of "the trouble behind her" she knows nothing. Just to rise from a couch, pull a curtain, pass through a room! How should she dream that the cornice-wreath blossomed anew? And ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... not seem too awful?" returned Cora, aghast, thinking of her own merry, enjoyable life, with every whim gratified. "To be so young and attractive and actually buried alive! Don't you think she ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... in alone," she replied a trifle impatiently. "I beg of you not to heed my whim, and to await my return, there, where the music ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... together, in holy matrimony, the yellow-bearded Thor and the dark-haired Helen. Master Hiero, his round, snub-nosed face red with fussy emotion, gives the bride away; while Salome, dressed in white and looking very pretty and lady-like, does service as bridesmaid,—such is her mistress's whim. She seems in even better spirits than the pale bride, and her black eyes scarcely wander from ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... instant she divined him. Perhaps her own conscience was not easy. Why had she meddled in the young Englishman's affairs at all? For a whim? Out of a mere good-natured wish to rid him of his troublesome sister; or because his handsome looks, his naivete, and his eager admiration of herself amused and excited her, and she did not care to be baulked of them so soon? At any rate, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... calm. But I'm not the fellow to be tossed over at a whim. I'm holding you to your word, that's all. You'll change your mind back as it was by to-morrow; you'll be crazy to have me as a husband then. I won't have to tie your hands and feet to keep you at my side when we come riding home to go to the minister's. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... for granted when he had set out to develop the Stinging Lizard. He had squared out his shaft and sunk on the vein only as far as the muckers could throw out the waste; and then, instead of installing a windlass or a whim, he had decided upon a gallows-frame and hoist. But to bring in his machinery he must first have a road, for the trail was all but impassable; and so, without sinking, he had blasted his way up the canyon, only to find his efforts wasted. The ore had been dug out before his engine ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... cried, looking up through her wind-tossed hair, "'tis joy to me! Lay you down and rest a while and trust the boat to me." And seeing how quick she was to meet each send of the seas (that were already running high) glad enough was I to humour her whim, and clambered forward again. And there (having nought better to do) I set about rigging a rough awning athwart the bows, with canvas and a stout spar, which methought should keep out the spray and any ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... as good condition as I am, and as, I hope you are, M. Morrel, and this day and a half was lost from pure whim, for the pleasure of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper's black veil or by a direct appeal to discover the secret which it was supposed to hide. By persons who claimed a superiority to popular prejudice it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the sober actions of men otherwise rational and tinges them all with its own semblance of insanity. But with the multitude good Mr. Hooper was irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk the street with any peace of mind, so conscious ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... exquisite Colonial four-poster, with a lowboy and dresser to match, and was papered and carpeted in accordance with these, its chief ornaments. Newmark bathed in the adjoining bathroom, shaved carefully between the two wax lights which were his whim, and dressed in what were then known as "swallow-tail" clothes. Probably he was the only man in Monrovia at that moment so apparelled. Then calmly, and with all the deliberation of one under fire of a hundred eyes, he proceeded to the dining-room, where waited the man who had a ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... reflects all the results of later scholarship on the matters of origins and interpretations. Its bibliographies and extended commentaries make it invaluable. The story of Phaethon is usually thought of as a warning against presumption, conceit, whim, self-will. It was probably invented in the first place to account for the extremely hot weather of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... will is her worthy bridegroom, Herself rules her sea, her fields. Our brother to eastward honors This independence of youth. He knows well that by it only Our wreath can be won in truth. When we from the flag are taking His colors, he knows 't is no whim, But merely because we are holding Our honor higher than him. And none who himself has honor Will seek him a different friend; Our life we can for him offer, But naught of our ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep undercurrents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honour, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the 'good Gretchen Futteral,' or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? Should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... all the professions of friendship, it would find admittance. No door is latched when scandal knocks. Over here they were very far from home, and it was natural that Elsa should view her conduct leniently. Martha readily appreciated that it was all harmless, to be expressed by a single word, whim. But Martha herself never acted upon impulse; she first questioned what the world would say. So run ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... be done was a mere nothing. Within the last two years, he had made good Father Mestienne, a chubby-cheeked person, drunk at least ten times. He played with Father Mestienne. He did what he liked with him. He made him dance according to his whim. Mestienne's head adjusted itself to the cap of Fauchelevent's will. Fauchelevent's ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... consists, roughly speaking, in knowing how to get into office, and remain there when once in; its objects are to guess and give expression to the prevailing popular feeling or whim with the loss of as ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... remark was nothing but the whim of a moment. But its pessimism cut deeper than he imagined: and Olivier, with his subtle perception, felt it intuitively. Beneath the Mooch of their acquaintance there was another different Mooch, who was in many ways exactly the opposite. His apparent nature was the result ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... this foolish whim, and failed to quite understand him. We remained together until we "collapsed," at Bowling Green, when we ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... "A mere whim—a sheer piece of perversity—a sleeveless errand," Anthony answered. "So now we might set about sweeping and garnishing ourselves," he ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... is the wife of George Packwood, "the celebrated Razor Strop Maker and Author of 'The Goldfinch's Nest'," whose shop was at 16, Gracechurch Street. 'Packwood's Whim; The Goldfinch's Nest, or the Way to get Money and be Happy', by George Packwood, was published in 1796, and reached a second edition in 1807. It is a collection of his advertisements in prose and verse. The poet, whom Packwood kept, apparently lived in Soho (p. 21), from his verses which appeared ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... running along the street, stumbles and falls; the passers-by burst out laughing. They would not laugh at him, I imagine, could they suppose that the whim had suddenly seized him to sit down on the ground. They laugh because ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... this whim of hers long ago, and thought she ought to get married like other people; there was nothing she need wait for—she was old enough and she would not be any richer either, for she was to have half the kingdom, which she inherited ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... that did not lend itself to immediate comprehension, and that, to one of my temperament, was a fatal attraction, especially as enough was known of his more than peculiar habits to assure me that character, rather than whim, lay back of ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... close to her. "You are my slave, do you understand?—bought in the market-place as I might buy me a mule, a goat, or a camel—and belonging to me body and soul. You are my property, my thing, my chattel, to use or abuse, to cherish or break as suits my whim, without a will that is not my will, holding your very life at ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... had an old French governess come to give her lessons. She taught little Natasha to dance, to play the piano, to put on the airs and graces of a little lady. So the years passed, and the old nobleman obeyed the girl's every whim, and his serfs bowed before her and kissed her hands. Gracefully and willfully she queened it over ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the wiles of Ahenobarbus and his Greek coadjutors, there was still a great dread which would steal over Drusus lest at any moment a stroke might fall. Those were days when children murdered parents, wives husbands, for whim or passion, and very little came to punish their guilt. The scramble for money was universal. Drusus looked forth into the world, and saw little in it that was good. He had tried to cherish an ideal, and found fidelity to it more than difficult. His philosophy did not assure him that a real ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... pranks. His rich father was a man of considerable influence in Stanhope, and many a man dared not treat the banker's son to the whipping he so richly deserved simply because it might be that his bread and butter depended in a measure on the good will or the whim of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... in trust; And he was ruined—ruined utterly. The very bed I sat on was not his, Nor mine, except by tender charity. A guilty secret menacing behind, A guilty passion burning in his heart, And, by his side, a guilty paramour, He seized upon this reckless whim, and fled From those he knew would curse him ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... the whim of renting this tumble-down house with its great gardens out on the suburb, we could have had snug rooms in some business street, where I could have earned our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... present excited state she would have torn up her best dress with equal readiness. She was elated with her success in the cricket field—what the Scotch call "fey"; and so long as she gratified her present whim, she had no thought ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... appears in the title to one of his works, the opus 129. It is a rondo a capriccio for piano, with the title, Die Wuth ueber den verlorenen Groschen (fury over a lost penny), of which Schumann says "it would be difficult to find anything merrier than this whim. It is the most ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... circumstances," replied the little girl. "Mother has often said she conna weel spare Alizon. An mayhap Mistress Nutter may knoa, that she con be very obstinate when she tays a whim into her head." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... surely conquers a people that, like the Roman armies, is used merely as a tool for foreign dominion and for the subjugation of independent nations; for the former have everything to lose, the latter have merely something to gain. But even a whim can prevail over the mental attitude which regards war as a game of hazard for temporal gain or loss, and which, even before the game starts, has fixed the limit of the stake. Think, for example, of a Mohammed—not the real Mohammed ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... well that you declined," he said. "'Twas but a passing whim of mine, and ten minutes later I'd have been sorry for it had ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rusticity and remoteness. And yet it is true as I came to that corner of the Park that, for some unreasonable reason of mood, I saw all London as a strange city and the civilization itself as one enormous whim. The Marble Arch itself, in its new insular position, with traffic turning dizzily all about it, struck me as a placid monstrosity. What could be wilder than to have a huge arched gateway, with people going everywhere ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... Tete Rouge. Henry's face was roughened by winds and storms; Tete Rouge's was bloated by sherry cobblers and brandy toddy. Henry talked of Indians and buffalo; Tete Rouge of theaters and oyster cellars. Henry had led a life of hardship and privation; Tete Rouge never had a whim which he would not gratify at the first moment he was able. Henry moreover was the most disinterested man I ever saw; while Tete Rouge, though equally good-natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would not have lost him on any account; he admirably served the purpose of a jester ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... protested, if playfully, against her husband's whim in introducing an English boy into their family circle, now regarded him with real affection, only refraining from constant allusions to the debt she considered she owed him because she saw that he ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... the Rhine had been abandoned. Perhaps the well-disposed students could have submitted to this disappointment, if it had not been inflicted upon them as a punishment. It seemed to them that they were to suffer for a whim of Shuffles. The runaways had taken pains to disseminate this idea among the crew, as they had also succeeded in involving the whole of them in the mischief which induced the principal to go ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... the Lelias and Sylvias may go in quest of their ideal without being stopped by morality and the laws, those importune customs lines which religion and the institutions have opposed to individual whim and inconstancy. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... by General Putnam.... Not the least attention has been paid to my order, in your name, for a detachment of one thousand men from the troops hitherto stationed at that post. Everything is sacrificed to the whim of taking New York.... By Governor Clinton's advice, I have sent an order, in the most emphatical terms, to General Putnam, immediately to despatch all the Continental troops under him to your assistance, and to detain ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... hero of a victorious war, at the height of his popularity, his party in undisputed and seemingly indisputable supremacy, made the attempt. Congress, good-naturedly tolerating what it considered his whim of inexperience, granted money to try an experiment. The adverse pressure was tremendous. "I am used to pressure," said the soldier. So he was, but not to this pressure. He was driven by unknown and incalculable currents. He was enveloped ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... have already seen, a certain thread of intelligent association linking the items of his library to each other. The collector knows what he wants, and why he wants it, and that why does not entirely depend on exteriors, though he may have his whim ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... taken too much for granted, you and Betty. Ten years ago your sister gave herself to me. She is mine. I will not for a whim, for a passion, for a temporary alienation, let her go. Neither will I have my good name and the name of a good woman besmirched for the sake of this impertinent desire for a release. I love my wife"—his voice was especially Hebraic and especially ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... homicide more justifiable. I had, as I believed, got rid of all the traces of the savages outside the tent. When I found the arrows sticking inside it in my bed, it did not occur to me that it would be equally necessary to get rid of them. The whim seized me of keeping them as a memorial of my escape. Instead, however, of concealing them under the bed, I arranged them in the form of a star on the tent covering just above my head, and every time I looked at them I felt grateful that they were not sticking in my body. I have a dislike ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... see into yourself far enough to know that you are paltering with necessity? Are you such a feeble creature that you must be at the mercy of every childish whim, and ruin yourself for lack of courage to do what you know you ought to do? If instability of nature had made such work of me as it has of you, I'd cut my throat just to prove that I could at least once make my ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... know, in effect, if, led away by the various situations in which you were placed, I may not have appeared to destroy what I had advanced on different occasions? How do I know, if, seeing you ready to yield to a whim, I may not have carried too far, truths, which, feebly uttered, would not, perhaps, have brought you back? How do I know, in a word, if, being interested in the happiness of a friend, the desire to serve her may not have sometimes diminished ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... wanted to test this sort of clay as a medium, I suppose. And with a man like Guiccioli, even a whim must result in something like a masterpiece. It was just about the time of that turmoil about the Florentine bronzes; and a bad light was thrown on the old man by persons interested in spoiling his career. I had the good fortune to come at the truth of the matter; ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... quite old: it is seventeenth century, probably; and it reminds one a great deal of that characterizing the antiquated French quarter of New Orleans. All the tints, the forms, the vistas, would seem to have been especially selected or designed for aquarelle studies,—just to please the whim of some extravagant artist. The windows are frameless openings without glass; some have iron bars; all have heavy wooden shutters with movable slats, through which light and air can enter as through Venetian blinds. These are usually painted ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness, and eccentric whim no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as much or more to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchety, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... little hearts made glad by novelty and colour. Great was the surprise of the older folk, who said, 'It is a new thing in the world when so great a show as this comes out of the accustomed track of shows to erect its tent in our small town!' Yet so it was; from some whim of the manager, or of some one who had the ear of the manager, the thing ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... and the Strymon, thus pushing forward the Persian dominion to the borders of Macedonia. Among the tribes which he conquered were the Perinthians, Greeks; the Pseti, Cicones, Bistones, Sapaei, Dersaei and Edoni, Thracians; and the Paeoplae and Siripasones, Pseonians. These last, to gratify a whim of Darius, were transported into Asia. The Thracians who submitted were especially those of the coast, no attempt, apparently, being made to penetrate the mountain fastnesses and bring under subjection the tribes of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... Because of Mrs. Alexander's whim, the ludicrous experiences that came upon the innocent heads of Polly and her friends, in the tour of England in two motor cars, decided them to escape from that lady, and run away to Paris. Before they could sigh in relief at their freedom, ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... three-storied tower, built of mighty gray stones without softening wings or adorning spires, beautiful only in its mantling ivy. From the great door in its side a crowd of serfs came running, ducking grinning salutations; and they were followed by a half-dozen old warriors. Seized by a boyish whim, their master rode past them with no more than a wave of ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... to him. And he has told me lately that she refused him with such considered firmness that it seemed unlikely that it was a whim." ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... also that the falcon was renowned as the finest bird throughout the countryside, as well as being the joy and pride of his master's heart. But the boy was fretful and restless, and, fearing to thwart his whim lest his life should depend on it, the poor mother promised to go and ask for the falcon ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... dramatic farewell of that young lady, and its possible influence in turning her susceptible heart towards his protege. He then quietly settled back to his old solitary habits, and for a week left the Robinsons unvisited. The result was a morning call by Trinidad Joe on the hermit. "It's a whim of my gal's, Mr. North," he said, dejectedly, "and ez I told you before and warned ye, when that gal hez an idee, fower yoke of oxen and seving men can't drag it outer her. She's got a idee o' larnin'—never hevin' hed much schoolin', and we ony takin' the papers, permiskiss like—and ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... blow quickly followed. Only a few days after that marriage which her father thought promised so much security and consolation to his old age, the Emperor Paul, in a cruel whim, suddenly banished him from Petersburg. Retiring to Moscow, the galling sense of his disgrace, the separation from his darling daughter, together with a frigid reception by a friend on whom he had especially relied, plunged him into the deepest grief. A terrible attack of apoplexy ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... and art is often only a whim. People wondered why they had ever bought those dark, shadowy things made by that Leyden artist, What's-his-name! One man utilized the frames which contained "Rembrandts" by putting other canvases right over in front ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... of continuing our delightful trip down the river, we three were scurrying to Saalsburg, urged by a sudden and stupendous whim on my part, and filled with a new interest ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon |
