"Changeable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... questioned. Neither misfortune, nor disappointment, nor accidents, nor delay, nor the protracted gloom of years, could avail to disturb the public trust in him. It was apart from circumstances; it was beside the action of caprice; it was beyond all visionary, and above all changeable feelings. It was founded on nothing extraneous; not upon what he had said or done, but upon what he was. They saw something in the man, which gave them assurance of a nature and destiny of the highest elevation—something ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... be sorry," I burst out, for I had often talked about this with Carrie. "It is beautiful, but it is too shifting, too treacherous, too changeable, to belong to the higher life. Think of all the cruel wrecks, of all the drowned people it has swallowed up in its rage; it devours men and women, and little children, Dot, and hides its mischief with a smile. Oh, no, it is false in its beauty, and there shall ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... preaches, as inevitable, a concentration of property in the hands of a limited number of property owners and the expropriation of the great proletarian mass of mankind, a concentration which is after all no more than a tendency conditional on changing and changeable conventions about property, and it finds its hope of a better future in the outcome of a class conflict between the expropriated Many and the expropriating Few. Both sides are to be equally swayed by self-interest, but the toilers ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... corrupt receiving of bribes and presents, was opened by Mr. Sheridan on the 2nd of April. It was clear that Hastings had been singularly indifferent as to riches for his own use yet the orator imputed to him the grossest corruption and most ravenous greed for money. He remarked:—"He is changeable in every thing but corruption; there, and only there he is systematic, methodical, immutable. His revenge is furious as a tempest, or a tornado; but his corruption is a monsoon; a trade-wind, blowing uniformly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... our social code Only a man, wavering and changeable Their Christian charity did not extend so far as that There are mountains that ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... watched the more closely. He also has received a letter in which he is publicly thanked for the services he has rendered. If I were in his place I should be very uneasy, seeing the kind of brother that he was, the most changeable the most jealous, and the most suspicious of men. There is a false ring about this letter to Prince Henry, just as there was in those which the Emperor addressed to Count Waldersee and to Bismarck. Gratitude is a word that William ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... South to take the place of the old plantation life. Congenial as they were in many ways, the possession of the latchkey, Dr. Bagby tells us, did not argue an intimate personal relation, as the fancy of the brilliant editor of the Examiner was apparently changeable, and wavered when he discovered that his assistant neither played chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversational excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so willed, the pleasant ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... wounds. After removing the pelt the carcass was thrown into the bay, so that there might be no stench, which my natives declared would be enough to spoil any future shooting in this locality. This same afternoon we moved our camp to a new marsh, but the wind was changeable, and we saw nothing. ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... to the Hawaiian mythology, presides over Kilauea, is, as some say all her sex are, variable, changeable, mutable. What I shall tell you about the appearance of the crater and lake is true of that time; it may not have been correct a week later; it was certainly not true of a month before. We climbed into the deep pit, and then stood upon ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... recollected that the Mediterranean is dotted with numerous islands; and he knew that, however changeable or adverse the winds might be, it would always prove an easy matter to make such arrangements as to enable him to gain some port a few days previously to the close of the month. Moreover, so strong, so intense was his love for Nisida, that, even without the prospect afforded by this calculation, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... of languor troubled me, for although I felt no inclination to go forward, yet I seemed to myself perfectly able and willing to stay where I was, so long as the world lasted. I was perfectly happy in spite of my bodily excitement. A bright halo of changeable colors, for all the world like the changeable lights I have seen displayed in front of the American Museum, New York, filled all my vision, in the very focus of which gleamed two keen points, like sparks from the blacksmith's anvil, and they were ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... perfectly contented. We had plenty of stores in the ship of every description; the cargo I had taken on board was chiefly manufactures, and as the island provided fresh meat, fish, and fruit, they were in want of nothing. But sailors are such changeable and restless beings, that I really believe they would soon be tired of paradise itself. After a sojourn of nine months, during which they perhaps lived better than they ever had before, they began to murmur and talk of getting ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... land appeared a high and rocky coast, And higher grew the mountains as they drew, Set by a current, toward it: they were lost In various conjectures, for none knew To what part of the earth they had been tost, So changeable had been the winds that blew; Some thought it was Mount AEtna, some the highlands Of Candia, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... something quite different from experience. Experience must be based on the permanent facts of nature. But a glance at the prevalent modes of treatment of any two successive generations will show that there is a changeable as well as a permanent element in the art of healing; not merely changeable as diseases vary, or as new remedies are introduced, but changeable by the going out of fashion of special remedies, by the decadence of a popular theory from which their fitness was deduced, or other cause not more ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fine, and the lines about his nose and mouth were cut as with a delicate steel instrument in wax. His eyes I have left to the last. They were large and quite changeable, not in colour only, but in character, size, and shape. Occasionally they seemed the eyes of someone else, if you can understand what I mean, and at the same time, in their shifting shades of blue, green, and a nameless sort of dark grey, ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... believed," he answered. "And nobody can prove it ain't true. For my part, you was always balanced in my mind very tender against that changeable woman, and nought but a hair turned the balance her way. 'Tis a strange experience for me not to have my will, and I feel disgraced in a manner of speaking; but, if I've lost her, I've gained you, seemingly. And I shan't squeak about it, nor yet go courting no more; and I'll venture to bet, dear ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... changeable," Vermont said reflectively, "one can never count on his movements; following him is like wild duck shooting, down the river on Monday, and up the Fens on Tuesday. I'm sorry I missed him, though, for I have several papers which he ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... it for very long in the country either," said Aunt Lizzie, "because our weather is so changeable. Sometimes we have cold winds with bright sunshine, or it rains, or the grass is damp. Still, during the long summer days we can frequently manage it; but it is not always summer even ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... women of Isaiah's time derived the "tinkling ornaments of the feet, the cauls, the round tires like the moon, the chains, the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets and the ornaments of the legs, and the head-bands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings, the rings and nose-jewels, the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins, the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods, and the vails,"[1223] which the prophet denounces so fiercely. The excavations ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... Not the changeable fry Who love, nor know why, But follow bedup'd by their passions: Such votaries as these Are like waves of the seas, And steer'd by their ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... the rough, graceless strength of Goths and Vandals supplanted the supple vigor of the gymnast. The rude, migratory life of the Dark Ages needed not the gymnasium as a means of physical culture, and was too changeable and evanescent to establish permanent institutions. Chivalry afforded some exception. The profession of knighthood and the calling of the men-at-arms gave ample scope to warlike exercises, reduced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... genus of birds peculiar to New Zealand, from Greek kreadion, a morsel of flesh, dim. of kreas, flesh. Buller says, "from the angle of the mouth on each side there hangs a fleshy wattle, or caruncle, shaped like a cucumber seed and of a changeable bright yellow colour." ('Birds of New Zealand,' 1886, vol. i. p. 18.) The Jack-bird (q.v.) and Saddle-back (q.v.) are ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... said Paul, detailing an account of the wondrous journey, "I felt easier and stopped at noon to partake of a light dinner. I knew I was in for a tough job and made up my mind to go through with it. The river ran all over the country and was as changeable in temper as a novelist's heroine. Sometimes it was a mile wide, running slowly, with as calm and smooth a surface as a lake. Again, at the next bend it would dart toward a range of hills, and instead of going around them as its previously erratic course led me to expect, it would plough straight ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... is generally easy, and proves our English tongue not to be so very changeable as is commonly supposed; nay, sometimes the phrase seems a little obscure, more by the mistakes of the printer than the distance of time. Here and there we meet with a broad expression, and some characters are far ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... successful exploit, on the fifteenth of October they despatched for Holanda the "Leon Negro" with sixteen hundred boxes of changeable silk. Each box contained two picos of silk (each pico equals five arrobas); besides this, they shipped three hundred fardos of black and white mantas—all of which will yield a great sum of money, if it reaches its destination. In the ship "Fregelingas" ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... from their old sins, because they fail to make their calling sure by good works. Therefore, it comes about that, as Paul says, they run uncertainly, beating the air. Their hearts are unstable and wavering before God, and they are changeable and fickle in all their ways, James 1, 8. Since they are aimless and inconstant at heart, this will appear likewise as inconstancy in regard to works and doctrines. They undertake now this and now that; they cannot be quiet nor refrain from factional strife. Thus they miss ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... graceful, handsome young man, gifted with that peculiar sort of beauty which you see in Goethe's face, in Byron's, indicating what may be called the Greek temperament—the nature of the old Attic race—sensuous, not sensual; pleasure-loving, passionate, and changeable; not intentionally vicious, but reveling in a sort of glorious enjoyment, intellectual and corporeal, to which every thing else is sacrificed—in short, the heathen as opposed to the Christian type of manhood—a type, the fascination of which lasts as long as the body lasts, and the intellect; ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... believe it was my crying about some housemaid or other who went away that first set her abusing me for having low tastes—a sort of thing that used to cut me to the heart, and which she kept up till the very day I left her for good. We were a precious pair: I sulky and obstinate, she changeable and hot-tempered. She used to begin breakfast sometimes by knocking me to the other side of the room with a slap, and finish it by calling me her darling boy and promising me all manner of toys and things. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... much modesty as men"; or "The appetite of women is twice as large, their understanding four times as large, their spirit of enterprise six times as large, and their longing for love eight times as large as that of men." Again we read: "The character of women is as changeable as a wave of the sea; their affection, like the rosy tint of a cloud in the evening sky, lasts just for a moment"; or "When women have a man's money, they let him go, as he is no longer ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... was a shaded niche under the lee of crags facing the east. Here the outlook was entirely different from that on the western side. It was not red and white and glaring, nor so changeable that it taxed attention. This eastern view was one of the mountains and valleys, where, to be sure, there were arid patches; but the restful green of pine and fir was there, and the cool gray of crags. Bold and rugged indeed were these mountain features, yet they were companionably close, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... sing and be merry, dance, joke and rejoice, With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice! The changeable world to our joy is unjust, All treasure's uncertain, Then down with your dust; In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings and pence, For we shall be nothing a hundred ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... were a bit changeable," grinned Tim Nolan, mischievously; "but do they always change their minds as often ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... Thursday was changeable, damp, and gloomy; and the night threatened to be windy and unpleasant. Stockdale had gone away to Knollsea in the morning, to be present at some commemoration service there, and on his return he was met by the attractive Lizzy in the passage. ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... respects they are entirely the same. For one you see in France you may here count a thousand. The Perching-Ducks, or Carolina Summer-Ducks, are somewhat larger than our teals. Their plumage is quite beautiful, and so changeable that no painting can imitate it. Upon their head they have a beautiful tuft of the most {261} lively colours, and their red eyes appear like flames. The natives ornament their calumets or pipes with the skin of their ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... myriad forms of life is changeable, impermanent, unenduring. Only the informing Principle of nature endures. Nature is many, and is marked by separation. The informing Principle is One, and is marked by unity. By overcoming the senses and the selfishness within, ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... hard to grow cold and to find cold words to say, which might lead her to believe him stronger than he was and able to master his grief. But he was too young, too hot, too changeable for such a part. Moreover, in his first violent outbreak Unorna had dominated him, and he could not now ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... sources of knowledge, he held that they furnish the mind with two distinct classes of cognitions—one variable, fleeting, and uncertain; the other immutable, necessary, and eternal. Sense is dependent on the variable organization of the individual, and therefore its evidence is changeable, uncertain, and nothing but a mere "seeming." Reason is the same in all individuals, and therefore its evidence is constant, real, and true. Philosophy is, therefore, divided into two branches—Physics and Metaphysics; ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... The entries for the Visitors are of average quality. Three visitors only are to compete over a course of picnic luncheons and strawberries and cream. I have only room left to remark that the weather has been changeable, and that all the above tips are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... freedom of the will in opposition to the general mechanism of nature, drawn from the subtle but impotent distinction of subjective and objective practical necessity; or of the existence of God, deduced from the conception of an ens realissimum—the contingency of the changeable, and the necessity of a prime mover, has ever been able to pass beyond the limits of the schools, to penetrate the public mind, or to exercise the slightest influence on its convictions. It must be admitted that this has not been the case and ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... silly things!" she sniffed, as she caught Mostyn's eye. "They are voting against me already. They are as changeable as March winds. Look at Mrs. Timmons; she is actually shaking her fist at me. When I speak I always keep my eye on somebody in the crowd. I'll watch that woman to-night, and if I can win her over I may influence some ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... skin and head. The cap and stem are both thinner in this tribe than in Inoloma. The pileus becomes thin when old, and is dry, not moist. It is at first silky. The color of the gills is changeable, which makes it hard ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... child; he was always foolish and changeable, and a deal too innocent for them wicked officer-gentlemen; and I'm glad he's not among them any longer to learn bad ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the invader has drawn his pencillings about the corners; and there is a kind of wintry red that seems enamelled on his cheek, the eloquent record of the claret his wit has brightened. His mouth is the most characteristic feature of all. The lips are delicately cut, and as changeable as an aspen; but there is a set-up look about the lower lip—a determination of the muscle to a particular expression, and you fancy that you can see wit astride upon it. It is arch, confident, and half diffident, as if he were disguising his pleasure at applause, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... as he stalked away on further errands of mercy, stooping as he went to avoid beams—"strange that Miles is so changeable in character. I had come to think him a steady, reliable sort ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... the elements which compose it cannot be reduced to unity and harmony. It would be difficult to co-ordinate them into a higher synthesis, for that universality is at the same time diversity and mutability. Goethe is essentially changeable and elusive. In his works we find combined the antipodes of human thought. There is little in common between the poet of Goetz von Berlichingen and Werther on the one hand and the poet of Tasso and Iphigenia on the other hand. The intellect of Goethe is like a crystal ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... stage; but there is something needed beyond wild Italian raptures before the ideal match is secured. Some of us are almost glad that Juliet passed away in swift fashion when the cup of life foamed most exquisitely at her lips. How would she have fared had that changeable firebrand Romeo taken to wandering once more? It is a grievously flippant question to ask when the most glorious of all love-poems is in question; yet I ask it very seriously, and merely in a symbolic way. ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... "His changeable humors, his irregularities, his caprices, his total disregard of everything and body, save the fancy in his head, prevented him from doing well in the world. The evils and sufferings that poverty brought upon him, soured his nature, and deprived him of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... to the south of the three last named, is less changeable in character, and is also a much more dangerous inlet to cross in rough weather. From Matoinkin Inlet the interior thoroughfares were followed inside of Cedar Island, when darkness forced me to seek ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... natural vocation. He wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach; it racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted. The thing was as impossible as to mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... dogma informs us that this always-existing Being is unchangeable and independent. One unavoidable inference from which is that Deity is itself immoveable, as well as unconnected with the universe—for a moveable Being must be a changeable Being, by the very fact of its motion; while an independent Being must be motiveless, as it is evident all motives result from our relationship to things eternal; but an independent Being can have no relations, and consequently must act without motives. Now, as no intelligent ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... never wore oilskins aboard ship—swinging with the swing of the plunging vessel as if he was built into her, and with his head thrown back and a smile, it may be, that was not a smile at all, and kept looking at me from out of eyes that were changeable as ...
— The Trawler • James Brendan Connolly
... chased and mounted on a pierced stand, is glazed with reddish brown (fig. 230). Another, in the shape of a mitred hawk, is blue picked out with black spots. It belonged of old to Ahmes I. A third, hollowed out of the body of an energetic little hedgehog, is of a changeable green (fig. 231). A Pharaoh's head in dead blue wears ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... she herself told me afterwards) but make her very best curtsey to him, being pleased that he was pleased with her, while she thought what a fine young man he was and so much breeding about him! And in truth he was a dark, handsome fellow, hasty, reckless, and changeable, with a look of sad destiny in his black eyes that would make any woman pity him. What he was thinking of our Annie is not for me to say, although I may think that you could not have found another such maiden on Exmoor, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... thought of their stern forefathers, who had broken the power of the mighty Spanish Empire, strengthened by God's Word and by that only. To them the Netherlands Reformed Church and the Netherlands State lost their sound and only safe basis by the assertion that there was something changeable, something non-eternal in the Bible; that this Bible, revered as containing the Holy Scriptures, might be replaced by any human System of thought to serve as the foundation for the structure ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... of electricity, some suspend rings to a loadstone, and find that what they did yesterday they can do again to-day. Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the wind is changeable. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... up at "set fair," mother was certain to be depressed, inclining to much rain; yet, strangely enough, it was on such occasions very dry! When mother was "fair," (barometrically speaking, of course), father was naturally down at "changeable"! Yet there was wonderful contradiction in the readings of this barometer; for, when mother's countenance indicated "much rain," father sometimes went down to "stormy," and the tails of his coat ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... causes; and this opinion, of course, excluded all utility from prayer. A third opinion was that human affairs were indeed directed by Divine Providence, and that human affairs did not happen of necessity, but that Divine Providence was changeable, and that consequently its dispositions were changed by our prayers and by other acts of religious worship. These views, however, have elsewhere ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas
... by the mad idea that the gods and daimons may be moved, or even compelled, by forms of prayer and sacrifices and magic arts, to grant to each worshiper the particular thing on which he may have set his covetous and changeable fancy." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that human affairs are changeable, seeing the restless and disturbing spirit of this century, which overturns everything once in a generation, can a more senseless method be imagined than to educate a child as if he were never to leave his room, as if he were obliged to be constantly surrounded by his servants? ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... felt about ye, and all my dreams which have often strangely deformed thee, will die with me. You will exist to reflect other images in other minds, and ever will remain the same, although your reflected semblance vary in a thousand ways, changeable as the hearts of those who view thee. One of these fragile mirrors, that ever doted on thine image, is about to be broken, crumbled to dust. But everteeming Nature will create another and another, and thou wilt loose nought by ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... say," replied Mr. George. "It was such a complicated case that you could not decide it either way. The question was like a piece of changeable silk. You could make it look green or brown, just according to the way you looked at it. When you come to read the history you will see ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... pretence, Nor beard nor tail to take occasion by, To bring in that unluckie inference Which weaken might this new built mysterie. Certes in raging fire they both did frie. A signe whereof you rightly may aread Their colours changeable varietie First clear and white, then yellow, after red, Then blewly pale, then ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... and of his workis. Lett not thairfoar the Readir wonder, albeit that our style vary and speik diverslie of men, according as thei have declared thameselves sometymes ennemymes and sometymes freindis, sometymes fervent, sometymes cold, sometymes constant, and sometymes changeable in the cause of God and of his holy religioun: for, in this our simplicitie, we suppoise that the Godlie shall espy our purpose, which is, that God may be praised for his mercy schawin,[13] this present age may be admonished to be thankfull for Goddis benefittis offerred, and the posteritie to ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... share of the rough work, whether riding or horse-breaking or building brush corrals, but while he responded to every mood of his changeable companion he hid the whirl of emotion which possessed him, guarding the secret of his heart even when writing to Lucy Ware; and slowly, as the months crept by, the wound healed ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... is moved in a magnetic field, the energy spent is measurable in foot-pounds, as before, a pressure into a distance. The energy appears in a new form, but the quantity of matter being unchanged, the only changeable factor is the kind of motion, and that the motion is molecular is evident, for the molecules are heated. Mechanical or mass motion is the antecedent, molecular heat motion is the consequent, and the way we know there has been some intermediate ...
— The Machinery of the Universe - Mechanical Conceptions of Physical Phenomena • Amos Emerson Dolbear
... she breaks a locket, she will have a changeable and unstable husband, who will dislike constancy in any form, be it ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... man. All the story of Cartwright's spoiled boyhood and viciously selfish youth were written in his face for the reading of such a man as Sinclair. The rancher's son had begun well enough. Lack of discipline had undone him; but whether his faults were fixed or changeable, Sinclair could not tell. It was largely to learn this that he took ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... April. This name may possibly be a corruption of u bynai-iong, i.e. the black moon, the changeable ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... expected to appeal to the selfish motives which are addressed by the market, the forum, or the bar, but to the eternal principle of Right. He must not be guided by the statutes of men, changeable as the clouds, but must fix his eye on the bright particular star of Justice, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. To him, office, money, social rank, and fame are but toys or counters which the game of life is played withal; while wisdom, integrity, benevolence, piety are the prizes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... betraying how little she knew, in her cage, of whether it was foul or fair. It was for that matter always stuffy at Cocker's, and she finally settled down to the safe proposition that the outside element was "changeable." Anything seemed true that ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... not changeable; fancy not art guides her mind. What to-day types beauty, is by her own voice to-morrow voted indecent and absurd. Thus we find in the period extending from 1870 to 1875 an entirely new but none the less ridiculous or injurious extreme prevails. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... or weep; they win a man's confidence but do not give him theirs. Therefore a respectable man ought to keep bayaderes like flowers of a cemetery, three steps away from him. It is also said: changeable like waves of the sea, like clouds in a sunset, glowing only a moment—so are women. As soon as they have plundered a man they throw him away like a dye-rag that has been squeezed dry. This saying, too, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... nigh six months of palpitating negotiations with the adorable Mrs. Glamorys, the poet, in a moment of dejection, penned the prose apophthegm, "It is of no use trying to change a changeable person." ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... only changeable element in modern industrial societies. Credit—the disposition of one man to trust another—is singularly varying. In England, after a great calamity, everybody is suspicious of everybody; as soon as that calamity is forgotten, everybody ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... Like that strange, intolerable, vulgar, attractive, intermittently inspired creature, who presented himself at life's roulette-table, not less various in his own person than were the varying turns he courted, unaccountable as chance, baffling as fate, changeable as luck. Indeed he was like life itself, a thing you loved and hated, grew weary of and embraced, shrank from and pursued. To see him then was in a way to look on at life, to be in contact with him was to feel the throb of its ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... suggestion whispered within him, tempting him. He knew his friend as no one else did. What chance of happiness had any woman with a man like Ahmed Ben Hassan, at the mercy of his savage nature and passionate changeable moods? What reason to suppose that the love that had flamed up so suddenly at the thought that he had lost her would survive the knowledge of repossession? To him, all his life, a thing desired had upon possession become valueless. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... the hill Pete climbed back to Philip's side, and said, "The heart's a quare thing, sir. Got its winds and tides same as anything else. The wind blows contrary ways in one day, and it's the same with the heart itself. Changeable? Well, maybe! We shouldn't be too hard on it for all.... If I'd only known now.... She wasn't much better than a child when I left for Kimberley... and then what was I? I was only common stuff anyway... not ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... a certain philosopher of Agrigentum, in a Greek poem, pronounced with the authority of an oracle the doctrine that whatever in nature and the universe was unchangeable was so in virtue of the binding force of friendship; whatever was changeable was so by the solvent power of discord. And indeed this is a truth which everybody understands and practically attests by experience. For if any marked instance of loyal friendship in confronting or sharing ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... as for Judah and Jerusalem: "their cauls and their round tires like moons; the chains and the bracelets and the mufflers; the bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the head bands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings; the rings and nose jewels; the changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins; the glasses, and the fine linen, and the hoods and the veils." Nor has the day yet come to pass in the nineteenth century when the bravery of the daughters has been ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... so changeable! But I think it is all the same. According to law, only the last will ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... shoulders—noisy self-interest side by side with introspective revery, where stray priests nodded in among the traders,—many-peopled India surged in miniature between the four hot walls and through the passage to the overflowing street; changeable and unexplainable, in ever-moving flux, but more conservative in spite of it than the very rocks she rests on—India who is sister to Aholibah ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... little children are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the world; if not so, God is a partial God, and also a changeable God, and a respecter to persons; for how many little ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... and seemed all of goldsmith's work. The women of Prometheus descended from their niches till the anger of Jupiter turned them again into statues. It is evident, too, that the size of the procenium accorded with the magnificence of the scene; for I find choruses described, 'and changeable conveyances of the song,' in manner of an echo, performed by more than forty different voices and instruments in ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Richard, who paid great court to his eldest uncle, by whom he had never been offended, and whom he found more moderate in his temper than the younger. He made a cession to him for life of the duchy of Guienne,[***] which the inclinations and changeable humor of the Gascons had restored to the English government; but as they remonstrated loudly against this deed, it was finally, with the duke's consent, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... traffic before him and guide the bicycle or automobile through the ever varying passages. The first condition of efficiency, therefore, in any pursuit, is to reduce any general movements involved in the process to unconscious habits, and thus leave the conscious judgment free to deal with the changeable features of ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... delays are on his side, I tremble for the lady; and, if on hers, (as he tells my niece Charlotte,) I could wish she were apprized that delays are dangerous. Excellent as she is, she ought not to depend on her merits with such a changeable fellow, and such a profest marriage- hater, as he has been. Desert and reward, I can assure her, seldom ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Board, and shortly after out of her dominions; so pliable and obedient they were to change with the times and their prince; and of them will fall a relation of recreation. Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, and Lord Treasurer, had served then four princes, in as various and changeable times and seasons, that I may well say no time nor age hath yielded the like precedent. This man, being noted to grow high in her favour (as his place and experience required), was questioned by an intimate friend of his, how he had stood up ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... altogether bad. When discussing the question whether it be better to be loved or feared, Machiavelli decides that 'it is far safer to be feared than loved, if you must choose; seeing that you may say of men generally that they are ungrateful and changeable, dissemblers, apt to shun danger, eager for gain; as long as you serve them, they offer you everything, down to their very children, if you have no need; but when you want help, they fail you. Therefore ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... and then flew to her waters and lay In love-patience long hours, and sore dazzled her eyes In watching for mine 'gainst the midsummer skies. But now they were heal'd,—O my heart, it still dances When I think of the charm of her changeable glances, And my image how small when it sank in the deep Of her eyes where her soul was,—Alas! now they weep, And none knoweth where. In what stream do her eyes Shed invisible tears? Who beholds where her sighs Flow in eddies, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... proved, instead, a true April day, of the most fickle and changeable type. Gusts of rain and wind alternated with flashes of bright sunshine. The second battalion of the Third Regiment arrived, and the work of completing the cantonments went on. The huts which were half finished yesterday were now put in good order, and in building the new ones ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... man facing eternity. But that was what gave him strength to endure. Somehow he was a part of it all, some atom in that vastness, somehow necessary to an inscrutable purpose, something indestructible in that desolate world of ruin and death and decay, something perishable and changeable and growing under all the fixity of heaven. In that endless, silent hall of desert there was a spirit; and Cameron felt hovering near him what he imagined to be phantoms ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... semi-transparencies—unsubstantial, foam-like, mere violet froth. As she came starry-eyed through the gardens, the impudent wind trifling with her hair, I protest she might have been some lady of Oberon's court stolen out of Elfland to bedevil us poor mortals, with only a moonbeam for the changeable heart of her, and for raiment a violet shadow spirited from the under side of some big, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... worthy of me if I were twenty times worthier! Mother, mother! What has turned you against us again? It is not like you to change about so! I cannot bear to find you changeable! I should have sworn you were just the one to understand her perfectly! I cannot bear you should let unworthy reasons prejudice you against anyone!—If you say a word more against her, I will go and sit outside with the moon. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... more or less degree by all the stones in the class of pellucid jewels, but no stone or gem can in any way even rival the curious mixture of opaqueness, translucency, silkiness, milkiness, fire, and the steadfast changeable and prismatic brilliance of colour of the precious opal. The other six varieties of opal are much inferior in their strange mixture of these anomalies of light and colour. Given in order of value, we have as the second, the "fire" opal with a red reflection, ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... to the supposed parentage and both Max and Agathe, Hochon turned to leave the room; but old Madame Hochon, a woman still erect and spare, wearing a round cap with ribbon knots and her hair powdered, a taffet petticoat of changeable colors like a pigeon's breast, tight sleeves, and her feet in high-heeled slippers, deposited her snuff-box on a little ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... cannot assign others more probable; and in that examination, do not despise some very mean and trifling causes of the actions of great men; for so various and inconsistent is human nature, so strong and changeable are our passions, so fluctuating are our wills, and so much are our minds influenced by the accidents of our bodies that every man is more the man of the day, than a regular consequential character. The ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... this singularity was a trial to me, and more especially at this time, as white hats were used by some who were fond of following the changeable modes of dress, and as some friends, who knew not from what motives I wore it, grew shy of me, I felt my way for a time shut up in the exercise of the ministry. Some friends were apprehensive that my wearing such a hat savored of an affected singularity: those who spoke with me in a friendly way, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... not a word to be said against us except that which referred to the feelings of the young and old. Feelings are changeable, I told them at that great and glorious meeting which we had at Gladstonopolis, and though naturally governed only by instinct, would be taught at last to comply with reason. I had lately read how feelings had been allowed in England ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... subject to the "blues," or other forms of depressed feeling? Are your moods very changeable, or rather constant? What kind of a disposition do you think you have? How did you come by it; that is, in how far is it due to hereditary temperament, and in how far ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... seemed to him to be principally very hilly and the soil sandy, with but little vegetation. There is scarce any wood; but all classes are content with dung for fuel. Though the country is so bare, sheep seem to do well. The climate is very changeable; in summer, storms are very frequent, many fall victims to the vivid lightning, and the wind is often so strong as even to blow over men on horseback: during the winter there is no rain, which all falls in the summer, and then scarcely enough to lay the dust, while the storms of hail ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... seldom suffered a fine day to pass without paying a visit to Wildfell about the time my new acquaintance usually left her hermitage; but so frequently was I baulked in my expectations of another interview, so changeable was she in her times of coming forth and in her places of resort, so transient were the occasional glimpses I was able to obtain, that I felt half inclined to think she took as much pains to avoid my company as I to seek hers; but this was ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... ain't got any objections to either color, only it ought to stay put, hadn't it? In a town of the size she's livin' in, a girl with changeable hair is likely to be kind of conspicuous. I tell you! maybe it bleached out ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... real succession in the objects. From these phenomena, as well as from many others, we may conclude, that time cannot make its appearance to the mind, either alone, or attended with a steady unchangeable object, but is always discovered some PERCEIVABLE succession of changeable objects. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... conquerors, so he who conquers self is one with me. He who little cares to conquer self, is but a foolish master; beauty, or earthly things, family renown and such things, all are utterly inconstant, and what is changeable can give no rest of interval. If in the end the law of entire destruction is exacted, what use is there in indolence and pride? Covetous desire is the greatest source of sorrow, appearing as a friend in secret 'tis our enemy. As a fierce fire excited from within ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... will always come. Don't be afraid. And when you are unhappy, write to me. I shall understand. You are not hard, you are not heartless. You are tender and sensitive. Only your armor is made of flint. You are not changeable and vacillating. They didn't know. You are brave and conscientious." With some such words as these last did I write to Ruth before I slept that night. I believed in her as I never had before. I ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... such a changeable creature, then?' said Miss Bretherton, smiling at him. 'Do you generally find my ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... smiled upon him, much as she had upon the singer, and brushing aside her skirts of changeable green and heliotrope silk, showed him a little golden-legged chair beside her. Mrs. Peck and Madame Delmonti conversed with unusual insight and knowledge on the singing of Maud Levy, and Faraday was left ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... with her just now, and then she seemed to me quite calm; but behind all her moods something lies hidden which it is impossible for me to fathom; and then she is so changeable, ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... year it prevails much further from the Southern towards the Northern Hemisphere, yet we can seldom hope to carry it beyond the equinoctial line, where we expect to get into what is very characteristically called "the variables": at one season of the year, these winds are very light and changeable, with frequent calms and occasional thunderstorms and waterspouts: at another season of the year, the weather is dark, gloomy, squally with occasional calms and much rain, until we advance to 12 deg. or 14 deg. N. latitude, where we usually fall in with the N.E. trade wind, however, ships are ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... with lofty trees; these are oftener to be found in the old parts of Paris than in the modern quarters. A much greater proportion of the population consists of foreigners, than is the case in London, consequently it is more moving and changeable. It is the great post town for almost all Europeans who visit England, and hundreds of thousands come to Paris, who never think of going to London, deterred by an exaggerated idea of the expense; hence it will ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... best school of moral discipline, for nations as for individuals. Indeed, the history of difficulty would be but a history of all the great and good things that have yet been accomplished by men. It is hard to say how much northern nations owe to their encounter with a comparatively rude and changeable climate and an originally sterile soil, which is one of the necessities of their condition,—involving a perennial struggle with difficulties such as the natives of sunnier climes know nothing of. And thus it may be, that though ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... Thou swankest, and that is not seemly, therefore shall I trounce thee right lustily to teach thee what a sorry young knave thou art." "Nay, good Master Brown, hearken to me. This morn too late I kept my bed, and finding not my buff jerkin, did don in haste my Sunday doublet of changeable taffeta, for thou wottest the ills that do befall those late for school. Neither by my halidom knew I, that being yet of tender years, it was not meet for me to go cross-gartered, so prithee, gentle youth, cease ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... by this face might be compared to that of a prism, every facet of which reflects a different color. The ardor burning under this changeable surface, which, through some sudden cause, betrayed its presence, was so deeply hidden, however, that it seemed impossible to fathom it completely. Was she a coquette, or simply a fashionable lady, or a devotee? In one word, was she ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... differences in topography? The law is written, but in unfamiliar characters that render our reading slow and uncertain. Yet it is conspicuously noticeable that those caves showing the most delicately fragile and wonderfully varied forms of decoration are those traversed by the most sweeping and changeable, or even reversible, currents of air; which might lead to the conclusion that the moisture is sprayed or converted into a light, misty vapor, and then deposited in exactly the same manner as the beautiful frost-work at Niagara: the direction and force of the current determining ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... One species, the most remarkable of all, was composed of a substance, resembling mother-of-pearl, exquisitely beautiful, but very fragile, breaking easily, if you but set foot on one of them: they were changeable in colour, being of a dazzling white, a pearly blue, or a delicate pale green, as viewed in different lights. Scattered here and there, among these deserted tenements of various kinds of shell-fish, were the beautiful exuviae ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... the beginnings of the earth, we have been here, and she changes us like the grass of her soil. She stands firm, unshaken. We alone are changeable, and help there is none for us, no refuge, nor may we decline to come hither. Like an angler of fish, the world brings us up on a hook. Before it has finished devouring one generation, the next is ready for its fate. One is swallowed up, the ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... animal kingdom at large yields reasons for associating an inferior and more rapidly-completed mental structure, with a relatively automatic nature. Lowly organized creatures, guided almost entirely by reflex actions, are in but small degrees changeable by individual experiences. As the nervous structure complicates, its actions become less rigorously confined within pre-established limits; and as we approach the highest creatures, individual experiences take larger and larger shares in moulding the conduct: there is an increasing ability ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... by the most trifling causes. A word will grieve them like some real misfortune. Their impulses are not lacking in intellectual control, but are followed by action with excessive rapidity. Although of such changeable disposition, they are subject to fixed ideas, to which they cling with a kind of cataleptic intensity. A woman will be dumb or motionless for months, on the pretext that speech or motion would injure her. But this is the only ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... Kate Dancox was changeable as the ever-shifting sea. Delighted with the frock that was in process, she extended her approbation to its maker; and when Mrs. Ram, a homely workwoman, departed with her small bundle in her arms, it pleased the young lady to say she would attend ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... saw a good deal of him—at one time, I mean. He's changeable, I think. But he always sent us game, and sometimes fruit. There were some stories against him, but I ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Apart from its great mineral resources, the province produces silk, wax and tobacco, all of good quality; grass cloth, grain in abundance, and tea, plentiful though of poor flavor. The climate is changeable, necessitating a variety of clothing. Cotton is grown in Szchuen, but Bourne states that Indian yarn is driving it out of cultivation, not apparently on account of the enormous saving through spinning ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... and sometimes feel sorrowful at his changeable appearance; perhaps if one of influence and authority came in, he would put on peculiar airs of suavity, and expatiate upon how things were and should be in prison, while one without that influence might enter and receive entirely different treatment. I here see how ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... relation to utility, they are innate and distinguish the organism from other organisms; the latter can be explained by means of certain vital functions, hence they possess a certain utility and adapt themselves more or less to environment. The former are permanent, the latter changeable. Darwinians regard all the characters of organisms as useful, physiological, and adaptive. If they have been hitherto unable to make good this assumption, they appeal to our lack of knowledge and console themselves with the thought that the future may yet reveal the ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... said that Thackeray was the very opposite of this. Unsteadfast, idle, changeable of purpose, aware of his own intellect but not trusting it, no man ever failed more generally than he to put his best foot foremost. Full as his works are of pathos, full of humour, full of love and charity, tending, as they ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Magus opens and closes his shutters himself; he is as careful of his pictures as of his daughter, his second idol. And well the old picture-fancier knows the laws of the lives of pictures. To hear him talk, a great picture has a life of its own; it is changeable, it takes its beauty from the color of the light. Magus talks of his paintings as Dutch fanciers used to talk of their tulips; he will come home on purpose to see some one picture in the hour of its glory, when the ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... that a letter is a dead messenger. Something is lacking in all writing. You can never be sure how the written page will affect the reader, because his mood, his circumstances, his affections are so changeable. It is different with the spoken word. If it is harsh and ill-timed it can always be remodeled. No wonder the Apostle expresses the wish that he could speak to the Galatians in person. He could change his voice according to their ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... hesitation, for the above reflections had long been dealt with, "but how I wish I could do something to deserve even half that you say of me! But I fear that you find the air getting rather cold. The weather is so changeable." ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... difference. We believe that the world is governed not by eternal laws, but by a changeable and continually changing God, and that it is our duty to try and persuade Him to make ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... husband. For the king was embarrassed, and hung vacillating betwixt shame and fear of battle. Thus Westmar, having been referred to the thoughts of the girl's heart, and knowing that every woman is as changeable in purpose as she is fickle in soul, proceeded to fulfil his task all the more confidently because he knew how mutable the wishes of maidens were. His confidence in his charge was increased and his zeal encouraged, because she had both a ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... too glowing a rhetoric for the true scientific tone of mind; but there was no doubt that his assertion met with a most startling aptness all the difficulties which had accompanied the received theories on the phenomena attending those changeable suns of marvellous systems so far away. It accounted for the nebulous mist that surrounds some of them at their weakest time; in short, took up a position of probability which has never ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... here that in these calculations we assume that the hide is in a perfectly dry state, water being a changeable element which does not allow one to arrive at ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... for passing up this coast is in April and the beginning of May, or between the middle of August and latter end of October; in the months of June and July, the passage is not apparently so safe, on account of the changeable weather that may be encountered, which to a stranger would create much anxiety, although no real danger. Strict attention to these directions and confidence in the chart, with a cautious lookout will, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... were dispirited by the loss of their officer and the ill success of the expedition; not, however, that this prevented them from exerting themselves to the very utmost of their strength. The wind also, which had been very uncertain and changeable, now almost a calm, now a fresh breeze, now blowing from the eastward, now some points to the north of it, then a like number to the south, seemed suddenly to fix itself in the latter point with a considerable increase of strength, which sent the mistico flying through the water ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... of men are finding 'the average woman' quite delightful," said Leslie. "Men respect a masculine, well-balanced, argumentative woman, but every time they love and marry the impulsive, changeable, ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... went, sleeping one day in the tent of a nomadic Lapp, another day in our bags, at other times in the gamme of a river Lapp. The weather was very changeable; one day it was clear, the next day the sky was gray. ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... shifting or a sudden squall breaking over the ship, which fortunately did not happen at the time of which I am speaking, those who might only have just turned in had to turn out again instanter. In the same way, I may add, had the weather been stormy and changeable all of us would have had plenty to do in taking in and setting sail, without leisure for sennit reeving and yarn spinning and playing "Tom Cox's traverse" about the decks from morning till night, as we did in those halcyon days between ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... justice. It was not that she was changeable or capricious, or that her love was weak; on the contrary, its very nature was to grow out of all bounds of sex and mood and circumstance. Its progress had been from Maurice Durant outward; from Maurice, as the innermost kernel and heart of the world, to the dim verge, the uttermost ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... changeable, a. mutable, variable, inconstant, unstable, unsteadfast, reversible, alterable, revocable, mobile, convertible, transmutable, commutable, kaleidoscopic, transformable, impermanent; volatile, fickle, mercurial, protean, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the people say, from seven to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute, I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by fortune, but also by intention. 'Tis a counterpart of various and changeable accidents, and of irresolute imaginations, and, as it falls out, sometimes contrary: whether it be that I am then another self, or that I take subjects by other circumstances and considerations: so it is that I may peradventure ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... accomplished merely served to stimulate his eagerness to penetrate the mystery of her reserve, and caused him to consider her henceforth as altogether differing from other girls. She had become a problem, an enigma, which he would try to solve; and her peculiar nature, baffling, changeable, full of puzzling moods, served to fascinate his imagination, to invite his dreaming. A strange thrill swept him when he caught a fleeting glimpse of white skirt and well-turned ankle as she ran swiftly up the steep staircase, yet, almost at the same ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... astrologer, Rider, in his note on the third column of the calendar side, teaches us to expect "variable and cold weather"; but instead of encouraging us to trust ourselves to the haze and mist and doubtful lights of that changeable week, on the answerable part of the opposite page he gives us a salutary caution (indeed, it is very nearly in the words of the author's motto): "Avoid," says he, "being out late at night and in foggy weather, for a cold now caught may last the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke |
