"Whim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... branch of research, and was, moreover, provided with that long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student's energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its aggressive ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... be amused with the Wise Woman's reiteration of this assertion. What fancy she had taken into her head he could not guess. It was some old-womanly whim, he supposed. If he could have guessed her reason for thus dismissing them in haste—if he had seen in the embers what she saw coming nearer and nearer, and now close to her very door—wild horses ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... took his pistols from the table, and followed him, and Abner, who seemed irresolute and demoralized, came slowly after. The report that Perez, in a sudden whim, now proposed to deprive them of the treat he had promised them, had produced on the drunken and excited crowd, all the effect which Hubbard had counted on, and as Perez reached the front door of the house, a mass of men with brandished clubs and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... towards the Bay of Biscay in the teeth of an Equinoctial gale. At the behest of one girl eighty men had to endure the discomfort of a storm at sea, and a great steel ship, straining and quivering, was flung into the perilous night. It seemed a misuse of power that, at a woman's whim, so many lives and so noble and costly a fabric could be risked—and risked for nothing. From the captain on the bridge, dripping in his oil- skins, to the coal-passers and firemen below who fed the mighty furnaces, to the cooks in the galley, the engineers, the electrician on duty, the ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... what she had done and take the consequences, believing in her power over him to come scatheless out of the adventure. In those days, when human life was so cheap, she might have asked for the death of almost any one, and her whim would have been gratified by a lover who had not hesitated to put to death his own son at her dictation. But with Ibrahim it was another matter; he was the familiar of the Sultan, his alter ego in fact. It says much for the nerve of the ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... the Widow Sprigg needed no urging to drink her favorite beverage, which, like many another countrywoman,—more's the pity!—she kept steeping on the stove all day long. But now, for an instant, she looked doubtfully upon the cup; then, as a sudden whim seized her, caught it up eagerly and again ascended the stairs to Moses' bedroom. He lay motionless, his leg kept taut by a ball and chain and his poor body encased in plaster, but he could use his arms and eyes, the one thrown restlessly ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... protection, guidance, strength. Every bit of her seemed to appeal for these qualities. But at the same time she dismayed. He moved nearer to her. Yes, she had grandeur. All the costly and valuable objects in the drawing-room she had rejected in favour of the satisfaction of a morbid and terrible whim. Who could have foreseen it? He moved still nearer. He stood over her. He seized her yielding wrists. He lifted her veil. Tears were running down her cheeks from the yellow eyes. She looked ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... in His Humour, is a key to all his dramas. The word "humour" in his age stood for some characteristic whim or quality of society. Jonson gives to his leading character some prominent humor, exaggerates it, as the cartoonist enlarges the most characteristic feature of a face, and so holds it before our attention that all other qualities ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... thing!" he said impatiently, as he opened the door of his flat, "it isn't worth worrying about. I mustn't let the whim of some mad tradesman get on my nerves. I've got ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... 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 disarrangement of ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... we justly put all others out of the account. It is nothing (as against this asserted influence on the intelligent faculty) that great numbers who may contribute to swell a public bustle about religion; who may run together at the call of whim, imposture, or insanity, assuming that name; who may acquire, instead of any other folly, a turn for talking, disputing, or ranting, about that subject: it is nothing, in short, that any who are ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... requires an atmosphere of roses; and the more rugged excitant of Wick east winds had made another boy of me. To go down in the diving-dress, that was my absorbing fancy; and with the countenance of a certain handsome scamp of a diver, Bob Bain by name, I gratified the whim. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a whim and laughed it out Upon the exit of a chance; He floundered in a sea of doubt— If life was ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... those early days of his disappearance there was money to the Charles name, and Grandemont had spent the dollars as if they were picayunes in trying to find the lost youth. Even then he had had small hope of success, for the Mississippi gives up a victim from its oily tangles only at the whim of its ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... have no priest or peeler in To dance in Beg-Innish; But we'll have drink from M'riarty Jim Rowed round while gannets fish, A keg with porter to the brim, That every lad may have his whim, Till we up sails with M'riarty ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... father! 'Tis only your whim! His house is high over the stars in the sky, Where the white swan sails undefiled, So high 'tis beyond any mortal eye Save that of the dreaming child!— The church that you spoke of! So then it is there We shall ride in festal ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... her guardian would reply. "It is not yours. It is only held in trust for you until you become of age, by which time you will have many other uses for money besides gratifying an old man's whim." ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... out hunting. I have seen you go without food and sleep simply because you were on the track of some beautiful wild creature that was forced to yield its liberty and life merely to gratify your whim. It is in that despicable way ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... mother I was above reproach. Here, then, was surely every promise for the future; here, at last, was a relation in which I might hope to taste repose. But it was not to be. You will hardly credit me when I inform you that she ran away from home; yet such was the case. Some whim about oppressed nationalities—Ireland, Poland, and the like—has turned her brain; and if you should anywhere encounter a young lady (I must say of remarkable attractions) answering to the name of Luxmore, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lightning still flickering and darting overhead, I cried, "But you are risking your lives for some fantastic whim, some wild superstition of yours. You are mad to brave such a storm! You expose your child to undoubted peril that you may ward off some illusory evil. Let me bear her to the inn, and follow me thither." And I was going to lift the senseless form in my arms ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... lady, here I am, thy slave, My wisest counsel thou shalt have. Thou must lay violent hand on him, And say: 'Unless thou'lt grant my whim, I'll drive thee hence from out my court, And with thy woes I'll have my sport, Nor will I stay thy punishment, Till drop by drop thy blood is spent.' Perhaps he will amend his way, If thou such cruel words ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... their frugal dinner from the market in their senatorial caps, entered our house as beggars, and left it with well-lined purses. Civitella pointed them out to me. "Look," said he, "how many poor devils make their fortunes by one great man taking a whim into his head. This is what I like to see. It is princely and royal. A great man must, even by his failings, make some one happy, like a river which by its overflowing fertilizes the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... riven stone That century on century has slept Until into its heart a tendril crept, And in the quiet majesty of birth New nature broke into her own! Or bid the sun stand still! Or fashion wings To herd the heaven's stars and make them be Subservient to will and rule and whim! Or rein the winds, and still the ocean's hymn! More surely ye shall manage all these things Than chain the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... noble, discarded all earnestness amidst the giddy bustle and witty brilliance of their daily life, and oscillated between the grandest boldness of enterprise and elevation of spirit on the one hand, and a shameful frivolity and childish whim on the other. It may not be out of place, in connection with a crisis wherein the existence or destruction of nations of noble gifts and ancient renown was at stake, to mention that Plato, who came to Tarentum ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 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. Though storms around my vessel rave, I will not fall to craven ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... polite; but she did not believe in the new order of things; and her eyelids and the corners of her mouth showed it. Mrs. Megilp admired; thought it lovely for Asenath just now; but of course not a thing to count upon, or to expect generally. In short, they treated it all as a whim; a coincidence of whims. Asenath, although she would not trouble herself about the "ifs away back," had a spirit of looking forward which impelled her to argue against ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... incident probably came to his knowledge about the same time. A beautiful and very intellectual woman was married to a well-known man who had been addicted to drink, but had entirely conquered the vice. One day a mad whim seized her to put his self-mastery and her power over him to the test. As it happened to be his birthday, she rolled into his study a small keg of brandy, and then withdrew. She returned some time after wards ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... case, though, all concerned would have felt easier to keep her on board. Then, when the ship sailed, they were sure to have her there. Otherwise, they assuredly were not. For they knew well her startling capacity for whims. But never, never, could they know the startling next way a whim of hers might jump. Yet did she give herself the small pains of wheedling? Not she. The mystery of her august guardianship, of no less than two emperors, and the responsibility falling on captain, crew, red trousers, and gilt eagles—He bien, what then? ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... thing of clouts, a she moth, That every silkmans shop breeds; to be cheated, And of a thousand duckets by a whim wham? ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... that other subjects were thereby excluded from it. The repression of night-poaching was not a matter that interested him either in principle or practice. He would just as soon that the keeper had not reminded him of his offer to share his watch—the whim that had once seized him to do so had died away; but having once promised his company, he was not one to break his word. So here ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... what whim of wanton chance Do radiant eyes know sombre days? And feet that shod in light should dance Walk weary ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... their instantaneous desires, than conform the moment to some regulated and considerate, some comprehensive scheme of life and action. The life of unreason is their desire; the experience whose bent is determined by every whim, the expression which has no rational connection with the past and no serious consideration for the future. This is of the very essence of lawlessness because it is revolt against the normal sequence of law and effect, in mind and conduct, in favor ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... try to take hers without murmuring, although convinced that it was a mere whim, stipulating only that she might go out in the kitchen to swallow it. But with Wealthy, who was younger, the ingestion of Vermifuge was usually preceded by an orgy of tears and supplications. Addison, who was older and generally well, long smiled in a superior way at the grimaces ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... had planned to take the six o'clock train. I quite finished my business with Saradokis last night. He's a brilliant business man. Too bad he has that silly whim ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Fenella exclaimed. "It was a whim of mine, that is all. I liked having you both there. Some day you must come again, and, if you are very good, I may let you bring the young lady, though I'm not so sure of that. Do you know that my brother was asking ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Sidney pleasantly. And vaguely conscious of mischief in the air, but led on by some inexplicable whim, she pursued, "Do you mean that it makes such a difference to you, ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... I told him, "which the founder, for some inexplicable whim, united in one domain, of an ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... reason to fear needle pricks. In short, Louise was one of those fickle birds of passage who from fancy, and often from necessity, make for a day, or rather a night, their nest in the garrets of the students' quarter, and remain there willingly for a few days, if one knows how to retain them by a whim ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of thatched huts, apparently set down at random—as indeed it is, for every one erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or wherever he can get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the huts and buildings. Several small orchards of mango surround the village; the roads ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... cuisine, either by the audacious invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of old ones—either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late history of the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard necessity—that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists had struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege of Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from the enforced diet of dogs, cats, rats and monkeys in bombardment days appears ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... years ago at a fancy ball clad in his ancestral clothing of the sixteenth century and wearing the insignia of the chieftainship. He boasted that in doing so he broke no fewer than three statute laws. But times are altered now, and the learned professor was permitted to indulge his whim in peace. No clansmen gathered round him, and no "Sassenach" soldiery rent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... his whim—if that could be called a whim which was a desire to have repeated to him a sentiment once to him, as he hinted, a reality connected with the young heart when it was lusty, and his pulse strong and thick with the blood of young life—- she went to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... prospect—her eager hopes converting the possible into the probable, and again, by a rapid change, the probable into the certain, the Greek stood spurning the needle work at her feet. Then glancing around, the whim seized upon her to assume, for a moment in advance, her coming stately dignity. At the side of the room, upon a slightly elevated platform, was a crimson lounge—AEnone's especial and proper seat. Over one arm of this lounge hung, in loose folds, a robe of purple ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... tolerably mild, To make a wash, would hardly stew a child; Has even been proved to grant a lover's prayer, And paid a tradesman once to make him stare; Gave alms at Easter, in a Christian trim, And made a widow happy, for a whim. Why then declare good-nature is her scorn, When 'tis by that alone she can be borne? Why pique all mortals, yet affect a name? A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame: Now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs, Now drinking ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... tape-tied curtains never meant to draw; The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies:—alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim! Gallant and gay, in Claverdon's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love, Or, just as gay, at council in a ring Of mimic'd statesmen and their merry King. No wit to flatter left of all his store, No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... cry up Haydn, some Mozart, Just as the whim bites.—For my part, I do not care a farthing candle For either of them, or for Handel. Cannot a man live free and easy Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... a bored gesture. Everybody asked the same thing, and he who belonged to that country had never seen a rose of Paestum.... Sometimes, just in order to satisfy the whim of tourists, he would bring rose bushes from Capaccio Vecchio and other mountain villages,—rose bushes just like others with no difference except in price.... But he didn't wish to take advantage of anybody. He was sad and greatly troubled over ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing 360 Through whose heart in such an hour Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, 365 A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then 370 Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, the tedious people who carry out their principles to the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of practice. Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word 'Whim.' Besides, my article is really a most salutary and valuable warning. If it is attended to, there may be a new ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... that every officer above the rank of captain was to lose his higher rank, and that all new reappointments were to be made on military merit and direct from Richmond. Companies accustomed to elect their officers according to the whim of the moment eagerly joined the higher officers in passing adverse resolutions. But authorities who were unanimous for Lee were not to be shaken by such absurdities in face of a serious war. And when the froth ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... an excellent manager, and he himself a pleasant, good-humored man, full of whim and inoffensive mirth. His powers of amusement were of a high order, considering his station in life and his want of education. These qualities contributed, in a great degree, to bring both the young and old to his ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... his pipe and lit it. His mother had said we when she talked of her plans, as if her son were merely an object to be moved about at her whim. Pick up my lighter at MacAuliffe's ... going to take a trip abroad this summer ... not going to be foolish about her.... He could see the phrases as vividly as if they were written ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... for you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite unusual, and indeed unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it may only be a passing whim." ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... sat in the tentroom, where the long lounges and the shaded electric light were suggestive of desultory conversation, and seemed tacitly to forbid all things that savour of a hind-leg attitude. To-night, however, some whim, no doubt, had prompted him to forsake his usual haunt. Perhaps he had been seized with a dislike for complete silence, such as comes upon men in recurring hours of depression, when the mind is submerged by a thin tide of unreasoning melancholy, and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... 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 ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... knowing her power, insisted that Agnes' child should be raised as a white child, and the secret of his birth effectually concealed. At first, Mr. Le Croix thought it was a passing whim that she would soon forget; that the child would amuse and interest her for awhile; and then she would tire of him as she had of other things; such as her birds, her squirrel, and even her Shetland pony. But when he found that instead of her intention ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... importance. It was not that she perceived any glamour of royalty about him; she did not wish to hear his voice. Besides, she had never found a conversational opening so harmless that he could not contrive, were it his whim, to be offensive about it. Besides, she had at the moment ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... 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, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow, half fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquors, who has ever since been called a "toast." Though this institution had so trivial a beginning, it is now elevated into a formal order; and that happy virgin who is received ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... that they have the actual opportunity for realizing what to other girls are mere dreams. I can imagine what my daughter would have done if a foreign nobleman had paid court to her. I will say this for Miss Wellington though; she would marry her chauffeur if she took the whim." ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... is an idle and impertinent invention there is little need to show, inasmuch as both tower and spire might still have been built to satisfy the whim of the old ladies, though placed in the usual manner, one serving as a substratum to the other. A more probable solution is the following, though it may be as far from the truth:—At the dissolution of the priory of Burscough in the time of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... old Sir Giles had stored in the secret room was considerable. He had evidently distrusted investments, and, following his own singular whim, had hoarded his money in gold and bank notes. There were precious stones also, in themselves worth a small fortune, which he must have collected, in addition to the family jewels and the old silver plate that had been handed down through ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... half jestingly and endeavored to get possession of the bottle. A struggle ensued, good-naturedly on the part of the guard, but characterized on the part of M'liss by that half-savage passion which any thwarted whim or instinct was sure to provoke in her nature. At last with a curse she freed herself from his grasp, and seizing the bottle by the neck aimed it with the full strength of her little arm fairly at his head. But he was quick enough to avert ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... said to be a whim of the Tzar Ivan the Terrible to see how many distinct chapels could be erected under one roof in a given space of ground, so that services could be performed at one ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... William 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 what constitution can resist the daily doses of hyperbolical flattery that are poured into the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... not to be misled by the spelling. That was no guide anyhow. He avoided every recognised phrase in the language and mispronounced everything in order that he shouldn't be suspected of ignorance, but whim. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... itself was in a way anticlimactic. By the whim of Le ffacase I went in one of the planes on the first day of the task. My protests, as always, proving futile, I spent a very boresome time flying backandforth over the same patch of ground. That is, it would have been boresome had it not been for the dangers involved, for in order to sow the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... too much care can be exercised at this important epoch of human life, provided it is properly applied; but nothing could be more disastrous in its consequences than a weak solicitude which panders to every whim and gratifies every perverted appetite. Such care ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... suspicious mind is ever the prey of worry. Such an one is to be pitied for he is tossed hither and yon, to and fro, at the whim of every breath of suspicion he breathes. He has no real peace of mind, no content, no unalloyed joy, for even in his hours of pleasure, of recreation, of expected jollity he is worrying lest someone is trying to get ahead of him, his vis-a-vis is "jollying" ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... sixpence into it, with the intention of stealing upon him as he sat most mysteriously chattering on the top of a cairn of stones, and then shooting him with silver, which is known never to fail in finishing the imps of the Evil One. And lucky indeed was it for pug that he chanced, through whim, to abscond from that quarter; for if he had not so disappeared, he might have died by the lead, if not by the silver. As it was, the bold peasant laid claim to the full glory of compelling this dreaded goblin ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... seven hundred miles to Virginia, where, it is said, they may be plentifully subsisted. As soon as they are there, they are ordered on some other march, because, in Virginia, it is said, they cannot be subsisted. Indifferent nations will charge this either to ignorance, or to whim and caprice; the parties interested, to cruelty. They now view the proposition in that light, and it is said, there is a general and firm persuasion among them, that they were marched from Boston with no other purpose than to harass and destroy them with eternal marches. Perseverance ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... wedding invitations, are expected to acknowledge them as soon as received, and never fail to accept, unless for some very good reason. Guests invited to the house, or to a marriage feast following the ceremony, should not feel at liberty to decline from any whim or caprice. ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... plaguy good he takes of his CHILDREN! He looks after our domestic as well as our public interests! It was a strange whim in old Fritz to offer each of his soldiers one of the factory girls ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Uncle Buzz stepped meekly aside and Mrs. Mosby—Aunt Loraine—joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance. She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched and streaked with a chestnut red, colour not so ill as misapplied. Her dress rustled as she swept forward and there were numberless faint clickings and clackings of chains and bangles ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... is fickle, egotistical, capricious; she exacts adoration, and most frequently loves you for a whim ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... in the least a sportswoman by nature, though she had hunted as a child—albeit much against her will—to satisfy the whim of a father who had been a dare-devil rider across country and had found his joy in life—and finally his death—in the hunting field he had loved. But she was a lover of animals, like most people of artistic temperament, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... turbulent Irish canal men, who keep the country in constant excitement, and who, owing no allegiance to Britain or to the American Union, cross over from the States to Canada, or vice versa, as work or whim dictates, carrying uneasiness and dismay wherever ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... my dear. As I have told you time out of number since his will was brought to light, I doubt if I ever exchanged a hundred words with the old gentleman. If it was his whim to surprise us, his whim succeeded. For ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... dilemma forever without going insane. Hawkes shuddered, trying to picture what would happen if he went mad, and the wild talents began operating at every whim ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... 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 use, see ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... then his compliments began To rain like drops of Frangipanni, A most insinuating man He was, this ancient DON GIOVANNI. You felt, if you could half believe, You'd but to word a whim to find it, You quite forgot he owned a sleeve, And several teeth ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... should; for when one begins to reflect why one don't like the country, I believe one grows near liking to reflect in it. I feel very often that I grow to correct twenty things in myself, as thinking them ridiculous at my age; and then with my spirit of whim and folly, I make myself believe that this is all prudence, and that I wish I were young enough to be as thoughtless and extravagant as I used to be. But if I know any thing of the matter, this is all flattering myself. I grow older, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... 