"Capricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tell you. But I have a reason. I'm not capricious. I don't take violent dislikes to people for nothing. Let it alone. We can talk very pleasantly about other things. Since you are good enough to like me, it might be amusing to tell me why. If you have any good reason, you know, you won't stop liking me just because ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... eliminated, he could turn in a card distinguished for its fours and threes; but unfortunately these sad lapses inevitably occurred. As Booverman himself admitted, his appearance on the golf-links was the signal for the capricious imps of chance who stir up politicians to indiscreet truths and keep the Balkan pot of discord bubbling, to forsake immediately these prime duties, and enjoy a ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... of printing all nouns with capitals, is borne out by no less an authority than the new Grimm's Deutsches Woerterbuch, which prints all words in "lower case" type except proper names. Nothing can be more unsightly than the constant breaking up of the harmony of a line by the capricious ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... proper food for the sick Knowledge of dietetics an important factor in the education of every woman No special dishes for all cases Hot buttered toast and rich jellies objectionable The simplest food the best Scrupulous neatness in serving important To coax a capricious appetite A "purple" dinner A "yellow" dinner To facilitate the serving of hot foods Cooking utensils Gruel Long-continued cooking needed Use of the double boiler in the cooking of gruels Gruel strainer Recipes: Arrowroot ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... and capricious creature, is, oftentimes so easily offended that if the maid rise from her before the milk is all withdrawn, the chances are that she will not again stand quietly at that milking; or, if the vessel used in milking is taken away and another substituted in ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... this demeanor; but she knew—I should rather have said she was aware; for it was a matter more of sensation than thought—a conviction that had grown up in her mind without reflection—she was aware that her mother was somewhat capricious in her friendships. She had seen it in the case of servants and of some of the governesses she had had when she was quite young. One day they would be all that was estimable and charming in Lady Hastings' eyes, and another, from some ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... in English, which she often spoke as if she were translating from the French. "Je me suis evadee—" put in that way, the opening sentence immediately suggested that she might merely have wanted to escape from a boring round of engagements; which was very likely true, for he judged her to be capricious, and easily wearied of the ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... band! thinks Friedrich Wilhelm. Fritz is celebrated, too, for his fine foot; a dapper little fellow, altogether pretty in the eyes of simple female courtiers, with his blond locks combed out at the temples, with his bright eyes, sharp wit, and sparkling capricious ways. The cockatoo locks, these at least we will ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... investigation. On the pretext of seeking a lady who had dropped a handkerchief he had crossed the ball room and was therefore in a position to give an accurate account of the waltzes he had heard, dulcet, undulating, capricious measures, far more provocative than Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata" which Tolstoy has denounced. The lady that Mr. Coote sought was not in the ball room, and so he had an opportunity of investigating all the retiring rooms, and I need not describe the pensive and shocked faces that listened to his ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... bed, and they slunk away, gaping at the open box on the stairs, and huddling together overhead, all on one bed, in the bitter cold, to whisper to each other. Isaac was a stern parent; Bessie a capricious one; and the children, though they could be riotous enough by themselves, were nervous and ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thus for yourself, brother. You are so little careful of your fortunes, that when a hundred others would have acquired titles and gold, you have only said—she is capricious, she is perfidious, and a coquette, and I prefer not to serve her. Therefore, you have renounced the world, though you have not ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... and queenly qualities and accomplishments, Elizabeth had many unamiable traits and unwomanly ways. She was capricious, treacherous, unscrupulous, ungrateful, and cruel. She seemed almost wholly devoid of a moral or religious sense. Deception and falsehood were her usual weapons in diplomacy. "In the profusion and recklessness ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... citizens. 28. He next resolved to invest himself with the dictatorship, and that for a perpetuity; and thus uniting all civil as well as military power in his own person, he thought he might thence give an air of justice to every oppression. 29. Thus he continued to govern with capricious tyranny, none daring to resist his power, until, contrary to the expectation of all mankind, he laid down the dictatorship, after having held it ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... Powers, excepting that of Algiers, our affairs remain on the ordinary footing. The consul-general residing with that Regency has suddenly and without cause been banished, together with all the American citizens found there. Whether this was the transitory effect of capricious despotism or the first act of predetermined hostility is not ascertained. Precautions were taken by the consul ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... adaptation of his means to his ends Utter disproportions between the king's means and aims Uttering of my choler doth little ease my grief or help my case Valour on the one side and discretion on the other Waiting the pleasure of a capricious and despotic woman Walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures War was the normal and natural condition of mankind War to compel the weakest to follow the religion of the strongest War was the normal condition of Christians Wasting ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he walked the smoking horses up and down the Newlands' drive, waiting for Helen to rejoin him. And now, somehow, that fog seemed to come up between him and the well-furnished breakfast-table, between him and the radiant expanse of the vivacious, capricious, half-classic, half-modern, mercantile city outstretched there, teeming, breeding, fermenting, in the fecundating heat of the noonday sun. The chill of the fog struck cold into his vitals now, giving him the strangest physical sensation. Richard ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... is reserved and studious, he prefers study to any amusement, and enjoys reading the best authors, applies himself earnestly to the abstract sciences, cares little for anything else. He is silent, and loves solitude. He is capricious, haughty, and excessively egotisical, talks little, but is quick and energetic in his replies, prompt and severe in his repartees, has great pride and ambition, aspiring to any thing. The young man ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... from New York found the weather fine and Lord Saxondale's party enjoying life thoroughly. Dickey and the capricious Lady Jane were bright or squally with charming uncertainty. Lady Jane, Lord Bob's sister, certainly was not in love with Mr. Savage, and he was too indolent to give his side of the case continuous thought. Dimly he realized, and once lugubriously ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... dart into the barn-door, through the barn, and out into the yard, before Missy realized the capricious creature's intent. And, as luck would have it, the Reverend MacGill was sitting on the porch, calling on Grandma Shears. If only it had been anybody but Rev. MacGill! Missy cherished a secret but profound admiration ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... enterprise, together with Galbraith's partnership in it, had become known here or there, got passed on from one to another, with modifications and embellishments according to fancy, and grown to be a monument of scandal and conjecture. But nothing is more capricious than the heat-lightning of gossip, and it just chanced that, up to the morning of Rose's little triumph, no one beyond Galbraith and Rose herself even suspected the identity with Dane of the chorus, of the costumer who was to submit, on approval, gowns for the sextette. The fact, ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... in the very look and atmosphere of the old house, fulfilled quietly the purpose of her capricious visit, and at the same time cherished a dreamy pleasure such as she had not thought ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... France and Germany than in the countries where Sterne's own tongue is spoken.[1] His place among the English classics has, from the foreign point of view, never been a dubious question, amatter of capricious taste and unstable ideals. His peculiar message, whether interpreted and insisted upon with clearness of insight, or blindness of misunderstanding, played its not unimportant part in certain developments of continental ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... crippling their resources. But for the present we may say in regard to them, happy is the man who can reckon upon a regular income of five rupees a month for the support of himself and his family, albeit he may have two or three relations dependent on him, and a capricious money lender ever on his track, ready to extort a lion's share of his scanty earnings. And thrice happy is the man who can boast an income of ten, fifteen, or twenty rupees a month, though the poorest and least skilled laborers in ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... win prizes at Cambridge, as he had done among the Blue Coats, in spite of irregularities. The only danger was, that the incalculable tendencies in him might be fatally timed, and that his good intentions might be frustrated by some act which was not due to habit but to capricious, scattered impulses. He could not be said to have any one bad habit; yet at longer or shorter intervals he had fits of impish recklessness, and did things that would have made ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... This fact is a feature in our national pretensions that could ever have been regarded doubtfully merely through insufficient knowledge. Dr. Johnson, indeed, made it the distinguishing merit of the French, that they "have a book upon every subject." But Dr. Johnson was not only capricious as regards temper and variable humors, but as regards the inequality of his knowledge. Incoherent and unsystematic was Dr. Johnson's information in most cases. Hence his extravagant misappraisement of Knolles, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... him, "Here comes the Emperor," or "Here comes Old Dutch," and very often there would be quite a little crowd round him buying his things. Uncle regarded himself always as conferring a great dignity on any one that he sold a badge to, but he was very capricious and he had certain buttons and badges that he would only part with as a very special favour and honour. Uncle got on so fast that presently Cousin Ferdinand decided that it would be all right to know him again and so he came over and made a reconciliation and took away Uncle's ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... but alas! not so: if the despotic Government has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has its bad, and it is for this that the civilized world is compelled to substitute for it something more orderly and less capricious. Good as the Imperial Government might have been, it must be recollected, too, that since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it. "Fly from steeple to steeple" the eagles of the former ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... vale, muy vale!" Biting off a large quid of black twist, he said: "You did wrong, captain, to mix cheese with plums. White cheese is never safe unless you know whence it comes. Quien sabe, it may have been from leche de Capra and becoming capricious—" ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... the people collectively and individually to an excessive servitude. For, as I said, this extreme liberty easily introduces the reign of tyranny, the severest of all unjust slaveries. In fact, from the midst of this unbridled and capricious populace, they elect some one as a leader in opposition to their afflicted and expelled nobles: some new chief, forsooth, audacious and impure, often insolently persecuting those who have deserved well of the State, and ready to gratify ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... lacked physical graces, this and many another story prove that she had a rare gift of diplomacy. She had, moreover, an unfailing cheerfulness and goodness of heart which quickly endeared her to the moody and capricious Peter. In his frequent fits of nervous irritability which verged on madness, she alone had the power to soothe him and restore him to sanity. Her very voice had a magic to arrest him in his worst rages, and when the fit of madness (for such it undoubtedly was) was passing away she would "take ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... habits and instincts, yet the birds sometimes seem as whimsical and capricious as superior beings. One is not safe, for instance, in making any absolute assertion as to their place or mode of building. Ground-builders often get up into a bush, and tree-builders sometimes get upon the ground or into a tussock of grass. The song sparrow, which is a ground ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... Love's a capricious power: I've known it hold Out through a fever caused by its own heat, But be much puzzled by a cough and cold, And find a quinsy very hard to treat; Against all noble maladies he's bold, But vulgar illnesses don't like to meet, Nor that a sneeze should ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Sagittarius, as we at length discover, Teufelsdroeckh has become a University man; though, how, when, or of what quality, will nowhere disclose itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in the way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now surprise our readers; not even the total want of dates, almost without parallel in a Biographical work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... known, what strikes the capricious mind of the poet is not always what affects the mass of readers. Now, while admiring, as others doubtless will admire, the details we have to relate, our main preoccupation concerned a matter to which no one before ourselves had ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... accomplished, vivacious, witty, a dashing and fascinating figure in dress and conversation, gracious and imperious by turns. She easily singled out and secured the admiration of such of the Springfield beaux as most pleased her somewhat capricious fancy. She was a sister of Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards, whose husband was one of the "Long Nine." This circumstance made Lincoln a frequent visitor at the Edwards house; and, being thus much thrown in her company, he found himself, almost before he knew it, entangled in a new love affair, ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Fanny regarded him led him to perceive the error he had committed, and, fearful of betraying himself, he added quickly, "You must make allowance for the morbid fancies of an invalid, proverbially the most capricious of all mortals. Six weeks ago I was in quite as great a hurry to reach this place as I now am to get away ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... confidants who enforced her commands. This precious chit was for ever wanting to play at being mamma, undressing the smallest ones to dress them again, insisting on examining the others all over, messing them about and exercising the capricious despotism of a grown-up person with a vicious disposition. Under her leadership they got up tricks for which they should have been well spanked. The troop paddled in the colored water from the dyer's and emerged from it ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... They lay fallow for seventy-five years, and then gave the best of accounts of themselves. England did not quite know what to make of the Virginians; to judge by the reports of the governors, they were changeable as a pretty woman. But they were simply capricious humorists, full of life and intelligence, who did what they pleased and did not take themselves too seriously. They indulged themselves with the novel toy, the post-office; and founded William and Mary College in 1693. This venerable institution passed its second centennial ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... presence of such language, that God did really foresee a difference where he has made so great a distinction, as the Calvinists have to suppose that so great a distinction has been made by a mere arbitrary and capricious exercise of power. That we have a better reason for this position than our opponents can produce for theirs, we shall endeavour to show ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... no right to be surprised at such things, for it provided no serious check on the excesses of this capricious military administration. Judicial control, it is true, was not entirely wanting. Although, according to the universal but more than questionable rule of allowing no complaint to be brought against a commander-in-chief during his term of office,(35) the Roman governor could ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the first efforts of immature genius. Nothing can be more crude as a novel, nothing more disappointing, than "Morton's Hope." But in no other of Motley's writings do we get such an inside view of his character with its varied impulses, its capricious appetites, its unregulated forces, its impatient grasp for all kinds of knowledge. With all his university experiences at home and abroad, it might be said with a large measure of truth that he was a self-educated ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... produced on the same tree leaves, flowers, and fruit of both pure parent-forms, as well as of a mixed or crossed nature. A bud taken from any one of the branches and grafted on another tree produces either one of the pure kinds or a capricious tree reproducing the three kinds. Whether the sweet lemon, which includes within the same fruit segments of differently flavoured pulp (10/20. 