"Wilful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brutal indifference of the authorities to everything connected with intellect, thought, and poetry. How often have Juste and I exchanged glances when reading the papers as we studied political events, or the debates in the Chamber, and discussed the proceedings of a Court whose wilful ignorance could find no parallel but in the platitude of the courtiers, the mediocrity of the men forming the hedge round the newly-restored throne, all alike devoid of talent or breadth of view, of distinction or learning, ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... affairs takes a young girl to wife, he expects to mold her to his nature, but he reckons without his host. Heinrich Schopenhauer's opposition to his wife's wishes was not strong enough to crush her—it simply developed in her a deal of wilful, dogged strength. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... from severe attacks of the croup. Her sisters had not known how they loved her till she showed her frail side, and they saw how slender was the thread which bound her to earth. When she was strong, and roguish, and wilful, they forgot that she was only a tender flower after all, and might be nipped ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... serious attempt to make Napoleon Bonaparte out a drunkard, and to prove that a rum-bottle lost him the battle of Waterloo. The author must himself have been drunk when he wrote it. Are you not ashamed to set such pitiful cant, I will not say such wilful falsehood and slander, before any rational creature? Did you not know that an overcharged gun would knock the musketeer over by its recoil? I do not tell you to give the convicts all and any books they may desire; but pray what ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... letter of her sending to the King," he went on, "but never of her writing, for they say that she knows not 'A' from 'B,' if she meets them in her voyaging. Now, nothing would serve my wilful daughter Elliot (she being possessed, as I said, with love for this female mystery), but that we must ride forth and be the first to meet the Maid on her way, and offer her shelter at my poor house, if she does but ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... crowded when Cornelius Dalton was put to the bar charged with the wilful murder of Bartholomew Sullivan, by striking him on the head with a walking stick, and when the old man stood up all eyes were turned on him. It was clear that there was an admission of guilt in his face, for instead of appearing erect and independent, he looked ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the ridicule of other Sunnis, the elders of the Cutchi Memans declared that their caste rules denied the widow's claim. The matter caused and is still (1896) causing agitation, as the doctors of the Sunni law at Mecca have decided that as the law of inheritance is laid down by the holy Koran, a wilful departure from it is little short of apostasy. The Memans are contemplating a change, but so far they have not found themselves able to depart from ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... correction was possible, this note arrived. "I suddenly remember that I have forgotten Diogenes. Will you put him in the last little chapter? After the word 'favourite' in reference to Miss Tox, you can add, 'except with Diogenes, who is growing old and wilful.' Or, on the last page of all, after 'and with them two children: boy and girl' (I quote from memory), you might say 'and an old dog is generally in their company,' or to that effect. Just ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... recent change in the law, transportation only; unless, indeed, loss of human life occur in consequence of the felonious act; in which case, the English law construes the offence to be wilful murder, although the incendiary may not have intended the death or injury of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... whom they took prisoner and put to death. Cnaeus Mallius Maximus commanded the main force on that side of the river, and he told Caepio, who as consul was in command on the right bank, to cross and effect a junction. But Caepio was as wilful as Minucius had shown himself towards another Maximus in the Second Punic War. When his superior began to negotiate with the Cimbri, he thought it was a device to rob him of the honour of conquering them, and in his irritation rashly provoked a battle, in which ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... cloth for the day," he murmured. "A college professor in the making who has much to unlearn; a crude young giant who is fond of killing things, and cares for helpless children; and a beautiful, wilful, characterless girl to be shown into her womanly heritage. The clay is ready. It is the potter whose hands need skill. Victor Burleigh! Victor Burleigh! There's my greatest problem of all three. He has the strength of a Titan in those arms, and the passion of a tiger behind those innocent yellow ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... use of Hetty's parents taking her home, if the little maid intends to be just as fond of Harry absent as of Harry present? Why not let her see him before Ball and Dobbin are put to, and say, "Good-bye, Harry! I was very wilful and fractious last night, and you were very kind: but good-bye, Harry!" She will show no special emotion: she is so ashamed of her secret, that she will not betray it. Harry is too much preoccupied ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... shall know, that, in the shocking progress to this ruin, wilful falsehoods, repeated forgeries, (particularly of one letter from your Ladyship, another from Miss Montague, and a third from Lord M.) and numberless perjuries, were not the least of his crimes: you will judge, that I can have no principles that will make me worthy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the Town-Goal; but they took care in the first Place to stop the Bleeding of his Wounds, and afterwards examin'd the suppos'd Delinquents apart, in order to discover, if possible, the real Truth. They acquitted Zadig of the Charge of wilful and premeditated Murder; but as he had taken a Subject's Life away, tho' in his own Defence, he was sentenc'd to be a Slave, as the Law directed. His two Beasts were sold in open Market, for the Service of the Hamlet; What Money he had was distributed amongst ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... that the charge committed to him by the dying father was well cared for. On his arrival he was not pleased with the relations subsisting between Fanny Jane and her aunt. Mrs. Grant declared that the child was stubborn, wilful, and disobedient, needing frequent and severe punishment. On the other hand, Fanny said that her aunt abused her; worked her "almost to death;" did not give her good things to eat, and whipped her when she "did not ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... her temper about as well as any of us. She seldom lets her tongue loose as she used to do when things went wrong, but flies to her room and fights it out alone. I expect those Gurneys have a good influence over our wilful Dexie." ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... the Choir.—These fourteenth century windows are the chief glory of the choir. There are seven in all, and though they have suffered much from wilful damage and neglect, there are perhaps no others in England containing quite so much glass of the same date, and in such good condition as a whole.[23] Every one must rejoice that in 1828 lack of funds prevented these windows from being ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... with his idol. Had any one else objected to the doctor's afternoon rest he would have found reason and excuse enough; but in his own heart he was puzzled. Such indifference to the appearances, such wilful disregard of "business" could hardly, he thought, be real; yet, for an imitation, it was remarkably well done. Bubble admired ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... as the acme of desirability and wickedness. He was always telling boys what they did at "his old school," and he quite inflamed the minds of such as fell under his influence by marvellous tales of the wild and wilful things which he and his former school-fellows had done. Many and many a scheme of sin and mischief at Roslyn was suggested, planned, and carried out, on the model of Ball's reminiscences of ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... persons whomsoever; and stating that he would have no falsehoods told, he desired her to keep to the original tale of the visit of the French family to her as guests of the Countess of Romfrey. Contradictory indeed. Rosamund shook her head over him. For a wilful character that is guilty of issuing contradictory commands to friends who would be friends in spite of him, appears to be expressly angling for the cynical spirit, so surely does it rise and snap at such provocation. He was even more emphatic when they next met. He would not listen to a remonstrance; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the illusions she cherished respecting him, till she saw the man as he really was, weak, unstable, self-indulgent, incapable of true manliness. Still she was patient with him to the last; and when she was relieved by friendly death from the charge of so wilful and ungrateful a burden—though things were easier, because hers was the sole authority—it was a constant strain to provide the education necessary for her boy. But that accomplished, she had a sweet interlude with ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... the Impropriety of the Word, this is to charge the above Writers with wilful and direct Forgeries. Llwyd and Powel were Gentlemen of fair and unblemished Characters, and good Scholars. Mr. Llwyd's Writings shew him to have been a Man of Learning and Judgment; and Dr. Powel was the ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... wish to be a comfort to your uncle in his last days. I know that, Mr. George. He's been good to you; and you've your duty to do by him now, Mr. George; and you'll do it." So said Mr. Pritchett, having thoroughly argued the matter in his own mind, and resolved, that as Mr. George was a wilful young horse, who would not be driven in one kind of bridle, another must be tried ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... would never more behold his mother, and the torture of mind resulting from this reflection is only comparable to the roasting of the body; but the worst thought of all was, that the dreadful pass to which he and Snorro had come, was the consequence of his own wilful disobedience! The anguish of spirit that filled him, when he reflected on this, was such that it caused him almost to forget the pain caused by savage knuckles in his neck, and ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... author has drawn at once the poem, the picture, and the living proof of the old Wordsworthian axiom, "The child is father to the man." The old man, in his simple way, and in his great love for his wilful little grandchild, is being continually distracted from the grave sermons and moral lessons he would read the boy. As, for instance, aggrievedly attacking the little fellow's neglect of his books and his inordinate tendency toward idleness ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... but I did so with a very bad grace; and I am sorry to say that my father's words had at that time little or no effect on my heart. I say at the time, for afterwards, when it was too late, I thought of them over and over again, and deeply repented of my wilful ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... so sure of that," said I, getting back into my mind, and becoming rather wilful in consequence. "If, as I have heard you contend, machines as they are more and more perfected will require less and less of tendance, how do I know that they may not be ultimately made to carry, or may not in themselves evolve, conditions ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... Burton, as she received the note again, "the provost guard is on the lad's track, and with a warrant. I told thee thy wilful ways would lead but ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... this wilful maid to his heart. "I do love you, oh, my dear, with all my body and my life—till the end of ends, in waking and sleeping. And ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... only give you the most meagre information," said Mr. Farrington. He was white and shaky, a natural state for a law-abiding man who had witnessed wilful murder. "I heard voices and went down to the door, thinking I would find a policeman—then I heard two shots almost simultaneously, and opened the door and found the two men as they were found by ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... to savour somewhat of boldness, yet I hazard the opinion that the real development of Australia will never actually begin till this wilful violation of her people's food-life ceases. For let us suppose that the semi-tropical character of our Australian life was duly appreciated by one and all. If such were the case—and I would it were so—there would be a wonderful change from the present state of ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... of any house or other building within the metropolis is on fire, the occupier of such house or building shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding twenty shillings; but if such occupier proves that he has incurred such penalty by reason of the neglect or wilful default of any other person, he may recover summarily from such person the whole or any part of the penalty he may have incurred ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... says Mr. Ainsworth Mitchell, in his Science and the Criminal, "remarkable as being the first one of which there is any detailed record, in which convincing scientific proof of poisoning was given." The indictment charged the prisoner with the wilful murder of Francis Blandy by administering to him white arsenic at divers times (1) between 10th November, 1750, and 5th August, 1751, in tea, and (2) between 5th and 14th August, 1751, in water gruel. The prisoner pleaded not guilty, a jury was duly sworn, and the indictment ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... at its sharpest, brightest, wittiest, most fantastic, most wilful, most devout, saint and imp sported in one, toying with the tricks of the Deity, taking them now with extreme profundity, then tossing them about like irresistible toys with an incomparable triviality. She has traced upon ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... glance saw that it was her old, happy Paul who had come back to them, and that all the shadow which had come between them had been cleared away, felt happier than she had for many a long day. For one wilful mischievous boy can not only make himself thoroughly unhappy, but everyone about him becomes ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... at present with pointing out two instances of Barere's wilful and deliberate mendacity; namely, his account of the death of Marie Antoinette and his account of the death of the Girondists. His account of the death of Marie Antoinette is as follows: "Robespierre in his turn proposed that the members of the Capet family should be banished, and that Marie ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in countenance. Therefore indulgence is desired for one further count in this distasteful recital of ineptitudes inherent in this institutional scheme of civilised life. This count comes under the head of what may be called capitalistic sabotage. "Sabotage" is employed to designate a wilful retardation, interruption or obstruction of industry by peaceable, and ordinarily by legally defensible, measures. In its present application, particularly, there is no design to let the term denote or insinuate ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... dislike them; but the Swan was white and clean. Still, strange as it may seem, this Swan struck up a fast friendship with the Crow. His mother and father begged him to keep out of bad company, but he would not listen to them. He had done better to keep to his own kind, but wilful will have his way, and the Swan was ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... whirled away, a sad, sad moan sighed through the branches of the old Oak. 'Twas a cry of anguish for its wilful child. ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... offended, will you, if I ask you to remain with me and take care of me until John comes? I could send him a message to-night that I am alone, and bring him by this time to-morrow; but I know he has business that will cause him to lose money should he leave, and I was so wilful about coming, I dread to prove him right so conclusively the very first day. That door opens into a room reserved for Susette, if only you'd take it, and leave the door unclosed to-night, and if only you would stay with me until John comes I could well afford to pay ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... not exaggerating. She was only a year older than the wilful lad, who must at times have driven her to despair. Yet she had never faltered in her efforts to restrain and control him; and had made a greater sacrifice for his sake than Lisle suspected, though in the light of a subsequent revelation of Gladwyne's character ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... kings will not consent To grave advice, but follow wilful will. This is the end, when in fond princes' hearts Flattery prevails, and sage rede[51] hath no place: These are the plagues, when murder is the mean To make new heirs unto the royal crown.... And this doth grow, when lo, unto the prince, Whom death or sudden hap ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of a divorce so easy and wilful as Mr. Shaw proposes arises naturally out of an exclusive consideration of what I may call the amorous sentimentalities of marriage. If you regard marriage as merely the union of two people in love, then, clearly, it is intolerable, an outrage upon human dignity, that they should remain ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... it as something wholly natural; he found her as truly a patrician as Wayne Wayland, her father, could wish. The old man's domain was greater than that of many princes, and his power more absolute. His only daughter he spoiled as thoroughly as he ruled his part of the financial world, and wilful Mildred, once she had taken an interest in the young college man so evidently ready to be numbered among her lovers, did not pause half way, but made her preference patent to all, and opened to him a realm of dazzling ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... idea was that we were old enough to know what was good for us, and ought to be above childish negligence and tricks. If some men saw no use in botany, he would not waste time in beating it into them. He left the blind and the sluggards in their wilful ignorance, but had generously helpful hands for all wiser ones who saw the value of trimming their lamps. All such he would take to his garden personally to direct and inspire, and our better men felt all through their lives how much that meant. In general we soon came to feel and appreciate ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... reports of disaster and wilful acts followed with increasing rapidity. The sinking of American vessels disclosed a ruthlessness of method that was gravely condemned in President Wilson's message of armed-neutrality, only to be followed by acts of more wilful import—finally evoking the proclamation, April ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... precision mark the action of the fishermen in all that is done, for they know well that only a limited time will be allowed them, and if any careless or wilful stragglers from the fleet come up when the time is nearly past, they stand a chance of seeing the carrier steam off without their fish, which are thus left to be shipped the following day, and to be sold at last as an inferior article, or, perhaps, condemned and thrown away ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... chief inheritance is a wild, wilful nature. He is nearing his fourteenth birthday. Having been allowed to have his own way while small, he has cultivated an ungovernable desire to do as he pleases. Let the mother of that boy cease her old habit of saying, "I don't know what will become of that boy! I ...
— The value of a praying mother • Isabel C. Byrum
... have been taught them. We may pass by the objectors of the class who believe that vaccinated persons cough like cows and bellow like bulls; these objections go into the limbo of old wives' fables or into the category of wilful misrepresentation. Unfortunately there is a large class of persons who can believe the absurdest nonsense about any subject which is particularly distasteful to them.[6] Another class of objection is the sentimental repugnance to the idea of being given one of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... "Wilful would have his way," answered Mr Strong, shrugging his shoulders. "It is his own fault, and he must suffer the consequences. Come on, you people; I don't see why we should sacrifice our ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the bolt, and slipped into the apartment of the hen and chickens. They cried out loudly, and came fluttering down from their perches, and ran about in dismay, and the little girl ran after them. I saw it quite plainly, for I looked through a hole in the hen-house wall. I was angry with the wilful child, and felt glad when her father came out and scolded her more violently than yesterday, holding her roughly by the arm: she held down her head, and her blue eyes were full of large tears. 'What are you about here?' he asked. She wept and said, 'I wanted to kiss the hen and beg her pardon for ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... already near, and that his fate was hanging on her lips. His heart fluttered, and he became slightly perturbed; but he sat down manfully; determined to await the issue. Margaret welcomed him with more restraint than was her wont, but not—he thought and hoped—less cordially. Maidens are wilful and perverse. Why should she hold her head down, as she had never done before? Why strain her eyes upon her work, and ply her needle as though her life depended on the haste with which she wrought? Thus might she receive a foe; better treatment surely merited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... verdict of wilful murder," said the coroner, and he entered it accordingly in his notes. The Court now rose. The spectators reluctantly trooped out, the jurymen stood up and stretched themselves, and the two constables, under ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... acquaintance, with a degree of surprise that seemed to be tempered with the most pleasing and unaffected urbanity, replied, without being in the least disconcerted, sir, you mistake me: but I am sure you are too much of a gentleman to mean any wilful affront. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... beginning she had defied the regulations of the hospital, as she had defied the rules of life, with an absolute success. The inelastic, military system bent and stretched itself beneath her good-humoured inability to believe that there could be any wilful opposition, to her desires. The macaw had been a case in point, the gramophone another. After tea the old woman set the instrument going for her, and when the authorities protested, ostensibly on behalf of neighbouring patients, it transpired that the patients ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... or a wilful blindness in the parliament, is, that they pretended, even after this statute, to maintain some limitations in the government; and they enacted, that no proclamation should deprive any person of his lawful possessions, liberties, inheritances, privileges, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... freedom and justice: and as for all other cares, and imaginations, how thou mayest ease thy mind of them. Which thou shalt do; if thou shalt go about every action as thy last action, free from all vanity, all passionate and wilful aberration from reason, and from all hypocrisy, and self-love, and dislike of those things, which by the fates or appointment of God have happened unto thee. Thou seest that those things, which for a ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... increase in the number of idiots, insane persons, and paupers during 1905, which, coupled with an increase of twenty-five per cent. in the number of diseased aliens, justifies the Bureau in directing attention to the flagrant and wilful disregard by the ocean carriers of the laws for the regulation of their business of securing alien passengers destined for the ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... his father had also forbidden him to touch firearms at all, except when with him; but the boy was naturally proud and wilful, and spite of all the careful training of his parents, these faults would ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... one of "Elsie's days," as old Sophy called them. The light in her eyes was still, but very bright. She looked up so full of perverse and wilful impulses, that Dick knew he could make her go with him and her father. He had his own motives for bringing her to this determination,—and his own way of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... have that cap, Elspie; I am not an invalid now, and I don't choose to be an old matron yet," she said, in a pretty, wilful way, as she threw off the ugly ponderous production of her nurse's active fingers, and exhibited her ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... pebble, looking at her with the thought of how intoxicating he should once have found this bit of wilful abandon, but feeling rather sorry for it now. "Oh, perhaps not?" he said, laying his hand upon hers, and ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... to Goeschenen, as up to that point the road does not take on a true Alpine character. The storm (which seemed rising to a point of fury) was in our favour, too, for no one would choose to be out on such a night, save mad English automobilists and wilful ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... one of the thirty practice fugues that Rimsky composed in the course of a single month, complained that the latter "worshiped technique" and that his work was "Full of contrapuntal tricks and all the signs of a sterile pedantry." It was not that Rimsky was pedantic from choice, out of a wilful perversity. His obsession with intellectual formulas was after all the result of a fear of opening the dark sluices through which surge the rhythms ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... are you shameless in your shame? No, mistress, no: it will not be let past; But, wilful wench, this new-attempted game, Ere it be won, will ask another cast. And, lady, cloak his virtues as you will, He'll be but as I said, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... son and is giving the final directions. The old man's face is full of anxiety, as he implores the lad not to fly too high. Icarus listens to the advice with a shade of impatience, pouting a little, like a wilful child who chafes under restraint. He points forward, as if to show that he understands his orders. Already the slender figure is poised for flight; he is eager to be off. In another moment he will rise into the air, dropping his garment as he ascends. A light breeze ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... us hi Merionethshire the wilful Wynnes. You will find me a good friend if you don't want the things I want, I am like most younger brothers, inclined to want things. I thank you all for a pleasant hour. It is like home, or better." With this he bowed low to ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... which shewed triumph at having, as she supposed, won her wager: "Repeat it once more before the caliph, who looks upon us all to be fools, would make us believe we have no sense of religion, nor fear of God; and tell your story to that wicked black slave, who had the insolence to assert a wilful falsehood." ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... It gave them a time- limit of twenty-four hours in which to effect the complete police evacuation of the coveted strip of territory on the ground that the delay in the signature of a formal Protocol had been wilful and deliberate and had closed the door to further negotiations; and as no response came at the end of the time-limit, an open invasion of Chinese territory was practised by an armed French detachment; nine uniformed Chinese constables on duty being forcibly removed and locked ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... marked trait, which might promise well for the future, or otherwise, according to circumstances, and that was a certain wilful persistence, which often degenerated into downright obstinacy. Frequently, when his mother thought that she had coaxed or wheedled him into giving up something of which she did not approve, he would quietly approach his object in some other way, and gain his ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... I at all put out by the general tone which seems to me inseparable from the subject; but here and there are passages which I think needlessly direct and pointed, so much so indeed as to appear, merely in point of composition, abrupt and wilful. These I think I could point out. G., you see, thinks his objections separable from the main design, which seems to me hardly possible—perhaps you will think the same of mine, but they relate only to isolated passages, and rather to ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... When people do right, things come right for them. But if father had stood out twenty years, Steve and I would have waited. Ducie gave us the same advice. 'Wait, children,' she said: 'I have seen many a wilful match, and many a run-away match, but never one, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... thing or two,' cried Alan with a wilful smile. 'He must learn he can't speak to me like that. He is Aunt Betty's servant, worse luck. If he had been Father's, I'd have been down on ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... at that moment She appears, carrying a bottle with horrible yellow stuff floating in it—Castor Oil! Wilful and unfeeling, she holds me between her strong knees, ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... Schiller's merit on this point is greater than we might at first suppose. For a man with whom intellect is the ruling or exclusive faculty, whose sympathies, loves, hatreds, are comparatively coarse and dull, it may be easy to avoid this half-wilful entertainment of error, and this cant which is the consequence and sign of it. But for a man of keen tastes, a large fund of innate probity is necessary to prevent his aping the excellence which he loves so much, yet is unable to attain. Among persons of the latter sort, ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... in spite of everything, prizes him like the breath of her own life. The very mention of what happened is even strange! He is now grown up to be seven or eight years old, and, although exceptionally wilful, in intelligence and precocity, however, not one in a hundred could come up to him! And as for the utterances of this child, they are no less remarkable. The bones and flesh of woman, he argues, are made of water, while those of man of mud. 'Women to my ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... strangest thing happened. First one, and then another, of the show-people, instead of reasoning with the wilful creature, just went to waving their arms and singing at her. I declare it was enough to have made a minister laugh when she turned, and began to sing back at them, sometimes spiteful, and then, again, with tears melting through ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... up your eyes and your hands, Griselda. I never heard tell of the like. The whole village is in a flustration; and I just came o'er-by, to find out from you the long and the short of everything. I'm feared you have been sorely put about with the wilful lass." ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... Robertson and several others were charged at Montreal with the wilful destruction of Fort Gibraltar, but the jury would not convict the accused upon the evidence presented. In September, at the {134} judicial sessions at Sandwich, Lord Selkirk was again faced with charges. A legal celebrity of the day, Chief Justice Dummer Powell, presided. The grand jury complained ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... she said, pausing. There was a flash from eyes deep and dark beneath a pair of wilful brows. "Aunt Lina would ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... A second wilful deception of his mother! As Managing Director of the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, as proprietor of the majority of its shares, as its absolute autocrat, he was making very nearly four thousand a year. ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... between Roberts and Rhoda, the author, unable to control his own capricious and monstrous fancy for Algernon, devotes some sixteen pages to the young knave's vagaries with an illicit thousand pounds. That the sixteen pages are excessively brilliant does not a bit excuse the wilful unshapeliness ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... just now is in bed. Perhaps the Obasan will urge her further, now that Yanagibara Uji is present." O'Naka at once rose, like to an automaton, the spring of which has been pressed. She disappeared, to return and repeat her lesson. "Wilful as a child! One would suppose her such. Illness she would disregard, but her hair is not made up. She cannot think of appearing before company. Truly she is vexing."—"Not so," defended Cho[u]bei. "She could not show higher regard than by refusing to appear before ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... believe that the spirit of the salon, or at any rate, as much of that spirit as depended on the relation between her and Terry, was dead; she was more conscious than Terry of the ups and downs of the human nerves and heart and the ever-present possibility of change, and she went to work in a wilful attempt to get back her lover. Her next ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... I, Mr. Lovelace, never be unhappy in this life, if I submit to the passing upon my uncle Harlowe a wilful and premeditated falshood for truth! I have too long laboured under the affliction which the rejection of all my friends has given me, to purchase my reconciliation with them now at so dear a price as ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the result of a preconceived idea of the author on a class of men or a kind of facts. This inquiry partly coincides with the search for motives of falsehood: interest, vanity, sympathy, and antipathy give rise to prejudices which alter the truth in the same manner as wilful falsehood. We therefore employ the questions already formulated for the purpose of testing good faith. But there is one to be added. In putting forward a statement has the author been led to distort it unconsciously by the circumstance that he was answering ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... remission, provided that in praying for forgiveness the sinner forgave those that had sinned against him. If he lacked the time, were he dying, a priest might yet save him with words whispered in the ear. That was the extreme unction, hardly administrable, however, in case of wilful omission of the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire, - The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. All earthly powers confess your sovereign art But that one rebel,—woman's wilful heart. All foes you master; but a woman's wit Lets daylight through you ere you know you're hit. So, just to picture what her art can do, Hear an old story made ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... on the statute books a law incapable of full enforcement because both judges and juries realize that its full enforcement would destroy the business of the country; for the result is to make decent railroad men violators of the law against their will, and to put a premium on the behavior of the wilful wrongdoers. Such a result in turn tends to throw the decent man and the wilful wrongdoer into close association, and in the end to drag down the former to the latter's level; for the man who becomes a lawbreaker in one way ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was a delicate, high-bred looking woman, with soft blue eyes and brown hair lightly streaked with gray, who was quite likely to be influenced by her wilful niece's opinions. It was in her Uncle William that Madge ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... store Of headless dolls, of schoolbooks torn, Birds and beasts that speak no more, Spoils brought home from the fairy ground Only trod by youthful feet, Dreams of a future never found, Memories of a past still sweet, Half-writ poems, stories wild, April letters, warm and cold, Diaries of a wilful child, Hints of a woman early old, A woman in a lonely home, Hearing, like a sad refrain— "Be worthy, love, and love will come," In the ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... with more heart than intellect, she knew only how to love and to weep. Her husband was a god and her sons were his angels, so he, knowing to what point he was loved and feared, conducted himself like all false gods: daily he became more cruel, more inhuman, more wilful. Once when he had appeared with his countenance gloomier than ever before, Sisa had consulted him about the plan of making a sacristan of Basilio, and he had merely continued to stroke his game-cock, saying ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... mother. I might tell you many such melancholy stories, all of which would be true. A few years ago there was a boy who began to be disobedient to his parents in little things. But every day he grew worse, more disobedient and wilful, and troublesome. He would run away from school, and thus grew up in ignorance. He associated with bad boys, and learned to swear and to lie, and to steal. He became so bad that his parents could do nothing ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... poor, sexual purity is the general rule. Simple living and severe toil keep in check the passions and make it possible to mold the mind with moral precepts. But when a nation becomes divided into the very rich and the extremely poor; when wilful Waste and woeful Want go hand in hand; when luxury renders abnormal the passions of the one; and cupidity, born of envy, blunts the moral perceptions of the other, then indeed is that nation delivered over to the world, the flesh and the devil. When all alike are poor, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... do what they bid you, always treat them lovingly, and take care of them when they are sick and grown old. I never yet knew a boy who trampled on the wishes of his parents who turned out well. God never blesses a wilful boy. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... of hers ain't so deep for nothing. She hasn't the Leverett mouth, and those full lips are wilful and saucy, generally speaking. Letty Orne was a pretty girl, as I remember. Strange, now, when you come to think of it, that the child should have been born in this house. But she'll never have any beauty to spare, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... course, was 1816. But among the documents preserved at the Swansea Custom House there is an interesting letter dated July 1806, written by the Collector to Mr. Hobhouse, stating that a Mr. Barber, the sailing-master of the Cleveland, had been committed for trial on a charge of wilful murder, he having fired a shot to cause a boat to bring-to and thus killed a man. This, taken in conjunction with the testimony of the Sheerness Coastguard, to which I alluded by anticipation and shall mention again, ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... her tear-stained face, and looked at him. It was true, in her moments of roused exposure she was a beautiful woman—a beautiful woman. At this moment, with her flushed, tear-stained, wilful ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... away to bury my sick mother. When that is off my mind I'll write you what I know about the Hegira, the Flight into Egypt, the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, and whatever else you would like to learn. There is nothing mean about me! I don't think there has been any wilful desertion. You may engage an editor for, say, fifty years, with the privilege of keeping him regularly, if, at the end of that time, I should break my neck ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... calamity looming before her, the old Indian mother's hurt heart swelled with a certain pride in his wilful actions. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... stood, while the jury deliberated in low gruff sorrowful murmurs, and after a few minutes, turned round to announce with much sadness that they could do no otherwise than return a verdict of wilful murder against Leonard Ward. ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... forbidden food without being observant of the sacrifices and vows ordained in the Vedas are regarded as wilful men. (They are regarded as fallen even here). Those, on the other hand, who eat such food in the observance of Vedic sacrifices and vows and induced by the desire of fruits in the shape of heaven and children, ascend ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... to see all the lions of the place. "Ah, Tam! Tam! ye will die o' the cholera," cried the weeping Maggie. "My heart will brak if ye dinna bide wi' me an' the bairnie." Tam was deaf as Ailsa Craig. Regardless of tears and entreaties, he jumped into the boat, like a wilful man as he was, and my husband went with him. Fortunately for me, the latter returned safe to the vessel, in time to proceed with her to Montreal, in tow of the noble steamer, British America; but Tam, the volatile Tam was missing. During the reign of the cholera, what at ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... to my brother, Prince," she said calmly, "I suffer to pass by me, knowing well to what a depth of wilful blind ignorance you are fallen. I pity you—and—I despise you! You are indeed a plain man, as you say—nothing more and nothing less. You can take advantage of the hospitality of this house, and pretend friendship to the host, while you slander ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... with these good qualities Compton was a weak man, wilful, and strangely wedded to a party.—Swift. He ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... standing in the centre of some ten others of the same kidney. "The same man whom Captain Dinks knocked down the other day for insubordination, and whom I saw threaten him afterwards, as I can swear. If the captain dies, he will be tried for wilful murder, and hung, for it was no accidental blow, but a ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... Navy is big, but we know that it is not powerful, and that it is honeycombed with disloyalty—as witness the theft of the signal-books, the assaults on officers, the desertions, and the wilful injury of the boilers and machinery, which all the vigilance of the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... have done, or what I meant to do, for you, ma'am, and my niece, I say not one syllable. I held out no promise, and leave you to judge for yourself. I hold out no threat now, but I say that this boy, headstrong, wilful and disorderly as he is, should not have one penny of my money, or one crust of my bread, or one grasp of my hand, to save him from the loftiest gallows in all Europe. I will not meet him, come where he comes, or hear his name. I will not help him, or those who help him. With a full knowledge ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... interrupted my letter and read through the chapter of the High Woods that is written, a chapter and a bit, some sixteen pages, really very fetching, but what do you wish? the story is so wilful, so steep, so silly—it's a hallucination I have outlived, and yet I never did a better piece of work, horrid, and pleasing, and extraordinarily true; it's sixteen pages of the South Seas; their essence. What ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... she may take a lawful pride in "fall," America need not boast the use of "gotten." The termination, which suggests either wilful archaism or useless slang, adds nothing of sense or sound to the word. It is like a piece of dead wood in a tree, and is better lopped off. Nor does the use of "bully" prove a wholesome respect for the past. It is true that our Elizabethans used this adjective in the sense of great or noble. ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Saint was a regular Boy—a high-spirited, clever, sportive, and wilful creature. He was as fond as most boys of the mythical tales, "and for that I was accounted to be a towardly boy." Meanwhile he does not record that Monica disliked his learning the foolish dear old heathen fables—"that ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... consolation is, that he spends comparatively little of his time at home, and, during the months he passes in London or elsewhere, I have a chance of recovering the ground I had lost, and overcoming with good the evil he has wrought by his wilful mismanagement. But then it is a bitter trial to behold him, on his return, doing his utmost to subvert my labours and transform my innocent, affectionate, tractable darling into a selfish, disobedient, and mischievous boy; thereby preparing the soil for those vices he has so ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Drake, in which he is said to have surrounded this globe of earth. On the left hand lies Ratcliffe, a considerable suburb: on the opposite shore is fixed a long pole with ram's-horns upon it, the intention of which was vulgarly said to be a reflection upon wilful and ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... away, almost herculean in figure, and every inch of him forceful. She had never seen such a man, one so virile and, at the same time, so wilful and so masterful. Before he was out of her sight, she got ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... of the jury," he began; "the prisoner at the bar is charged with the wilful murder of John Smith, on the night of Tuesday, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... never tied up, sooner or later find that as men and women they are not free. Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, would not be tied up to any rules as a girl. She was wilful and wild, so in later life she caused the death of her husband ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... merge him, and sometimes was almost inclined to suspect that his constant prominence in the picture must be owing to some mysterious and wilful conjuration going on in the background. She was at a loss to conceive how else it happened that, despite her utmost endeavours to the contrary, she was so often thrown upon his care, and obliged to take up with his company. It was very disagreeable. Mr. Carleton she saw almost as constantly, but, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... rain; and his daughters still persisting in their resolution not to admit his followers, he called for his horses, and chose rather to encounter the utmost fury of the storm abroad, than stay under the same roof with these ungrateful daughters: and they, saying that the injuries which wilful men procure to themselves are their just punishment, suffered him to go in that condition and shut their ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... joy or under the burden of disappointment and disillusion. "As docile as Daisy" might have been a proverb in the neighborhood, so general was this view of her nature. Least of all did the selfish, surly-tempered, wilful young Englishman who was her husband, and who had ridden rough-shod over her tender thoughts and dreams these two years, suspect that she had in her the capabilities of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... needed only a few questions; and the fit orders, as to Warkotsch and Company, were soon given: dangerous engineers now fallen harmless, blown up by their own petard. One of the King's first questions was: 'But how have I offended Warkotsch?' Kappel does not know; Master is of strict wilful turn;—Master would grumble and growl sometimes about the peasant people, and how a nobleman has now no power over them, in comparison. 'Are you a Protestant?' 'No, your Majesty, Catholic.' 'See, IHR HERREN,' said the King to those about him; 'Warkotsch ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... other troubles that may happen, I accept; they are sent to try me and to purify, and come from Thee; but sin, I have no pleasure in it! Oh! when in the hour of temptation I fall away, LORD, hearken to the cry that I now raise to Thee in all sincerity; I will it not! it is not wilful! I go from Thy Presence, but, JESUS, Thou art with me! In work, in prayer, in suffering, let all ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... could believe this! If my knowledge of him and of her would allow me to hug this forlorn hope, and behold, in this shock to her brain, and in her look and attitude on leaving the club-house, only a sister's horror at a wilful brother's crime! ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... court-house to senate-chamber, from caucus to street. He has his own sins no doubt, is no saint, is a prodigal. He has drunk this rum of Party too so long, that his strong head is soaked, sometimes even like the soft sponges, but the "man's a man for a' that." Better, he is a great boy,—as wilful, as nonchalant and good-humored. But you must hear him speak, not a show speech which he never does well, but with cause he can strike a stroke like a smith. I owe to him a hundred fine hours and two or three moments of Eloquence. His voice in a great house is ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to explain my late arrival," he said. "You must not believe me guilty of wilful discourtesy. As for the rest, Mr. Greatson, what does it matter whether the hour is late or early? The matter is an important one. Between ourselves, her Highness has made up her mind to undertake the charge of the young lady, and I may tell you that when her Highness has made up her mind to anything ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... individuals calling themselves critics have attacked 'Lavengro' with much virulence and malice. If what they call criticism had been founded on truth, the author would have had nothing to say. The book contains plenty of blemishes, some of them, by-the-by, wilful ones, as the writer will presently show; not one of these, however, has been detected and pointed out; but the best passages in the book, indeed, whatever was calculated to make the book valuable, have been assailed with abuse ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... introduced by a mention of Philo's books[249]. Some considerable portion of the speech must have been directed against the innovations made by Philo upon the genuine Carneadean doctrine. These the elder Catulus had repudiated with great warmth, even charging Philo with wilful misrepresentation of the older Academics[250]. The most important part of the speech, however, must have consisted of a defence of Carneades and Arcesilas against the dogmatic schools[251]. Catulus evidently concerned himself more with the system of the later than with that of ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... important part. In Russia "desire for amusement" comes second among the causes of prostitution. There can, I think, be little doubt that, as a thoughtful student of London life has concluded, the problem of prostitution is "at bottom a mad and irresistible craving for excitement, a serious and wilful revolt against the monotony of commonplace ideals, and the uninspired drudgery of everyday life."[203] It is this factor of prostitution, we may reasonably conclude, which is mainly responsible for the fact, pointed out by F. Schiller,[204] that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... been willing to pardon her for her first rejection of him; telling himself that he had spoken too soon; that he had scared her by his unwise suddenness; that she was wild and wilful, and wanted more gentling before she was brought to the lure. But after a prolonged period of gentle treatment, after such courtesies and flatteries as Dr. Rylance had never before lavished upon anybody under ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... until 7.30 p.m., when Inspector Winter again put in an appearance, to announce that the coroner's jury had brought in a verdict of "Wilful murder by some two ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... Elisabeth; "I fancy it depends a good deal upon whom I am talking to. I find as a rule it is a good plan to let a weak man think you are obedient, and a strong man think you are wilful, if you want men to find ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... dread them more for your sake than for any fear I have of them myself, for I may happen to escape and rid myself in a great need, where ye must abide all that will be said unto you. And then if that ye fall in any distress through wilful folly, then is there none other remedy or help but by me and my blood. And wit ye well, madam, the boldness of you and me will bring us to great shame and slander; and that were me loath to see you dishonoured. And that is the cause I take upon ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... was making the deposition was absolutely false? Gentlemen, I ask you what evidence you have upon which you are to find this noble person, not only guilty of a foul conspiracy, but also of the still higher crime of wilful and corrupt perjury? Gentlemen, I am quite satisfied, you will not feel that there is any evidence in this cause, which can weigh down the testimony which my learned friend has thought proper to put in. I say the oath of Lord Cochrane makes the evidence offered on the other side ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... Esmond's heart, as she could, with that perceptiveness affection gives. "But she will make no mean match, Harry: she will not marry as I would have her; the person whom I should like to call my son, and Henry Esmond knows who that is, is best served by my not pressing his claim. Beatrix is so wilful, that what I would urge on her, she would be sure to resist. The man who would marry her will not be happy with her, unless he be a great person, and can put her in a great position. Beatrix loves admiration ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... if I have made A fault of ignorance, instruct my youth; I shall be willing, if not apt to learn; Age and experience will adorn my mind With larger knowledge: And if I have done A wilful fault, think me not past all hope For once; what Master holds so strict a hand Over his boy, that he will part with him Without one warning? Let me be corrected To break my stubbornness if it be so, Rather than turn me off, ...
— Philaster - Love Lies a Bleeding • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... course, your own mistress, and much as we both must grieve should anything separate you from us, we have no power to prevent you from taking steps which may lead to such a separation. If you are so wilful as to reject the counsel of your friends, you must be allowed to cater for yourself. Is it worth you while to break away from all those you have loved—from all who love you—for ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... purchase, and which was more valuable than themselves, she had, for their sake, thrown away. She discovered, when it was too late, that she had mistaken the means for the end—that riches, rightly used, are instruments of happiness, but are not in themselves happiness. In this wilful blight of her affections, she found them valueless as means: they had been the end to which she had immolated all her affections, and were now the only end that remained to her. She did not confess this to herself as a principle of action, but it operated through the medium of unconscious ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... over me. "All good men," said he, "have a mighty interest in your success; for me there is nothing dark, even in the mute grave, if it covers the ashes of one who has loved and served his brethren, and done, with a wilful heart, no ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... spot seemed to fascinate her. Then the thought that perhaps poor, wilful Tavia had fallen down such a place; that perhaps at that very moment, she lay alone, helpless, at the ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... and shadows; God has permitted it to be so in order that the just may have somewhat to exercise their faith in believing, and the impious and incredulous persist in their wilful impiety and incredulity. The greatest mysteries of Christianity are to the one subjects of scandal, and to the others means of salvation; the one regarding the mystery of the cross as folly, and the others ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... brush. Nor was she precisely the same as when Brandilancia had looked upon these charms unmoved. All arrogance and self-confidence were gone or lay buried under the most appealing of coquetry, a shy tenderness apparently born of irresistible impulse showing itself in little wilful sallies, a glance or touch, seemingly instantly regretted, and followed by alternations of reticence. He admitted her bewitching but had no idea that he was himself bewitched. His was a literary passion. He was a student of life as well as of books, and he had never before had the opportunity ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... of adopting her husband's profession, she had never concealed from him. He usually laughed, in his gay, supercilious way, when she spoke of this purpose, or lightly patted her grand head and declared her to be a wilful, unpractical enthusiast,—too much a child of Nature to attempt an art of any kind,—born to live and be poetry, not to declaim it,—to inspire genius, not to embody it,—a Muse, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... believe that what he has told me is true. Some of it cannot, I think, be true. Much of it is not so,—unless I am more deceived in you than I ever was in any man. At any rate sit down." Then the schoolmaster did sit down. "He has made you out to be a perjured, wilful, ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... citizen would acquire material wellbeing. Industry would revive and yield to the people all its blessings. But if it is not intended to cease favoring the army to such an unreasonable extent, let them take the money needed from the pockets of those who are spending their days in sloth and wilful luxury. As it is, the wealthy are not burdened any more than the poor laborer, while the latter really has to surrender a portion of the scant bread he has earned for himself and his family to maintain a state of things in which capital enjoys all those advantages ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... and feeding with her own hand an impatient old woman whom no one else would consent to touch. Oh, oh! they talk about repentance and a change of heart! If some one or something would only change mine! But there is no hope of that! no hope of my ever being anything else than what I am: a selfish, wilful, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... reply; and, despite his efforts to the contrary, felt highly flattered. He also felt the pangs of hunger, and, after resisting them for some time, resolved to eat, as it were, under protest. With a reckless, wilful air, therefore, he opened the tarpaulin bag, and helped himself to a large "hunk" of bread and a piece of cheese. Whereupon Mr Jones smiled grimly, and remarked that there was nothing like grub for giving a man heart—except grog, he added, producing a case-bottle ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... exquisite sensibility for any personal injury, and a contemptuous indifference for the rest of the human species. When they have called for warm water, if a slave has been tardy in his obedience, he is instantly chastised with three hundred lashes: but should the same slave commit a wilful murder, the master will mildly observe, that he is a worthless fellow; but that, if he repeats the offence, he shall not escape punishment. Hospitality was formerly the virtue of the Romans; and every stranger, who could plead either merit or misfortune, was ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... reached that moral depravity which fails to recognize and accept any truth which is opposed to her wishes. As she looks back over the vista of years, filled with many activities, no monument of wholesome constructiveness remains; she has blighted what she touched. Lena Platt, a wilful, spoiled, selfish hysteric! ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... I've known your family for forty years, Stuyvesant. I knew your parents; I exonerate them absolutely. Sheer laziness and wilful depravity is what has brought you here to me on this errand. You deliberately acquired a taste for intoxicants; you haven't one excuse, one mitigating plea to offer for what ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... and weakened him; and he confessed it did, but said, his "life could not be better spent, than in the service of his Master Jesus, who had done and suffered so much for him. But," said he, "I will not be wilful; for though my spirit be willing, yet I find my flesh is weak; and therefore Mr. Bostock shall be appointed to read prayers for me to-morrow; and I will now be only a hearer of them, till this mortal shall put on immortality." And Mr. Bostock did ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... Eutropius, x. 6. In primo Imperii tempore optimis principibus, ultimo mediis comparandus. From the ancient Greek version of Poeanius, (edit. Havercamp. p. 697,) I am inclined to suspect that Eutropius had originally written vix mediis; and that the offensive monosyllable was dropped by the wilful inadvertency of transcribers. Aurelius Victor expresses the general opinion by a vulgar and indeed obscure proverb. Trachala decem annis praestantissimds; duodecim sequentibus latro; decem novissimis pupillus ob ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... go." She lifted her wilful chin and sat still. They stared at each other in the silence of lovers. Though the girl's face was without a line, she was more skilled in the play of ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Sir, I should have some hesitation in speaking. I can only now say thus much, that I'm satisfied, he, Charles Archer, in swearing as he did, committed wilful perjury.' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... obstruct or throw open an airway; handle or disturb any part of the machinery of the hoisting engine of a mine; open a door of a mine and neglect to close it; endanger the mine or those working therein; disobey an order given in pursuance of law, or do a wilful act whereby the lives and health of persons working therein, or the security of a mine, or the machinery connected therewith may be endangered. (Penalty, ...
— Mining Laws of Ohio, 1921 • Anonymous
... the eighth of September, when the intense heat of the summer has passed away, and the periodical autumnal rains are necessary for the young herbage, the law is broken, and not only accidental but wilful conflagrations have been the destruction of numerous forests. What with this waste, the injury done to the growing timber by the contractors, and the indolence of the natives, the noble forests of Sardinia are of little account. Even the government, it is said, purchase most ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... other, the Puritan colonies were to be regulated, a mission which called for the utmost tact. The men chosen for the work were far from the best that might have been selected to bring back to the path of true obedience and impartial justice a colony that was deemed wilful and perverse. They were Richard Nicolls, a favorite of the Duke of York and the only commissioner possessed of discrimination and wisdom, but who, as governor of the yet unconquered Dutch colony, was likely to be taken up with his duties to such an extent ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... copying, some fellow thrusting himself between us and the floating illusion of art. In despair I looked into the mirror that reflects the picture. I suspected trickery. Surely that little princess with her wilful, distrait expression, surely the kneeling maid, the dwarfs, the sprawling dog, the painter Velasquez—with his wig—the heads of the king and queen in the oblong mirror, the figure of Senor Nieto in the doorway, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... endearment. You are quiet because your heart is over-full. You talk because it is pleasant, not because you have anything to say. You weary of terms that are already love-laden, and you go out into the highways and hedges, and gather up the rough, wild, wilful words, heavy with the hatreds of men, and fill them to the brim with honey-dew. All things great and small, grand or humble, you press into your service, force them to do soldier's duty, and your banner over ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various |