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 to my ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... at the races, when seated beside her, Andrea was suddenly seized with the whim to get her to promise to come to the Palazzo Zuccari and receive the mysterious little clock dedicated to her namesake. Hearing his audacious words, she frowned, wavering between curiosity and prudence; but as he, nothing daunted, persevered in the attack, an irrepressible ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... autocratic form of government. Imperial whims, it was said, override grave economic considerations. In recent years, however, a change seems to have taken place in public opinion, and some people now venture to assert that this so-called Imperial whim was an act of far-seeing policy. As by far the greater part of the goods and passengers are carried the whole length of the line, it is well that the line should be as short as possible, and that branch lines should ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... forsooth! And pray, are you going to reject the best offer in the county because of a simple whim? the mere fancy of a vain-headed, foolish and inexperienced girl? I did not before suppose that a daughter of mine would manifest such a want of ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... a moment. If he said no, and went away out of the city wherever his listless and changeful whim called him, he knew how it would be with her; he knew what her life would be as surely as he knew the peach would come out of the peach-flower rosy on the wall there: life in the little hut; among the neighbors; sleepy and safe and ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... love to flop and twist and turn Whenever 'tis our whim. Yet social etiquette we learn Because ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... which he always succumbed, came from the little wheeled chair. No anger did he ever find there—no dark looks or sharp tones—but he found steady, unbending authority; the firm will which never passed over a single fault, or yielded to a single whim. In his wildest passions of grief or wrath, it was only necessary to say to the child, "If the earl could see you!" to make him pause; and many and many a time, whenever motherly authority, which in this case ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... there are depths as well as shallows, and the reader may get now and then a peep into the depths. He may find, if he will, in a man's shadow that outward expression of himself which shows that he has been touched, like others, by the light of heaven. But essentially the story is a poet's whim. Later writings of Chamisso proved him to be one of the best lyric poets of the romance school of his time, entirely German in his tone of thought. His best poem, "Salas y Gomez," describes the feeling of a solitary on a sea-girt rock, living on eggs of the ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... fingers smoothed the wax, and over the effaced heart—a child's whim—Orion wrote things on which the lives of two human beings depended. He did so with sincere confidence in his little ally's adroitness and fidelity. Early next morning she was to receive a letter to be conveyed to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... belongs to all, and, moreover, to choose the best portion of it? Shall a minority be permitted to destroy the Union, and to imperil those who were its first benefactors, and without whom it would never have existed? If this does not constitute an impious revolt, then any whim that seizes a people is just and right. It is not only political reasons that oppose a separation; geography, the positions of places force the United States to form a single nation. Strabo, meditating on this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Miss Phillips once more drives away all recollection of Marion, even while he has before him the unopened letter of that wronged and injured girl. Jack's brain was certainly of a harum-scarum order, such as is not often found—he was a creature of whim and impulse—he was a rattle-brain, a scatter-brain —formed to win the love of all—both men and women—formed, too, to fall into endless difficulties—formed also with a native buoyancy of spirit which enabled him to float where others would sink. By those who knew him, he would always ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... Cornwall. After three days there I met some miners, had a night with them, which ended by their initiating me into their clan. Next morning, thinking it over, my better self asserted itself, and the whim took me to learn the ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... this whim of Loman's. It may have been his conscience which prompted it. For a mean person nearly always detests an honest one, and the more open and generous the one is, the meaner the other feels in ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... yourself! We can look after the children ourselves. You better save what you get to look after yourself when those two get over this whim!" ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... the cottage, after she had fulfilled her hostess's last demand, Glory's spirits rose to the highest. It was the first time she had entered the ranks of the seven other children which filled it to overflowing, and who were "shooed" into or out of it, according to their mother's whim. ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... you in time—beware of the original of that picture, and never again talk to me of going to see those Percys; for though the girl may be only an unfashioned country beauty, and Georgiana has so many polished advantages, yet there is no knowing what whim a young man might ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... patriot warms. Peleus' great son, or Brutus, who had known, Had Lucrece been a whore, or Helen none! But virtues opposite to make agree, That, Reason! is thy task; and worthy thee. Hard task, cries Bibulus, and reason weak: Make it a point, dear Marquess! or a pique. Once, for a whim, persuade yourself to pay A debt to reason, like a debt at play. For right or wrong have mortals suffer'd more? B—— for his prince, or —— for his whore? Whose self-denials nature most control? His, who would save a sixpence, or his soul? Web for ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... wisdom but a whim of mine which causes me to be graciously minded!" she cried. "Think you that Liane ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... "A mere whim—a sheer piece of perversity—a sleeveless errand," Anthony answered. "So now we might set about sweeping and garnishing ourselves," he suggested, moving towards ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... schools of thought relating to amendment of the Constitution. One need not be committed to the belief that amendment is weakening the fundamental law, or that excessive amendment is essential to meet every ephemeral whim. We ought to amend to meet the demands of the people when sanctioned ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... luckless husband, Listen to thy wife's opinion, 270 Tongue of lark, and whim of women, Like myself, a youth unhappy, For both bread and meat I bought her, Bought her butter, ale I bought her, Every sort of fish I bought her, Bought her all sorts of provisions, Home-brewed ale the best I bought her, Likewise wheat from ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... purposes. It was to his credit that neither libertinism nor disgrace nor remorse withered at its root this herb of grace. Cynical speeches with regard to friends and friendship, often quoted to his disadvantage, need not be taken too literally. Byron talked for effect, and in accordance with the whim of the moment. His acts do not correspond with his words. Byron rejected and repudiated bath Protestant and Catholic orthodoxy, but like the Athenians he was "exceedingly religious." He could not, he did not wish to, detach himself from a belief in an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the print how, moved by whim, Trumpeting Jumbo, great and grim, Adjusts his trunk, like a cravat, To noose that individual's hat; The Sacred Ibis in the distance, Joys to observe ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... with Dolores, who discovered that, notwithstanding his evident weariness, he was astonishingly light on his feet and by no means a poor waltzer. But after midnight she found it increasingly difficult to lure him out on the floor whenever she was seized with the whim to favor him by scratching the name—and ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Italy. He was a man of gigantic stature, prodigious corpulence, and marked personal daring; agreeable in manners, but subject to uncontrollable fits of passion, and incapable of self-restraint when crossed in any whim or fancy. Upon the habit of his body it is needful to insist, in order that the part he played in this tragedy of intrigue, crime, and passion may be well defined. He found it difficult to procure a charger equal to his ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... him the sobriquet of "Forty Faces" among the police and of the "Vanishing Cracksman" among the scribes and reporters of newspaperdom. That he came in time to possess another name than these was due to his own whim and caprice, his own bald, unblushing impudence; for, of a sudden, whilst London was in a fever of excitement and all the newspapers up in arms over one of his most daring and successful coups, he chose to write boldly to both editors and police complaining that the title given him by each was both ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... rate of production, and so forth, but substitutes water for the old hock and "Scots pint" (magnum) of claret, a dirty little terra-cotta inkstand for the silver utensil of the Noctes, and a single large tallow candle for Christopher's "floods of light." He carried the whim so far as to construct for himself—his Noctes self—an imaginary hall-by-the-sea on the Firth of Forth, which in the same way seems to have had an actual resemblance, half of likeness, half of contrast, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... grieved at parting with me, whenever it is; and if we give them time to become acquainted with my soul, and with its new powers of loving and honouring them, I fear that when I go, their aged hearts will break under the load of sorrow. As yet, they take my gentle mood for a passing whim, such as they saw me liable to formerly, like a calm on the lake when the winds are lulled; and they will soon begin to love some favourite tree or flower in my place. They must not learn to know this newly obtained, affectionate ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... come home jes' long enough To take the whim 'At he'd like to go back in the calvery— And the old man jes' wrapped up in him! Jim 'lowed 'at he'd had sich luck afore, Guessed he'd tackle her three years more. And the old man give him a colt he'd raised, And follered him over to Camp Ben ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... white gate talking to each other, my Charlotte and I. The old red-tiled roof which I had seen in the distance sheltered the girl I love. The solitary farm-house which it had been my whim to examine was the house in which my dear love made her home. It was here, to this untrodden hillside, that my darling had come from the prim modern villa at Bayswater. Ah, what happiness to find her here, far away from all those stockbroking surroundings—here, where our hearts expanded ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... 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 ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... about her education. I didn't know she had one," said Jarvis, "but this whim of hers, in marrying me, is very trying to me. ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... out upon the ledge, but keep inside the grotto that had given them such well-timed shelter. Some sulky savage, disappointed at not getting their scalps, might take it into his head to return and hurl down into the hole another shower of stones. Such a whim was ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid |
