"Self-willed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that she deemed it prudent not to mention anything about her resolution. She knew her companion well enough to believe that it would be useless to attempt to persuade her to abandon her brilliant scheme; and Fanny was so resolute and self-willed that she might find a way to compel her to go with her, whether she was ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... about a Christmas-tree for the poor children. He urged her to stop and spend the night, but she insisted that she must go on, though it was nearly dark and raining hard, and the roads would have mired a cat (she was always self-willed). Next day he went to see the sick woman, and when he arrived he found her in one bed and Cousin Fanny in another, in the same room. When he had examined the patient, he turned and asked Cousin Fanny what was the matter with her. "Oh, just a ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... younger than you, and therefore cannot chaperone yon. She has received only an ordinary education, and her experience of society is derived from local subscription balls. And, as she is not unattractive, and is considered a beauty in Wiltstoken, she is self-willed, and will probably take ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... her suddenly in his arms, his fine young features aglow. This then was the goal of his desires; a goal of delight, far, far beyond all youthful dreams or early imaginings. With drooping eyelids, she stood in his embrace; she, once so proud, so self-willed. He drew her closer—kissed her ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... ignorant of the trouble given to the consciences of many worthy men, viewed this conduct on their part as self-willed, and an unwarrantable opposition to what appeared to him a needful regulation. He ordered Lilius and Reinhardt to be removed from office, if they delayed to subscribe, and gave the others time for consideration. The two former, ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... that constitutes the spirit, the power, the charm of youth is extinguished. The young man becomes prematurely old. We have all witnessed that saddest of spectacles, the petulant child developing into the ruffian boy, and hurrying into the ruffian man,—rude, hard-natured, swaggering, and self-willed, a darkness over his conscience, a glare over his appetites, insensible to duty or affection, and only tamed into decencies by the chains of restraint which an outraged community binds on his impulses. Now give this young savage arbitrary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... "She was very self-willed, that gentle Eglantine, in spite of her soft, pretty ways. There was no moving her. She turned her back as nearly as she could on Sir Scraggo, and bent farther and farther toward the south, stretching her arms out as if imploring her heartless lover ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... was a man so plagued as I am with a malapert knave!—The fellow is shrewd, and I have found him faithful—I believe he loves me, too, and he has given proofs of it—but then he is so uplifted in his own conceit, so self-willed, and so self-opinioned, that he seems to become the master and I the man; and whatever blunder he commits, he is sure to make as loud complaints, as if the whole error lay with me, and in ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the soldiers of Fimbria were said to have become difficult to manage, from being accustomed to obey no commander. They were the men who joined Fimbria in putting to death Flaccus, who was a consul and their general, and who gave up Fimbria himself to Sulla[343]—self-willed and lawless men, but brave and full of endurance, and experienced soldiers. However, in a short time, Lucullus took down the insolence of these soldiers, and changed the character of the rest, who then, for the ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... insubordinate to arbitrary forms. It could not, with the witling in the play, cap verses with any man. The moment its tasks were dictated and the form prescribed, that moment there was ground to expect the self-willed jade to play a jade's trick, and leave us with no decent results of inspiration. For odes and sonnets, and other such Procrustean moulds into which poetic thought is at times cast, Tennyson had neither gift nor liking. When, therefore, with the Duke's death, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... him. To do her justice, she was not exactly vulgarly ambitious for her daughter; she liked Sir John personally, and had a high respect for his character, and she considered that Beatrice's high spirit and self-willed disposition would be most desirably moderated and kept in check by a husband so much older than herself. Lady Kynaston, moreover, was one of her best and dearest friends, and was her beau-ideal of all that a clever and refined lady should be. The match, in every respect, would have been a very ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... fanned herself vigorously. She had been aching to have it out with this self-willed young woman who was playing fast and loose with attainable millions, and the hour ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... officials treated some of the Basque shepherds with what seemed to be too great severity there were numerous forest fires on the reserve. These men were generally both self-willed and ignorant, and we passed by at this spot a clump of finely growing firs, which had been destroyed by a fire started by ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... as keen at that as I. Avice is not only amazingly self-willed, as you intimated a moment since, but she is intensely secretive. When she left me I could get nothing from her whatever. She was wretchedly sullen ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... of heartfelt pity, promised to hide her "dear child" from every one, which promise, however, did not prevent her, for she was very self-willed, from going, without Jacqueline's knowledge, to see Madame de Talbrun and tell her all that had taken place. She was hurt and amazed at her reception by Giselle, and at her saying, without any offer of help or words of sympathy, "She has only ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... in almost the same lordly fashion as the preachers. Of a certain congregation at Norwich Wesley writes, 'I told them in plain terms that they were the most ignorant, self-conceited, self-willed, fickle, untractable, disorderly, disjointed society that I knew in the three kingdoms. And God applied to their hearts, so that many were profited, but I do not find that one was offended.'[727] At one time he had an idea that ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... all compunctious visitings. A life of crime had steeled her soul against every merciful impression. But she was very apprehensive lest her son, less obdurate in purpose, might relent. Though impotent in character, he was, at times, petulant and self-willed, and in paroxysms of stubbornness spurned his mother's counsels and exerted his ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... whom Lutheranism was only the cloak which hid their selfish political intrigues. There had been a time when Somerset was one of them, and had sought his own advancement as they now did theirs. And the deserted regiment never pardons the deserter. The faction complained that Somerset was proud and self-willed: he worked alone; he acted on his own responsibility; he did not consult his friends. This of course meant in the case of each member of the faction (as such complaints usually do), "He did not consult me." Somerset might truthfully ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... brother too well to have any desire for the union with Lady Maria, and lost no time in explaining to Lord Castlewood that Harry had no resources save dependence,—"and I know no worse lot than to be dependent on a self-willed woman like our mother. The means my brother had to make himself respected at home ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... I am the general, or I am king and thou art the general." Joab had no choice but to obey. He selected the tribe of Gad as the first to be counted, because he thought that the Gadites, independent and self-willed, would hinder the execution of the royal order, and David would be forced to give up his plan of taking a census. The Gadites disappointed the expectations of Joab, and he betook himself to the tribe of Dan, hoping that if God's punishment descended, ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... for, I think I have—a good heart. Without the affections, all the world is vanity, my love! I protest I only live, exist, eat, drink, rest, for my sweet, sweet children!—for my wicked Willy, for my self-willed Fanny, dear naughty loves!" (She rapturously kisses a bracelet on each arm which contains the miniature representations of those two young persons.) "Yes, Mimi! yes, Fanchon! you know I do, you dear, dear little ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with the hero turns out to be only his pale reflection. Distinctions of sex and age, of race and education, are merely superficial. High or low, good or bad, they are all equally knowing and equally self-willed. The women may talk of bonnets, but their lofty and fiery souls glow through the twaddle. The children have an infantile prattle, but the schoolmaster, overhearing it, would at once remark that it was only that boy Reade holding one of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... memorable day when I first saw her in the meeting- house. How perverse my fate has been, giving me that for which I might well thank God on my knees, and yet which my heart refuses, and withholding that which will impoverish my whole life. Why must the heart be so imperious and self-willed in these matters? An elderly gentleman would say, Everything is just right as it is. It would be the absurdity of folly for Miss Warren to give up her magnificent prospects because of your sudden and sickly sentiment; ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... burning in things unallowed, to that use which is against nature; or are found guilty, raging with heart and tongue against Thee, kicking against the pricks; or when, bursting the pale of human society, they boldly joy in self-willed combinations or divisions, according as they have any object to gain or subject of offence. And these things are done when Thou art forsaken, O Fountain of Life, who art the only and true Creator and Governor ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... self-willed to himself, and, putting out nine miles from the Boodah his three lights, ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... lives, until the wear and tear of daily life and new anxieties have erased all trace of the old bitterness. Such was the case of Andre Elsberger. He would have liked to be a writer: but his brother, who was very self-willed, had made him follow in his footsteps and enter upon a scientific career. Andre was clever, and quite well equipped for scientific work—or for literature, for that matter: he was not sure enough ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... with Bess, her little quarrels and tart replies, her generous, happy, winning, self-willed ways, were as if they had never been, and in their place came resignation, reserve, pride and a little—only a ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... defer to the will of a child! Such a child too! So stubborn and spoiled and self-willed! If we say it is good for her ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... horde, and which changed our holy zeal against the enemies of the Cross into remorseless hatred of all mankind. As to the forged seals and signatures you talk of, and the deceptions practised on the Turks, if such there were, they were the self-willed act of our woivodes, and in no way ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... the idea of this, I could see. She is not at all shy, and she still is very fond of planning, or managing things, and people too, for that matter, though of course she is much more sensible now, and not so impatient and self-willed as she used to be. Still, on the whole, she gets on better with Peterkin than with any of us, though she is fond of us, I know, and so are we of her. But Peterkin is just a sort of slave to her, and does everything she asks, and I expect it will ...
— Peterkin • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... Miss Alison was designed accordingly to be the Master's wife, gladly enough on her side; with how much good-will on his is another matter. She was a comely girl, and in those days very spirited and self-willed; for the old lord having no daughter of his own, and my lady being long dead, she had grown up as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... old gentleman here (I may venture to tell you freely) seems to me to be in a pretty odd way of late—moping, dejected, self-willed, and as if surrounded with some perplexing circumstances. Though I visit him pretty frequently for short intervals, I say very little to his affairs, not choosing to be a party concerned, especially in ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... the law would be enforced, and exhorted them to desist. The proclamation was effective in the south, and the opposition died out in North Carolina. Not so in Pennsylvania. There the Scotch-Irish borderers who lived in the western counties were bent on having their way. A brave, self-willed, hotheaded, turbulent people, they were going to have their fight out. They had ridden rough-shod over the Quaker and German government in Pennsylvania before this, and they no doubt thought they could do the same with this new government of the United States. They merely ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... is not of my rank; her character is strange and self-willed; her education neglected. I am enslaved by her beauty, but I ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... law. No doubt, as Egyptologists tell us, the princesses of the royal house had separate households and abundant liberty of action. Still, it was bold to override the strict commands of such a monarch. But it was not a self-willed sense of power, but the beautiful daring of a compassionate woman, to which God committed the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... self-denial that had gone to the gathering of that three thousand dollars than she could the nature of a person who would nag for twenty years the girl she meant to endow. That also belonged among the puritan traits, as well as a sneaking admiration for the handsome, self-willed, ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... that is what he will find me, Grandma Elsie," replied the determinately self-willed ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... did anything else that was obsolete; or decried Sullivan's music in favour of Debussy's or of Scarlatini's 17th century tiraliras; or wore spectacles and had to have their front teeth in gold clamps. Just clear-eyed, good-tempered, good-looking, roguish and spontaneously natural and reasonably self-willed children, who adored their parents and did not openly mock at the Elishas that called ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... of this scurril fool, Ajax is grown self-willed as broad Achilles. He keeps a table too, makes factious feasts, Rails on our state of war, and sets Thersites (A slanderous slave of an o'erflowing gall) To level us with low comparisons. They tax our policy with cowardice, Count wisdom of no moment in the war, In ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... arrived, and with Aeschylus, philosophy passed into poetry. The dark doctrine of fatality imparted its stern and awful interest to the narration of events—men were delineated, not as mere self-acting and self-willed mortals, but as the agents of a destiny inevitable and unseen—the gods themselves are no longer the gods of Homer, entering into the sphere of human action for petty motives and for individual purposes—drawing their grandeur, not from the part they perform, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... what you say. You know quite well you would not give up your son and daughter for all the money in the world. You love Edna all the more because she needs so much care, and you are just as proud of Rex as you can be. Of course he is self-willed and determined, but if you could change him into a weak, undecided creature like the vicar's son, you would be very sorry to ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... unshakable, not to be moved; inert &c 172; unchangeable &c 150; inexorable &c (determined) 604; mulish, obstinate as a mule, pig-headed. dogged; sullen, sulky; unmoved, uninfluenced unaffected. willful, self-willed, perverse; resty^, restive, restiff^; pervicacious^, wayward, refractory, unruly; heady, headstrong; entete [Fr.]; contumacious; crossgrained^. arbitrary, dogmatic, positive, bigoted; prejudiced &c 481; creed- bound; prepossessed, infatuated; stiff-backed, stiff necked, stiff ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a skilful hand, the spies took this as a hint to make off in good time. Accordingly, Mr Venus slipped past Mr Wegg and towed him down. But Mr Wegg's descent was not accomplished without some personal inconvenience, for his self-willed leg sticking into the ashes about half way down, and time pressing, Mr Venus took the liberty of hauling him from his tether by the collar: which occasioned him to make the rest of the journey on his back, with his head enveloped in the skirts of his coat, and his wooden leg coming last, like ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... what's all this?" he exclaimed, searching sedulously for his double eyeglass—which all the while he held between his finger and thumb. "Now, young people, you must not occupy my time any longer. Harry, see this self-willed little lady into a cab; and you need not return until the afternoon. If you are in time to find me before I leave, that will do quite well. Good-bye, ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... very grand fellow, who was going to speak what I knew to be true, in spite of all fools (and really did and do intend so to do), while all the while I was deceiving myself, and unaware of a canker at the heart the very opposite to the one against which you warn me. I mean the proud, self-willed, self-conceited spirit which made no allowance for other men's weakness or ignorance; nor again, for their superior experience and wisdom on points which I had never considered—which took a pride in shocking and startling, and defying, and hitting ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... attempted to speak; but knowing that the self-willed multitude, if enraged, might beat him to death, as almost always happened in such cases, he bowed very low, laid down his staff, and hid ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... do; and to go, with his wayward young feet, whithersoever his foolish young nose should choose to lead him; so that, by the time he had walked into his twelfth year, a worse spoilt boy, a vainer boy, a more self-conceited boy, a more self-willed boy than master Sprigg was not to be found in the land—ransack the Paradise from Big Bone Lick ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... goods"—she was unfit to marry George Ellesborough. But she would marry him! She set her teeth—clinging to him with all the energy of a woman's deepening and maturing consciousness. She had been a weak and self-willed child when she married Delane—when she spent those half miserable, half wild days and nights with Dick Tanner. Now she trusted a good man—now she looked up and adored. Her weakness was safe in the care ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was going very strong with her. More than once the farmer cautioned her to give him a pull over the plough. And she attempted to obey the order. But the horse was self-willed, and she was light; and in truth the heaviness of the ground would have been nothing to him had he been fairly well ridden. But she allowed him to rush with her through the mud. As she had never yet had an accident she knew nothing of fear, and she was beyond measure ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... abundance. It was rank and power that he craved. Four men—all with better war records and more experience—stood between him and that coveted star, and two of the four were popular and beloved men. Frost was cold, selfish, intensely self-willed, indomitably persevering, and though "close-fisted," to the scale of a Scotch landlord as a rule, he would loose his purse strings and pay well for services he considered essential. When Frost had a consuming desire he let no money consideration stand in the way, and for Nita ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... Every trace of recklessness and arrogance had passed away; every stain of passion had been removed; every particle of hardness had been calcined in the flame of trial. All was gentleness, love, and dependence, in the once bright, impetuous, self-willed boy; it seemed as though the lightning of God's anger had shattered and swept away all that was evil in his heart and life, and left all his true excellence, all the royal prerogatives of his character, pure and unscathed. Eric, even in his worst days, was, as I well remember, a ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... force of about two thousand men, including the British regulars and the colonial militia, Washington accompanied the British general as one of his staff. Braddock was a gallant soldier, but imperious, and self-willed, and he looked almost with contempt upon the American troops. He made a forced march with twelve hundred men in order to surprise the French at Duquesne before they could receive reinforcements. Colonel Dunbar followed with the remainder of the army and the wagon-train. It was a delightful ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... galloping about in an unaccountable manner, but, as is usually the case, a little investigation explained the seemingly unaccountable. The men were engaged in driving some cattle into the enclosure, and as these were more than half wild and self-willed, the process entailed much energy of limb and noise. As to the porcine yells, the whole of the almost superhuman skirling arose from one little pig, which the ebony cupid before mentioned had lassoed by the ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... feeling. It might be supposed that a child of such parents could not but turn out well. Unhappily for me, they loved me much, but not wisely. I was allowed to have my own way in all things, I was never taught to obey. As I grew up, my self-willed disposition became more and more developed. I could not bear constraint of any sort. Too late they discovered their error. I had received at home some little religious instruction; I even knew something about the contents of the Bible, ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... finger-nails, like those of antique statues. I should displease you, I know, if you were not yourself an exception to my rule, when I say that flat waists should have the preference over round ones. The round waist is a sign of strength; but women thus formed are imperious, self-willed, and more voluptuous than tender. On the other hand, women with flat waists are devoted in soul, delicately perceptive, inclined to sadness, more truly woman than the other class. The flat waist is supple and yielding; the round ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... with evident intention, which the others were quick to read, changed the subject of conversation. On the whole, vexed though she was with Frances's persistence—'self-willed obstinacy' as she called it to herself—Jacinth felt that the dreaded crisis had passed off better than might have been expected, and in some things it was a relief. Things were ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... they rent, And what behind it lay, all earth shall view. But good with ill they also overthrew, Leaving but ruins, wherewith to rebuild Upon the same foundation, and renew Dungeons and thrones, which the same hour refilled, As heretofore, because ambition was self-willed. ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... four hundred thousand honest women whom we have so carefully sifted out from all the European nations, we indulge the belief that there are a certain number, say three hundred thousand, who will be sufficiently self-willed, charming, adorable, and bellicose to raise the standard of ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... always protesting against in others. We are tiresome and self-willed, but we know very well how much we owe to you, and your care for us. It hurts us as much as it hurts you when we disagree; but we've got to live ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... or an ELEGANT like Brummel to point to an armful of failures in the attempt to achieve a perfect tie. This son of mine, whom I have not seen for these twenty-five years, generously counted, was a self-willed youth, always too ready to utter his unchastised fancies. He, like too many American young people, got the spur when he should have had the rein. He therefore helped to fill the market with that unripe fruit which his father says in one of these papers abounds in the marts ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the anger of the self-willed monarch, who ordered the author to be sent to the Bastille, and then to be banished from the kingdom for ever. Bussy passed sixteen years in exile, and occupied his enforced leisure by writing his memoirs, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... this summons, she did not pout, nor plead for more time, as a self-willed child would have done; but she looked up to her aunt with a smile, brushed the sand from her fingers, ...
— Aunt Amy - or, How Minnie Brown learned to be a Sunbeam • Francis Forrester
... picturesque and tragical scene it was, and what a beautiful poem it will make, when we have thrown it into an artistic form, and bedizened it with conceits and analogies stolen from all heaven and earth by our own self-willed fancy? ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... would be, that had hatched a young cuckoo. Frankly, she did not understand Honor, whose strong, uncontrolled character differed so entirely from her own gentle, clinging, dependent disposition; and whose storms of grief or anger, wild fits of waywardness and equally passionate repentance, and self-willed disobedience, alternating with sudden bursts of reformation, were a constant source of worry and anxiety, and the direct opposite of her ideal of girlhood. Poor Mrs. Fitzgerald would have liked a docile, tractable daughter, who would have been content to ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... deal of misery, with an infinite patience; saying my books and maps were much better cheap to teach them than myself: many others have used the like good husbandry that have payed soundly in trying their self-willed conclusions; but those in time doing well, diverse others have in small handfulls undertaken to go there, to be several Lords and Kings of themselves, but most ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dreams had come to nothing. And it was this little monster, who looked as fair and as white as a seraph, who had just shattered my first hopes. Huddled up in the cab, an expression of fear on her self-willed looking face and her thin lips compressed, she was gazing at me under her long lashes ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... stout and strong man, with brown hair; of a manly appearance, but not handsome; well grown; of little speech, and often not friendly, but good to his friends, and faithful; not very eloquent, but moral and polite. King Sigurd was self-willed, and severe in his revenge; strict in observing the law; was generous; and withal an able, powerful king. His brother Olaf was a tall, thin man; handsome in countenance; lively, modest, and popular. When all these brothers, Eystein, Sigurd and Olaf were kings of Norway, they did away with ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... and the representatives of the people were thunderstruck to see the king enter the great hall of the palace in full hunting costume of scarlet coat, high boots, and plumed gray beaver. Behind him came a long train of nobles in hunting suits also. Whip in hand and hat on head, this self-willed boy of sixteen faced his wondering ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... of Himself, and in essence are, in various fashions, the repetition of this prayer of my text: 'Be ... for Thou art,' that we can expect to have them answered. Much else may call itself prayer, but it is often but petulant and self-willed endeavour to force our wishes upon Him, and no answer will come to that. We are to pray about everything; but we are to pray about nothing, except within the lines which are marked out for us by what God has told us, in His words ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... mingled remains of vexation and self-reproach, caused by their own conduct or that of others, made them hard to be pleased—and so the cloud thickened about them, and with all outward means for being happy, loving and beloved, they were a wretched family. James, the eldest, was impetuous and self-willed, but affectionate, generous, and very fond of reading and study, and with gentle and judicious management, would have been the joy and pride of his family, with the domestic and literary tastes so invaluable to every youth, in our day, when ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... severeth faith and repentance, concluding, that the soul shall be saved by grace, though the man was never made sorry for his sins, nor the love of the heart turned therefrom. This is to be self-willed, as Peter has it; and this is a despising the word of the Lord, for that has put repentance and faith together; Mark i. 15. And "because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath broken his commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... necessity in home life—this "I must"—just the thing which makes it akin to our Lord's life? Is there not in that Holiest Life a continual undercurrent of "I must"? His earthly life was a course of obedience, not a succession of self-willed efforts; its keynote was, "Wist ye not that I must be ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... his fame. With his principles in the various branches of philosophy we have little or nothing to do. In choosing them he manifested, no doubt, something of the same defiance of authority, and the same self-willed preference for his own not too well-educated opinion, which brought him to grief in his encounter with Wallis. But when he had once left his starting points, his sureness of reasoning, his extreme perspicacity, and ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the Professor's wife, whom Madame Bertaux had happened to meet in Paris, was a young, beautiful, and self-willed girl, passionately devoted to her husband. She was piqued at his lack of jealousy, and doubted or pretended to doubt his love for her. In order to put him to the test, she determined to rouse his jealousy by violent and systematic flirtation. This ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... she look remarkably pretty? Everyone thought so at the dance. But she is terribly self-willed, this sweet little person. What are we to do with her? You will hardly believe that I had almost to bring her ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... formidable to the temporal power. It was, therefore, in the natural constitution of society that bigoted zeal, which in such times makes a show of public acts of penance, should avail itself of the semblance of religion. But this took place in such a manner that unbridled, self-willed penitence degenerated into luke-warmness, renounced obedience to the hierarchy, and prepared a fearful opposition to the Church, paralyzed as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Diseases," the delivery of which many years ago marked the commencement of a new epoch in the movement of the medical mind among us. An hour's reading given to this new lesson of wisdom will turn many a self-willed, proud-hearted medical skeptic into a humble and consistent patient of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... thought, even, that the Rector—that name of fear—had at last found in himself the ideal which he had vainly sought in so many examples of lettered youth. He became vain, perhaps, but certainly a little self-willed, as was his nature, feeling himself to be on the top of the wave, and above those precautions for keeping himself there which had once seemed necessary. He did not, indeed, turn to any harm, for that ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... was again beckoning to Ni-ha-be, and there was an impatient look on his dark, self-willed face. It was time for her to make haste, therefore, and Rita put the three magazines under the light folds of her broad antelope-skin cap and tripped away toward the bit of bushy grove just ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... suddenly took a strange, unbidden turn. If he had only himself to consider! ... well, what then! Was it not just within the bounds of probability that, under the same circumstances, he might be precisely as self-willed and as haughtily opinionated as the friend whose arrogance he deplored, yet could ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... and has for a little while enjoyed the happiness of that mercy, it not unfrequently appears to his evil and inconstant heart too humiliating a condition to be constantly receiving grace for grace. There is no other radical cure for a proud, self-willed heart than every day and every hour to repeat that act by which we first came to Christ. Pray that you may have more of that childlike spirit which regards the grace of your Lord as a perennial fountain of life. Especially avoid the error of those who seek ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... polite, that he didn't believe a word of any such yarn; that the mountains had to be crossed, and that go they must and should. They had evidently never had to deal before with any such determined, self-willed individual as the Major proved to be, and, after some consultation among themselves, they agreed to make the attempt with eight unloaded horses, leaving all our baggage and heavy equipage at Lesnoi. This the Major at first would not listen to; but after thinking ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... that she might induce him to hear reason and again to consent to live with his wife. "Of all men," she said to the lawyer, "he is the most honest and the most affectionate; but of all men the most self-willed and obstinate. An injustice is with him like a running sore; and, alas, it is not always an injustice, but a something that he has believed ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... some time before the Convention met in 1844, and that he was heartily in sympathy with the movement for conquering a portion of Mexico to be made into slave States. Polk entered heartily into this business, and worked harmoniously with the instigators of conquest, except that he became self-willed when his vanity ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... his happy childhood and golden youth, Victurnien had never met with opposition to his wishes. He had been the king of the house; no one curbed the little prince's will; and naturally he grew up insolent and audacious, selfish as a prince, self-willed as the most high-spirited cardinal of the Middle Ages,—defects of character which any one might guess from his qualities, essentially those of ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... four years and three months who was 3 feet 10 1/2 inches tall and weighed 54 pounds; his features were large and coarse, and his penis and testes were of the size of those of an adult. He was unusually dull, mentally, quite obstinate, and self-willed. It is said that he masturbated on all opportunities and had vigorous erections, although no spermatozoa were found in the semen issued. He showed no fondness for the opposite sex. The history of this rapid growth says that he was not unlike other children until the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a number of new laws.] They let Nero sow his wild oats with the intention of bringing about in him through the satisfaction of all his desires a changed attitude of mind, while in the meantime no great damage should be done to public interests. Surely they must have known that a young and self-willed spirit, when reared in unreproved license and in absolute authority, so far from becoming satiated by the indulgence of its passions is ruined more and more by these very agencies. Indeed, Nero at first gave but simple dinners; his revels, his drunkenness, his amours ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... expressive eyes on hers, which, in her ecstasy of doubt, terror, and perplexity, she cast up towards him, "I have ever remarked that when others called thee girlish and wilful, there lay under that external semblance of youthful and self-willed folly deep feeling and strong sense. In this I will confide, trusting your own fate in your own hands for the space of twenty-four hours, without my interference ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... became more self-willed and disobedient, and his manner to his mother was often very rude and his temper to the other chickens ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... class of mills that is practically controlled by one man, a very able man, but exceedingly self-willed and stubborn. He owns a chain of mills from coast to coast, and the rest of the manufacturers in his line follow his lead in everything. He has fought the Safety First idea from the start—calls it 'one of these new-fangled notions'—will have ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... it! I will be your husband!" And as she shook her head and looked at me sadly, I added: "Oh! I well know that my uncle is self-willed, but I will be more self-willed still; and, since he must be forced to say 'yes,' I will force ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... dowering her with a big brain had not made for her a more refined mouth. The upper part of her face was often illuminated; the lower narrowly escaped coarseness; and a head of rusty red hair gave a total impression of strenuous brilliancy, of keen abiding vitality. A self-willed New York girl who had never undergone the chastening influence of discipline or rigorously ordered study—she averred that it would attenuate the individuality of her style; avowedly despising the classics, she was a modern of moderns ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... SE. Go to, you are a prodigal, and self-willed fool. Nay, never look at me, it's I that speak, Take't as you will, I'll not flatter you. What? have you not means enow to waste That which your friends have left you, but you must Go cast away your money on a Buzzard, And know not how to keep it when you have done? Oh, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... give his own name, when he first called at your uncle's house. He will now acknowledge no other. Remonstrance is useless. You must do what we do—you must give way to an unreasonable man. The best fellow in the world in other respects: in this one matter as obstinate and self-willed as he can be. If you ask me my opinion, I tell you honestly that I think he was wrong in courting and marrying you under his false name. He trusted his honor and his happiness to your keeping in making you his—wife. Why should he not trust the story of his troubles to you as well? His mother ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... belle of the city, as his bride. There was a rumor afloat that the match afforded the fair lady but meagre satisfaction, and that her taste and wishes were not much consulted in the matter; but the angry importunities of her proud, self-willed mother at length induced her to marry a man she did not love. But this idle report was hushed after their marriage, and the devotion of the young couple loudly descanted on in fashionable circles throughout the city; for was not Hardin all attention, and how could she avoid loving ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... a look at the Obelisk. She had eyes only for the beautiful beast which, seemingly, she was to ride on a single rein and a wisp of a saddle. Standing sixteen hands, born of the desert, nervous and self-willed, he was no fit mount for a woman, and a gleam of anxiety flashed across the sayis's face as he measured the slender girl with his eye ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... She explored their ancestral history on both sides for the origin of their traits, and there were times when she reduced them in formula to mere congeries of inherited characteristics. If Eunice was self-willed and despotic, she was just like her grandmother Mavering; if Minnie was all sentiment and gentle stubbornness, it was because two aunts of hers, one on either side, were exactly so; if Dan loved pleasure and beauty, and was sinuous ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... spotted dogs whose tails curled over their backs, not like greyhounds whose tails curl between their legs. Outside of the Plantation those dogs caught and ate my future wife, as I have said. It was her own fault, for I had warned her not to go there, but she was a very self-willed character. As it was she never even gave them a run, for they were all round her in a minute. Then they made a kind of cartwheel; their heads were in the centre of this cartwheel and their tails pointed out. In its exact ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... settling for an instant upon whiteness, then carried away by a purifying wind. She knew that she would always be subject to such moments so long as she was a human being, that there would always be in her blood something that was self-willed. Otherwise, would she not be already in Paradise? She sat and prayed for strength in the battle of life, that could never be anything else but ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... that Enna is not well enough to go out, and wants a fairy story to pass away the time, which Elsie alone is acquainted with, but is too lazy or too self-willed ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... freak of temper, and she chose to be self-willed about it. I hope she will show herself penitent to Sinclair; she can turn him around her little finger if she likes; but sometimes she prefers to quarrel with him. I really think Edna enjoys a regular flare up," finished ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... squire as in any of these. Sharp alternations of violent action and self-indulgent repose; a hard run, and a long revel after it: this is what over-much horse tends to animalize a man into. Such antecedents may have helped to make little Dick Venner a self-willed, capricious boy, and a rough playmate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... wicked and detestable sedition, so unbecoming the elect of God, which a few headstrong and self-willed men have fomented to such a degree of madness, that your venerable and renowned name, so worthy of all men to be beloved, ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... the boy is developing. I don't know what to do with him. In my young days, boys were different. We submitted to our fathers. A year or two of school and camp life has changed my little Pat into a sullen, self-willed, unmanageable youngster." He repeated the conversation between Pat and ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... do not deceive me. The generalissimo is desirous of punishing me for my victories at Sacile and St. Boniface, and for advocating a declaration of war when he pronounced three times against it. He has already several times told the emperor that I am self-willed, disobedient, and always inclined to oppose his orders by words or even deeds; and the emperor always takes pleasure in informing me of the ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... are also terribly head-strong and self-willed in all they do. They do not seem to know what fear means in any sense—they are dangerous lovers and husbands to trifle with, for they will stop at nothing if their ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... trust to these self-willed methods, and neglect the noble and exquisite forms which the Church has prepared for us as embodiments for every feeling ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... alter his opinion on the subject of bullies. This one, like others, was a mortal coward. Like other men, who have no fear of God before their eyes, he made up for it by having a very hearty fear of sickness, death, departed souls, and one or two other things, which the most self-willed sinner knows well enough to be in the hands of a Power which he cannot see, and does not wish to believe in. Bully Tom had spoken the truth when he said that if he thought there was a ghost in Yew-lane he wouldn't ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... for weeks and weeks, this same selfish, self-willed girl, Mabel Ellis, lay on the bed of pain and languishing, and I may add, I am rejoiced to say, on the bed of sincere repentance. Yes, the salutary lessons of adversity had not been taught in vain, for they were not transitory ones, they had taken deep root; while the ...
— Aunt Mary • Mrs. Perring
... self-willed, capricious little puss. She's been too much indulged. She needs to be brought under discipline," said Gerald, angrily whipping off a blossom with his rattan as ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... party. Convinced at last that his true interest lay rather on the side of the Court, then managed by a woman and a priest, where he might be supreme in military matters, than in supporting the cause of an impetuous and self-willed leader, such as Conde, Turenne gladly listened to overtures of accommodation, and passed over to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... mixture of guilt and mischief, like a child's. But the glance had not the power to attract Martha's eyes. Martha felt the glances as surely as if she had lifted her eyes to meet them. She held her peace. She had not been brought along as Elsa's guardian. Elsa was not self-willed but strong-willed, and Martha realized that any interference would result in estrangement. In fact, Martha beheld in Warrington a real menace. The extraordinary resemblance would naturally appeal to ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... that Hsi Jen had ever since her youth not been blind to the fact that Pao-yue had an extraordinary temperament, that he was self-willed and perverse, far even in excess of all young lads, and that he had, in addition, a good many peculiarities and many unspeakable defects. And as of late he had placed such reliance in the fond love of his grandmother that his father and mother even could not ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... hear and what they do not hear—what is true and what is not true. I know I have been robbed of my brother's love, but I will not consent to the loss of his respect and consideration. Sire, Winterfeldt wrote to you; I know that he did so. If he wrote that I was obstinate and self-willed, and alone answerable for the disasters of the army, [Footnote: Warner's "Campaigns of Frederick the Great."] I call God to witness that he slandered me. Your majesty speaks of instructions. I received none. I would remind you that ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... capacity before their business was closed. At this moment, a tall, lank-sided Pennsylvanian, who was standing among the spectators, and who, perhaps, had no love for the shining tomahawk of the self-willed chief, cautiously approached, and handed him an old, long stemmed, dirty looking earthen pipe, intimating, that if Tecumseh would deliver up the fearful tomahawk, he might smoke the aforesaid pipe. The chief took it between his thumb and finger, held it up, looked at it for a moment, then at the ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... times" by the faithful and harrowing portraits he has drawn of them? Would he carry us back to the early stages of barbarism, of clanship, of the feudal system as "a consummation devoutly to be wished?" Is he infatuated enough, or does he so dote and drivel over his own slothful and self-willed prejudices, as to believe that he will make a single convert to the beauty of Legitimacy, that is, of lawless power and savage bigotry, when he himself is obliged to apologise for the horrors he describes, and even ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... cry of "Ware sheep!" in a stern tone of voice, arrests them, and often, without the aid of the whip; it being taken as a principle that this instrument should be used as seldom as possible. If, indeed, the dog is self-willed, the whip must be had recourse to, and perhaps with some severity; for, if he is once suffered to taste the blood of the sheep, it may be difficult to restrain him afterwards. A nobleman was told that it was ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... real, are those natural tendencies which each of us brings with him into the world,—which we did not make, and yet which almost as much determine what we are to be, as the properties of the seed determine the tree which shall grow from it. Men are self-willed, or violent, or obstinate, or weak, or generous, or affectionate; there is as large difference in their dispositions as in the features of their faces. Duties which are easy to one, another finds difficult or impossible. ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of water around the ship. I saw him excitedly haul in a good-sized fish, and, hailing him, inquired how many he had caught, and if he were sure they were not poisonous? He replied that he had caught five, and that "there was nothin' the matter with them." Knowing what a self-willed, ignorant man he was, I thought I should have a look at the fish and satisfy myself; so I ran the boat alongside and clambered on board, followed by two of my native crew. The moment we opened the fishes' mouths and looked down their throats we saw the infallible sign which denoted their highly ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... fasting painful, satiety unwieldy, religion nicely severe, liberty is lawless, wealth burdensome, mediocrity contemptible. Everything faulteth, either in too much or too little. This man is ever headstrong and self-willed, neither is he always tied to esteem or pronounce according to reason; some things he must dislike he knows not wherefore, but he likes them not; and otherwhere, rather than not censure, he will accuse a man ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... I do," said Patty, "but I warn you I'm a self-willed young person, and if I insist on having my own way, what are you going ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... said Mrs Winn. "There's a great deal of good in Delia, but she is conceited and self-willed, like all ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... Mr Roberts," said the doctor importantly. "I do not know how you find him in your dealings, Anderson," he continued, "but as a patient I must say that of all the argumentative, self-willed young men I ever encountered Mr Roberts carries ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn |