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1841 page 613.), is an analogous case, I know not. But to this subject I shall have ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... Fiddy was a sick, capricious, caressed darling in a cambric cap and silk shawl, on whom fond friends were waiting lovingly: whom nobody in the world, not even the doctor, the parish clerk, or the housekeeper at Larks' Hall, dreamt of subjecting ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... Oleron himself knew her? Lovely radiant creations are not thrown off like How-d'ye-do's. The men to whom it is committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit that, ever eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does not slacken. Let Oleron but hunt this Huntress a little longer... he would have her sparkling and panting in his arms yet.... Oh no: they were ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... management of his private affairs he exhibited an exact yet liberal economy. His funds were not prodigally wasted on capricious and ill examined schemes, nor refused to beneficial though costly improvements. They remained therefore competent to that expensive establishment which his reputation, added to a hospitable temper, had in some measure imposed upon him; and to those donations which real distress has ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... instinct is common to girls and boys alike; and endures in some measure throughout life. As other young animals express their abounding energies in capricious activities similar to those followed in the business of living, so small children gambol, physically, like lambs and kids; and as the young of higher kinds of animals imitate in their play the more complex ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... for tests at Glasgow, against tests at Belfast, and for tests at Edinburgh, against tests on the Monday, for them on the Wednesday, against them again on the Thursday—how can such a Government command esteem or confidence? How can the Ministers wonder that their uncertain and capricious liberality fails to obtain the applause of the liberal party? What right have they to complain if they lose the confidence of half the nation without gaining the ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Middle Germany. While the northern plains are marked off into great divisions, by such rivers as the Lower Rhine, the Weser, and the Oder, running almost in parallel lines, this central region is cut up like a mosaic by the capricious lines of valleys and rivers. Here is the region in which you find those famous roofs from which the rain-water runs toward two different seas, and the mountain-tops from which you may look into eight or ten German states. The abundance of water-power and the presence of extensive coal-mines ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... a coldness so extraordinary with a fervour so animated as that which he had lately shewn, was indeed not easy; sometimes she fancied he had entangled not only the poor Henrietta but himself, at other times she believed him merely capricious; but that he studied to avoid her she was convinced invariably, and such a conviction was alone sufficient to determine her upon forwarding his purpose. And, when her first surprise was over, and first chagrin abated, her own pride came to her aid, and she resolved to use every ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... many of the processes, the capricious character of the market for the commodities, the expensive production of which renders them a luxury and especially amenable to the shifts of taste and fashion, have preserved for artistic handicraft the production of many of the finer silk fabrics, or have permitted the application of machinery ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... her that there was a faint change in the patient's face; but it was only a fancy—she had been deceived by the shadows that played about the room, caused by the capricious flame in the grate. The hours were creeping on, and the housekeeper, wearying at last of her fruitless watch, dropped asleep; her head fell forward on to her breast, her prayer-book slipped from her hands, and finally she ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... of an appreciable time that passed between my hearing of it and my having it. The event must have been most important to me, and it is strange I cannot fix the moment when the precious story came into my hands; though for the matter of that there is nothing more capricious than a child's memory, what it will hold and what ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... their fame invites to the same studies, copy partly them, and partly nature, till the books of one age gain such authority, as to stand in the place of nature to another, and imitation, always deviating a little, becomes at last capricious and casual. Shakespeare, whether life or nature be his subject, shews plainly that he has seen with his own eyes; he gives the image which he receives, not weakened or distorted by the intervention of any other mind; the ignorant feel his representations to be just, and the learned see that ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... these processes struck Carthew as unsound; and he was at times altogether thrown out by the capricious startings of the prophet's mind. These plunges seemed to be gone into for exercise and by the way, like the curvets of a willing horse. Gradually the thing took shape; the glittering if baseless edifice arose; and the hare still ran on the mountains, but the soup was already served ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... a very good reason; for the oldest lion in the Tower, much about the King's age, died about a fortnight ago. This extravagancy, I can assure you, was believed by many above people. So wild and capricious ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... tangling underwood, And the trim walks are broken up, and grass, Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths. But never elsewhere in one place I knew So many nightingales; and far and near, In wood and thicket, over the wide grove, They answer and provoke each other's songs, With skirmish and capricious passagings, And murmurs musical and swift jug jug, And one low piping sound more sweet than all— Stirring the air with such an harmony, That should you close your eyes, you might almost Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes, Whose dewy leaflets are but half-disclosed, You may perchance behold ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... for the sons of poor and deserving clerics and laics, but many of the noble governors of the institution, with an enlarged and rather capricious benevolence, selected all sorts of objects for their bounty. To get an education for nothing, and a future livelihood and profession assured, was so excellent a scheme that some of the richest people ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... really supernormal knowledge. By this I mean knowledge that cannot be traced to the ordinary sources of information—the senses namely, of the automatist. In really strong mediums this knowledge seems to be abundant, though it is usually spotty, capricious and unconnected. Really strong mediums are rarities; but when one starts with them and works downwards into less brilliant regions of the automatic life, one tends to interpret many slight but odd coincidences with truth as possibly ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Murphy, John T. Hoffman, and Samuel J. Tilden made the campaign attractive, speaking with unsparing severity to the great audiences gathered in New York City. Although somewhat capricious in his sympathies, Brady seemed never to care who knew what he thought on any subject, while the people, captivated by his marvellously easy mode of speech, listened with rapture as he exercised his splendid powers. It remained for Seymour, however, to give character to the discussion ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... morning that she might play better in the afternoon, she ransacked the library for interesting and cheerful things to read to him, and she even found a game or two that he seemed to enjoy. From Madame Francesca's spotless kitchen came many a dainty dish to tempt his capricious appetite, and all the flowers from both gardens, daily, made a bower of ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... The Athenceum, December 28, 1901, remarks: "The truth is that in Lamb's imitations of the elder writers 'anachronistic improprieties' (as Thomas Warton would say) are exceedingly rare. In John Woodvil it would not, I think, be easy to discover more than two: caprice, which, in the sense of 'a capricious disposition,' seems to belong to the eighteenth century, and anecdotes (i.e., 'secret Court history'), which, in its English form at least, probably does not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with the boldness of an ancient prophet, entered the presence of the emperor. He was venerable in years, and his gray locks fell in clusters upon his shoulders. The boy king was overawed by his appearance. One word from that capricious king would cause the head of Sylvestre to fall from the block. But the intrepid Christian, with the solemnity of an embassador from God, with pointed finger and eye sparkling with indignation, thus ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... the capricious wind drove them fairly past Copper Island, and they plunged into the foggy, ill-charted reaches of the Bering, their jubilation was tempered with a note of pessimism. They debated, in the Cohasset's cabin, whether the adventurer of the Dawn had been beforehand; and Captain Dabney ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... music by going to concerts and festivals and operas, exposing our bodily ear to showers and floods of sound, unless we happen to be in the right humour, unless we dispose, at the moment, of that rare and capricious thing—the ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... Original; for all the Alterations which I made were in the first Act, in removing that old bustle about Whigg and Tory, (which was the Subject of most of the Second Scene) and placing the Character of a Rake-hell in its room, which was so little, that it could not Influence a more Capricious Audience, to the Damning of the whole. There might indeed be some objections about the Plot, but not very Rational, I think; I'm sure, at least, 'tis the first Play, for some Years, could be quarrell'd at for having too much Plot. In the Edition ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the enormous stem of the sequoia supported quite a forest. The capricious network of its upper boughs presented the aspect of a wood crowded with trees, ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... symptoms accompany the presence of tape worm. The children may have pains in the abdomen, diarrhea, a capricious appetite, foul breath, and they may suffer from anemia, sometimes quite severely. The only positive symptoms is the presence of links of the worm ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... of inconstancy, or of the right of experiment in love." Its hero, who is "a modern gentleman, a refined, cultured, musical, artistic and philosophic person, of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious will," produces arguments "wide in range, of profound significance and infinite ingenuity," to defend and justify immoral intercourse with a gipsy trull. The poem consists of the speculations of a libertine, who coerces into his service truth and sophistry, and "a superabounding ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... months Guy remained quietly at Summerley. Agnes, though nearly sixteen, was still but a young girl, while Katarina had grown still more womanly during the last six months. The former always treated him as a brother, but the latter was changeable and capricious. Occasionally she would laugh and chat when the three were alone, as she had done of old in Paris, but more often she would tease and laugh at him, while sometimes she would be ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... get on, the boat drifting down stern first toward the big rock. Prof. concluded to let the stern strike and then try to throw the boat around into the river. By this time Andy had got hold of his oars, and the eddy seemed to carry them up-stream some twenty-five feet, so perverse and capricious is the Colorado. They swung the bow to starboard into the main current, and with a couple of strong oar-strokes the dreaded rock was cleared, and down the Canonita came to us over the long waves like a hunted deer. We unloaded the Dean and pulled her out ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... rebukes Malone for his ignorance of such usage of the latter word. If it be said that these two examples have no singular form, whereas contents has, there is means, at any rate precisely analogous. On the other hand, so capricious is language, in defiance of the logic of thought, we have, if I may so term it, a merely auricular plural, in the word corpse referred ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... gad-about Blanche"; he made her promise him a Whitsuntide visit instead, and whispered in her ear, "You shall have her room"; he paid her the most handsome and gallant attentions, natural to the man of fashion par excellence, mingled with something intimate, brusque, capricious, which marked her his own, and of the family. Seventy-five!—with that step, that carriage of the ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... George Sand! Love had been for her like the ancient Sphinx: each time that she ventured to interrogate it she had felt its merciless blow upon her heart. She had tasted all love's abnegations and perversities. The capricious woman of the Venetian nights, the unfaithful companion of de Musset, was the same nurse who cooked the meals and prepared the cough syrups for the dying Chopin in the solitudes of Valldemosa. If only Jaime had known a woman like that, a woman who combined within ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... country in the eye of the world, and which, in these latter times, men have been accustomed to regard as somewhat less, after all, than an adequate embodiment of the rights of conscience, has been virtually repealed in a populous and very extensive district of the British empire, through a capricious exercise of power on the part of a single man. Why, it has been asked, in a matter which lies between God and conscience, and between God and the conscience only, should a third party be permitted to interfere so far as even to ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... the man whom king Henry's capricious soul esteemed for his virtues above all other men. Cranmer's example is an endless testimony that fraud and cruelty are the leading characteristics of the catholic hierarchy. They first seduced him to live ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... hod-carrier and a Fiji-Islander. And grown men, I've concluded, are very much the same with their appetite of love. They come to you with a brave showing of hunger, but when you've given until no more remains to be given, they become finicky and capricious, and lose their interest in the homely old porridge-bowl which looked all loveliness to them before ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... blue heavens look down through it like a far-off eye. You cannot number the caverns and niches. Everywhere the sea has bored alleys and galleries, or hewn out solemn aisles, with arches intersecting each other, and running off into capricious furrows and mouldings. There are innumerable refts, and channels, and crescents, and cupolas, half-finished or only hinted at. There are chambers of every height and shape, leading into one another by irregular portals, but all rough and rude, as ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... me with a fixed, relentless gaze. 'No, I do not. Here, with none to overhear us, I will tell you truly that I do not believe you guilty of this crime which I am about to charge against you, and to prove before the world. You were a spoiled, capricious beauty when I met with you, and I, merely a fortune hunter. Our marriage was a fatal mistake. But you have discharged your duties faithfully, and I know it will be a satisfaction in the future to have this to ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... the metropolis for the sea-coast, or the country, as soon as the fine weather sets in, operates too as another draw-back from the fascination and agreeableness of our Sunday promenades. Ancient manners, in the capricious whirl of fashion, may however again return; and, if the dinner-hour should recede back to four, I trust the luxury and splendour of this delightful Mall ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... her knowledge. Her conversation therefore was happily described by an old and attached friend and very competent judge, when he said of it that 'her talk was so crisp.'[5] She had an even flow of animal spirits, was never capricious or uncertain, full of vivacity, with a constant but temperate enjoyment of society; never fastidious or exclusive, tasting and appreciating excellence without despising or slighting mediocrity; attentive, affable, and obliging ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... said, 'your regrets are so piteous that I have come to offer you the choice of goodness or beauty. If you wish to be pretty you shall have your way, but you will also be vain, capricious, and frivolous. If you remain as you are now, you shall be wise and amiable ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... Latin names. The old Greek tales were not known to the Latins in their first times, but only afterwards learnt from the Greeks. They seem to have thought of their gods as graver, higher beings, further off, and less capricious and fanciful than the legends about the weather had made them seem to the Greeks. Indeed, these Latins were a harder, tougher, graver, fiercer, more business-like race altogether than the Greeks; not so clever, thoughtful, ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the number of shells falling at this corner as a concrete instance of what was happening at a dozen other points along the road. The fire of the German batteries was as capricious as the play of a search-light; one week, the corner and three or four other points would catch it, the next week the corner and another set of localities. And there were periods, sometimes ten days to two ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... principally in the Thames and Trent. The carp grows to a great size, 20 lb being not unknown; tench are big at 5 lb; barbel have been caught up to 14 lb or rather more; and bream occasionally reach 8 lb, while a fish of over 11 lb is on record. All these fish are capricious feeders, carp and barbel being particularly undependable. In some waters it seems to be impossible to catch the large specimens, and the angler who seeks to gain trophies in either branch of the sport needs both patience ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... arbitrary powers committed to these Chiefs, they may import into the debate a fresh and hitherto unbroached line of discussion, and, following it, may argue from a quite novel standpoint, and formulate a decision based upon some utterly capricious leaning of their own. I have not been able to learn whether the decision of these Chiefs, to be valid, requires to be established by their unanimous voice, or simply by a majority ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... and fur cap before I even reached the stables, and Jasper's horse made trouble when I led him out. He knew the signs of the weather and desired to stay there, because they were not promising. Now, though winter is almost Arctic in that region, the snow-fall is capricious and generally much lighter than that further east, though it can come down in earnest now and then. Thus, swept by the wind, the grass was bare on the levels, or nearly so, and there was no passage for steel ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... of such images was his sense of the convenience of creating them. He says that he identified the 'character and instinct' of 'states' and of those 'governments of religious communities,' from which he suffered so much, with spirits 'partially fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious, as the case might he.... My preference of the Personal to the Abstract would naturally lead me to this view. I thought it countenanced by the mention of the "Prince ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... chastity because they have found attractiveness in more or less superficial studies of radical socialism. Many of these radical women frankly say that they would like to marry the "right man," but failing to find that rare species, they claim their right to sexual freedom in more or less capricious liaisons. Others of these women are so highly individualized that marriage is beneath their contempt, either because it will "interfere with a career" or because the legal aspects and ecclesiastical ceremonies still suggest the old-time subjection of the ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... happy, who make their happiness to consist in, or be governed by the votes of other persons. I deny not but the approbation of wise and good persons is a very necessary satisfaction; but to forbear innocent contentments, only because it's possible some fancies may be so capricious as to dispute whether I should have taken them, is, in my belief, neither better nor worse than to fast always, because there are some so superstitious in the world, that will abstain from meat, upon some score or other, upon every day in the year, that is, some upon some ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... able to refuse him under a similar compulsion, and he a Child of France besides.—Ah, no, Philip! little fear of her standing obstinate against the suit of such a lover.—Varium et mutabile [(semper femina): woman is always inconstant and capricious], Philip." ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... we had not proceeded far before our party was augmented by ten or twelve more, and before we reached the Creek which we had passed in the morning of the 13th it appeared to me that we had all the men of the village and a number of women with us. this may serve in some measure to ilustrate the capricious disposition of those people who never act but from the impulse of the moment. they were now very cheerfull and gay, and two hours ago they looked as sirly as so many imps of satturn. when we arrived at the spring on the side of the mountain where we had encamped on the 12th the Chief insited ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... "Don't talk about Julia! I will not hear about Julia!" for she was always held up as a pattern of excellence. Truth to tell she bored her own mother terribly; but that is not strange, for by a curious freak of nature, Mrs. Allan Carey was as flighty and capricious and irresponsible and gay and naughty as Julia was steady, limited, narrow, conventional, and dull; but the flighty mother passed out of the Carey family life, and Julia, from the age of five onward, fell into the charge of a pious, ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... light' of the former Creation is first expanded into 'Let there be a disposition of the molecules to swing,' and the destinies of mankind, no less than the vitality of the universe, depend thereafter upon this amiable, but perhaps capricious, and at all events not easily ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... bring you to see her immediately." She smiled at Calvert so graciously and with such unaffected good-humor that he looked at her with delight and wonder at the change come over her. Once more the mask was down. All the haughtiness and capricious anger had faded away, and Calvert thought he had never beheld a creature so charming and so beautiful. Her dark eyes shone like stars in a wintry sky, and, though the air was frosty, the roses bloomed in her cheeks. As he looked at her there was a troubled smile ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... then you will be better able to counsel me how to manage the capricious little witch who, if I attempt to check her in her wild and dangerous freedom of action, tells me plainly that liberty is too precious a thing to be exchanged for food and clothing, and that, rather than live in ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... the table alone lighted the small but comfortable- looking room; but the flame was leaping cheerfully among the logs on the hearth, and the sofa was so placed that the fitful light from the fire glanced in a thousand capricious reflections on the Diva's auburn hair and rich satin dress. It was black of the most lustrous quality, and fitted her person with a perfection that showed the shape of the bust, and the lithe suppleness of the slender waist to the utmost advantage. The dress ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... auld capricious carlin, Nature, To mak amends for scrimpit stature, She's turn'd you aff, a human creature On her first plan; And in her freaks, on every feature She's wrote, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... way, we visited a mill that was soon to become the property of Barnard in right of his bride. In passing through the different lofts into which it was divided, we paused in one to admire the immense and complicated machinery connected with the great wheel that worked the manufactory. Martha, ever capricious and perverse, wished to see the engine set in motion. But there was not a servant—not a creature, save ourselves—within a mile of the spot at the moment. Barnard, however, volunteered to go to the mill-dam outside, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... there is an obscure sense, or instinct I might call it, in every one of us, of this truth. We all, whether we have given a distinct account of the matter to ourselves or not, believe that words which we use are not arbitrary and capricious signs, affixed at random to the things which they designate, for which any other might have been substituted as well, but that they stand in a real relation to these. And this sense of the significance of names, that they are, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... steady from the southwest, and not too much sun; the very day when a scent, in and out of cover, would be a certainty, if there were any calculation on this contingency. Let us do our sisters justice—there is one thing in nature more uncertain and capricious ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... and saw its radiance upon them, as I used to do long ago. But do you know what occurs to me this moment, most taciturn?" He added, after a short pause, being moved, probably, by one of those quick and capricious changes to which both the intoxicated and insane are proverbially liable: "It strikes me, that you probably are descended from the man in the iron mask—ha—ha—ha! Or stay, was there ever such a thing in this benevolent ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... all her graphic details of Ray's mysterious flirtation with Mrs. Truscott, or of the thrilling evidence in Mrs. Turner's possession of his guilt. A good fellow was Turner, a loyal soldier and husband, who loved his pretty and capricious better half, and deserved a still ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... the broad open sea. The ocean seems always stern, masculine, bold, The Sound is a woman, now warm, and now cold. It rises in fury and threatens to smite, Then falls at your feet with a coo of delight; Capricious, seductive, first frowning, then smiling, And always, whatever its mood is, beguiling. Look, now you can see it, bright beautiful blue, And far in the distance there loom into view The banks of Long Island, full thirty miles off; A sign of wet weather ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... intentions and deeds are the same here and everywhere, now and always. If we wish to learn in what manner God will prepare a hell and punish the impenitent wicked after death, we must not, as men did in the barbaric and mythological ages, make an induction from the treatment of criminals by capricious and revengeful rulers in this world; we must see how God himself now treats his disobedient children for their demerits here, assured that his eternal temper and method are identical with his temporal temper ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... they have deeply loved, appear to be even more cruel, and wrongly meted out, than human judgments generally are. To careless observers, for instance, it would seem as though the squire was rendered more capricious and exacting, more passionate and authoritative, by his wife's death. The truth was, that it occurred at a time when many things came to harass him, and some to bitterly disappoint him; and she was no longer there to ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... wiles. Who was she to object to past peccadillos on his part? Then, uncomforted, he sought to reassure himself with the remembrance of her love for him, ardent and beautiful as the sun on the desert, but her image rose on the dark of his mind like a flame, veering and capricious, or as the wind, lingering, caressing, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... possess, sufficient to blast the influence of so divine a mother, and the rest of her children: She always affected to keep mean and scandalous company; valuing nobody, but just as they agreed with her in every capricious opinion she thought fit to take up; and rigorously exacting compliance, though she changed her sentiments ever so often. Her great employment was to breed discord among friends and relations, and make up monstrous alliances ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... as these women are on ordinary occasions, when two or three of them are gathered together in their holiday petti-coats and shawls, they are as wild and capricious as the women ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... Parisian artists. This fashion indeed is carried almost to a mania. Every thing must be Greek and Roman without any reference to Nature or propriety. For example, what could be so absurd as the natural realization of some of these capricious ornaments? What lady would chose to sleep in a bed, up the pillars of which serpents were crawling? Yet is such realization the only criterion of taste ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... She shrugged her shoulders when I asked if she was well, and anticipated all further questions by running from the room. She was always capricious in her ways and never more so than at that moment. Would to God that it had been different! Would to God that she had shown herself to be a suffering woman! Then I might have reached her heart and this tragedy would have ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... The reading of the riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this world was ruled by capricious and unworthy despots, and the next world was gloomy with terrors and almost unlighted by hopes. Such had become the popular mythology in its later day, and as contrasted with this the view and temper ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... known variety, but we are a little too far north for it, 41 deg.45' N. Lat. It matures well here only in our most favorable seasons. It appears to be an excellent nut, large, good cracking quality and good flavor. It appears to be a little capricious as to bearing, two years ago our one graft was heavily loaded, but there was no crop last year and a light one only this year. In spite of the lateness in maturing the nut, the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... all-absorbing pursuit of those around me. Then I played myself, first taking a hand at ecarte with some of the younger guests, half in sport, and then venturing a small golden coin at the rouge et noir table, while my admirers praised my daring, as if I had been some capricious child. In those assemblies I was always the only woman, except Matilda Brewer, who was then my governess. My father would have no female guests at these nightly orgies. The presence of women would have been a hindrance to the delights of the gaming-table. At first I felt all the bitterness of ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... effects from causes so incompetent, as they will appear to those who have not had the experience which I have had of the quick sensibility which influences the habits of men placed in a state of polity so loose, and subject to the continual variations of capricious and despotic authority, will be deemed overcharged, or perhaps void of foundation; nor, if they should come to pass, will it be easy to trace them with any positive evidence to their connection: yet it is my duty to apprise you of what I apprehend, on grounds which I deem of absolute certainty, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... established with so happy a mixture of its elements—its tempered monarchy and its regulated freedom—that we have nothing to fear from foreign despotism, nothing at home but from capricious change. We have nothing to fear, unless, distasteful of the blessings which we have earned, and of the calm which we enjoy, we let loose again, with rash hand, the elements of our constitution, and set them once more to fight against each other. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... ill-humor of the driver and his beasts, Parisians all three at heart, and furious at being deprived of such a fine show. Thereupon, through the silent deserted streets, all the life of Paris having betaken itself to the great artery of the boulevard, began a capricious, aimless journey, the senseless loitering of a cab hired by the hour, reaching the extreme limits of Faubourg Saint-Martin, Faubourg Saint-Denis, returning toward the centre, and always finding at the end of every circuit, every stratagem, the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... that time, a great favorite in the house. All the old people cared for me especially, and I was kept often in the parlor, and, when I was cold, the children were allowed to sit upon me, but never to abuse me. But this is a capricious, changing, cheating, vain world, and foot stoves are not thought much of nowadays. The churches are warmed all over, so that foot stoves are not needed, and so I never go to church; indeed, in my broken-down state of health, it would hardly be safe for me to do so. I am not ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... express an opinion on the subject are, at present, agreed that the manifold varieties of animal and vegetable form have not either come into existence by chance, nor result from capricious exertions of creative power; but that they have taken place in a definite order, the statement of which order is what men of science term a natural law. Whether such a law is to be regarded as an expression of the mode of operation of natural forces, or whether it ...
— Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life • Thomas H. Huxley
... Rebecca was in the kitchen. He was thus able to take his mother quietly into the parlor, and then prepare his wife for the interview. She had fortunately drunk but little at that early hour, and she was less sullen and capricious than usual. ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... that short journey. The water was higher than her waist; the ground was slippery; the current, rapid and capricious. It required an indomitable will to sustain her—to keep her from yielding twenty times to the might of this unchained monster. Frequently she was obliged to pause in order to regain her breath. The struggle lasted ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... was not to be expected that such a person was imbued with that ardent faith which casts a man headlong into the centre of revolutions, or the stoical energy which produces and controls them. He saw in the people only a sovereign, more exacting and more capricious than any others, towards whom it was necessary to display more skill to seduce, more policy to manage them. He believed himself sufficiently plastic for the task, and resolved to attempt it. Without a lofty imagination, he yet had ambition and courage, and he viewed the position of affairs as a ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... ever seem'd sweetest to her lips. She favor'd him more than the rest—perhaps, as in a hundred similar instances, for his being so often at fault, and so often blamed. In truth, however, he seldom receiv'd more blame than he deserv'd, for he was a capricious, high-temper'd lad, and up to all kinds of mischief. From these traits he was known in the neighborhood by ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... particularly inconvenient and uncomfortable, Elinor had not been there two minutes before she rose up again and began to walk about the room, with an aspect so unlike that of an exhausted and perhaps fainting woman, that even John, used as he was to her capricious ways, was confounded. Instead of being subdued and thankful that it was over, and this dreadful crisis in her life accomplished, Elinor walked up and down, wringing her hands, moaning and murmuring to herself; what was it she was saying? "God ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... Arkadyevna Karenina had friends and close ties in three different circles of this highest society. One circle was her husband's government official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, brought together in the most various and capricious manner, and belonging to different social strata. Anna found it difficult now to recall the feeling of almost awe-stricken reverence which she had at first entertained for these persons. Now she knew all of them ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... did not exchange confidences, however; she merely gave promises to do her best. She was shrewd enough to know that if she confessed to Agatha that she had cared for Harry Green—from a distance—that capricious and perverse young person would have declined to retire from the field of strife. After all, Betty admitted to herself, it was not wholly a service of sacrifice she was granting her friend. There was something of a ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the schooner must have begun to realise some part, but not yet the twentieth, of the dangers that environed their doomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen how fast the current swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, as they saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the rising swell began to boom and foam upon another sunken reef; and ever and again a breaker would fall in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... corpuscles enter into the eggs while they are being formed, and consequently are carried within them when they are laid; and for this reason, also, it presents the very singular peculiarity of being inherited only on the mother's side. There is not a single one of all the apparently capricious and unaccountable phenomena presented by the Pebrine, but has received its explanation from the fact that the disease is the result of the presence of the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... How capricious a thing is public taste! It can regale on garbage, from which Hottentots would turn with loathing, and yet, in the frenzy of idiotism, could reject and condemn Congreve's 'Way ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... relative of Pericles, who, after the death of Cleinias at the battle of Coroneia (447), became his guardian. Thus early deprived of his father's control, possessed of great personal beauty and the heir to great wealth, which was increased by his marriage, he showed himself self-willed, capricious and passionate, and indulged in the wildest freaks and most insolent behaviour. Nor did the instructors of his early manhood supply the corrective which his boyhood lacked. From Protagoras, Prodicus and others he learnt to laugh ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... often sighing in capricious languor never quite deserted those who trusted to it, and at a good hour next morning the pinnace dropped her anchor beside the Anne, and her dory carried the two mew ashore just as Plymouth woke to a ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... minor theme. A sad example of this infantile trick is to be found in the thirty-first chapter of Rhoda Fleming, wherein, well knowing that the reader is tingling for the interview 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 of the ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... awakened by many such; and they will spring perhaps from very trivial sources; as a friend once said to me, the "spirit of delight" comes often on small wings. For the pleasure that we take in beautiful nature is essentially capricious. It comes sometimes when we least look for it; and sometimes, when we expect it most certainly, it leaves us to gape joyously for days together, in the very home-land of the beautiful. We may have passed a place a thousand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... permitted to intercept. Parents know not but that Providence may be substituting the noblest education for the misteaching of intermediate guardians. It may possibly be so; but if not, still there is appointed to every human being much training, many privileges, which capricious fortune can neither give nor take away. The father may sigh to see his boy condemned to the toil of the loom, or the gossip and drudgery of the shop, when he would fain have beheld him the ornament of a university; but he knows ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... calming the ardor of the lady, who was evidently a woman of social distinction. "Don't have any friendship for me," he writes; "I need too much. Like all people who struggle, suffer, and work, I am exacting, mistrustful, wilful, capricious.... If I had been a woman, I should have loved nothing so much as some soul buried like a well in the desert—discovered only when you place yourself directly under the star which indicates it to the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... believe that gods have never spoken face to face with men! Let me think, lest I go mad, that beings from that unseen world for which I hunger have appeared, and held communion with mankind, such as no reason or sense could doubt—even though those beings were more capricious and baser than ourselves! Is there, after all, an unseen world? Oh for ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... young Shakespeare as he came up the green lanes from Stratford, or the young Dickens when he first lost himself among the lights of London. It is not for nothing that the very roads are crooked and capricious, so that a man looking down on a map like a snaky labyrinth, could tell that he was looking on the home of a wandering people. A spirit at once wild and familiar rested upon its wood-lands like a wind at rest. If that spirit be indeed departed, it matters little that it has been driven out by ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... are just a wee bit capricious, fitful, Tess?" he said, good-humouredly, as he spread a cushion for her on the stool, and seated himself in the settle beside her. "I wanted to ask you something, and just ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... I. in a capricious mood, threatened the Lord Mayor with removing the seat of royalty, the meetings of parliament, &c. from the capital. "Your Majesty at least," replied the Mayor, "will be graciously pleased to leave us the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... commonplace, orderly world of Nature was surrounded and interpenetrated by another intangible and mysterious world, no more bound by fixed rules than, as they fancied, were the thoughts and passions which coursed through their minds and seemed to exercise an intermittent and capricious rule over their bodies. They attributed to the entities, with which they peopled this dim and dreadful region, an unlimited amount of that power of modifying the course of events of which they themselves possessed a small share, and thus came to regard them ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... be more capricious than the sentences they pass. In very few cases does the law set any limit. "Life or any term not less than five years" is the usual reading of the statute books, and the consequence naturally is that one Judge will give his man five years, while another will ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... Micheline grew up amid this colossal prosperity. The one, tall, brown-haired, with blue eyes changing like the sea; the other, fragile, fair, with dark dreamy eyes. Jeanne, proud, capricious, and inconstant; Micheline, simple, sweet, and tenacious. The brunette inherited from her reckless father and her fanciful mother a violent and passionate nature; the blonde was tractable and good like Michel, but resolute and firm like Madame Desvarennes. These ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is, this great man had found out that animal and intellectual vigour,[21-*] are much more entirely dependent upon each other than is commonly understood; especially in those constitutions whose digestive and chylopoietic organs are capricious and easily put out of tune, or absorb the "pabulum vitae" indolently and imperfectly: with such, it is only now and then that the "sensorium commune" vibrates with the full tone of accurately considerative, or creative energy. "His favourite dainties ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... the presence of gastric calculi, and possibly none by which we can unmistakably assert their presence. They have been found most frequently in millers' horses fed sweepings from the mills. A depraved and capricious appetite is common in horses that have a stone forming in the stomachs. There is a disposition to eat the woodwork of the stable, earth, and, in fact, almost any substance within their reach. This symptom must not, however, be considered ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... were not a force of nature, blind in its strength and capricious in its power, they would not be mistrusted. As it is one can't help it. You will say that this force having been in the person of Flora de Barral captured by Anthony . . . Why yes. He had dealt with her masterfully. But man has captured electricity ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... here. In short, I have done with the world, and live in it rather than in a desert, like you. Few men can bear absolute retirement, and we English worst of all. We grow so humorsome, so obstinate and capricious, and so prejudiced, that it requires a fund of good-nature like yours not to grow morose. Company keeps our rind from growing too coarse and rough; and though at my return I design not to mix in public, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... a brilliant young man, monsieur, but he was of no importance to his generation—and he becomes so now through the whim of a capricious woman to disinherit her other heirs. After all this time she has decided to make ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... "that the severity of the weather, and, at some seasons, the deficiency of light, render it impossible for the people to continue their usual out-of-door employments." The result of this he finds to be desultory habits of work, which help to make the national character fitful and capricious. He cites in illustration of his principle the people of the Scandinavian and Iberian peninsulas, whom he finds marked "by a certain instability and fickleness of character," owing to the fact that in Norway and Sweden agricultural labor experiences ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... Ber was full of capricious moods as well. She loved her son, and was very proud of him. She selected this girl and that, but ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... nourishment. What fate was Feofar-Khan reserving for these unfortunates? Would he imprison them in Tomsk, or would some bloody execution, familiar to the Tartar chiefs, remove them when they were found too inconvenient? This was the secret of the capricious Emir. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... This capricious arbitrary aspect of law was a thing which much impressed the Greeks. They contrasted the varying, artificial arrangements made by mankind with the constancy and simplicity of nature. We speak of nature and convention; ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... and alterations in "things,"—that is to say in the Bibliomania itself—have been equally capricious and unaccountable: our countrymen being, in these days, to the full as fond of novelty and variety as in those of Henry the Eighth. Dr. Board, who wrote his Introduction of Knowledge in the year 1542, and dedicated it to the Princess Mary, thus ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... afraid I have shown a wretched temper, Pa. I am afraid I have been very complaining, and very capricious. I seldom or never thought of it before. But when I sat in the carriage just now and saw you coming along ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... things in heaven and earth, and given them a law, which cannot be broken, so that all things obey him to this day—I suppose, I say, that this pleased him better than the Roman stories of many gods, who were capricious, and fretful, and quarrelled with each other in a fashion which ought to have been shocking to the conscience and reason of ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... fullest and have over. There were moments even when Laura saw his temperamental impatience awake in his face, as if his thoughts were beginning already to plunge from the fruition of to-day after the capricious possibility which lies in to-morrow. In the midst of the forest, under the gold and green of the leaves, she realised at times that his moods were more in harmony with the city streets and the rush ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... forward, and in contrast with the rich gloom of her own chamber, saw a suite of the brightest, sunniest rooms, that ever a capricious beauty inhabited. ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... of their voyage down the Mississippi "the science of piloting was not a thing of the dead and pathetic past," and wonderful accounts were written of the autocrats of the wheel and the characteristics of the ever-changing, ever-capricious river. "Accidents!" says an early steamboat captain. "Oh, sometimes we run foul of a snag or sawyer, occasionally collapse a boiler and blow up sky-high. We get used to these little matters and don't ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... sitting on the terrace above the river in the golden light of an afternoon that was fair and warm as May, though by the calendar 'twas March. The capricious climate had changed from austere winter to smiling spring. Skylarks were singing over the fields at Hampstead, and over the plague-pits at Islington, and all London was rejoicing in blue skies and sunshine. Trade was awakening from ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... more incredible that they could actually have been lost for two hours. Both of them were severely frostbitten about the face and legs, but bitter as their experience was it served as yet another warning to those who were to go sledding in the spring that no risks could be taken in such a capricious climate. Had not Royds been rehearsing his troupe on this occasion the results to Bernacchi and Skelton must have been more disastrous than they were; consequently the idea of using the large hut as a place of entertainment was fortunate ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... garment of mist, driven and dispersed by day's last flash of self-assertion, lay heaped and tumbled in the valleys, and the mountains stood knee-deep in an opalescent sea of foam. It was as though Nature, in a mood of capricious kindliness, had rent the veil, that mortals might share in the triumphal passing of the sun, whose supremacy had been ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... "the paper and ink relics of Christianity," (Ib., p. 21); which they regard as "a foundation as impermanent as the changeful sand" (Ib. p. 24), and not adapted "to the wants or requirements of the nineteenth century," Ib. p. 26. They reject Him, whom they style "the cruel and capricious God generally worshipped by the Bible Christians," Ib. p. 47. "The Jewish God," says Davis, "is cruel, capricious and tyrannical," whose "kingdom is more despotic, and more contracted in principle, than the present government of the Russian empire," Ib. p. 61. He adds, "The Old Testament ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... anticipated from the poet's school life. Although "very studious," and not unambitious of academical honours—within a few months of his entering at Jesus he won the Browne Gold Medal for a Greek Ode on the Slave Trade [3]—his reading, his friend admits, was "desultory and capricious. He took little exercise merely for the sake of exercise, but he was ready at any time to unbend his mind in conversation, and for the sake of this his room was a constant rendezvous of conversation-loving friends. I will not call them loungers, for they did not call to kill time but ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... inclined to fancy that wisdom or virtue may be had by inheritance, or that all the excellencies of a line of progenitors are accumulated on their descendant. Reason, indeed, will soon inform us, that our estimation of birth is arbitrary and capricious, and that dead ancestors can have no influence but upon imagination; let it then be examined, whether one dream may not operate in the place of another; whether he that owes nothing to forefathers, may not receive ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... whimsical, and often too high in her colouring of characters, and in the trifling business of the idle world,—yet I think she has principles, and a good heart,—[with a glow of conjugal tenderness.] but in a partner for life, Sidney, (you know your own precept, and your own judgment)—affection, capricious in its nature, must have something even in the external manners,—nay in the very mode, not only of beauty, but of virtue itself— which both heart and judgment must approve, or our happiness in that delicate point ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... tacitly brought up as his uncle's heir, it had become so avowed an adoption as to have him assume the name of Churchill on coming of age. It was most unlikely, therefore, that he should ever want his father's assistance. His father had no apprehension of it. The aunt was a capricious woman, and governed her husband entirely; but it was not in Mr. Weston's nature to imagine that any caprice could be strong enough to affect one so dear, and, as he believed, so deservedly dear. He saw his son every year in London, and ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... cooperation between reason, affection, and will; the reason prescribing nothing against which the affections revolt, and proscribing nothing which they crave; and the will obeying the joint impulses of these two directing forces, without liability to capricious or extravagant disturbance of their direction. Well, if the reason were perfect in information and method, and the affections faultless in their impulse, then organic unity of character would be the final consummation of all human improvement, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley |
