"Inconstant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have a respect for honest indignation, righteous anger, such as the O'Mollys have ever been capable of. And all the O'Molly blood in my veins has been stirred by the contemptuous manner in which some men have spoken of woman. 'Weak woman,—inconstant woman;' they have made the wind a type of her fickleness. In this they are right; for it has been proved that the seasons in their return, day and night, are not more sure than the wind. Such fickleness as this is preferable to man's greatest constancy. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... well enough," she said. "The girl was faithless, and tyrannous, and proud, and coquettish, and unworthy, and false, and inconstant. She was black as hell and dark as night in both her person and her living. You were not niggardly ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Trades. Indeed, the most extensive observation serves only to link the whole into one harmonious chain or series of explanations, exhibiting the uniformity as well as the exquisite adaptability of Nature, even in those departments called "inconstant," where she is ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... by the Zuider Zee, after she had confided to me her anxieties, "but I find it hard to keep up the deception that I am heart-whole and fancy-free, and yet indifferent to Count Hendrick's attentions. Indeed, my father openly upbraids me with being fickle, inconstant, unmaidenly, and I know not what besides, until I am driven to my wit's end to keep the peace between us. Yet I doubt not, if he knew the truth, he would marry me willy-nilly to ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... answering these questions, the young man began to weep bitterly. "How inconstant is fortune!" cried he; "she takes pleasure to pull down those she has raised. Where are they who enjoy quietly the happiness which they hold of her, and whose day ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... the time, when sober Evening sheds Her dusky mantle o'er the grassy meads: Nor yet the pale stars trembled thro' the trees, Nor sparkling quiver'd on the inconstant seas; Nor yet the moon illumed the solemn scene: The fields were silent, and the heavens serene. The sheep had sought the fold; nor yet arose Night's listless bird from her dull day's repose. When in a ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... gath'ring fast, Loud roars the wild, inconstant blast, Yon murky cloud is foul with rain, I see it driving o'er the plain; The hunter now has left the moor. The scatt'red coveys meet secure; While here I wander, prest with care, Along the lonely ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... wicked world. Fancy his horror over the mere suspicion that she could be indifferent to his wishes—his comfort—even his health, because of a mere tomboy flirtation with a man who could swim better than he could! Most women were like that, he knew—vain, shallow, inconstant creatures! But was not his pearl an exception? It was horrible to ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... of letters, though an inconstant one. His vanity led him to wish to have distinguished writers about him, but it also led him to wish to be ranked as himself the most distinguished. His own taste was good; he appreciated and copied ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... now the Court became the ultimate guardian, in the name of the Constitutional Document, of the laissez-faire conception of the proper relation of Government to Private Enterprise, a rather inconstant guardian, however, for its fluctuating membership tipped the scales now in favor of Business, now in favor of Government. And today the latter tendency appears to have prevailed. In its decisions early in 1937 sustaining outstanding Roosevelt Administration measures, the Court not only subordinated ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... hap, To make them climb to overthrow them straight? Accurs'd thy wreak[116], thy wrath, thy bale, thy weal, That mak'st me sigh the sorrows that I feel! Untrodden paths my feet shall rather trace, Than wrest my succours from inconstant hands: Rebounding rocks shall rather ring my ruth, Than these Campanian piles, where terrors bide: And nature, that hath lift my throne so high, Shall witness Marius' triumphs, if he die. But she, that gave the lictor's rod and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... then, ye powers that sway eternal seats, And guide this massy substance of the earth, If you retain desert of holiness, As your supreme estates instruct our thoughts, Be not inconstant, careless of your fame, Bear not the burden of your enemies' joys, Triumphing in his fall whom you advanc'd; But, as his birth, life, health, and majesty Were strangely blest and governed by heaven, So honour, heaven, (till heaven dissolved ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... disposition, with a weak understanding, headstrong, a gadder, who would be constantly changing his situations and inclinations, sleeping every night in a new place, and every day forming some new intimacy. Young men may be lively and handsome, but they are inconstant in their attachments. Look not thou for fidelity from those who, with the eyes of the nightingale, are every instant singing upon a different rose-bush. But old men pass their time in wisdom and good manners, not in the ignorance and ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... said I did not agree with them," he replied, taking up his own defence; "the point is not that men are more inconstant than women, but that women have more excuse for inconstancy. If I remember correctly, Desmond, in a letter to Rosamond, says: 'Inconstancy in a woman, because of the present social conditions, is often pardonable. In a man, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which is Monsieur. Whether he be not apt to work on the disadvantage of your estate, he is to be judged by his will and power: his will to be as full of light ambition as is possible, besides the French disposition and his own education, his inconstant temper against his brother, his thrusting himself into the Low Country matters, his sometimes seeking the king of Spain's daughter, sometimes your majesty, are evident testimonies of his being carried away with ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... longer white or black or brown or gray: color is not an essential quality, so it has dropped out; size is no longer essential except within very broad limits; shagginess or smoothness of coat is a very inconstant quality, so this is dropped; form varies so much from the fat pug to the slender hound that it is discarded, except within broad limits; good nature, playfulness, friendliness, and a dozen other qualities ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... from the wars, found his betrothed a nun in this asylum. It would seem that lies were as rife before the art of printing had been pressed into their service, or newspapers known, as they are to-day, for she had been taught to think him dead or inconstant; it was much the same to her. The castle which overlooked the island was built for his abode, and here the legend is prudently silent. Although one is not bound to believe all he hears; we are all charmed with the images ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... silent, shady green, The souls of lovers oft are seen, Who, in their life's unhappy space, Were murder'd by some perjur'd face. All these th' enchanted streams frequent, To drown their cares, and discontent, That th' inconstant, cruel sex Might not in death their spirits vex. And here our souls, big with delight Of their new state, will cease their flight: And now the last thoughts will appear, They'll have of us, or any here; But on those flow'ry banks will stay, And drink ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man can not say it: "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even can not say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the color of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... that we give the bridle to all naughtiness, and provoke the people to all licentiousness and lust; that we labour and seek to overthrow the state of monarchies and kingdoms, and to bring all things under the rule of the rash inconstant people and unlearned multitude; that we have seditiously fallen from the Catholic Church, and by a wicked schism and division have shaken the whole world, and troubled the common peace and universal quiet of the Church; and that, as Dathan and ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... common, or ordinary, or trifling, or made up of remote suppositions; if the definition contained in it be faulty, if it be controverted, if it be too evident, if it be one which is not admitted, or discreditable, or objected to, or contrary, or inconstant, ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... for this (for that were wrong) opine That you should cease to love; for you, without A lover, like uncultivated vine, Would be, that has no prop to wind about. But the first down I pray you to decline, To fly the volatile, inconstant rout; To make your choice the riper fruits among, Nor yet to gather what too long ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Vingolf even here beneath the clouds. O come, let's haste away, each spoken word A moment shorter makes our waiting joy. Come, all's prepared! Ellide stretches now Her shadowy eagle wings for eager flight,— And freshly blowing winds now guide the way Henceforth from this inconstant land forever. ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... sentence,—there was no saying where she might find faults of grammar or bad spelling. There might have been twenty or thirty of these themes in the bundle before her. Of course she knew pretty well the leading sentiments they could contain: that beauty was subject to the accidents of time; that wealth was inconstant, and existence uncertain; that virtue was its own reward; that youth exhaled, like the dewdrop from the flower, ere the sun had reached its meridian; that life was o'ershadowed with trials; that the lessons of virtue instilled by our beloved teachers were to be our guides through ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... (Pers.) Berk., Rost., Mon., p. 139; but Rostafinski himself admits that the two species, here united, as he defined them, are very much alike, having "the same spores and capillitium", differing in the form of the sporangium, an inconstant feature. Bulliard's name has precedence; his descriptions of this and the preceding species ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... sure, offered herself a sacrifice to the whims of the sick girl, whose worst whim was having no wish that could be ascertained, and who now, after two days of her mother's devotion, was cast upon her own resources by the inconstant barometer. ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... stages of development the crystal will begin to cloud over, first becoming dull, then suffused with milky clouds, among which sparkle a large number of little specks of light like gold dust in the sunlight. The focus of the eyes is inconstant, the pupil rapidly expanding and contracting, the crystal at times disappearing entirely in a haze or film which seems to pass before the eyes. Then the haze will disappear, and the crystal will loom up into full view again, accompanied by a lapse of the seer into full consciousness. ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... preparations and antecedents by which they themselves, alack, had contributed to their own undoing. Had they not both trifled with the mysterious test of life—he no less than she? And out of the dark had come the axe-stroke that ends weakness, and crushes the unsteeled, inconstant will. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which they stood fatigue and exposure made amends for this. A white might outrun them for eight or ten miles; but on a long journey they could tire out any man, and any beast except a wolf. Like most barbarians they were fickle and inconstant, not to be relied on for pushing through a long campaign, and after a great victory apt to go off to their homes, because each man desired to secure his own plunder and tell his own tale of glory. They are often spoken ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... on us," is the remark of one of them. During the mysterious trip from the island of Elba to France, on the 27th of February, on the open sea, the French brig of war, Le Zephyr, having encountered the brig L'Inconstant, on which Napoleon was concealed, and having asked the news of Napoleon from L'Inconstant, the Emperor, who still wore in his hat the white and amaranthine cockade sown with bees, which he had adopted at the isle ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... beautiful, whose clever smile proclaims her to have inherited from you the most precious gifts a woman can possess, and whose childhood, it is certain, will be rich in all those joys which a sad mother refused to the Eugenie of these pages. If Frenchmen are accused of bring frivolous and inconstant, I, you see, am Italian in my faithfulness and attachments. How often, as I write the name of Eugenie, have my thoughts carried me back to the cool stuccoed drawing-room and little garden of the Viccolo dei Capuccini, which used to resound to the dear child's ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... with his infant daughter. Some said he died abroad. Others, that he had appeared again for a brief space at the hall. But all now concurred in a belief of his decease. Of his child nothing was known. His inconstant wife, after enduring for some years the agonies of remorse, abandoned by Sir Reginald, and neglected by her own relatives, put an end to her existence by poison. This is all that could be gathered of the story, or the misfortunes ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... must necessarily come as a friend to those whose lives are wretched, he begins to speculate whether, after all, he ought not to rejoice rather than mourn over his son's death. "Certes he is rid of this miserable life of danger and difficulty, vain, sorrowful, brief, and inconstant; these times in which the major part of the good things of the world fall to the trickster's share, and all may be enjoyed by those who are backed up by wealth or power or favour. Power is good when it is in the hands of those who use it well, but it is a great evil when murderers ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... it forfeits the respect and confidence of other nations, and all the advantages connected with national character. An individual who is observed to be inconstant to his plans, or perhaps to carry on his affairs without any plan at all, is marked at once, by all prudent people, as a speedy victim to his own unsteadiness and folly. His more friendly neighbors may pity him, but ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... mistake there, Lady Mary," said Sylla, in accents of mock anguish. "Mr. Cottrell is one of the most dangerous and inconstant of his sex. He made most desperate love last year to me in Suffolk, whispers pretty speeches into my ear the whole of this evening, and then turns me over—consigns me, I believe, is the proper term—to Mr. Beauchamp as if I ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... her over for good and all; you can have no hopes of getting her for a mistress; and she is too proud, too inconstant, too affected and too witty, and too handsome for ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... frequent occurrence, and usually of about a week's duration. Mr. Vernon, my late client, a man—I'll not deny it—of inconstant affections (you understand me, Inspector?), did not greatly concern himself with his wife's movements. She belonged to a smart Bohemian set, and—to use a popular figure of speech—burnt the candle at both ends; late dances, night clubs, bridge ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... these many and various forms, I find the manners and customs alike inconstant; and this of especially singular in them—that the Alpine and northern species bloom hardily in contest with the retiring snows, while with us they wait till the spring is past, and offer themselves to us only in consolation for the vanished violet and primrose. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Comedies, has he praised himself upon the stage; but, having been slandered by his enemies amongst the volatile Athenians, accused of scoffing at his country and of insulting the people, to-day he wishes to reply and regain for himself the inconstant Athenians. He maintains that he has done much that is good for you; if you no longer allow yourselves to be too much hoodwinked by strangers or seduced by flattery, if in politics you are no longer the ninnies you ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... and inconstant outline of the Corbiere, as we were hurried swiftly past it, was a subject of surprise and admiration. When first seen through the haze of morning, it resembled a huge elephant supporting an embattled tower; a little after, it assumed the similitude of a gigantic warrior ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... might be by keeping it, for others to rest upon, he becomes a reed, which no man will vouchsafe to lean upon. Like a floating island, when we come next day to seek it, it is carried from the place we left it in, and, instead of earth to build upon, we find nothing but inconstant ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... by his foreign relations Henry's statesmanship was unsuccessful. His insincerity and perfidy often overreached themselves, and he was often {278} deceived. Moreover, he was inconstant, pursuing no worthy end whatever. England was by her insular location and by the nearly equal division of power on the Continent between France and the emperor, in a wonderfully safe and advantageous place. But, so far was Henry from using ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Inconstant Sylvio, when yet I had not found him counterfeit, One morning (I remember well) Tied in this silver chain and bell, Gave it to me: nay, and I know What he said then: I'm sure I do. Said he, 'Look how your huntsman here Hath taught a fawn to hunt his deer.' ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... l'homme est inconstant, divers, Foible, lger, tenant mal sa parole, J'avois jur, mme en assez beaux vers, De renouncer tout Conte frivole. Depuis deux jours j'ai fait cette promesse Puis fiez-vous Rimeur qui rpond D'un seul moment. Dieu ne fit la sagesse ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... hardship, dirtiness, and disagreeableness almost equals that of colliers; and from the unavoidable irregularity in the arrivals of coal-ships, the employment of the greater part of them is necessarily very inconstant. If colliers, therefore, commonly earn double and triple the wages of common labor, it ought not to seem unreasonable that coal-heavers should sometimes earn four or five times those wages. In the inquiry made into their condition a few years ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... natures in her and those were their reflections; two lodestars set above her that by turns brightened and drew her gaze; two lodestones set within her that claimed her banners as claim the moon and earth the inconstant sea; one of head, one of heart; one of choice, one of dower; one of ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... enemy he has to conquer. Every woman seems to him enclosed in a bell-glass, fine as gossamer, but he cannot break it. He feels himself drawn, but he cannot approach. His heart is yearning; yet he says to himself, no, I do not love. A looker-on calls him inconstant, uncertain, capricious. He is not so; he is bound by viewless fetters, nor does he know where to strike the chain that is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... neck, and give me one good long kiss, and I won't talk any more in that way about your lover. After all, some young men are not so fickle as others; but even if he's the ficklest, there is consolation. The love of an inconstant man is ten times more ardent than that of a faithful ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... think. At any rate he wooed and won. Nanca begged the young foreigner to divorce her, which he did. The Seminole divorce custom is lenient when the marriage is childless. The artist, I fancy, was merely a wild, reckless, inconstant sort of chap who did not regard the simple Seminole marriage tie as binding. After the birth of his daughter, a tiny little elf whom Nanca has named "Red-winged Blackbird," he tried to run away, and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... another family committee met and sat upon her case. They were sitting on it now, up-stairs with Brodrick in his study. She knew infallibly what their judgment would be. Just as she had seemed to them so long a creature of uncertain health, she must seem now inconstant, insincere, the incarnation of heartlessness, egotism and caprice. She said to herself that it was all very well for Nina to talk. This insight was a curse. It was terrible to know what people were thinking, to feel what they were feeling. And they were seven to one, so that when ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... lights." We know that the magnetic and electric forces of the earth time after time envelop practically the whole globe in a mantle of light, but this mysterious phenomenon is still unexplained. Usually the aurora is inconstant. It flashes out suddenly, quivers for a moment in the sky, and then grows pale and vanishes. Most lasting are the bow-shaped northern lights, which sometimes stretch their milk-white arches high above the horizon. It may be that only ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... look at the matter this way, one moment: supposing now—only just for supposition—this lover of yours was not the sort of man we all take him to be, and that he was to turn out false, or inconstant; suppose now it turned out he had another ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... exception the most brilliant and decisive action fought by the British navy in a century. This circumstance alone would have insured the confirmation of his rank by the Admiralty, even had he not also eminently distinguished himself; but it was for him one of those periods when inconstant fortune seems bent upon lavishing her favors. He was near the head of the British column, as the hostile fleets passed in opposite directions, exchanging broadsides. As his ship cleared the French rear, a neighboring British vessel, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... dishonoured? Let not therefore any Englishman, of what religion soever, have other opinion of these Spaniards or their abettors, but that those whom they seek to win of our nation, they esteem base and traiterous, unworthy persons, and inconstant fools; and that they use this pretence of religion, for no other purpose but to bewitch us from the obedience due to our natural prince, hoping thereby to bring us in time under slavery and subjection, when none shall be there so odious and despised, as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... liberality may be seen likewise in the end curve of every word. Where these characteristics are inconstant and variable, the disposition will be found to be uncertain—liberal in some matters, while needlessly economical and stingy ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay
... not remembered, with a sort of pain, that, charming and brilliant as Reyburn was, having a sweet and reckless gayety and generosity, winning friends who loved him almost as men love women, he was nevertheless as inconstant as the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Perdido, Los Flores, Cuecuhilas. There is a range traversing from north to south for the space of forty leagues in that territory, which contains also a multitude of veins which have not been explored. In all these minerals abound, but the irregular and inconstant labor of some of the mines does not permit us to consider them as ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... "the inconstant." A handsome, dashing young rake, who loves Oriana, but does not wish to marry. Whenever Oriana seems lost to him the ardor of his love revives; but immediately his path is made plain, he holds off. However, he ultimately marries her.—G. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... superstition, to have so ruled them as to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges of citizens, would indeed be a title to glory all our own. The sceptre may pass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our most profound schemes of policy. Victory may be inconstant to our arms. But there are triumphs which are followed by no reverse. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... deer and caribou which crossed our path. Upon my soul, I was so full of gratitude and love at the sight that I could have thrown my arms round their necks and kissed them. I could not raise a gun at them. My Indians did that, and so inconstant is the human heart that I ate heartily of the meat. My Indians were almost less companionable to me than any animal would have been. Try as I would, I could not bring myself to like them, and I feared only too truly that they did not like me. Indeed, I soon saw that they meant to desert ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of Omphale may be stronger than the club of Hercules. Here is an inconstant Romeo escaped from his Juliet, and yet unable to shake off the magnetic spell which must haunt him ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... on the mare's neck trembled suddenly. She dropped her head before all the eyes in the wide circle formed round the generous, the terrible, the inconstant Capataz de ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... what a plague is love! I cannot bear it, She will inconstant prove, I greatly fear it; It so torments my mind, That my heart faileth, She wavers with the wind, As a ship saileth; Please her the best I may, She looks another way; Alack and well a-day! ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... Thaddeus with a glowing countenance expressed his regret for having doubted his friend, and repeating the assurance of having been punctual to his promise of correspondence, even when he dreamed him inconstant, acknowledged that nothing but a premeditated scheme could have effected ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... had in his life? Didn't I feel for eight-and-forty hours as if something too delightful was going to happen to me the week that Brilliant was bought and sent home, looking like an angel in a horse's skin? That reminds me I never go to see him now; I hope I am not inconstant to my old friends. And what was it but a presentiment that made my heart beat and my knees knock together when I entered my own room to-day before luncheon and saw a brown paper parcel on the table, addressed, evidently by the shop ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... Thom. Walsi. Hypod. pag. 161.] In this yeare Roger of Walden departed this life; who hauing bene tossed vp and downe with sundrie changes of fortune, tried in a short time how inconstant, vncerteine variable, wandering, vnstable, and flitting she is; which when she is thought firmelie to stand, she slipperinglie falleth; and with a dissembling looke counterfaiteth false ioies. [Sidenote: Roger of waldens variable fortune.] For by the meanes of hir changeablenesse, ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... forward. In less than one minute the trim battalions had become simply a swarm of men struggling through the undergrowth of the forest, pushing and crowding. The front was irregularly serrated, the strongest and bravest in advance, the others following in fan-like formations, variable and inconstant, ever defining themselves anew. For the first two hundred yards our course lay along the left bank of a small creek in a deep ravine, our left battalions sweeping along its steep slope. Then we came to the fork of the ravine. A part of us crossed below, the rest above, passing over both branches, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... characteristic of her that, during her absence, she hardly wrote to us. She is of far too hasty and impetuous a nature to take kindly to the task of letter-writing; her moods are too inconstant; her thoughts, her fancies, supersede one another too rapidly. Anyhow, beyond the telegram we had made her promise to send, announcing her safe arrival, the most favoured of us got nothing more than ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... or furious, the sea treacherous, the waters insidious; a stone is obstinate, if we cannot easily move it, and we inveigh against all kinds of material obstacles as if they could hear us. We call the season inconstant or deceitful, the sun melancholy and unwilling to shine, and we say that the sky threatens snow. We say that some plants are consumed by heat, that some soils are indomitable, that well cultivated ground is no longer wild, that in a good season the whole ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... can't but see, yet must not dare to complain. And though both, he who lends his heart to whosoever pleases it, and he that gives it entirely to one, do both of them require the exactest devoir from their wives, yet I know not if it be not better to be wife to an inconstant husband (provided he be something discreet), than to a constant fellow who is always perplexing her with his inconstant humour. For the unconstant lovers are commonly the best humoured; but let them be what they will, women ought not to be unfaithful for Virtue's sake ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... care. {uns[ae]lekeit}, sf. unhappiness; misfortune. {uns[ae]lic} ({-ec}), aj. unhappy, cursed. {unschulde}, sf. innocence. {unschuldigen}, wv. proclaim one's innocence. {unsegel[i]ch}, aj. unspeakable. {unsenfte}, aj. painful, hard. {unser}, pr. our, 7, 67. {unst[ae]te}, aj. inconstant, fickle. {unst[ae]te}, sf. inconstancy, fickleness. {untriuwe}, sf. faithlessness, deceit. {untr[oe]sten}, wv. dishearten, discourage. {untr[o]st}, sm. despondency, discouragement. {untugent}, sf. lack of good training. {unversunnen}, pp. unconscious. ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... be justly described in the words he himself uses of a book by one of his opponents, as calculated "to gain a short, contemptible, and soon-fading reward, not to stir the constancy and solid firmness of any wise man ... but to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... and sometimes fast, She held her wav'ring pace; Like early spring's inconstant blast, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... body. Better times will come, when tribulation shall be changed into joy. Clouds are followed by sunshine, storms by calm, all things in the world tend toward their opposites, and nothing is more inconstant than ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... enslaved to their desires than the few. Glory drags bound to her glittering chariot-wheels the nameless as well as the nobly-born. The poor are as inconstant as the rich. What of the man who is not rich? You may well smile. He changes from garret to garret, from bed to bed, from bath to bath and barber to barber, and is just as seasick in a hired boat as the wealthy man ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... of young hemp stretching westward—soon to be a low sea of rippling green. Beyond this field was the sunset; over it flashed the evening star; and for the past few days beside the star had hung the inconstant, the constant, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... wishfully at her lover, "Sir," said she, "you overwhelm me with amazement and anxiety! you are imposed upon, if you have received any such letter. You are deceived, if you thought Aurelia Darnel could be so insensible, ungrateful, and—inconstant." ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... spite of the inconstant character of the emanation tube there are many reasons for preferring its use to the use of the radium tube. Chief of these is the fact that we can keep the precious radium safely locked up in the laboratory and not exposed to the thousand-and-one ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... labor to develope, in any degree of completeness, its relations among the aiguilles of Chamouni; and even of professed geologists, the only person who has described it properly is De Saussure, whose continual sojourn among the Alps enabled him justly to discern the constant from the inconstant phenomena. And yet, in his very first journey to Savoy, Turner saw it at a glance, and fastened on it as the main thing to ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... suppose that at any rate for a short time in the year 1822 she was his mistress. Be that as it may, after Shelley's death they parted, and doubtless it will be said she treated her lover ill. To us it appears that he gave as good as he got. She was mercenary, and he was inconstant. If we read Letter XX aright, when she did offer, after some months of prudent dalliance, to live with him at Florence, he replied that he had but L500 a year, which was not enough for two. An establishment on the ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the "Caroline" was one which a seaman will readily understand. She had forged so far ahead as to lie directly on the weather-beam of the stranger, but too near to enable her to fall-off in the least, without imminent danger that the vessels would come foul. The wind was inconstant, sometimes blowing in puffs, while at moments there was a perfect lull. As the ship felt the former, her tall masts bent gracefully towards the slaver, as if to make the parting salute; but, relieved from the momentary pressure of ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. They have been so tried among the inconstant squalls and currents, so often sailed for islands in the air or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they will risk all for solid ground below their feet. Desperate pilots, they run their sea-sick, weary ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'inconstant mind' and his 'false heart,' it was easy to recognise the insincerity and treachery that somehow seem inseparable from the artistic nature, as in his love of praise that desire for immediate recognition that characterises all actors. And yet, more fortunate in this than other actors, Willie ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... what it all meant, and what the revelation was between Nature and herself. Nature was so vast; she was so insignificant; changes in its motionless inorganic life were imperceptible save through the telescopes of years; but she, like the wind, the water, and the clouds, was variable, inconstant. Was there any real relation between the vast, imperturbable earth, its seas, its forests, its mountains and its plains, its life of tree and plant and flower and the men and women dotted on its ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in season we have pleasure in announcing a few proposed schemes for the recreation of some of the mighty brains that shape our destinies and guide our groping intelligences. But it must be clearly understood that in these inconstant times we cannot vouch for their authenticity or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... false in soul, With roving hearts that spurn control. Brooding on sin and quickly changed, In one short hour their love estranged. Not glorious deed or lineage fair, Not knowledge, gift, or tender care In chains of lasting love can bind A woman's light inconstant mind. But those good dames who still maintain What right, truth, Scripture, rule ordain— No holy thing in their pure eyes With one beloved husband vies. Nor let thy lord my son, condemned To exile, be by thee contemned, For be he poor ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... to brook my overthrow, As commonly men bear with a hard year. I will not blame the cause on 't; but do think The necessity of my malevolent star Procures this, not her humour. O, the inconstant And rotten ground of service! You may see, 'Tis even like him, that in a winter night, Takes a long slumber o'er a dying fire, A-loth to part from 't; yet parts thence as cold As when he first ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... with ill-presaging glare, Dim, cloudy, sunk beneath the western wave; Th' inconstant blast howl'd thro' the darkening air, And hollow ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... disciple, he was clothed in the mantle of a philosopher, or a mendicant; his countenance was hideous; his face was overshadowed with black hair; his beard long an uncombed; his deportment rustic; his temper gloomy and inconstant; nor could he grace his discourse with the ornaments, or even the perspicuity, of Latin elocution. But his mind was stored with a treasure of Greek learning: history and fable, philosophy and grammar, were alike at his command; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... pair, they are generally constant to each other, and the female usually remains at the side of her mate: but some are capricious, and go about as if seeking other males of the herd. When the female is thus inconstant, her partner, after a time, tries to destroy her and her young, though pains are taken to prevent ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... pleased with him, even to passing her hand over his back and taking him by the tail, holding him in her hands, or putting him in her apron—caresses of a kind that parrots do not usually permit. Nothing astonished him or offended him. He proved very inconstant toward her, and now, while better disposed toward the other girl, he is furious against this one. A third miss has come to capture his affection; and when he has been left asleep, or resting in his cage, he has always the same word, but different in the inflection wheedling, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... awful shadow of some unknown Power Floats, though unseen, among us, visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... yet when Winter's cold Their limbs benumbs, thither with speed returned 40 In the long grass they skulk, or shrinking creep Among the withered leaves, thus changing still, As fancy prompts them, or as food invites. But every season carefully observed, The inconstant winds, the fickle element, The wise experienced huntsman soon may find His subtle, various game, nor waste in vain His tedious hours, till his impatient hounds With disappointment vexed, each springing lark Babbling pursue, far scattered ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... lecture. But I like you, and I can't help having hope of you." He smiled charmingly, his keen, inconstant eyes dimming. "Perhaps I hope because you're young and extremely lovely and I am pitifully susceptible. You see, you'd better go. Every man's a Ransdell at heart ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... spluttered with an amazing air of detached insistence. The machine-guns strike in battle quite a note of their own. Shells, screeching and roaring in their frenzy, give an impression of passion, of untameable wrath. Rifle-fire is as inconstant in volume as piano music; there is something of human effort to be heard in the "tap ... tap ... tap ... tap-tap-trrrrapp" of its crescendos and diminuendoes. But the machine-gun is different from these. It strikes ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... had withdrawn itself from the pope and clung tenaciously to Prince Colonna. The Holy Father, as we have said before, notwithstanding he was pope, had some human weaknesses; he naturally hated the fair inconstant, and sought revenge. He recommended Tintoretto to bring the erring one once more before the public—this time, however, as a guilty ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... More inconstant than the May, She cares nothing for our pain, Nor will hear the birds complain In their bowers that once ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... this lady lasted not long; for, as we have before observed, he was the most inconstant of all human race. Mrs. Trent's passion was not however of that kind which leads to any very deep resentment of such fickleness. Her passion, indeed, was principally founded upon interest; so that foundation served ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... fresh in the fracture, and clean—not like those long in the water, covered with sea-weed, and encircled by a shoal of fish, who, finding sustenance from the animalculae collected, follow the floating pieces of wood up and down, as their adopted parent, wherever they may be swept by the inconstant winds and tides. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... His plans were castles in the air: his talk was rhodomontade. He took no thought for the morrow: he treated the Court as if the King were already a prisoner in his hands: he built on the favour of the multitude, as if that favour were not proverbially inconstant. The signs of the coming reaction were discerned by men of far less sagacity than his, and scared from his side men more consistent than he had ever pretended to be. But on him they were lost. The counsel of Achitophel, that counsel which was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God, was ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fix the degree of its importance. Thus value varies, and the law of value is unchangeable: further, if value is susceptible of variation, it is because it is governed by a law whose principle is essentially inconstant,—namely, labor measured ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... the soft evening breeze fanning his temples, was far more delightful, than to recline in his soft-cushioned box at the Opera, listening even to the delicious notes of a Pico, with bright jewels, and still brighter eyes flashing around him, and his cheek kissed by the inconstant air wafted from the coquettish fan in the hands of smiling beauty. And, moreover, that the book of human nature, to be studied in the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... was an address by "The Publisher to the Purchaser.... The conductors of this paper, being a kind of whimsical and negligent gentry of easy habits and inconstant disposition, its continuation will not so much depend upon the patronage that may be given to it as upon their own humours and caprices. It is, as Johnson says of its title—'Trangram—an odd, intricately-contrived thing,' and, therefore, in its appearance will be as irregular in its size or ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... on reaching home found domestic trouble—a wife had proved inconstant and married another man. As the men had generally more wives than one, Livingstone comforted them by saying that they still ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... the lat. of 13 deg. N. for going to the East Indies. I had therefore to represent the advantage of cleaning and repairing our ship at Porto Segnro, in California, and I had much difficulty to persuade them. I at last brought them to my purpose, when we sailed from Cano northwards. Having inconstant gales and bad weather, we went between seventy and eighty leagues out to sea, in hopes of meeting more settled weather. When at sixty leagues from the land, the winds still continued variable, but ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... according as he sees that sin increases or decreases. As it is, they go their heedless way, take upon themselves this, that, and the other task, do now this, now that, according to the appearance or the reputation of the work, and again quickly leave off, and thus become altogether inconstant, till in the end they amount to nothing; nay, some of them so rack their brains over the whole thing, and so abuse nature, that they are of no use either to themselves ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... at night Ye wake to feel your beauty going. It was a web of frail delight, Inconstant as an ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... inconstant than the wind, who wooes Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, Turning this face to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... is folysshe lothsome and vnstable Lyght brayned, theyr herte and mynde is inconstant Theyr gate and loke proude and abhomynable They haue nor order as folys ignorant Chaungyng theyr myndes thryse in one instant Alas this lewdnes and great enormyte Wyll them nat suffer ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping horse; and nothing is plainer, than that he who towers to the fifth story, is whirled through more space by every circumrotation, than another that grovels upon the ground-floor. The nations between the topicks are known to be fiery, inconstant, inventive, and fanciful; because, living at the utmost length of the earth's diameter, they are carried about with more swiftness than those whom nature has placed nearer to the poles; and therefore, as it becomes a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... which causes their disappearance. This is perhaps one of the causes which have strengthened by selection the will power in women. Man is impulsive and violent as regards his will power, but often inconstant and irresolute, yielding as soon as he has to strive persistently for a certain object. From these facts it naturally results that, on the average, it is the man in the family who provides the ideas and impulses, but the woman ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... no optimist either in regard to French character or the progress of public affairs," said Lafayette, bitingly. "But I can assure him that if the French are inconstant, ignorant, and immoral, they are also energetic, lively, and easily aroused by noble examples. Moreover, the public mind has been instructed lately to an astonishing point by the political pamphlets issued in such numbers, and 'tis my opinion that these facts will bring us, after no great lapse ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... Forgiveness. He loaded her with a thousand Reproaches; nor did he spare to chastise her in the most outrageous Manner. By the Egyptian's cruel Deportment towards her, he concluded that the Man was a jealous Husband, and that the Lady was an Inconstant, and had defil'd his Bed: But when he reflected, that the Woman was a perfect Beauty, and to his thinking something like the unfortunate Astarte, he perceiv'd his Heart yearn with Compassion towards the ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... thought things would be brought to a climax were Temple to visit her. A long letter of commission follows, the envoy is instructed to appear as his old friend, praising him to Miss Blair for his good qualities. Temple is adjured to dwell upon his odd, inconstant, impetuous nature, how he is accustomed to women of intrigue, and he is to ask of the fair one if she does not think there is insanity in the Boswell family. She is to hear of his travels, his acquaintance with foreign princes, Voltaire and ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... the palace whither the host conducted her, a very different effect was produced to what the kind host intended; for there, to her heart's sorrow, she beheld her lover, the inconstant Proteus, serenading the Lady Silvia with music, and addressing discourse of love and admiration to her. And Julia overheard Silvia from a window talk with Proteus, and reproach him for forsaking his own true lady, and for his ingratitude to his friend Valentine; and then Silvia left the window, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... had said—that. Anyway, Jim was a better dancer than Raymond, and handsomer and nicer—besides the uniform. He was more poetical too—much more. What was it he had said about liking her?... better dancer than any other... Funny she should feel so happy after Raymond... Maybe she was just a vain, inconstant, coquettish... ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... individual in regard to himself: the complexity of soul which there, too, makes "all judgments in the gross" impossible or useless, certainly inequitable, he delighted to note. Men's minds were like the grotesques which some artists of that day loved to joint together, or like one of his own [94] inconstant essays, never true for a page to its proposed subject. "Nothing is so supple as our understanding: it is double and diverse; and the matters ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... been a cruel husband, an insolent tyrant to an inoffensive wife; for her sake he had squandered his people's money, and outraged every moral law; and it may be that she remembered these things, and hated him the more fiercely for them when he was inconstant. She was a woman of extremes, in whose tropical temperament there was no medium between hatred ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... resolution and chosen his time, Napoleon kept the secret of his expedition until the last moment; and means were found to privately make the requisite preparations. A portion of the soldiers was embarked in a brig called the 'Inconstant' and the remainder in six small craft. It was not till they were all on board that the troops first conceived a suspicion of the Emperor's purpose: 1000 or 1200 men had sailed to regain possession of an Empire containing a population of 30,000,000! He commenced his voyage ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... was perfectly indefensible. It would have been better for him not to have alluded to any reasons, but to have remained firm to his assertion that he loved another woman. He must have acknowledged himself to be false, perjured, inconstant, and very base. A fault that may be venial to those who do not suffer, is damnable, deserving of an eternity of tortures, in the eyes of the sufferer. He must have submitted to be told that he was a fiend, and might have had to endure whatever of punishment a lady in her wrath could inflict ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... ago (says story) I lov'd you, For which you call me most inconstant now; Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man; For I am not the same that I was then: No flesh is now the same 'twas then in me; And that my mind is chang'd yourself may see. The same thoughts to retain ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... science, and none of her loves were barren. She embraced them each in turn with an ardour that resulted in the production of an offspring—a song, a picture, a poem, or book on some most serious subject, and all worthy of note. But she was inconstant, and these children of her thought or fancy were generally isolated efforts that marked the culminating point of her devotion, and lessened her interest if they did ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... disposition. G Sol re ut, to be peevish and effeminate. Flats, a manly or melancholic sadness. He who hath a voice which will in some measure agree with all cliffs, to be of good parts, and fit for variety of employments, yet somewhat of an inconstant nature. Likewise from the TIMES: so semi-briefs may speak a temper dull and phlegmatic; minims, grave and serious; crotchets, a prompt wit; quavers, vehemency of passion, and scolds use them. Semi-brief-rest may denote one either stupid ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the commonest book of arithmetic furnishes us, where it will be found, that to ring all the changes that can be produced on twelve bells only, would occupy a space of more than ninety-one years. The element of fire is visibly more active and more inconstant than that of earth. This is more solid and ponderous than fire, air, or water. According to the quantity of these elements, which enter the composition of bodies, these must act diversely, and their motion must in some measure partake the motion peculiar to ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... illumine the King's Highway! They shine from above, with increasing splendor, while these cast forth, from below, their uncertain lights. It seems to me that the farther we go the darker becomes the way, and its lights the more inconstant,—so fitful is ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... no one can ever tell how things may turn out. The grumpy Englishman, in an ill-temper with his wife, is capable of some day putting a rope round her neck, and taking her to be sold at Smithfield. The inconstant Frenchman may become unfaithful to his adored mistress, and be seen fluttering about the Palais Royal after another. But the German will never quite abandon his old grandmother; he will always keep for her a nook by ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... hate to be bothered with them, and it would be a great relief to have them out of my sight. I will make speedy arrangements to that effect. Of course nothing further will be heard of this girl. Men are proverbially inconstant, and Wilfred will soon forget all about this Miss Graystone. It was but a passing fancy, and I have taken the wisest course to get rid of her. I dare say she will get along well enough, and marry somebody in her own sphere in life. She was pretty and dignified with that ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... and inconstant than the multitude" is affirmed not by Titus Livius only, but by all other historians, in whose chronicles of human actions we often find the multitude condemning some citizen to death, and afterwards lamenting him and grieving greatly for his loss, as the Romans grieved and lamented ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... they are sick of this malady? What terrible colds, and roaring seas doth he not undergo, through an intemperate desire that he hath to be with his nittebritch'd Peggy? How often doth he hazard his Owners Ship, the Merchants Goods, and his own life, for an inconstant draggle-tail; that perhaps before he has been three daies at Sea, hath drawn her affection from him, and given promise to another? Yet nevertheless, tho the raging Waves run upon the Ship, and fly over his head, he withstands it all. Nor is the main Ocean, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... rare indeed, that, in a continued course of evil practices, any uniform method of proceeding will serve the purposes of the delinquent. Innocence is plain, direct, and simple: guilt is a crooked, intricate, inconstant, and various thing. The iniquitous job of to-day may be covered by specious reasons; but when the job of iniquity of to-morrow succeeds, the reasons that have colored the first crime may expose the second malversation. The man of fraud falls into contradiction, prevarication, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... eye in her eye lost, His ear to drink her sweet tongue's utterance; And changing passion, like inconstant clouds, That, rackt upon the carriage of the winds, Increase, and die, in his disturbed cheeks. Lo, when she blushed, even then did he look pale; As if her cheeks by some enchanted power Attracted had the cherry blood ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... believe in the stars," replied Antinous. "No doubt you are right, but my weak head cannot understand what their regular courses have to do with my inconstant wanderings." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... there ill opinion gain, No merit can their favour re-obtain: And if they're not vindictive in their fury, 'Tis their inconstant temper does secure ye: Their brain's so cool, their passion seldom burns; For all's condensed before the flame returns: The fermentation's of so weak a matter, The humid damps the flame, and runs it all to water; So though the inclination may be strong, ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... Gowanbrae, the date had not gone back far enough to establish that he had not died in the Indian war. It was fear that predominated with her, there were many moments when she would have given worlds to be secure that the newcomer was not the man she thought of, who, whether constant or inconstant, could bring nothing but pain and disturbance to the calm tenour of her sister's life. Everything was an oppression to her; the children, in their wild, joyous spirits and gladsome inattention, tried her patience almost beyond her powers; the charge of the ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with sudden transitions into glows yet deeper, until a belt of broad flame bounded the water, diffusing itself more faintly towards the zenith, where it melted into the pearl-colored sky, or played on the fantastic volumes of a few light clouds with inconstant glimmering. While these beautiful transitions were still before the eyes of the youthful admirers of their beauties, a voice was heard above them, crying ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... will be wise in the material sense; he will trip gracefully through life with more brains and bonhomie than worldly discretion, yet eclipsing many steadier companions by writing the "Recruiting Officer" and other sparkling plays, not forgetting "The Inconstant," which will last even unto the end of the nineteenth century. At present—and 'tis the present rather than the past or future that most concerns the captain—he holds a commission in the army, which he is ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... conceal her amusement. She attributed his seriousness to sudden infatuation—an infatuation which made him seem ridiculously inconstant after his recent professions ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... Catholic party. Their army was a legion of priests, and the black swarms of countless monasteries, who by the distribution of alms held in pay the rabble of cities and starving peasants on the lands of impoverished nobles. Montmorency, Conde, and Navarre leaned towards the Reform,—doubtful and inconstant chiefs, whose faith weighed light against their interests. Yet, amid vacillation, selfishness, weakness, treachery, one great man was like a tower of trust, and this was ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... brain is sometimes as inconstant as a popular assembly; and presently after she had voted the morning was like to be rainy, and that the gilded chamber was the fittest play-room for the children, Mistress Deborah came to the somewhat inconsistent resolution, that the park was the ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the rain are over: calm is the noon of day. The clouds are divided in heaven. Over the green hills flies the inconstant sun. Red through the stony vale comes down the stream of the hill. Sweet are thy murmurs, O stream! but more sweet is the voice I hear. It is the voice of Alpin the son of the song, mourning for ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... Miss Segrim drew a mirror from his pocket (like Strephon in "Iolanthe"), and cried, "Behold that lovely figure, that shape, those eyes," with other compliments; "can the man who shall be in possession of these be inconstant?" Sophia was charmed by the "man in possession," but forced her features into a frown. Presently Thomas "caught her in his arms," and the rest was in accordance with what Mr. Trollope and the best ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... in the most condescending tone and manner, "I do not mean that Leonor will repent her choice when once made; she has attractions to fix the most volatile and inconstant of men; and I sincerely hope that Gomez Arias will have discernment ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... jailer had been furnished with my name. You are right surely, touching the character of Aurelian. Though rude and unlettered, and severe almost to cruelty, there are generous sentiments within which shed a softening light, if inconstant, upon the darker traits. I would conceal nothing from you, Gracchus; as I would do nothing without your approbation. I know your indifference to life. I know that you would not purchase a day by any unworthy concession, by any doubtful act or word. Relying ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... between, two extremes, oscillate between, two extremes; alternate; have as man phases as the moon. Adj. changeable, changeful; changing &c. 140; mutable, variable, checkered, ever changing; protean, proteiform|; versatile. unstaid[obs3], inconstant; unsteady, unstable, unfixed, unsettled; fluctuating &c. v.; restless; agitated &c. 315; erratic, fickle; irresolute &c. 605; capricious &c. 608; touch and go; inconsonant, fitful, spasmodic; vibratory; vagrant, wayward; desultory; afloat; alternating; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Mr Jellaby, I noticed, inconstant fellow that he was, payed attentions of the most marked character on this occasion, all the time the festivities lasted to a Cape damsel of the most slender figure, contrasting strongly with the stout lady who was his former flame and who had come off especially, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... shorter way, and the apparently pleasanter way, and to snatch at the quickest and promptest means. At this moment he saw no difference between d'Arthez's noble friendship and Lousteau's easy comaraderie; his inconstant mind discerned a new weapon in journalism; he felt that he could wield it, so he wished to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... that anxious suffering, that weary life-gnawing suspense, which is ten times more hard to bear than any evil, however great, of which we can ascertain the nature and discern the limits. Could Philip be ill? Could he—No, he could not be inconstant. Ought she to write to him again? But to this question her parents answered "No. It would be unfeminine, unladylike, undignified. If Mr. Hayforth were ill, he would doubtless write as soon as he was able; and if he were well, his conduct was inexcusable, and on Emily's ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... inclined to resent. It interfered with his perfect happiness. It disarranged the orderly peace of the house that was his own. But Ameera was wild with delight at the thought of it, and her mother not less so. The love of a man, and particularly a white man, was at the best an inconstant affair, but it might, both women argued, be held fast by a baby's hands. 'And then,' Ameera would always say, 'then he will never care for the white mem-log. I hate them ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... blinded by sorrow. Or, perhaps, she hath conceived this magnificent scheme for my sake. Alas, cruel is the deed that the innocent princess of Vidarbha intends to do, having been deceived by my sinful and low self of little sense. It is seen in the world that the nature of woman is inconstant. My offence also hath been great; perhaps she is acting so, because she hath no longer any love for me owing to my separation from her. Indeed, that girl of slender waist, afflicted with grief on my account and ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... 'the furrowed sea,' 'the lofty surge,' 'the inconstant billows dancing;' in Henry VI., Queen Margaret finds in the roughness of the English waters a presage of her approaching wo; in Richard III., Clarence's dream figures to us all the horrors of 'the vasty deep;' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... the inconstant, and the adventurous, may be said to throw themselves by design into the arms of fortune, and voluntarily to quit the power of governing themselves; they engage in a course of life in which little can ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson |
