"Inconstancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Ye poor malicious blood-suckers of the virtuous! Ye shall not be able to hurt a hair of my head. Ye cannot injure the man who has sixty years lived in honour. I will not, in my old age, bring upon myself the reproach of inconstancy, treachery, or desire of revenge. I will betray no political secrets: I wish not to injure those by whom I have been injured.—Such acts I will never commit. I never yet descended to the office of spy, nor will I die a ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... trifling ceremonies into intolerable burdens; always dresses becoming to her rank and age; is modest without prudery, religious without an alloy of superstition; can hear the one sex praised without envy, and converse with the other without permitting the torch of inconstancy to kindle the unhallowed fire in her breast; considers her husband as the most accomplished of mortals, and thinks all the sons of Adam besides unworthy of a transient glance from the corner ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... evolution of greatness. Inconstancy never. The Globe of a certain date in June, 1921, contained a front page display of the Agrarian bye-election victory in Medicine Hat. On another date there was an editorial once again advising the Agrarians to make common cause with Liberals against the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... of clinging plants, the trembling of the grass, the slenderness of the rose-vine and the velvet of the flower, the lightness of the leaf and the glance of the fawn, the gaiety of the sun's rays and tears of the mist, the inconstancy of the wind and the timidity of the hare, the vanity of the peacock and the softness of the down on the throat of the swallow, the hardness of the diamond, the sweet flavor of honey and the cruelty of the tiger, the warmth of fire, the ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... quarrel with Heaven. If the feeble charms which my countenance displays have exposed me to the misfortune of my lover abandoning me, Heaven could not better soften such a blow than by making use of you to captivate that heart. I ought not to blush for an inconstancy which indicates the difference between your attractions and mine. If this change makes me sigh, it is from foreseeing that it will be fatal to your love; amidst the sorrow caused by friendship, ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... of Shakespeare's plays harder to characterise. The name and the remembrances connected with it, prepare us for the representation of attachment no less faithful than fervent on the side of the youth, and of sudden and shameless inconstancy on the part of the lady. And this is, indeed, as the gold thread on which the scenes are strung, though often kept out of sight and out of mind by gems of greater value than itself. But as Shakespeare calls forth nothing ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... is a slight consciousness of mental processes, but the mind rarely watches itself work; the neurasthenic is unable to concentrate, and gets charged with inconstancy and shiftlessness. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... who, having carefully examined the miniature, had opened the back of the case, and could not repress a smile at what he beheld—"strangely enough, this very picture will convince you of the earl's inconstancy. It was evidently designed for Mistress Mallet, and, as she would not accept ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... reason than the discovery of Viola's sex. In the same way Romeo turns from Rosaline to Juliet at first sight. This trait has been praised by Coleridge and others as showing singular knowledge of a young man's character, but I should rather say that inconstancy was a characteristic of sensuality and belonged to Shakespeare himself, for Orsino, like Romeo, has no reason to change his love; and the curious part of the matter is that Shakespeare does not seem to think that the quick change in Orsino requires any ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... disobeyed."—"But what is to be done? I cannot remain as I am; I have yet resources and partisans. It is said that the Allies will no longer treat with me. Well! no matter. I will march on Paris. I will be revenged on the inconstancy of the Parisians and the baseness of the Senate. Woe to the members of the Government they have patched up for the return of their Bourbons; that is what they are looking forward to. But to-morrow I shall place myself at the head ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... hurt by anything to which the Will does not extend, but only by itself. If, therefore, we always would incline this way, and whenever we are unsuccessful, would lay the fault on ourselves, and remember that there is no cause of perturbation and inconstancy but wrong principles, I pledge myself to you that we should make some proficiency. But we set out in a very different way from the very beginning. In infancy, for example, if we happen to stumble, our nurse does not chide us, but beats the stone. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... I exclaimed, is it thus you requite my tender love! Could a vague report of my inconstancy drive you to infidelity! Did not my continual letters breathe constant adoration? And did not yours portray the same sincerity of affection? No, it was not that which caused you to perjure your plighted vows. It ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... know the respect thou bearest to the dogly character, and can attribute to nothing else the complacency with which thou hast listened to me since I released thy cloak. If ever the Athenians, in their inconstancy, should issue a decree to deprive me of the appellation they have conferred on me, rise up, I pray thee, in my defence, and protest that I have not merited so severe a mulct. Something I do deserve at thy hands; ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... other night, about a lady of the place, between her various lovers, occasioned a midnight discharge of pistols, but nobody wounded. Great scandal, however—planted by her lover—to be thrashed by her husband, for inconstancy to her regular Servente, who is coming home post about it, and she herself retired in confusion into the country, although it is the acme of the opera season. All the women furious against her (she herself having been censorious) for being found out. She is a pretty woman—a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Caucasian characters, while other so-called Tartaric Turks exemplify the Mongol type. On the other hand, the Magyar and the Basque do not depart in any essential physical peculiarity from the Indo-Germans, whilst the Magyar, Basque, and Indo-Germanic tongues are widely different. Apart from their inconstancy, again, the so-called race characters can hardly yield a scientifically natural system. Languages, on the other hand, readily fall into a natural arrangement, like that of which other vital products are susceptible, ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... all the sages upon the vicissitudes of fortune and the inconstancy of human affairs would prove unfounded if this expedition had terminated profitably and happily; but the ordering of events is inevitable, and those who tear up the roots, sometimes find sweet liquorice and sometimes ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... The last stanza shows very pleasingly the faithfulness of father and children, in contrast to the inconstancy of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... with great ease, deny their contract, and disavow her claim of participation. She therefore demanded security, and proposed, as a preliminary of the agreement, that he should privately take her to wife, with a view to dispel all her apprehensions of his inconstancy or deceit, as such a previous engagement would be a check upon his behaviour, and keep him strictly to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... woods, encreasing the winds with my sighs, or to sit by a purling stream, swelling the rivulet with my tears; may be, both may do well in their turns:—but to be a minute serious, what do you mean by this reproach of inconstancy? I confess you give me several good qualities I have not, and I am ready to thank you for them, but then you must not take away those few I have. No, I will never exchange them; take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me, leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... fear of lust or license. Men will, on the whole, continue to prefer one partner, and friendship will refine the grossness of sense. There are worse evils than open and avowed inconstancy—the loathsome combination of deceitful intrigue with the selfish monopoly of property. That a child should know its father is no great matter, for I ought not in reason to prefer one human being to another ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... one would ever think of inquiring into the truth. They thus went on day after day, muttering, complaining, and consulting together; and though the admiral was not fully aware of the extent of their cabals, he was not entirely without apprehensions of their inconstancy in the present trying situation, and of their evil intentions toward him. He therefore exerted himself to the utmost to quiet their apprehensions and to suppress their evil design, sometimes using fair words, and at other times fully resolved to expose ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... you, but myself," said Eugene. "It is all with myself. I will take the blame of it all, sweet," and he smoothed her hair and kissed her and held her close and tried to comfort her; and it seemed to him that he could indeed take all the blame of her inconstancy and distrust, and could even bear his self-reproach for her sake, ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... I am unkind That from the nursery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly. True! a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field, And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore, I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... to charge women with fickleness and inconstancy; but there comes into my mind a story of a woman's constancy and a man's cruelty which, I think you will agree, is worth the telling. Gualtieri, the young Marquis of Saluzzo, was a man who did not believe that any woman could be true and constant all her life. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... desperately, while Molly, with cool fingers and a calm face, plucks a flower to pieces, "it is impossible you can have so soon forgotten. Think of all the happy days at Brooklyn, all the vows we interchanged. Is there inconstancy in ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... happiness of innocence, and solace our disquiet with sensual gratifications. By degrees we let fall the remembrance of our original intention, and quit the only adequate object of rational desire. We entangle ourselves in business, immerge ourselves in luxury, and rove through the labyrinths of inconstancy till the darkness of old age begins to invade us, and disease and anxiety obstruct our way. We then look back upon our lives with horror, with sorrow, and with repentance; and wish, but too often vainly wish, that we had not forsaken the paths ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... intoxicated and dazzled with their genius, their prowess, and success; but a sudden revulsion of popular feeling, and an explosion of popular indignation, would overturn the one, and ostracism expel the other. Thus while inconstancy, and turbulence, and faction seem to have been inseparable from the democratic spirit, the Athenians were certainly constant in their love of liberty, faithful in their affection for their country,[33] and invariable in their sympathy and admiration for that genius which shed ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... excuse for asking him to his house. Mr. Dallas availed himself of the excuse; and Mike prayed that he might find the ladies at home. They were in the drawing-room. The piano was played, and amid tea and muffins, tennis was discussed, allusions were made to man's inconstancy. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... ultimate ground of judgment, what undulancy, complexity, surprises!—"I have no other end in writing but to discover myself, who also shall peradventure be another thing to- morrow." The great work of his life, the Essays, he placed "now high, now low, with great doubt and inconstancy." "What are we but sedition? like this poor France, faction against faction, within ourselves, every piece playing every moment its own game, with as much difference between us and ourselves as between ourselves and others. ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... have no objection, have you, sir, to my speaking to her, I mean?' said Mr. Coxe, a little anxious at the expression on Mr. Gibson's face. 'I do assure you I have not a chance with Miss Gibson,' he continued, not knowing what to say, and fancying that his inconstancy was rankling in Mr. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... form of government and ousted Ippolito de' Medici, another bastard, and the very Alessandro with whom, at the later period of which we are now writing, he was travelling to Livorno. Having completed this change of government, he became alarmed at the evident inconstancy of the people of Florence, and, fearing the vengeance of Clement VII., he went to Lyon to superintend a vast house of business he owned there, which corresponded with other banking-houses of his own in Venice, Rome, ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... marry? Should it be A dashing damsel, gay and pert, A pattern of inconstancy; Or selfish, mercenary flirt? Quoth ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... love? Her tenacity and reserve were ill matched with Fina's native inconstancy of purpose and childish incontinence of speech; her pride of race resented her father's adoption of a stranger into the penetralia of the family; and to share the name she had inherited from her mother with the daughter of that mother's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Mr. Winch, in despair at this inconstancy, "when will you learn to be a little more steady-minded? Here I have come expressly to plead your cause, and get you off; but before I have a chance, you change your mind again, and now nothing can ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... be thankful that the fault has not been on our side." Miss Altifiorla had almost brought herself to believe that the man had made love to her, and proposed to her, that she in a moment of weakness had accepted him, and that she now had been luckily saved by his inconstancy. ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... the Apostate, rebelled against Constantius, his cousin-german, in the spring, in 360, and by his death, in November, 361, obtained the empire. He was one of the most infamous dissemblers that ever lived. Craft, levity, inconstancy, falsehood, want of judgment, and an excessive vanity, discovered themselves in all his actions, and appear in his writings, namely, his epistles, his satire called Misopogon, and his lives of the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... of a rebeck, which he plays admirably, he sings his complaints in verses that show his ingenuity. I follow another, easier, and to my mind wiser course, and that is to rail at the frivolity of women, at their inconstancy, their double dealing, their broken promises, their unkept pledges, and in short the want of reflection they show in fixing their affections and inclinations. This, sirs, was the reason of words and expressions I made use of to this goat when I came up just now; for as she is a female ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... came satiety and weariness and inconstancy on the part of the husband, who soon commenced the pleasing pastime of breaking ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... with their immediate and aesthetic joys, are not thought to be happy men; they themselves are apt to be loud in their lamentations, and to regard themselves as eminently and tragically unhappy. This arises from the intensity and inconstancy of their emotions, from their improvidence, and from the eccentricity of their social habits. While among them the sensuous and vital functions have the upper hand, the gregarious and social instincts are subordinated and often deranged; and their unhappiness ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... dear, it is to convince you that I am in excellent humor with all the world, and that you have no cause to complain of me. I do not intend to enact the role of a 'cruel parent,' in order to make you a persecuted heroine. I do not even intend to reproach you with your inconstancy!—though I do hope it is not going to be a chronic complaint!—because it would be embarrassing, for instance, if while we were in the midst of the preparations for your wedding with Anglesea, young Herriott, the new minister, were to come and beg my indulgence to explain to me how you ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... and generous, but of an Humour so uneasy and inconstant, that the victory over his Heart is as soon lost as won; a Slave that can add little to the Triumph of the Conqueror: but inconstancy's the Sin of all Mankind, therefore I'm resolv'd that nothing but ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... make a vague and indefinite promise of obeying the mandates of his constituents. He knows the prejudices of faction, and the inconstancy of the multitude. He would first inquire, how the opinion of his constituents shall be taken. Popular instructions are, commonly, the work, not of the wise and steady, but the violent and rash; meetings held ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... getting in a passion; with all these defects I nevertheless willingly gave alms, and I much loved the poor. I assiduously prayed to you, O my God, and I took pleasure in hearing you well spoken of. I do not doubt you will be astonished, Sir, by such resistance, and by so long a course of inconstancy; so many graces, so much ingratitude; but the sequel will astonish you still more, when you shall see this manner of acting grow stronger with my age, and that reason, far from correcting so irrational a procedure, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... do, amazingly fast," he returned, with a sigh and a far-away look. "But what you say applies to all men. If you ever marry you must run the risk of inconstancy in the man you accept. I am at least old enough and experienced enough to value a good woman when I have found one, especially when she does not make her goodness a bore. And you—you have inspired me with something ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... her, wished to see her, and longed for the next breaking-up, that he might re-enjoy that satisfaction, as he knew she intended to stay the whole winter at his father's; but now arrived the time to prove the inconstancy of human nature: he became acquainted with some other little misses, and by degrees found charms in them, which made those he had observed in Delia appear less admirable in his eyes; the fondness he had felt for her being in reality instigated chiefly by being the only one of his own ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... and why? She had given him all; it was not her fault if he wearied of her tyranny. No; he alone was to blame, his inconstancy, his weakness. He poured forth a torrent of self-reproach, and words of love, and she responded passionately. Once more they were lovers, thrilling to each other's touch. And the wan moon looked ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... eternity, if he had her to himself, safe and sure; but the confidence to which he rose every now and then that she would one day be his, just as often failed him, rudely shaken by some new symptom of what almost seemed like cherished inconstancy. If after all she should forsake him! It was impossible, but she might. If even that should come, he was too much of a man to imagine anything but a stern encounter of the inevitable, and he knew he would ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconstancy.—Addison. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... of Moscow are of wood, in order that they may be built quicker, and that the natural inconstancy of the nation, in every thing unconnected with country or religion, may be satisfied by an easy change of residence. Several of these fine edifices have been constructed for an entertainment; they were destined to add to the eclat of a day, and the rich manner in which they were decorated has made ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... what hollowness, what corruption existed beneath the brilliant and gay surface. Amiability, charm, wit, grace were to be found everywhere in their perfection, but nowhere was truth, or sincerity, or real pleasure. All things were perverted. Constancy was only to be found in inconstancy. Gossip and rumor left no frailty undiscovered, no reputation unsmirched. Religion was scoffed at, love was caricatured. All about him Calvert saw young nobles, each the slave of some particular goddess, bowing down and doing duty like the humblest menial, now caressed, now ill-treated, but always ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... advertised touching the proceedings here in ecclesiastical causes, because you seem to note in them some inconstancy and variation, as if we sometimes inclined to one side, sometimes to another, as if that clemency and lenity were not used of late that was used in the beginning, all which you impute to your own ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... to dream that fleas bite her, foretells that she will be slandered by pretended friends. To see fleas on her lover, denotes inconstancy. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... journey in the sky, and twilight was gathering around them, when, with arms entwined round each other, they pursued their way back, conversing upon the disappointments of life, and the misery that is produced by inconstancy and faithlessness. ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... ear. This jealousy caused him to take a side against the strike, solely because it had been proposed by Lantier, and this attitude made him very unpopular. But after the failure of the strike, which he had all along predicted, the inconstancy of the crowd turned in his favour and he soon regained his old ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... but he was so thrilled by the implicit revelation that she could not even imagine feminine inconstancy, that he forebore to draw her attention ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... some of his former opinions, and places the crux of philosophical controversy at a new point. We are soon made aware that exact thinking and true thinking are not synonymous, but that one exact thought, in the same mind, may be the exact opposite of the next. This inconstancy, which after all does not go very deep, is a sign of sincerity and pure love of truth; it marks the freshness, the vivacity, the self-forgetfulness, the logical ardour belonging to this delightful reformer. It may seem a paradox, but ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... voice from the seaward side of Meteor? True, the sea had yielded this wild being up, but did she speak with the sea's voice? She had at least the sea's inconstancy, the sea's abandonment. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Red, into which they have been thenceforth divided, till Panurgus, the eighteenth king from the Conquest, was more by their favor than his right advanced to the crown. This King, through his natural subtlety, reflecting at once upon the greatness of their power, and the inconstancy of their favor, began to find another flaw in this kind of government, which is also noted by Machiavel namely, that a throne supported by a nobility is not so hard to be ascended as kept warm. Wherefore his secret jealousy, lest the dissension of the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... vanity inclines him to consider every man as a rival in every pretension; with him whose airy negligence puts his friend's affairs or secrets in continual hazard, and who thinks his forgetfulness of others excused by his inattention to himself; and with him whose inconstancy ranges without any settled rule of choice through varieties of friendship, and who adopts and dismisses favourites by the sudden impulse ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... intended to deceive you. I did love you, and felt at the time all that I professed. Had you loved me less, I had been more constant. But why, let me ask, have you sought me here, to upbraid me for my inconstancy? What good can it do to you or to me? You call me a wretch: and I acknowledge myself to be one, a vile, ungrateful wretch. Call me a thief, if you will, if the word does not blister your tongue to utter it. I confess it all. Now leave me to ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... consulted in their affairs, wherein I sometimes was of service. I piti'd poor Miss Read's unfortunate situation, who was generally dejected, seldom cheerful, and avoided company. I considered my giddiness and inconstancy when in London as in a great degree the cause of her unhappiness, tho' the mother was good enough to think the fault more her own than mine, as she had prevented our marrying before I went thither, and persuaded the other match in my absence. Our mutual affection was revived, but there ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... card must be played, to win or lose. It might be that with the low opinion he held of women he would think her reconciled to her lot; he would think this an overture, a step towards kinder treatment, one more proof of the inconstancy of the lower and the weaker sex, made to be men's playthings. And at that thought her eyes grew hot with rage. But if it were so, she must still put up with it. She must still put up with it! She had sent for him, and he was coming—he was at ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... It was a case of my subconscious mind pointing out that the available present was more desirable than the unavailable not-present. At first I resented my apparent inconstancy in forming an esper projection of Marian Harrison when I was trying to project my blank telepathic inadequacy to Catherine. But as the weeks faded into the past, the shock and the frustration began to pale and I found Marian's projective image less and less ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... art in his management of Vivian's mind, he might have been suspected of using it in favour of Miss Sidney at this instant; for this prophecy of Vivian's inconstancy was the most likely means to prevent its accomplishment. Frequently, in the course of their tour, when Vivian was in any situation where his constancy was tempted, he recollected Russell's prediction, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... of authors free from adulteration. Others, and those very frequent, smoothed the cadence, or regulated the measure; on these I have not exercised the same rigour; if only a word was transposed, or a particle inserted or omitted, I have sometimes suffered the line to stand; for the inconstancy of the copies is such, as that some liberties may be easily permitted. But this practice I have not suffered to proceed far, having restored the primitive diction wherever it could for ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... the soldiers, adored by the women, at his ease in camps, a roue in courts, he was of that school of sparkling vices of which the Marshal de Richelieu had been the type in France. It was said that the queen herself had been enamoured of him, without being able to fix his inconstancy. Friend of the Duc d'Orleans, companion of his debaucheries, still he had never conspired with him. All treachery was abhorrent to him, all baseness of heart roused his utmost indignation. He adopted the Revolution as a noble idea, of which he was always ready to ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... former husbands, and there being hardly any difference between legitimacy and illegitimacy. Another old writer, Rev. S. Gobat, describes the Abyssinians as light-minded, having nothing constant but inconstancy itself. A more recent writer, J. Hotten (133-35), explains, in the following sentence, a fact which has often ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Hohenstiel-Schwangau—one of the rockiest and least attractive of all Browning's poems—had mystified most of its readers and been little relished by the rest. And now that plea for a discredited politician was followed up by what, on the face of it, was, as Mrs Orr puts it, "a defence of inconstancy in marriage." The apologist for Napoleon III. came forward as the advocate of Don Juan. The prefixed bit of dialogue from Moliere's play explains the situation. Juan, detected by his wife in an intrigue, is completely nonplussed. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... "Anatol," saw nothing but a rather weak-minded restlessness in woman's inconstancy, recognizes in "Intermezzo" woman's right to as complete a knowledge of life and its possibilities as any man may acquire. The same note is struck by Johanna in "The Lonely Way." "I want a time to come when I must shudder at myself—shudder ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... a time there lived a young king whose name was Souci, and he had been brought up, ever since he was a baby, by the fairy Inconstancy. Now the fairy Girouette had a kind heart, but she was a very trying person to live with, for she never knew her own mind for two minutes together, and as she was the sole ruler at Court till the prince grew up everything was always ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... Massinger's accustomed temperance and dignity. To the graver writer, too, we must set down Leydenberg's solemn and pathetic soliloquy (iii. 6), when by a voluntary death he is seeking to make amends for his inconstancy and escape from the toils of ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... Frank, though only patching fences, is still Frank. Changes in circumstances and in ourselves sometimes prevent the keeping of a friend, and we no longer find friendship in the places where we used to seek for it; but inconstancy in ourselves is a greater enemy to the holding of a friendship ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... whom the lightest presumption of his wife's fidelity would have been more delicious than the absolute restoration of all his jewels, and who, indeed, had with the utmost difficulty been brought to entertain the slightest suspicion of her inconstancy, immediately abandoned all distrust of both her and his friend, whose sincerity (luckily for Wild's purpose) seemed to him to depend on the same evidence. He then embraced our hero, who had in his countenance all the symptoms of the deepest concern, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... subject, and after a year's absence from the laboratory he joined the Oriental Society, and delivered a paper on the Hieroglyphic and Demotic inscriptions of El Kab, thus giving a crowning example both of the versatility and of the inconstancy ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... before it is succeeded by another novelty; for a French woman of bon ton, instead of wearing what is commonly worn by others, always aims at appearing in something new. It is unfortunately too true, that the changeableness of taste and inconstancy of fashion in France furnish an aliment to the luxury of other countries; but the principle of this communication is in the luxury of this ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... gained from their intercourse a certainty of power and promise of greater power. Silly people fill the world with lamentation over human inconstancy; but if we follow love, we cannot cling to the beloved. We must love onward, and only when our friends go before us can we be true both to friendship and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... century there lived in Hungary one Francis David, a man learned in the arts and languages, but his inconstancy and fickleness of mind led him into diverse errors, and brought about his destruction. He left the Church, and first embraced Calvinism; then he fled into the camp of the Semi-Judaising party, publishing a book De Christo non invocando, which was answered ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... Crowd of them assembled at a Play, wherein the Heroine, as the Phrase is, is so just a Picture of the Vanity of the Sex in tormenting their Admirers. The Lady who pines for the Man whom she treats with so much Impertinence and Inconstancy, is drawn with much Art and Humour. Her Resolutions to be extremely civil, but her Vanity arising just at the Instant that she resolved to express her self kindly, are described as by one who had ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... ha! twa excellent similes, I vow, Mr. Egerton.— Excellent! for they illustrate the vagaries and inconstancy of my dissipated heart as exactly as if you had meant to describe ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... of fact, we were richer. The captain had the usual sailor's provision of quack medicines, with which, in the usual sailor fashion, he would daily drug himself, displaying an extreme inconstancy, and flitting from Kennedy's Red Discovery to Kennedy's White, and from Hood's Sarsaparilla to Mother Seigel's Syrup. And there were, besides, some mildewed and half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over which Nares ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... laws, adds: "It might perhaps be said that the power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing good ones, and may be used to the one purpose as well as to the other. But this objection will have little weight with those who can properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and mutability in the laws which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments." (Federalist, No. 73.) And again in No. 62 of the same work he observes: "The facility and excess of law-making seem to be the diseases to which our governments are most ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... time find himself playing the cad in feeling disappointed, discontented, utterly lacking affection? It's a ghastly happening. Why is it he saw no handwriting on the wall? I am not stupid, Mary, neither am I given to inconstancy—I've had to struggle too much not to have my mind made up once and for all time. Why didn't I see through this veneer of a good time that these Gorgeous Girls manage to have painted over their real selves? Why did I never suspect? And what is a man to do when he discovers ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... taken possession of everyone. The Archbishop was celebrating high mass in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine. Scarcely was it ended and the prelate gone when Masaniello, with a crucifix in his hand, mounted the pulpit. His speech was a mixture of truth and madness; he complained of the inconstancy of the people, enumerated his services, described the oppressions that would fall upon them if they deserted him; he confessed his sins, and admonished the others to do the same before the Holy Virgin, that they might obtain the mercy of God, and as he raised ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... scenes of the neighbourhood, which, often celebrated by the poets, were especially calculated to foment his own rapidly developing fancy. He fell in love, was accepted, and ultimately cast off—incidents which afforded him opportunities of celebrating the charms, and deploring the inconstancy of the fair. He composed a poem, of fifteen hundred lines, entitled "Mahomet, or the Hegira," and performed the extraordinary mental effort of retaining the whole on his memory, at the period being unable to write. "The Retrospect," a poem of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... her way. We all have our moods, don't we? I mean we poor women. Don't all the poets credit us with inconstancy?" The least ripple of amusement at her sex swelled in ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... the Gentiles felt himself under a painful necessity faithfully to rebuke Peter in presence of the whole Church. He had recorded that rebuke, too, in one of his epistles. It was thus to be handed down to every age as a permanent and humiliating evidence of the wavering inconstancy of his fellow-laborer. Peter, doubtless, must have felt acutely the severity of the chastisement. Does he resent it? He, too, puts on record, long after, in one of his own epistles a sentence regarding his Rebuker, but it ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... their character explains the inconstancy and fickleness exhibited by the Christianized Manbos at the beginning of their conversion. These were due to the call of the forest hailing them back to their old haunts. These characteristics will ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... understand. Being a poet, he has spent more time weaving day-dreams, and basking, lizard-like, in the sun, than scribing in his dingy garret. Now, practical people have a way of tarring with the same brush of inconstancy authors, artists, and in general all men who live by their brains. Their nimble and fertile wit lays them open to the charge of a like agility in matters of ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... still as simply arranged as possible, had an indescribable air of care and taste that added to the effect of grace and pleasantness, and made Rachel feel convinced in a moment that the wonder would have been not in constancy to such a creature but in inconstancy. The notion that any one could turn from that brilliant, beaming, refined face to her own, struck her with a sudden humiliation. There was plenty of conversation, and her voice was not immediately wanted; indeed, she hardly attended to what was passing, and really dreaded outstaying ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... announced between Jeffrey and the young heiress. This and his previous attentions to Cora had made much talk, both in Washington and elsewhere, and there were not lacking those who had openly twitted him for his seeming inconstancy. This had been over the cups of course, and Jeffrey had borne it well enough from his so-called friends and intimates. But when, on a certain evening in the parlor of one of the large hotels in Atlantic City, a fellow whom nobody ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... distinguished by a levity and inconstancy ill suited to the gravity of the Roman Censor. In the first part of his reign, he surpassed in clemency those princes who had been suspected of an attachment to the Christian faith. In the last three years and a half, listening ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... who paid me profusely for the unlimited complaisance with which I passively humoured every caprice of pleasure, and which had won upon him so greatly, that finding, as he said, all that variety in me alone, which he had sought for in a number of women, I had made him lose his taste for inconstancy, and new faces. But what was yet at least agreeable, as well as more nattering, the love I had inspired him with, bred a deference to me, that was of great service to his health: for having by degrees, and with much pathetic ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... political disaster. You will scarcely find anyone who can bring himself to do that. And though what Ennius says is quite true,—" the hour of need shews the friend indeed,"—yet it is in these two ways that most people betray their untrustworthiness and inconstancy, by looking down on friends when they are themselves prosperous, or deserting them in their distress. A man, then, who has shewn a firm, unshaken, and unvarying friendship in both these contingencies we must reckon as one of a class the rarest ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... from Romanzes, I approve of them in the works of others, and make use of them in mine; I know likewise, that the Sea is the Scene most proper to make great changes in, and that some have named it the Theatre of inconstancy; but as all excess is vicious, I have made use of it but moderately, for to conserve true resembling: Now the same design is the cause also, that my Heros is not oppressed with such a prodigious quantity of accidents, as arrive unto some others, ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... decided through the fall of manna. If a married couple came before Moses, each accusing the other of inconstancy, Moses would say to them, "To-morrow morning judgement will be given." If, then, manna descended for the wife before the house of her husband, it was known that he was in the right; but if her share descended before the house of her own parents, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... enemy, since he whom nature has endowed with the quality of fidelity does not change his conviction when he changes his fortune. But you, should their fortunes not continue to prosper as before, would readily listen to the overtures of their assailants. For he who has the disease of inconstancy of mind no sooner takes fright than he denies his pledge to those most dear." Such were the words of Asclepiodotus. But the populace of the Neapolitans, when they saw him returning from Belisarius, gathered in a body and began to charge him with responsibility ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... constancy enough to finish a game at ball, but would ever throw his racquet down ere the winning point was scored. His plans were like a weather-vane, altered by every breeze. He was constant only in his inconstancy. It is true that he led the King's troops in Scotland, but all men knew that Claverhouse and Dalzell were the real conquerors at Bothwell Bridge. Methinks he resembles that Brutus in Roman history who feigned weakness of mind as a cover ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... determine the dates of those that have occurred in the early times of history, and find calculation and history in harmony. Anomalies and perturbations in the planets have been over and over again observed; but these, instead of demonstrating any inconstancy on the part of natural law, have invariably been reduced to consequences of that law. Instead of referring the perturbations of Uranus to any interference on the part of the Author of nature with the law of gravitation, the question which ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... believe, if I gave you his measure, and so old that his birthday was lost in the mists of antiquity. Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy; now, describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the stable-door; now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now, eliciting a shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire, ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... nearly smothered me. There is another little trick of thine, most lovely snow— It is but a proof of thine affection to cling around our necks, But still we swear—we cannot help it, Snow. Now it is "Skidoo," or "23 for you." Oh, cursed inconstancy of man! ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... Inconstancy of False Religion, 34 Fruitfulness of True Piety, 34 Fruits of the True and False Professor contrasted, 35 Fruit-bearing the test of Christian Character, 36 The Fruits of the Spirit, 36 Love, as in the Experience of David, 37 Manifested ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... passing gusts, they have only to imagine this power increased many, many fold, and the baffling currents made furious, as it might be, by meeting with resistance, to form some notion of the appalling strength and frightful inconstancy with which it blew for ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... of tears—Convulsive spasms of the muscles, tendons, nerves of the back, loins, arms, hands, and a general convulsion of the stomach, bowels, throat, legs, and indeed almost every other part of the body—A quick apprehension, forgetful, unsettled, and constant to nothing but inconstancy—A wandering and delirious imagination, groundless fears, and an exquisite sense of his sufferings—A gradually sinking into a nervous atrophy or consumption—A perpetual alarm of approaching death—Sometimes cheerful, and sometimes melancholy—Without ...
— A Treatise on Foreign Teas - Abstracted From An Ingenious Work, Lately Published, - Entitled An Essay On the Nerves • Hugh Smith
... dared to pass so severe a judgment upon a man whom my sovereign lady has raised above other men by casting upon him a look of kindness; but if Robert of Cabane has deserved the reproach of inconstancy and ingratitude, if he has perjured himself like a coward, he must indeed be the basest of all miserable beings, despising a happiness which other men might have entreated of God the whole time of their life and paid for through eternity. One man I ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... good. His verses have more traces of poetry and humour than we should expect from a man who out of the thirty-four years of his life, was for five of them continually drunk. He nearly always attunes his harp to the old subject, so as to become hopelessly monotonous. Inconstancy has great charms for him, and he consequently imputes it ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... inconstancy; but one would scarcely expect to find the thistle regarded as lucky; for, according to an old piece of folk-lore, to dream of being surrounded by this plant is a propitious sign, foretelling that the person will before long have some pleasing intelligence. In the same way ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... laugh, which, being prolonged, fell off into a dismal wail. Checking himself, with fierce inconstancy ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... knees in a tremor of fear. I pulled from my bosom a little book like the one Leperello exhibits in the opera of "Don Giovanni." There, I said, was a record of my flirtation and inconstancy. I waited long for the decision, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... not intend to accuse the wind of inconstancy, as that was not her fault; nor of treachery, for she loved dearly; nor of violence, for she was all softness and mildness; but we do say, that "S.W. and by W. 3/4 W." was the occasion of Jack being very often in a scrape, for our hero kept his word; he forgot all other wind, and, with ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... writers ever in the wrong? Does virtue ne'er seduce the venal tongue? Yes; if well brib'd, for virtue's self they fight; Still in the wrong, tho' champions for the right: Whoe'er their crimes for interest only quit, Sin on in virtue, and good deeds commit. Nought but inconstancy Britannia meets, And broken faith in their abandon'd sheets; From the same hand how various is the page! What civil war their brother pamphlets wage! Tracts battle tracts, self-contradictions glare; ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... had him, was all for Heathcote, and eloquent on the abominable sins of piety and inconstancy. And when he was with Dick he was all for Dick, and discoursed no less eloquently on the wickedness of deceit and poorness of spirit. Sometimes his bad memory, and the quick transitions of allegiance through which he was called upon to pass, made him forget his role, and condole ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... from feeling resentment on account of his want of fidelity, I was rather disposed to rejoice at it. I could appreciate his want of merit, and his unfitness to be the husband of such a woman as Grace, even at my early age; but, alas! I could not appreciate the effects of his inconstancy on a heart like that of my sister. Could I have felt as easy on the subject of Mr. Andrew Drewett, and of my own precise position in society, I should have cared very little, just then, about Rupert, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... tremble at the height, Whene'er I think Of the hot barons, of the fickle people, And the inconstancy of power, I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... (since the use of perukes) accustom to wash their heads, instead of powdering, would doubtless find the benefit of it; both as to the preventing of aches in their head, teeth, and ears, if the vicissitude and inconstancy of the weather, and consequently the use of their monstrous perukes, did not expose them to the danger of catching colds. When I travelled in Italy, and the Southern parts, I did sometimes frequent the public baths (as the manner is), but seldom without peril of my life, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... inestimable, or know what riper years and experience know? Do not think it. One thing alone is good in this world, to act always consistently, so that no one be deceived unless it be by his own ignorance. In extreme youth there is much inconstancy; in the rich there is pride; in the arrogant, vanity; in men who value themselves on their beauty, there is disdain; and in one who unites all these in himself, there is a fatuity which is ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... its roots, it does down towards Tartarus;" it was not so delicious at first, as now it is bitter and harsh: a cankered soul macerated with cares and discontents, taedium vitae, impatience, agony, inconstancy, irresolution, precipitate them unto unspeakable miseries. They cannot endure company, light, or life itself, some unfit for action, and the like. Their bodies are lean and dried up, withered, ugly; their looks harsh, very dull, and their souls tormented, as they are more or less ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... The inconstancy of baby Maggot's nature was presently exhibited in his becoming tired of the sun, and the restlessness of his disposition displayed itself in his frantic efforts to get out of bed. Being boxed in with a board, this was not an easy matter, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... unto duties, sealed with the renewing of the Covenant and the Oath of God; Which some men have so far already forgotten, as to return with the dogge to the vomit, and with the sow to the puddle: And many signes of inconstancy and levity do appear among all sorts and ranks of persons, who seem to want nothing but a sutable tentation to draw them away from their stedfastnesse; Our Army is not yet sufficiently purged, but there be still in it Malignant and scandalous men, whose ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... not doubt that you loved me then. But wealth, I had been told, is so demoralising, and I thought your never coming forward to find me and protect me in my illness might have something to do with inconstancy. Anyhow, these thoughts combined with my dread of your mother to prevent me from ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the Evening I visited Madam Winthrop, who Treated me Courteously, but not in Clean Linen as somtimes. She said, she did not know whether I would come again, or no. I ask'd her how she could so impute inconstancy to me. (I had not visited her since Wednesday night being unable to get over the Indisposition received by the Treatment received that night, and I must in it seem'd to sound like a made piece of Formality.) Gave her this day's Gazett. Heard David Jeffries say the Lord's Prayer, and some ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... to the darkness of this our age, in which, besides all the huge and heinous sins, which it has common with all the wicked of the world committed, is found an innate, indelible, and irremediable load of folly and inconstancy?" "What, wretched man (I say to myself) is it given to you, as if you were an illustrious and learned teacher, to oppose the force of so violent a torrent, and keep the charge committed to you against such a series of inveterate crimes which has spread far ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... the folio. And in very many of these cases the name is printed with a hyphen, "Shake-speare," as if on purpose that there might be no mistake about it. All which, surely, is or ought to be decisive as to how the Poet willed his name to be spelt in print. Inconstancy in the spelling of names was very common ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... failed in consideration for her, Augustine could not help trembling as she saw that he kept for the outer world those treasures of wit and grace that he formerly would lay at her feet. She soon began to find sinister meaning in the jocular speeches that are current in the world as to the inconstancy of men. She made no complaints, ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... of greedy and interested hearts, you will soon see revealed and diminishing; probably your eyes, which are so alert, have already remarked this diminution. The monarch no longer loves you; coolness and inconstancy are maladies of the human heart. In the midst of the most splendid health, our King has for some ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... an insistent visitor. Certainly they impressed Burke with a belief in their sincere but secret sympathy with the royalist cause. The three men also agreed in suspecting Leopold, though Burke tried to prove that his treachery was not premeditated, but sprang from "some complexional inconstancy." Pitt and Grenville, knowing the doggedness with which the Emperor pushed towards his goal, amidst many a shift and turn, evidently were ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... which he himself had introduced were within the reach of the meanest capacity; and, having been among the first to debauch the taste of the public, it was retributive justice that he should experience their inconstancy. Indeed Dryden seems himself to admit, that the principal difference between his heroic plays and "The Empress of Morocco," was, that the former were good sense, that looked like nonsense, and the latter nonsense, which yet looked very like sense. A nice distinction, and which argued ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Indians say that departed souls dwell among the caves and rocks of the cliffs, and that the echoes often heard there are their voices. Ruskin suggests that the cause of the Greeks surrounding the lower world residence of Persephone with poplar groves was that "the frailness, fragility, and inconstancy of the leafage of the poplar tree resembled the fancied ghost people." We can very easily imagine how, in the breeze at the ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... afterwards, when the name of Gibbon was become as notorious as that of Middleton, it was industriously whispered at Oxford that the historian had formerly "turned Papist;" my character stood exposed to the reproach of inconstancy.' Gibbon's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... amused so many. In the study of human nature, Fourier believed he discovered inherently inconstant natures, exceptional men and women, who cannot be constant to one idea, one hope or one love; and believing that this inconstancy was a normal trait of character with some persons, who are the exceptions to the general rule, simply and honestly acknowledged the fact, and speculated on the result and the position such persons would have in the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... was very cool to her at first; for though you never told me why your engagement to her was so abruptly broken off, I could not but think she was in some manner to blame, since I knew you too well, my darling boy, to believe you capable of inconstancy or unkindness. I thought, therefore, that her visit was very ill-timed, and I let her see that my feelings towards ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... individuality, if not equal to that of Squire Western, at least on a level with Partridge or Colonel Bath. There are numbers of minute touches—as, for example, his mistaking "a lion" for "Elias" when he reads prayers to the ship's company; and his quaint asseverations when exercised by the inconstancy of the wind—which show how closely Fielding studied his deaf companion. But it would occupy too large a space to examine the Journal more in detail. It is sufficient to say that after some further delays from wind and tide, the travellers sailed ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... not be told. Darrell could not speak of the letter he had received at Malta, nor of Caroline's visit to him at Fawley; for to do so, even to Fairthorn, was like a treason to the dignity of the Beloved. And Guy Darrell might rail at her inconstancy—her heartlessness; but to boast that she had lowered herself by the proffers that were dictated by repentance, Guy Darrell could not do that;—he was a gentleman. Still there was much left to say. He could own that he thought she would now accept his hand; and when Fairthorn looked ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... love for her was deep, sincere, and tender. Her entire and unbounded confidence, her extreme beauty, her simplicity and timid deference made a soothing compensation to his heart for the coldness of the haughty, though superior beauty, whose inconstancy had raised ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... came over to hold the tails of Meg's cows. Jock Forrest still went out, saying nothing, whenever the Cuif came in, which the Cuif took to be a good sign. Only Ebie Fairrish, struck to the heart by the inconstancy of Jess, removed at the November term back again to the "laigh end" of the parish, and there plunged madly into flirtations with several of his old sweethearts. He is reported to have found in numbers the anodyne for the unfaithfulness of one. As for what Winsome ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... and finding her lost Lysander asleep so near her, was looking at him and wondering at his strange inconstancy. Lysander presently opening his eyes, and seeing his dear Hermia, recovered his reason which the fairy charm had before clouded, and with his reason, his love for Hermia; and they began to talk over the adventures of the night, doubting ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... dear Mr. Thomas, which will be felt by us both in some measure. It will be very important to missionaries to be men of calmness and evenness of temper, and rather inclined to suffer hardships than to court the favour of men, and such who will be indefatigably employed in the work set before them, an inconstancy of mind being quite injurious ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... himself very much embarrassed in his finances till his good city of Paris came to his relief with a donation of twenty thousand livres. He had even sold his vessels of gold and silver, for the sum of two hundred thousand livres. Being thus relieved, with the inconstancy of men, he began to think of another wife, and in September, 1514, the magistrates of the city went out in state to meet the ambassadors of England who had arrived to negotiate a match with the Princess ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... of my name, My nature or conditions, were but vain; Sith this attire so plainly shows the same, As showed cannot be in words more plain. For lo, thus roundabout in feathers dight, Doth plainly figure mine inconstancy: As feathers, light of mind; of wit as light, Subjected still to mutability, And for to paint me forth more properly, Behold each feather decked gorgeously With colours strange in such variety, As plainly pictures ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... famine: and it is astonishing that Joseph's wise foresight, which in fruitful years had made provision for seasons of sterility, should not have taught these so much boasted politicians, to adopt similar precautions against the changes and inconstancy of the Nile. Pliny, in his panegyric upon Trajan, paints with wonderful strength the extremity to which that country was reduced by a famine under that prince's reign, and his generous relief of it. The reader will not be displeased to read here an extract of it, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... should be mentioned, as a proof of his judicious benevolence, that in conjunction with Sir John Hawkins, he procured the establishment of the Chest at Chatham for the relief of aged or sick seamen, out of their own voluntary contributions. The faults ascribed to him are ambition, inconstancy in friendship, and too much ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... merely national limitations. To very few French novelists—to few even of those who are generally credited with a much softer mould and a much purer morality than Balzac is popularly supposed to have been able to boast—would inconstancy to a mistress have seemed a fault which could be reasonably punished, which could be even reasonably represented as having been punished in fact, by the refusal of an honest girl's love in the first place. Nor would many have ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... a trick to conceal your inconstancy during his absence; but it is the nature of the sex ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... From her position he could see little more than her dark eyes, which occasionally seemed to meet his frank curiosity in an amused sort of way, but he was chiefly struck by the pretty foreign sound of her musical voice, which was unlike anything he had ever heard before, and—alas for the inconstancy of youth—much finer than Mrs. Peyton's. Presently his farmer companion, casting a patronizing glance on Clarence's pea-jacket and brass buttons, ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the office of senator from the Roman people. [50] As he passed through the city, in his road to victory, he received their oath of allegiance, lodged in the Lateran palace, and smoothed in a short visit the harsh features of his despotic character. Yet even Charles was exposed to the inconstancy of the people, who saluted with the same acclamations the passage of his rival, the unfortunate Conradin; and a powerful avenger, who reigned in the Capitol, alarmed the fears and jealousy of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... Pastoral on Absence, the tenderness and simplicity of which I greatly admire. A man who is in love is like a man who has got the tooth-ache, he feels most acute pain while nobody pities him. In that situation am I at present: but well do I know that I will not be long so. So much for inconstancy. As this is my first epistle to you, it cannot in decency be a long one. Pray write to me soon. Your letters, I prophecy, will entertain me not a little; and will besides be extremely serviceable in many important ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... intrinsic superiority and natural antagonism which forbid their commingling; but also, and with a more hearty potency, from the experience which they, alternately the adored or the scorned, have had of the inconstancy of the giddy people. In this light estimation, indeed, of the judgment of their less worthy fellows, lies the secret of their greatness and their strength. They ride towards their goal while the stream tends that way, and when the course of the current is diverted, they are not ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... immutable. If the order of the universe—in which we believe we see the most convincing proof of His existence, of His intelligence, His power, and His goodness—should be inconsistent, His existence might be doubted; or He might be accused at least of inconstancy, of inability, of want of foresight, and of wisdom in the first arrangement of things; we would have a right to accuse Him of blundering in His choice of agents and instruments. Finally, if the order of nature proves the power and ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... in their fellow-creatures. Such was not his destiny. There was something about him which looked as if he would not take bullying kindly. He had also the advantage of being acquainted with most of those ingenious devices by which the proverbial inconstancy of fortune is steadied to something more nearly approaching fixed laws, and the dangerous risks which have so often led young men to ruin and suicide are practically reduced to somewhat less than nothing. So that Mr. Richard Veneer worked off his nervous energies without any troublesome ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Commercial Bank, which occurred about that time, but no one who knew Sir Alexander Galt would waste time in seeking to account for his actions, which often could only be accounted for by his constitutional inconstancy. In saying this I do not for a moment wish to ascribe any sordid or unworthy motive to Galt, who was a man of large and generous mind and of high honour. He was, however, never a party man. He could not be brought to understand the necessity for deferring sometimes ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... will—somewhere in the depths of his earthly nature a spark of good survived, and fired him with so pure an ardour that at the least hint of disrespect to his mistress, at a thought of injury to her, the whole man rose in arms. It was a strange, yet a common inconsistency; an inconstancy to evil odd enough to set The McMurrough marvelling, while common enough to commend itself ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... our advocate, and reconciler, to entertain the company, and keep up the mirth, began to be pleasant on the inconstancy of women: how forward they were to love, how soon they forgot their sparks: and that no woman was so chast, but her untry'd lust, might be rais'd to a fury: nor wou'd he bring instances from ancient tragedies, or ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... two Bretons. M. Pariset, our colleague, and M. Villenave, will therefore think it natural in me to thank them here, in the name of science and literature, in the name of humanity, for the few moments of sweet peace and happiness that they afforded to our learned colleague, at a time when the inconstancy and ingratitude of men ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Voyages in these low latitudes were, owing to the inconstancy of the winds, extremely troublesome, and often lasted five months and upwards. The fear of exposing the costly, cumbrous vessel to the powerful and sometimes stormy winds of the higher latitudes, appears to have been the cause of ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... quality of the mind, by which some happy characters are enabled to avoid the most distant approaches to any thing like affectation, inconstancy, or design, in their intercourse with the world. It is much more easily understood, however than defined; and consists not in a specific tone of the voice, movement of the body, or mode imposed by custom, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... one wish he had been born a sheep rather than a sentient man who had to live without Mary Tudor? Yet, strange as it may seem, I was really and wholly in love with Jane; in fact, I loved no one but Jane, and my feeling of intense admiration for Mary was but a part of man's composite inconstancy. ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... Otterbourne Park, and a large bunch on the Romsey Road. An old woman described having tried the augury, having laid the plants in pairs on Midsummer Eve, naming them after pairs of sweethearts. Those that twisted away from each other showed inconstancy! ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... though she was but a baby tugging with a sweet angle of opposition at her black nurse's hand and I near a man grown, and though I had naught to hope for save a fleeting grasp of her rosy fingers and a wavering smile from her sweet lips and eyes, ere she flung the offering away with innocent inconstancy. ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... to gigantic fantasies still. In spite of himself, the sight of the new moon, as representing one who, by her so-called inconstancy, acted up to his own idea of a migratory Well-Beloved, made him feel as if his wraith in a changed sex had suddenly looked over the horizon at him. In a crowd secretly, or in solitude boldly, he had often bowed ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... he had ever known. But when she played this role of a feminine providence, who was apparently free from the ordinary weaknesses of her sex, when she carefully repressed every emotion of jealousy at the sight of his inconstancy, she was not free from a selfish motive. She still hoped that some day he would grow weary of pursuing the blue will-o'-the-wisps of fleeting sham loves; he would at last long to escape from the marsh into which for ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... sure, as yet we had been treated with no violence; nay, had been even kindly and hospitably entertained. But what dependence could be placed upon the fickle passions which sway the bosom of a savage? His inconstancy and treachery are proverbial. Might it not be that beneath these fair appearances the islanders covered some perfidious design, and that their friendly reception of us might only precede some horrible catastrophe? How strongly did these forebodings spring up in my mind as I lay restlessly upon ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... reason or another the idea occurred to me that, just BECAUSE Dimitri stuck up so stoutly for Dubkoff, he neither liked nor respected him in reality, but was determined, out of stubbornness and a desire not to be accused of inconstancy, never to own to the fact. He was one of those people who love their friends their life long, not so much because those friends remain always dear to them, as because, having once—possibly mistakenly—liked a person, they look upon it as dishonourable ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... for one to alter one's opinion."—"No, sure, madam," replied the youth, with some precipitation, "provided the change be for the better."—"And should it happen otherwise," retorted the nymph, with a flirt of her fan, "inconstancy will never want countenance from the practice of mankind."-"True, madam," resumed our hero, fixing his eyes upon her; "examples of levity are every where to be met with."-"Oh Lord, sir," cried Emilia, tossing her head, "you'll scarce ever find a ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of America, who have no regular government, make at this day upon the like occasions; but it would be a strange apology from one of the modern states of Europe that had employed armies against another. Caesar reprimanded them for the inconstancy of their behavior, and ordered them to bring hostages to secure their fidelity, together with provisions for his army. But whilst the Britons were engaged in the treaty, and on that account had free access ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... admit, that it depends upon the decree and will of God alone that each thing should be what it is, for otherwise God would not be the cause of all things. It is also admitted that all God's decrees were decreed by God Himself from all eternity, for otherwise imperfection and inconstancy would be proved against Him. But since in eternity there is no when nor before nor after, it follows from the perfection of God alone that He neither can decree nor could ever have decreed anything else than that ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... thousand dollars in America in less than four years, and only two or three minutes before Vera Alexandrina's husband was due to arrive he himself stood at the cottage door with folded arms, asking himself if he should or should not enter and reproach Vera Alexandrina for her inconstancy. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... have left every thing to see you, to press you in my arms; .... you are not there! You are pursuing a circle of festivities through the cities. You go away from me at my approach; you trouble yourself no more about your dear Napoleon. A spleen has made you love him; inconstancy renders you indifferent. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... if they be examined by the true rules of criticism, no such contradiction will be found. Farther, if, as I have advanced in years, conversation with able men, and a more perfect examination, have made me change my sentiments, I ought not on that account to be accused of inconstancy, no more than St. Augustin, who retracted many things." He again touches on this point in his Votum pro pace[633]. "If in my youth, says he, having less knowledge than now, the prejudices of education, or a blind attachment to authors of same, carried ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny |
