"Caprice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... married life Alice Benden had experienced enough of her husband's constant caprice and frequent brutality; but this new development of it astonished her. She had not supposed that he would descend so far as to take the price of innocent blood. The tone of her voice, not indignant, ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... Filippo: he was nearly of my age, prepossessing in his appearance, and fascinating in his manners; he attached himself to me, and seemed to court my good opinion. I thought there was something of profession in his kindness, and of caprice in his disposition; but I had nothing else near me to attach myself to, and my heart felt the need of something to repose itself upon. His education had been neglected; he looked upon me as his superior in mental powers and acquirements, and tacitly acknowledged my superiority. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... strings; then a hole made in it and a little sour wine poured in. This speedily bred a small but numerous vermin. When the cheese was so rotten with them that only the twigs and string kept it from tumbling to pieces and walking off quadrivious, it came to table. By a malicious caprice of fate, cage and menagerie were put down right under the Dutchman's organ of self-torture. He recoiled with a loud ejaculation, and hung to the bench by the calves of ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Indian potato) was abundant. Communication with all arts of the surrounding country was easily had by means of the short portages that separated the sources of interlacing rivers and with his light bark canoe the Indian could travel in any direction his necessity or his caprice might dictate. ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... mixture of caution and the absence of it; cold business calculation and sudden, unreflecting impulse; but there were two details which were constant, and not subject to caprice: patient persistence in following up the prey, and pitilessness when the time came ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... prophesied well, "There shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot." But we are not concerned here with the victim of expulsion and persecution. The wayfarer with whom we shall deal is the traveller, and not the exile. He was moved by no caprice but his own. He will excite our admiration, perhaps our sympathy, only ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... of an impostor have robbed the discoverer of his just reward, and the caprice of fame has unjustly assigned to him an honour far above the renown of the greatest conquerors—that of indelibly impressing his name upon this vast portion of the earth, which ought in justice to have ...
— Peter Parley's Tales About America and Australia • Samuel Griswold Goodrich
... Mirza Abu-Taleb,[19] and in much the same line of argument—to the effect that the dowery which the eastern husband is bound by law to pay over in money to his wife in the event of a separation, is a far more effectual protection to the wife from the fickleness and caprice of her partner, ("whose interest it thus becomes, setting affection wholly out of the question, to remain on good terms with her,") than any remedy afforded by the laws of England; where a wife, though bound by ties less easily dissolved than under the Mohammedan system ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... without thanking the sweet daughter of your mother for her share in making me great. I had the presumption to believe in myself. It seemed natural enough to your good father that 'a whimsical genius,' as he called me, should be allowed the caprice of even tardily looking up his boyhood's acquaintance. He received me nobly, was proud that you should see I remembered him—and simply made no secret ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... Miss IRENE VANBRUGH, with her swift humour and her skill as a quick-change artist, naturally revelled in this tour de force, and, thanks to her, the author came very near to being justified of his caprice. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... and cannot be touched by your cares and attention. I explain myself plainly with you, and my confession ought in no way to hurt your feelings. The love which springs up in the heart is not, as you know, the effect of merit, but is partly decided by caprice; and oftentimes, when some one pleases us, we can barely find the reason. If choice and wisdom guided love, all the tenderness of my heart would be for you; but love is not thus guided. Leave me, I pray, to my blindness; ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... and damaging thousands. These abuses are so shameful, that they are scarcely credible in Britain; but they are easily capable of corroboration by inquiry and a little knowledge of Spain, where very frequently caprice is the only law in existence, or at least is the only one acted upon. I might multiply instances, but this ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... Lord Carlisle originally undertook the trust; nor can we wonder that, when his duties as a guardian brought him acquainted with Mrs. Byron, he should be deterred from interfering more than was absolutely necessary for the child by his fear of coming into collision with the violence and caprice of the mother. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... brought into being? To amuse His solitary and weary intelligence, and to become the victims or the indulged manifestations of His power. Why is one man selected for extreme agony from which a score of his fellows escape? Because god Setebos resembles Caliban, when through mere caprice he lets twenty crabs march past him unhurt and stones ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... unravel its secrets; all that the earth nourished ministered to one desire:—and what of low or sordid did there mingle with that desire? The petty avarice, the mean ambition, the debasing love, even the heat, the anger, the fickleness, the caprice of other men, did they allure or bow down my nature from its steep and solitary eyrie? I lived but to feed my mind; wisdom was my thirst, my dream, my aliment, my sole fount and sustenance of life. And have I not sown the whirlwind and reaped the wind? The glory ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sight to be a mere fish, and to differ but little in sentiments and ethical culture from all the rest of his remote cousins. But when one comes to look closer at their character and antecedents, it becomes evident at once that there is a deal of unsuspected originality and caprice about sharks and flat-fish. Instead of conforming throughout to a single plan, as the young, the gay, the giddy, and the thoughtless are too prone to conclude, fish are in reality as various and variable in their mode of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... has been blamed for 'writing so little', for deserting poetry for metaphysics and theology; he has been upbraided for winning only to lose the 'prize of his high calling'. Sir Walter Scott, one of his kindlier censors, rebukes him for 'the caprice and indolence with which he has thrown from him, as if in mere wantonness, those unfinished scraps of poetry, which like the Torso of antiquity defy the skill of his poetical brethren to complete them'. But whatever may be said ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fact, she had not come in with a different set. This was not her custom, and he worried over it. Protected by princes and financiers, she nevertheless loved her liberty so much that one seldom caught her in the same company twice in succession. For this singular caprice Aholibah, oftener called the Woman from Morocco,—because she had lived in Algiers,—was the despair of her circle. Why, argued the other birds, why fly in the face of luck? To be sure, she was still young, still beautiful, with that sort of metallic beauty which reminded Ambroise of some priceless ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... nonchalant slight, which, while the mother openly enjoyed it, filled the daughter with anger and apprehension. Quite at random, she visited points of his informal manner with unmeasured reprisal; others, for which he might have blamed himself, she passed over with strange caprice. Sometimes this attitude of hers provoked him, and sometimes it disarmed him; but whether they were at feud, or keeping an armed truce, or, as now and then happened, were in an entente cordiale which he found very charming, the thing that he always contrived ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... stared at him a full minute. His eyes fell. "No, no such good luck," he said brusquely. "It is only caprice." ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... misfortune, drew him from the cobwebs of a college library to the active energies of a useful and honoured life. But to return to Coleridge. When he quitted College, which he did before he had taken a degree, in a moment of mad caprice—it was indeed an inauspicious hour! 'In an inauspicious hour I left the friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever honoured Jesus College, Cambridge.' Short, but deep and heart-felt reminiscence! In a literary Life of himself this short memorial is all that Coleridge gives of his happy ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... and further was resolved not to expose himself to any manifestation of her caprice. He perceived Miss Thorne was disinclined to converse, and fancied she was preparing to be reserved. So he passed quietly into the next room, where he found Miss Innis quite ready to welcome him, though surrounded by a number of gentlemen. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... was shut when those who did not want came into her presence; but when the really poor came in, it was like a strainer full of holes, letting all she held in it pass through. In the exercise of generous feeling she was uniform, It was not indebted for its exercise to whim, nor caprice, nor partiality. No matter of what nation the applicant for her bounty was, or whether at war or peace with her nation; if he were hungry, she fed him; if naked, she clothed him; and, if houseless, she gave him shelter. The continued exercise of this ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... with him peaceably for months at a time; but it never let him know the precise moment of its arrival or departure. At times it seemed the one certainty in an otherwise dubious world, at other times it was a creature of unmistakably feminine caprice. He courted it, and it avoided him. He let it go, and it came back to him, caressing and tormenting him, compelling his embrace. There were days when it pursued and captured him, and then it had ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... consummation; Silvia and Silvio are either entirely careless, or else touched with a genuine human love. Nor are the more tumultuous sides of human passion represented, for it is impossible so to regard Corisca's love for Mirtillo, which is at bottom nothing but the cynical caprice of the courtesan, who regards her lovers merely as ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... and modern style of Raffaelle, that after he had finished the "Stanza della Segnatura," he forced him to destroy the paintings of the older masters and delivered the entire work to him and his assistants: a caprice which points a very significant turn in the history of painting—the triumph of the late Renaissance over the giants of ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... letters, does not deny the right of government to withdraw its confidence from any one of its delegates, representatives, or agents. He has hinted, it is true, that caprice and temper are not in accordance with the spirit of paternal rule, and that whenever a representative government punishes or rewards, good faith, integrity and justice should replace the good pleasure ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... lands and estate." The honest writer refused to partake of a splendid entertainment with which Gilbert Glossin, Esquire, now of Ellangowan, treated the rest of the company, and returned home in huge bitterness of spirit, which he vented in complaints against the fickleness and caprice of these Indian nabobs, who never knew what they would be at for ten days together. Fortune generously determined to take the blame upon herself, and cut off even this vent ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... last—that in my eye A suppliant look beheld, and me before Thee stand, timid and trembling (how I blush, In saying it, with anger and with shame), Of my own self deprived, thy every wish, Thy every word submissively observing, At every proud caprice becoming pale, At every sign of favor brightening, And changing color at each look of thine. The charm is over, and, with it, the yoke Lies broken, scattered on the ground; and I Rejoice. 'Tis true my days are laden with ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... arranged as to be rapidly flashed through the empire. Once a lady induced the Emperor to give the signal and summon his armies to the capital. The Mandarins assembled with their forces, but on finding they had been simply employed at the caprice of a woman, they returned angrily to their homes. By-and-by the enemy came; the beacon fires were again lighted; but this time the Mandarins did not heed ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Peter's advice regarding her White Minorcas and respectfully promised to act upon it, and Cherry showed him a new side, an affectionate, little sisterly deference and confidence quite different from her old childish sulkiness and pretty caprice. ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... guidance of either of the two great elements of their being. The penalties of trusting to the emotions alone are notorious; and every day affords some instance of a character that has degenerated into a bundle of impulses, of a will that has become caprice. But the consequences of making Reason our tyrant instead of our king are almost equally disastrous. There is so little which Reason, divested of all emotional or instinctive supports, is able to prove to our satisfaction that a sceptical aridity is likely to take possession ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... other system can present so obviously to the great mass of the people the two principal piers and buttresses of government, tangible interest and reasonable hope? No danger of any kind can arise from it, no antipathies, no divisions, no imposture of demagogues, no caprice of despots. On the contrary, many and great advantages in places which at the first survey do not appear to border on it. At present, the best of the English juridical institutions, that of justices of the peace, is viewed with ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... reaping an experience which enriched his writings; "Confessions d'un Enfant du Siecle" appeared in 1836, and is a significant confession of his life at this time; two years later he was appointed librarian at the Home Office, and in 1847 his charming comedy, "Un Caprice," was received with enthusiasm; in 1852 he was elected to the Academy, but his work was done, and already an ill-controlled indulgence in alcohol had fatally undermined his never robust strength; his writings, besides possessing the charm of an exquisite style, heightened by an undertone of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... had been apparently a sharer in such deceit! Would they ever believe that he had acted unwittingly, when the whole transaction was evidently to the advantage of none but himself; when he was to reap the whole of the solid benefit, and the Earl of Byerdale had only to indulge a revengeful caprice? Would anybody believe it? he asked himself: and, clasping his hands together, he stood overpowered by the feeling of having lost all hope in his own fate, of having lost her he loved for ever, and, perhaps, of having lost also her love and esteem, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... Horace Walpole panted with a secret desire for literary celebrity; a full sense of his distinguished rank long suppressed the desire of venturing the name he bore to the uncertain fame of an author, and the caprice of vulgar critics. At length he pretended to shun authors, and to slight the honours of authorship. The cause of this contempt has been attributed to the perpetual consideration of his rank. But was this bitter contempt of so early a date? Was Horace Walpole a Socrates ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... do not condemn Mr. Robinson; I but too well know that we cannot command our affections. I only lament that he did not observe some decency in his infidelities; and that while he gratified his own caprice, he forgot how much he exposed his wife ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... not a partnership. A nation, one and inseparable, we propose that it shall continue. We deny that the founders and fathers ever contemplated a mere temporary alliance dissoluble at the caprice of any member. To the Union, established under the Constitution, just as earnestly as to the cause of independence, they virtually pledged 'their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.' With every year the nation ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... upon the bridge, with banners waving, and spear and cuirass glancing in the lurid light; the demon fleet, guided by no human hand, wrapped in flames, and flitting through the darkness, with irregular movement; but portentous aspect, at the caprice of wind and tide; the death-like silence of expectation, which had succeeded the sound of trumpet and the shouts of the soldiers; and the weird glow which had supplanted the darkness-all combined ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cathedral itself, that edifice formerly so dogmatic, invaded henceforth by the bourgeoisie, by the community, by liberty, escapes the priest and falls into the power of the artist. The artist builds it after his own fashion. Farewell to mystery, myth, law. Fancy and caprice, welcome. Provided the priest has his basilica and his altar, he has nothing to say. The four walls belong to the artist. The architectural book belongs no longer to the priest, to religion, to Rome; it is the property of poetry, of imagination, of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... judge by the considerable fragment that exists, he was in the right. There is nothing immature, nothing here of the boy; he is approaching, in his tale, a fateful point of passion and disaster; his characters, especially the elder woman, the nurse, are entirely human, with no touch of caprice; they all live their separate lives in our memories. Then the end came. One moment of bewildered consciousness—then unconsciousness and death. He had written to me, some months before, a letter full ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... skeleton's head or a grotesque mask bears to the countenance of living humanity. In no other portion of our planet is nature so unnatural, so fanciful and extravagant, and seemingly the production of caprice, as on the great central ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... arms of another; and in his despair he finds the means of introducing himself into the house of his shepherdess, in order to learn her feelings and to hear from her the fate he must expect. There he sees everything ready for what he fears; he sees the unworthy rival whom the caprice of a father opposes to the tenderness of his love; he sees that ridiculous rival triumphant near the lovely shepherdess, as if already assured of his conquest. Such a sight fills him with a wrath he can hardly master. He looks despairingly at her ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... beauty is not, as some have supposed, a mere matter of caprice. It rests in part on (1) an objective basis of aesthetic character which holds all its variations together and leads to a remarkable approximation among the ideals of feminine beauty cherished by the most intelligent men of all races. But beyond this general objective basis we find that (2) the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a whisper, "poor Antonia becomes more peculiar and trying each day. She simply bullies us all. Look at that poor dear little Nora, submitting to her caprice as gently as a lamb. I don't know why she wants Squire Lorrimer to come here. I am not acquainted with him, and it will be really painful for me to see him in his present afflicted condition. I am a very cheerful person by nature, ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... to go to Rome with them. She managed it all so well, saying nothing at first of their intended journey, but making herself very agreeable to her son. She brought to him all the flattering things said of them. She studied every little whim, wish, or caprice. She put him on a pedestal and made an idol of him. She was all that was gay, amiable, pleasant and kind. She made herself not only his friend and companion, but everything else in the world to him. She was gay, amiable, gracious, witty. With her still beautiful ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... you for him, and regretting him for you. Last Monday he was good enough to play, in his usual and admirable manner, at the concert for the Orchestral Pension Fund. The pieces he had selected were his new 'Concerto Pathetique' (in F sharp minor) and an extremely piquant and brilliant 'Caprice on Hungarian Melodies.' (This latter piece is dedicated to me.) The public was in a good humour, even really warm, which is usually one ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... and this idea I mentioned to Augustus as soon as I found an opportunity. He thought the matter possible, but urged the necessity of the greatest caution in making the attempt, as the conduct of the hybrid appeared to be instigated by the most arbitrary caprice alone; and, indeed, it was difficult to say if he was at any moment of sound mind. Peters went upon deck in about an hour, and did not return again until noon, when he brought Augustus a plentiful supply of junk beef and pudding. Of this, when we were left alone, I partook ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... fierce outlaws, Who think man's spirit as a worm's, and they Would trample out, for any slight caprice, 235 The meanest or the noblest life. This mood Is marketable here in Rome. They ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... by groups of old trees—some Scotch firs, some beeches, a cedar or two—groups where the slow selective hand of Time had been at work for generations, developing here the delightful roundness of quiet mass and shade, and there the bold caprice of bare fir trunks and ragged branches, standing back against the sky. Beyond the lawn stretched a green descent indefinitely long, carrying the eye indeed almost to the limit of the view, and becoming from the lawn onwards a wide irregular avenue, bordered by beeches of a splendid ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... So she has insisted upon keeping to the business bargain up till now, has she!" he thought. "If it goes on we shall have to make her jealous. That would be an infallible remedy for her caprice." ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... horse, whether through some wild caprice of its own, or some touch of its dying rider, circled back, galloping down the long slope toward the man who had come to help Hall adjust his differences with these contemptible sheepmen. Hall's hat fell off as his head sank forward; he ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... doubtless, to human being he never unbent before; in my presence his sternness, his somber moods, his gloomy thoughts vanished. It was evident that he had much preying upon his mind; and perhaps he loved me thus fondly because—by some unaccountable whim or caprice, or strange influence—he found solace in my society. The presents which he heaped upon me, but which have been nearly all snatched from me, were of immense value; and when I remonstrated with him on account of a liberality so useless to one whom ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... Colonel Howard and the gallant Captain Borroughcliffe may find it easier to overcome the enemies of his majesty in the field than to shake a woman's caprice. Not a day has passed these three weeks, that I have not sent my inquiries to the door of Miss Howard as became her father's kinsman, with a wish to appease her apprehensions of the pirates; but little has she deigned me In reply, more than such thanks as ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... care that Miss Caprice should not have time to change her mind. The whole house was soon in a bustle, for Prue ruled supreme. Mr. Yule fled from the din of women's tongues, the bridegrooms were kept on a very short allowance ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... love ye, nor fear ye; and though I buy with ye and sell with ye, and talk with ye, I will neither eat with ye, drink with ye, nor pray with ye. They made me, without my search, a species of popular idol; they, without reason or judgement, beyond the caprice of their good pleasure, threw down the image from its pedestal; it was not broken with the fall, and they would, it seems, again replace it,—but ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... a scarlet fever. This same black shadow, with others almost as hideous, now glided among the pillars of the magnificent saloon, grinning recognition, until the man shuddered anew at the forgotten terrors of his childhood. It amused him, however, to observe the black woman, with the mischievous caprice peculiar to such beings, steal up to the chair of the Oldest Inhabitant and peep into ...
— A Select Party (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seldom happen that a father's death surprises youth in the full-blown splendor of life, in the midst of the mad riot of an orgy? Death is as unexpected in his caprice as a courtesan in her disdain; but death is truer—Death ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... prostitute came to Tarragona, driven from Venice at the time of its fall. The life of this woman had been a tissue of romantic adventures and strange vicissitudes. To her, oftener than to any other woman of her class, it had happened, thanks to the caprice of great lords struck with her extraordinary beauty, to be literally gorged with gold and jewels and all the delights of excessive wealth,—flowers, carriages, pages, maids, palaces, pictures, journeys ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... our refuge from the caprice of fate, our centre of happiness and strength. But these things have been said so often that we need do no more than refer to them, and indicate them as our starting-point. Ennoblement comes to man in the degree that his consciousness ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... these means, by a certain contempt of Great Britain, by constant reference to American usage, by citations from American authors, Webster made the title to his Dictionary good in every part of it, while by the exercise of individual caprice and of a personal authority, which had grown out of his long-continued and solitary labor, he attached his own name to it. Both names remain. The existing Dictionary is "An American Dictionary of the English Language," and bears indubitable evidence of its application to American use, but it ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... was not real and that the truths were not to be shaken. Their conduct was marked by a corresponding unity. They determined once for all that there were rules which had to be obeyed, and when any particular case arose it was not judged according to the caprice of the moment, but ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... purified and ennobled, has become charity among civilized peoples. Under my coarse exterior my heart no doubt merely felt passing shocks of fear and disgust at the sight of punishments which I myself might have to endure any day at the caprice of my oppressors; especially as John, when he saw me turn pale at these frightful spectacles, had a habit of saying, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... unwieldy bark; and there could be no doubt that if the Argonauts did succeed in getting their vessels out into the river, it would immediately descend the stream, and that it, and those upon it, would either be upset altogether, or taken to whichever bank and whatever part of it, the river in its caprice might please. ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... artist may be as strenuous in the one case as in the other; unless, indeed, we maintain, as perhaps we may, that individuality is more apt to atrophy in the latter instance; for as one gets farther and farther away from nature he is in more danger from conventionality than from caprice. And this is in fact what has happened since the high Renaissance, the long line of conventionalities being continued, sometimes punctuated here and there as by Clodion or Houdon, David, Rude, or Barye, sometimes rising into great dignity and refinement ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... nothing to say of myself, entirely and without qualification. One grows familiar with all strange things by time. But the more I frequent myself and the better I know myself, the less do I understand myself. If others would consider themselves as I do, they would find themselves full of caprice. Rid myself of it I cannot without making myself away. They who are not aware of it have the better bargain. And yet I know not whether they have ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... that monarchy is that in which one man governs, according to fixed and determinate laws; and a despotism is that in which one man, without law, or rule of administration, by the mere impulse of will or caprice, decides, and carries ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... speeches; but if Gussie had a chance to secure another escort more to her mind, she thought nothing of snubbing Hugh unmercifully, yet was willing enough to smile him back to her side when no other gentleman offered his company. But few men care to be made the plaything of a young girl's caprice, and there came a time when Gussie's smile lost its power to charm. Her pretty face had been the attraction; but having ample opportunity of seeing Gussie under the different light of home-life, he could not help seeing the shallow nature that lay behind her outward sweetness, or that this ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... complete indifference shown to her wishes as to the furnishings of the Tower; these various happenings had at last brought her to an unwelcome commerce with the bare truth. She had married a selfish eccentric, who had chosen her for a caprice and was now tired of her. She had not a farthing, nor any art or skill by which to earn one. Her family was as penniless as herself. There was nothing for it but to submit. But her temper and spirits had ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... this question, by saying, that they did so, because they did not understand the meaning of the books they quoted. But it has been answered by some learned Christians, that Jesus and the apostles did not quote in the manner they did through caprice or ignorance bat according to certain methods of interpretation, which were in their times of established authority among ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... bright with spring flowers, gleaming with crystal streams, and fringed on all sides by deciduous and coniferous trees, above and among which are great glaciers and the snowy peaks of Tilail. Fashion has deserted Sonamarg, rough of access, for Gulmarg, a caprice indicated by the ruins of several huts and of a church. The pure bracing air, magnificent views, the proximity and accessibility of glaciers, and the presence of a kind friend who was 'hutted' there for the summer, made Sonamarg a very pleasant halt ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... neighbour might be,—which would be almost as bad. Let him be sent to Cayenne if he deserves it, but let a jury say that he has deserved it. My idea of government is this,—that we want to be governed by law and not by caprice, and that we must have a legislature to make our laws. If I thought that Parliament as at present established made the laws badly, I would desire a change; but I doubt whether we shall have them better from any change in Parliament ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... acquaintances. He had asked and obtained leave to write to Maud Enderby; what on earth could he write about? How could he address her? He had promised to go and see Ida Starr, on a most impracticable footing. Was it not almost certain that, before the day came round, her caprice would have vanished, and his reception would prove anything but a flattering one? The feelings which both girls had at the time excited in him seemed artificial; in his present mood he in vain tried to resuscitate his interest either in the one or the other. It was as though he had ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... agreeable task. It is true, I met on all sides with indications of sympathetic interest in the completion of my great lyric work, although most of my acquaintances regarded the whole thing as a chimera, or possibly a bold caprice. The only one who entered into it with any heartiness or real enthusiasm was Herwegh, with whom I frequently discussed it, and to whom I generally read aloud such portions as were completed. Sulzer was much annoyed at the remodelling of Siegfrieds Tod, as he regarded it ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... their language to understand them. I have since learnt from Omai, that they offer human sacrifices to the Supreme Being. According to his account, what men shall be so sacrificed, depends on the caprice of the high priest, who, when they are assembled on any solemn occasion, retires alone into the house of God, and stays there some time. When he comes out, he informs them, that he has seen and conversed with their great God (the high priest alone having that privilege), ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... equal sufferer. He came up all the way from the city full of sweet anticipations. It was for your sake that he came; and love pictured you as embodying all attractions. But how has he found you? Ah, my daughter, your caprice has wounded the heart that turned to you for love. He came in joy, but ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... present form for reading (perhaps in the refectory) in the great religious houses. They were copied and re-copied during the succeeding centuries and the scribes according to their knowledge, devotion or caprice made various additions, subtractions and occasional multiplications. The Irish Lives are almost certainly of a somewhat earlier date than the Latin and are based partly (i.e. as regards the bulk of the miracles) on local tradition, and partly (i.e. as regards the purely ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... I must confess that your evident restraint towards me, so different from what perhaps my vanity induced me to hope, has been to me a source of wonder as well as regret. May I flatter myself that this rumour has been the occasion of an apparent caprice, which I never could have imagined that Miss Etheridge would ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... retiring from court, to appease the continual uneasiness her presence gave the queen: at other times it was to avoid temptations, by which she wished to insinuate that her innocence was still preserved: in short, the king's heart was continually distracted by alarms, or oppressed by humour and caprice. ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... arguing that pleasure is the chief good, but that we should have a principle of choice. He did not intend to oppose 'the useful' to some higher conception, such as the Platonic ideal, but to chance and caprice. The Platonic Socrates pursues the same vein of thought in the Protagoras, where he argues against the so-called sophist that pleasure and pain are the final standards and motives of good and evil, and that the salvation of human life depends upon a right estimate of pleasures greater or ...
— Philebus • Plato
... dear to every patriot I shall devote myself with anxious solicitude. It will be my desire to guard against that most fruitful source of danger to the harmonious action of our system which consists in substituting the mere discretion and caprice of the Executive or of majorities in the legislative department of the Government for powers which have been withheld from the Federal Government by the Constitution. By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... dwells on her tongue. With all the boasted fortitude and resolution of our sex, we are but mere machines. Let love once pervade our breasts, and its object may mould us into any form that pleases her fancy, or even caprice. ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... promises in the beginning to keep them in the end, had ceased from chilling caprice and withdrawals: the whole land was now the frank revelation of her loveliness. Autumn—the hours of falling and of departing; spring—season of rise and of return. The rise of sap from root to summit; the rise of plant from soil to sun; the rise of bud from ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... that social perfection which they are commanded to seek, and of that womankind of which the castle affords so few examples. To please her, this lazy, bored, highbred woman, with all the squeamishness and caprice of high birth and laziness about her, becomes their ideal; to be favourably noticed, their highest glory; to be loved, these wretched mortals, by this divinity—that thought must often pass through their brain and terrify ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... Lord Castleton cannot do," said the marquis, gravely. "The rank of Sir Sedley Beaudesert was a quiet and comfortable rank, he might marry a curate's daughter, or a duke's, and please his eye or grieve his heart as the caprice took him. But Lord Castleton must marry, not for a wife, but for a marchioness,—marry some one who will wear his rank for him; take the trouble of splendor oft his hands, and allow him to retire into a corner and dream that he is Sedley Beaudesert once more! Yes, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... numbers of them not only at the bazaars or shops making purchases, but riding in splendid carriages through the streets. So prodigal are these poor deluded creatures of their money, that, although slaves and liable to immediate sale at the caprice of their keepers, they have often been known to spend in one afternoon 200 dollars in a shopping excursion. Endowed with natural talents, they are readily instructed in every accomplishment, requisite to constitute them charming companions. Often as a carriage dashes by, the pedestrian ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... committed in giving and executing those orders, that the innocent sometimes have suffered along with the guilty. In short, such is their miserable condition, that they are exposed defenceless to the insolence, caprice, and passions of owners, obliged to labour all their life without any prospect of reward, or any hope of an end of their toil until the day of their death. At the decease of their masters they descend, like other ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... sinister Designs upon the People and has offered to such as will accept of Pardon upon an unlimited Submission, "Royal Forgiveness." But who is base enough to wish to have a precarious Care dependent upon the caprice of Power, unrestrained by any Law and governed by the dangerous ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... be drawn from all this. The simplicity of it, for instance. Since believing is looking, it can be done without special equipment or religious paraphernalia. God has seen to it that the one life-and-death essential can never be subject to the caprice of accident. Equipment can break down or get lost, water can leak away, records can be destroyed by fire, the minister can be delayed or the church burn down. All these are external to the soul and are subject to accident or mechanical failure: but looking ...
— The Pursuit of God • A. W. Tozer
... show the Lady Marcia that he was not to be dismissed and sent for—much less ordered back at the caprice of a girl. His next was to humour the whim of a child, and his third was to obey humbly and thankfully, without a thought but of Marcia's beauty and his ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... may not hear an irritating noise, that she may relieve herself as soon as possible from the painful weakness of compassion, or that she may avoid the danger of being interrogated by the family as to the cause of the disturbance. It is less trouble to her to yield to caprice and ill-humour than to prevent or cure it, or at least she thinks it is so. In reality it is not; for an humoured child in time plagues its attendant infinitely more than it would have done with reasonable ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... symbols of their profession, from any party who have more evidently and practically abandoned the distinctive principles and order of a covenanted ancestry. There is no constitutional barrier in the way of their coalescence with any party, whom interest or caprice may select. ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... House only goes where it thinks in the end the nation will follow; but it takes its chance of the nation following or not following; it assumes the initiative, and acts upon its discretion or its caprice. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... the propriety of its conduct, is final, and not to be questioned by other Powers. An assertion to this effect would obviously be the negation of the whole system of international law, of which Professor de Martens is so great a master, resting, as that system does, not on individual caprice, but upon the agreement of nations in restraint of the caprice of any one of them. The last word, with reference to the propriety of the conduct of any given State, rests, of course, not with that State; but with its neighbours. "Securus ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... that Dudley Venner worshipped, when he attended service anywhere,—which depended very much on the caprice of Elsie. He saw plainly enough that a generous and liberally cultivated nature might find a refuge and congenial souls in either of these two persuasions, but he objected to some points of the formal creed of the older church, and especially to the mechanism which renders it ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... my part I soon recanted in my heart: For if a rival should arise, How can he possibly devise The things that I have let alone, Since each man's fancy is his own, And likewise colouring of the piece?— It was not therefore mere caprice, But strong reflection made me write: Wherefore since you in tales delight, Which I, in justice, after all, Not Esop's, but Esopian call; Since he invented but a few; I more, and some entirely new, Keeping indeed ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... making great plans for a golden future; and a golden future there must be, but I had then no hope of it, no joy in life, no happiness even in my beauty. One only thought spurred me on, to forget past, present and future; to buy forgetfulness by any caprice; to win ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... work, where caprice has long wantoned without control, and vanity sought praise by petty reformation, I have endeavoured to proceed with a scholar's reverence for antiquity, and a grammarian's regard to the genius of our tongue. I have attempted few alterations, and among those few, perhaps, the greater part ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... predicting the policy of the Vatican is surely not so difficult as M. Renan suggested, when he remarked to a friend of the present writer, 'The Church is a woman; it is impossible to say what she will do next.' For where is the evidence of caprice in the history of the Roman Church? If any State has been guided by a fixed policy, which has imposed itself inexorably on its successive rulers, in spite of the utmost divergences in their personal characters and aims, that State is ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... It is very probable that the firmness that distinguished her maturer will in youth might have been taken for obstinacy, that her nice discrimination might at the same period have been taken for adolescent caprice, and that the positive expression of her quick intellect might have been thought youthful impertinence before her years had won ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... and the first liberty to be secured is the right to be dealt with in accordance with law. A man who has no legal rights against another, but stands entirely at his disposal, to be treated according to his caprice, is a slave to that other. He is "rightless," devoid of rights. Now, in some barbaric monarchies the system of rightlessness has at times been consistently carried through in the relations of subjects to the king. Here men ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... the bread very much, and renders it whiter and firmer. Good, white, and porous bread, may certainly be manufactured from good wheaten flour alone; but to produce the degree of whiteness rendered indispensable by the caprice of the consumers in London, it is necessary (unless the very best flour is employed,) that the dough should be bleached; and no substance has hitherto been found to answer this purpose better ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... his execution, Butler wrote a final confession of faith: "I shall have to find my way across the harbour bar without the aid of any pilot. In these matters I have for many years carried an exempt flag, and, as it has not been carried through caprice or ignorance, I am compelled to carry it to the last. There is an impassable bar of what I honestly believe to be the inexorable logic of philosophy and facts, history and experience of the nature of the world, the human race and myself, between ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... his sovereign, and that the empress will resent every word of disloyalty spoken to the parent. And I hold it to be highly disloyal for my son to accuse me of making sport of his hopes. I have not come to my latest determination from cruelty or caprice; I have made it in the strength of my maternal love to shield my child from sin, and in the rectitude of my imperial responsibility to my people, who have a right to claim from me that I bestow upon them a monarch who is worthy to reign over Austria. Therefore, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... lovers were wont to turn when suffering from her caprice, was on very friendly terms with the young Earl. He used to come and stand by her, and talk to her about Wrangerton, and seemed quite amused and edified by her quiet enthusiasm for it, and for Helvellyn, and her intimacy with all the pictures which ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... plants from seed-pans, it is usual to put them round the edges of pots. This is no mere caprice, but is founded on the well-ascertained fact that seedlings establish their roots with greater readiness near the edge of the pot than ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... the fair Louise de La Valliere when she danced in the royal ballet in the forest of Fontainebleau and stole a king's heart by the flashes of her pretty feet. Angelique had been indulged by her father in every caprice, and in the gay world inhaled the incense of adulation until she regarded it as her right, and resented ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... I pray you, this wild enterprise. A great and good king should not be sacrificed to the strange caprice of the Queen of Issland. You know that like all others who have contested against the unmatched strength of Brunhild, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... his band. The trail on the opposite side of the mud belt was little used, and old Tom, by throwing some fresh rushes across it, expected to make sure that the Stallion would enter by the other, if indeed he should by any caprice try to come by ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... softest tones, just touched with irony. "The fact of our engagement has been published. Our marriage is looked for by a host of friends and acquaintances, and even by the mere readers of the newspapers. All but at the last moment, on a caprice, an impulse you do not pretend to justify to one's intelligence, you declare it is all at an end. Pray, how do you propose to satisfy natural curiosity ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... example of the Gothic of the South, and of the modifications which that style invariably underwent, through the artistic caprice of its builders, or the political fore-sight of ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... fulfilling that promise. My decision is as follows. Whatever your conduct may have been, I do not consider myself justified in breaking the ties in which we are bound by a Higher Power. The family cannot be broken up by a whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of the partners in the marriage, and our life must go on as it has done in the past. This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am fully persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has called forth the present letter, and that you will ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... characters, which by some associations of memory, or caprice of fancy, are ever blended in our recollections—the one of ancient, the other of modern days—the one of sacred, the other of profane history. Catharine of Arragon, the unloved consort of the King of England, and Leah, the daughter of the Syrian ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... all probability, would have had the original charge retrumped up against me. I learned that this was the German practice. Moreover, the old charge was liable to be trotted out at any odd moment at the caprice of my oppressors. The authorities had never acquitted me of being a spy. On the other hand they had never pronounced me guilty. I was forced to accept the former interpretation from my transference to the internment camps, as if I had been merely a detained civilian. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... is, so to speak, an impression sine materia. Presumably the notes which we hear at such moments tend to spread out before our eyes, over surfaces greater or smaller according to their pitch and volume; to trace arabesque designs, to give us the sensation of breath or tenuity, stability or caprice. But the notes themselves have vanished before these sensations have developed sufficiently to escape submersion under those which the following, or even simultaneous notes have already begun to awaken in us. And this indefinite perception would continue to smother ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... while Cowley, who resembles Casimir in many respects, completely barbarizes his Latinity, and even his metre, by the heterogeneous nature of his thoughts. That Dr. Johnson should have passed a contrary judgment, and have even preferred Cowley's Latin Poems to Milton's, is a caprice that has, if I mistake not, excited the surprise of all scholars. I was much amused last summer with the laughable affright, with which an Italian poet perused a page of Cowley's Davideis, contrasted with the enthusiasm with which he first ran through, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... perpetually gives victory to the male, who is thus constantly rescued on the very ridges of defeat. She said to Seumas that his fatal day would dawn when he loved a woman, because he would sacrifice his destiny to her caprice, and she begged him for love of her to beware of all that twisty sex. To Brigid she revealed that a woman's terrible day is upon her when she knows that a man loves her, for a man in love submits only to a woman, a partial, individual and temporary submission, but a woman who is loved surrenders ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... and Mascoutins, and rest content with driving them away; to which the Hurons returned a fierce and haughty refusal. There was danger that, if vexed or thwarted, the rabble of excited savages now gathered before the fort might turn from friends into enemies, and in some burst of wild caprice lift parricidal tomahawks against their French fathers. Dubuisson saw no choice but to humor them, put himself at their head, aid them in their vengeance, and even set them on. Therefore, when they called out for admittance, he did not venture ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... last time I listened to hear if any sound from my companions could reach my ears. At the moment when I left the right road I had not noticed the absence of the stream. It is evident that at that moment a deviation had presented itself before me, whilst the Hansbach, following the caprice of another incline, had gone with my companions ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Intoxicated by the unaccustomed possession of power, and without the least notion of the responsibilities which attached to their situation as masters of the land, they too often abandoned themselves to the indulgence of every whim which cruelty or caprice could dictate. Not unfrequently, says an unsuspicious witness, I have seen the Spaniards, long after the Conquest, amuse themselves by hunting down the natives with bloodhounds for mere sport, or in order to train their dogs to the game! 1 The most unbounded scope was given to ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... do I smile when I should sigh? And wherefore do I feed when I would fast? And wherefore do I dance when I should pray? And wherefore do I live when I should die? Canst answer that, good Sir? O there are women The world deem mad, or worse, whose life but seems One vile caprice, a freakish thing of whims And restless nothingness; yet if we pierce The soul, may be we'll touch some cause profound For what seems causeless. Early love despised, Or baffled, which is worse; ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... in 1624, Madame Champlain lived alone, and became more and more detached from the world, till she asked her husband to allow her to enter an Ursuline convent. Champlain, fearing that this desire might arise rather from caprice than a vocation for the life of the cloister, thought it advisable to refuse her request, and he bade her a last adieu in 1633. After Champlain's death, Father Le Jeune informed her that she was now free to follow the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne
... best ordered counties—Armagh and Wexford—are the counties in which small farms most abound. I call a reluctant witness, Master Fitzgibbon, to testify that when the Irish tenant, be his holding ever so small, gets common justice and is not subjected to caprice, he gives no trouble. That gentleman informs us that there are 650 estates of all magnitudes, from 100 l. to 20,000 l. a-year, under the control and management of the court of chancery; the total rents of these amount to ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... he said, "that you're foolish enough to have any feeling beyond caprice. That would be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... one circumstance a little extraordinary; that if there be a single spot in the glebe more barren, more marshy, more expos'd to winds, more distant from the church, or skeleton of a church, or from any conveniency of building: the rector, or vicar may be obliged by the caprice, or pique of the bishop, to build, under pain of sequestration, (an office, which ever falls into the most knavish hands,) upon whatever point his lordship shall command; although the farmers have not paid one quarter of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift |
