"Whim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... well to note the efficacy of the people's call upon the Government in those early days, and how quickly the response came; not by yielding to gusts of popular whim and caprice; not by conferring benefits upon the few at the expense of the many; but by a quick observation of the fact that the withdrawal of certain rightful privilege by another nation from American settlers had caused them distress, ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... beyond measure to find myself at last on the very border of the unknown country, and yet checked, held back, by the irresponsible orders of a maiden lady named Smawl. However, my salary depended upon the whim of that maiden lady, and although I fussed and fumed and glared at the mountains through my glasses, I realized that I could not stir without the permission of Miss Smawl. At times this grotesque situation became almost unbearable, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... her children to poverty and want, while he wasted his time and strength in chasing a dream. His neighbors jeered at him as a madman, one who put his plain duty aside for the gratification of what seemed to their dull minds merely a whim. His poor wife could hardly be blamed for reproaching him. She could neither understand nor sympathize with his hopes and fears, while she knew that if he followed his trade, he could at least save his family from ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... Prussian Constitution." If he defended the prerogative of the Crown he defended the Constitution of his country. A constitution is the collection of rules and laws by which the action of the king is governed; a state without a constitution is a mere Oriental despotism where each arbitrary whim of the king is transmuted into action; this was not what Bismarck desired or defended; there was no danger of this in Prussia. He did not even oppose changes in the law and practice of the Constitution; what he ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... "Whim. Old men like to show up on such occasions. They are next of kin to funerals, feel their dust shaking on ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... all defects. The intellectual excitement of giving free rein to his fancy and his tongue was dangerously pleasant to Arthur, who often more than half convinced himself of the verity of his extravagant theories, and oftener still involved himself in their defense by yielding to the mere whim of phrasing them effectively. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... self-confident, somewhat ironical, and had a rather biting humour; he could not fail to please. He began to be seen everywhere, directly he had received his commission as an officer. He was much admired in society, and he indulged every whim, even every caprice and every folly, and gave himself airs, but that too was attractive in him. Women went out of their senses over him; men called him a coxcomb, and were secretly jealous of him. He lived, as has been related already, in ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... often as prodigal, just to gratify a whim, as when he flung the gold coins to Dinnies Kleist, merely to see if he could break them. For instance, he was not content with the old ducal residence at Stettin, but must pull it down and build another in the forest, not far from ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... blue silk and velvet, and looks very pretty, for Marcia brightens up wonderfully with becoming dress. Mr. Wilmarth's tailor has made the best of his figure, and he brings out the training of years agone, when he had some ambitions. Society decides that it must have been merely a whim, for the man is certainly well enough, and really adores her. Even Laura wonders how Marcia managed to inspire this regard, and decides that the marriage is not so bad, after all, and she shall never have Marcia ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... drop the dog, because, you see, he's part of the story. Hamlet would be left out decidedly were I to read the play without him. Besides, I've never told the story to any one. I'll do it, though, to-day. The whim takes me. Surely a fellow may enjoy the luxury of being recklessly confidential once in half a decade or so, especially with an old friend and a trusted one. No need for going far back with the legend. You know it all up ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... the other. "Any sudden whim of the keeper might be our doom. But this we must be prepared for. In times like this we must be ready to meet death at any moment. What says our Lord? 'Be ye also ready.' We must be able to say when the time comes, 'I am now ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... not prepared to lay stress on it as an argument for the geographical determination of Marco's Arbre Sec. His use of the title more than once to characterise the whole frontier of Khorasan can hardly have been a mere whim of his own: and possibly some explanation of that circumstance will yet be elicited from the Persian historians or geographers ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was, besides, a prematurely-aged man, exhausted by debauch, crazed by strong drink, a ferocious maniac, mutilating his subjects, his officers or his ministers, as the whim seized him, cutting the nose and ears off some, and the foot or the hand from others. His own death, not unlooked for, would ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... the man at the gate. "I beg! I beg! Do not, I pray, good nymph, torture me with thy dreadful power. I swear that I will obey thy every wish and whim." ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... missed being brained by a stone dislodged by some drunkard above me. Already, however, the stream of tipplers had begun to set back towards the camp, and my main difficulty was to steer against it, avoiding disputes as to the rule of the road. I had no intention of climbing to the castle: my whim was—and herein again I set my training a test—to walk straight to the particular opening from which, across the Zapardiel, I ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Dunstan's-in-the-West, St. Bartholomew-the-Less, and again in Drury Lane Court, now disappeared. Most likely it was the latter, if any of these neighbourhoods, though it is all hearsay now, though formerly one of the "stock sights" of the "Lady Guide Association," who undertook to gratify any reasonable whim of the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... bored gesture. Everybody asked the same thing, and he who belonged to that country had never seen a rose of Paestum.... Sometimes, just in order to satisfy the whim of tourists, he would bring rose bushes from Capaccio Vecchio and other mountain villages,—rose bushes just like others with no difference except in price.... But he didn't wish to take advantage of anybody. He was sad and greatly troubled ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... came, and unwilling longer to remain the tenants of others. These were induced to [100] emigrate, with the laudable ambition of acquiring homes, from which they would not be liable to expulsion, at the whim and caprice of some haughty lordling. Upon the attainment of this object, they were generally content; and made but feeble exertions to acquire more land, than that to which they obtained title, by virtue of their settlements. Some few, however, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... and when she has to grow up, even to your mature years, help her to be just such another woman as yourself. Covington gives me glowing accounts of her progress in the little scheme which you so cleverly suggested. He seems to think her interest is more than a mere whim, but I can't ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... "the blame of part of the misfortunes of that day: but the mischief is done; no more is to be said about it." I read this new twenty-ninth bulletin: a few slight changes, suggested by General Drouot, were assented to by the Emperor; but, from what whim I know not, he would not confess, that his carriages had fallen into the hands of the enemy. "When you get to Paris," said M. de Flahaut to him, "it will be plainly seen, that your carriages have been taken. If you conceal this, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... will call him, has a large establishment at 75, Portsmouth Square. The house next door was empty, possibly it belonged to Mr. Bates. He had a whim for furnishing a room or two in an empty house, or perhaps there was some more sinister purpose behind it. Anyway, after you had blundered on the place and had taken your life in your hands, it became necessary ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... of attachment interchanged between these two. Mai Noie bore the child in her arms to and from the school, fed her, humored her every whim, fanned her naps, bathed and perfumed her every night, and then rocked her to sleep on her careful bosom, as tenderly as she would have done for her own baby. And then it was charming to watch ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... few days at Mrs Budd's, she was sufficiently recovered to walk about Swanage. One day she was even strong enough to get as far as the Tilly Whim caves, where she was both surprised and disgusted to find that some surpassing mediocrity had had the fatuousness to deface the sheer glory of the cliffs with improving texts, such as represent the sum of the world's ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... seem like some days don't belong to any month, but just whim along, doin' as they please?" Calliope said. "Months that might be snowin' an' blowin' the expression off our face hev days when they sort o' show summer hid inside, secret an' holy. That's the way with lots o' things, ain't ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... a nobleman as ever set forth to seek the pleasures of life. His board was known as the most bountiful, his home the cheeriest and most hospitable, his horses the best bred in all Brussels. He loved his wife and indulged her every whim, and she adored him. Theirs was a home in which the laugh seldom gave way to the frown, where happiness dwelt undisturbed and merriment kept the rafters twitching. With them the two London women were to stop until after the wedding. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... see that it was only the whim of an economist? I cry out against money, just because everybody confounds it, as you did just now, with riches, and that this confusion is the cause of errors and calamities without number. I cry out against it because its function in society is not understood, and very difficult ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... amusement. Fitz-James O'Brien was a frequent guest, and an eager partaker of our merriment, which sometimes resolved itself into the writing of burlesque poems. We sat around a table, and whenever the whim seized us, we each wrote down themes on little pieces of paper, and putting them into a hat or box we drew out one at random, and then scribbled away for dear life. We put no restriction upon ourselves: we could be grave or gay, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... of our American hostesses that they will concede to every whim and desire of their guests. They must be pleased at all costs. The dinner is not a success unless each guest leaves a little happier than when he came and incidentally a little better pleased with the person who happens to be giving ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... not forget, but that was nothing—nothing to do with you. It was merely the result of a mood, a whim, a lovers' quarrel. No, don't speak, don't stop me. I am not going to lie. It was not a mood, nor a whim. I had been analyzing my own heart, and discovered Captain Le Gaire was not what I had believed him to be. The very fact that both he and my father so took everything for granted, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... drink, and what not—for, though a hard man, John Hayes had learned to spend his money pretty freely on himself and her—having had all her wishes gratified, it was natural that she should begin to find out some more; and the next whim she hit upon was to be restored to her child. It may be as well to state that she had never informed her husband of the existence of that phenomenon, although he was aware of his wife's former connection with the Count,—Mrs. Hayes, in their matrimonial quarrels, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No man, woman, or child alive could please Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh Because I sit and frame an epitaph— "Here lies all that no one loved of him And that loved no one." Then in a trice that whim Has wearied. But, though I am like a river At fall of evening while it seems that never Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while Cross breezes cut the surface to a file, This heart, some fraction of me, happily Floats through the window ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... Izaak Walton; and to serve as an entree, I think some fixed-up morsel, say from James, or from Daudet; The roast will be Charles Kingsley—there's a deal of beef in him. For sherbet, T. B. Aldrich is just suited to my whim. ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... full of wine, and his hair crown'd, Touching his harp as the whim came on him, And praised and spoil'd by master and by guests, Almost as much ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... so well that he had put a clause in his will against its appearance even at his own funeral. Marie Louise loved him dearly, but she feared his prejudices. She had an abject terror of offending him, because she felt that she owed everything she had, and was, to the whim of his good grace. Gratitude was a passion with her, and it doomed her, as all passions do, good or bad, to the penalties human beings pay for every excess of virtue or vice—if, indeed, vice is anything but ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... town talk. The women gathered round the fountain in the Place Royal and filled their water jars and gossiped about Salvatore Urso's silly whim with his child. Madame Dubois settled her cap and gave it as her opinion that no good would come of such a foolish thing. Madame Tilsit knew better, if the child wanted to play, why, let her play. The priest would not forbid it. Madame Perche knew it was far better ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... literature was still, to a large extent, the romantic liberalism of Rousseau, the free and humane truisms that had refreshed the other nations, the return to Nature and to natural rights. But that which in Rousseau was a creed, became in Hazlitt a taste and in Lamb little more than a whim. These latter and their like form a group at the beginning of the nineteenth century of those we may call the Eccentrics: they gather round Coleridge and his decaying dreams or linger in the tracks of Keats and Shelley ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... never should break it—and you may rest assured that I will not break mine. If your view of such matters is so loose, Peter, what security have I that you won't deceive me and betray me when it is your interest or your whim to do so?" ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... the bygone days of knight and dame, the days of real romance, were more devoted to each other. With satisfaction he saw that Gabrielle's apparent indifference had now worn off. It had been but the mask of a woman's whim, and as ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... smoke; it had often proved a powerful sedative to him when wearied with the cares of life, and the numberless irritations of his trying vocation, and therefore she replied, 'Nonsense, you will soon repent of that whim. I shall get two ounces as usual, and I know you'll smoke it.' 'I shall never touch it again,' was his firm reply, and ever after ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... little thing that took place. Like a wise coxswain he felt that he ought to know each man's weakness, if he had any, so as to build him up into a perfect part of the whole machine. For a boat crew must act as though it were one unit, at the nod and whim of the fellow who sits in the stern, doing the steering, and by his motions increasing or diminishing the stroke. If one cog fails to work perfectly, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... On the following day Comte Jean laid before me several projects, which were far from pleasing in my eyes; too much time was required in their execution. I knew the king too well to be blind to the danger of allowing this mere whim of the moment to take root in his mind. One idea caught my fancy, and without mentioning it to Comte Jean, I determined upon carrying it into execution. The marechale de Mirepoix happened at this moment not to be at Paris at her hotel in the rue ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... They had clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard, on stormy nights, by some poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... dog commences with maiming him while a puppy. He finds fault with the ears that nature has given him, and they are rounded or cut into various shapes, according to his whim or caprice. It is a cruel operation. A great deal of pain is inflicted by it, and it is often a long time before the edge of the wound will heal: a fortnight or three weeks at least will elapse ere the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... dry and bald, I have confined myself to telling accurately what has happened, my greatest ambition being to leave no one the chance of misrepresenting, as his whim, fancy, or passion may dictate, facts in which I am so deeply interested. Let those note them who, after my time, have to defend my memory ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... possesses him. He thinks that he is still the master of Lone as well as the Duke of Hereward. He thinks that he lives in London, and in the most Objectionable part of London, only to gratify my 'eccentric whim' of being a journalist. And he daily and hourly urges me to return ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... was not the least extraordinary feature of his appearance. He constantly wore a full-trimmed scarlet waistcoat of most uncommon dimensions, a light grey coat, which altogether gave him an air of singularity and whim ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... deep heaven within the hearts of men. Nevertheless, the immediate seamen there Knowing how great a ransom they might ask For some among their prisoners, men of wealth And high degree, scarce liked to free them thus; And only saw in Drake's conflicting moods The moment's whim. "For little will he care," They muttered, "when we reach those fabled shores, Whether his cannon break their golden peace." Yet to his face they murmured not at all; Because his eyes compelled them like a law. So there they freed the prisoners and set sail Across the earth-shaking shoulders ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... tongue-like in its response to the performer's emotion. A bow that should at once be flexible to "whisper soft nothings in my lady's ear"; strong—to sound a clarion-blast of defiance; and, withal, be ready for any coquetterie or badinage that might suit its owner's whim. This is what Francois Tourte, the starving ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... be always successful in his labours, I should answer you, as I have told him, No: for the profit and applause attendant upon them are not commensurate with his exertions. Moreover, I do verily think that, in some few instances, he sacrifices his judgment to another's whim; by a reluctance to put out the strength of his own powers. He is also, I had almost said, the admiring slave of Ritsonian fastidiousness; and will cry 'pish' if a u be put for a v, or a single e for a double one: but take him fairly as he is, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... gout? Oh no! But I'm 'Taken in Tow,' And suffering from dejection, 'Spring Cleaning' I'll use for a pair of old shoes (Queer rhyme upon reflection), 'Sound without Sense,' I've no pretence, To write Shakspearian Sonnets. Of her and him, As suits my whim, I sing, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... wheeled her horse towards the rear with some parting remarks. " I suppose you should attend more strictly to your own affairs, Rufus. Instead of raising the devil I am lending hairpins. I have seen you insult people, but I have never seen you insult anyone quite for the whim of the thing. Go ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the operations which by the whim of fate had been so strangely revealed to Ali, but Ali's own plan was a different matter. This was the feast of the Moolood, and on one of the nights of it, probably the eighth night, the last night, Friday night, Ben Aboo the Basha was to give a "gathering of delight," to the Sultan, his ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... wont rather to avoid his society: for on this evening he was about to disclose a secret to him, and beg for his advice. The timid, shy Emilius found in every business and accident of life so many difficulties, such insurmountable hindrances, that it might seem to have been an ironical whim of his destiny which brought him and Roderick together, Roderick being in everything the reverse of his friend. Inconstant, flighty, always determined by the first impression, and kindling in an instant, he engaged in everything, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... face that dilemma forever without going insane. Hawkes shuddered, trying to picture what would happen if he went mad, and the wild talents began operating at every whim of ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... without value, and its historic interest is considerable, taken in connection with the other memoirs of the same epoch. The style is rather piquant, and the translation good, though a little stiff. The writer is an Orleanist, and thinks the Revolution of 1848 a mere whim of the populace, favored by a "vertigo" on the part of Louis Philippe. It was "an incomprehensible contingency,—sovereign power giving way to a revolt, without the test of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... dissipated man of fortune. Some mothers know this; my wife's mother thought me a good match, and my wife thought so too. I loved her very dearly, or I would not have married—though I don't know, either: people often marry in a whim." ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... exclaimed. "It was a whim of mine, that is all. I liked having you both there. Some day you must come again, and, if you are very good, I may let you bring the young lady, though I'm not so sure of that. Do you know that my brother was asking ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... To please a whim of Madame de Maintenon's, who fed them with scraps from the royal table, some carp were taken out of a muddy pool and placed in a marble basin of bright, clean water. The carp perished. The animals might be sacrificed, but man ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... States are being wooed. Ever since the Western powers' hope of speedy decisive blows on the part of Russia have shriveled up, they would like to lure the Japanese Army, two to four hundred thousand men, to the Continent. What was scoffed at as a whim of Pinchon and Clemenceau now is unveiled as a yearning of those at the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... had added to his vast acreage, and it was a matter of common knowledge how he had done it. He was rich, powerful, bullying, a man whose self-aggrandizement knew no limit, whose merest whim was his law, whose will must not be thwarted. Year by year his vaqueros drove down the Wall herds of fat cattle, their brands blurred, insolently raw and careless. Many a hapless man had stood and seen his own stock go by in Courtrey's band and dared not open his mouth. In fact Courtrey ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... difference in Tom that Rose felt but could not define, some influence over him that was stronger than her own. She had been conscious before that she had but to speak and he would try his utmost to carry out her whim; but to-day, miserable as he was, oppressed by the weight of sin, she felt respect for a certain strength of purpose that seemed developed in him. Mr. Curzon was right; she had chosen the wrong man. Never had she valued Tom's ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... Pratscha-Paramita, the peace that is beyond all knowledge and which Nirvana provides. That peace is—or was—the complete absence of anything, extinction utter and everlasting, a state of absolute non-existence which no whim of Brahm ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... time, it appeared, since this had been first said. Day did not now call upon Caius as a medical man. His wife had taken a fancy to see him because of his remembered efforts to save her child. Day said apologetically that it was a woman's whim, but he would be obliged if Caius, at his convenience, would call upon her. It spoke much for the long peculiarity and dreariness of Day's domestic life that he evidently believed that this would be a disagreeable ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... I to him; of passports We never had the whim. Strong ones I believe it would need To recall, to our side of the limit, Subjects of Pluto King of the Dead: But, from the Germanic Empire Into the gallant and cynical abode Of Messieurs your pretty Frenchmen,—A jolly and beaming air, Rubicund faces, not ignorant of wine, These ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... ear for it; whim also to construe lord and master relaxed but reboant and soaring above the verbal to harmonic truths of abstract or transcendental, to be hummed subsequently by privileged female audience of one bent on a hook-or-crook plucking ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... original Mrs. Nevill Tyson remained to give her own supernatural naeivete to the character. Stanistreet was completely puzzled by this new freak; it looked like recklessness, it looked like vanity, it looked—it looked like an innocent parody of guilt. He had given in to her whim, as he had given In to every wish of hers, but he was not quite sure that he liked the frankness, the publicity of the thing. He wondered how so small a woman contrived to attract so large a share of attention in a city where pretty women were as common as paving-stones. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... only child, and her wealthy father was pleased to gratify her every whim. So, besides being far too elegantly dressed for a schoolgirl, she was supplied with plenty of pocket money, and being very generous and full of life and fun, she was the acknowledged leader ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... them, and so he plunged into them. His only rule was not to be misled by the spelling. That was no guide anyhow. He avoided every recognised phrase in the language and mispronounced everything in order that he shouldn't be suspected of ignorance, but whim. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... dined and spent the evening at the Walraven palace, and talked about his ward's second flight with her distressed guardian, and opined she must have gone off to gratify some whim of her own, and laughed in his sleeve at the two anxious faces before him, and departed at ten, mellow with wine and full of ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Belmont. With a docile old general and a niece so young, she had less resistance to encounter than, perhaps, her ardent soul would have relished. Fortunately for the general it was only now and then that Aunt Becky took a whim to command the Royal Irish Artillery. She had other hobbies just as odd, though not quite so scandalous. It had struck her active mind that such of the ancient women of Chapelizod as were destitute of letters—mendicants and the like—should learn to read. Twice ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... they are bent on having a good time. Fighting, feasting, and making love are their usual occupations. If they can be considered as governing the world, it is in a very loose way and on a very irregular system. They interfere with human affairs from time to time, but merely from whim or from passion. With the common relations of life they have little to do. They announce no moral law, and neither by precept nor example undertake to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... castle or cottage in the air, Rachel lighted up. The little whim had something tranquillising and balmy. It was escape—flight from Gylingden—flight from Brandon—flight from Redman's Farm: they and all their hated associations would be far behind, and that awful page in her ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... extraordinary, and perhaps fantastic my plan may appear to you, be convinced that it is not the outgrowth of a mere passing whim, but has been imposed upon me by the necessary consequences of the essence and being of the subject which occupies me wholly and impels me towards its complete execution. To execute it according to my power as a poet and musician is the only thing that stands before my eyes; anything else ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... with myself. Attracted by this living interesting work, by the little table, the naive exercise books and the charm of doing this work in my wife's society, I was afraid that my wife would suddenly hinder me and upset everything by some sudden whim, and so I was in haste and made an effort to attach no consequence to the fact that her lips were quivering, and that she was looking about her with a helpless and frightened air like a ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Krumerweg. But my father does not know that she is in Dreiberg; and we dare not tell him, for he still believes that she had something to do with my abduction." Then she stopped. She was strangely making this peasant her confidante. What a whim! ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... "'tis joy to me! Lay you down and rest a while and trust the boat to me." And seeing how quick she was to meet each send of the seas (that were already running high) glad enough was I to humour her whim, and clambered forward again. And there (having nought better to do) I set about rigging a rough awning athwart the bows, with canvas and a stout spar, which methought should keep out the spray and any chance sea that might ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... old Gamewell this to his face. "When I am gone you can do what you will with the place, boy," the old man had answered. "I have no son; but, of course, the fees and revenues will be yours. If, for a whim, you beggar yourself, I cannot stay you. But take it whilst I live; and wear Montfichet's shield in the days when my eyes can be rejoiced by so brave a sight, for you will ne'er disgrace our 'scutcheon, I warrant me. Perchance 'tis Geoffrey's sole ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... On that wily galoot Soon dropped, and you'll say that he leathered him — Not he; with a grim Sort of humorous whim, He took him and tarred him and ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... so well that I have nothing to add to excuse me specially for my negligence or idleness, or whim or distraction, or—or—or—You know that I can explain myself better in person, and, this autumn, when I take you home late by the boulevards to your mother, I shall try to obtain your pardon. I am writing to you without ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... something on two separate occasions, ma'am?" Hugh hastened to ask, beginning to realize now that "where there was smoke there must be a fire," and that after all there was something more in this affair than a mere specter brought into being through an old lady's whim. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... heads and said, "Well, they say there's one black sheep in every family." Now we are beginning to see that the black sheep may be made by the gratification of every physical desire and every mental whim and the ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... connected the two courts were subsequently drawn closer by marriage; partly from policy and partly from a whim, Amasis espoused a Cyrenian woman named Ladike, the daughter, according to some, of Arkesilas or of Battos, according to others, of a wealthy private individual named Kritobulos.* The Greeks of Europe and Asia Minor fared no less to their own satisfaction at his hand than their compatriots ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... whim," broke in Curtis, who did not feel like explaining at the moment that he was choosing a quiet old inn in a side street because he had been born there! Nevertheless, his words held that ring of decision, of finality in judgment, which invariably forms part of the equipment ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... man's whim was gratified, and he dropped off to sleep with his arm round his instrument, cuddling it up to him on the pillow as if it had been ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... perfectly indifferent to me. The sun and the seasons were not gone out of fashion when I was young; and I may do what I will with them now I am old: for fashion is fortunately no law but to its devotees. Were I five-and-twenty, I dare to say I should think every whim of my contemporaries very wise, as I did then. In one light I am always on the side of the Young, for they only silently despise those who do not conform to their ordinances; but age is very apt to be angry at the change ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... library to the reader. If this takes a hundred or more volumes a day, he is to have them; but to give him the right to throw a library into confusion by "browsing around," is to sacrifice the rights of the public to prompt service, to the whim of one man. Those who think that "browsing" is an education should reflect that it is like any other wandering employment, fatal to fixity of purpose. Like desultory reading of infinite periodicals, it tends rather to dissipate the time and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... inclined to be amused with the Wise Woman's reiteration of this assertion. What fancy she had taken into her head he could not guess. It was some old-womanly whim, he supposed. If he could have guessed her reason for thus dismissing them in haste—if he had seen in the embers what she saw coming nearer and nearer, and now close to her very door—wild horses would ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... have set their hearts upon. The prince, therefore, to make the time seem short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she would do any modest office to help her cousin to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Pharaoh rarely left his palace, and bothered little about affairs outside, and Zaphnath must have been at the bottom of an edict which was shortly issued. Nothing that I remember in Kem better illustrated the absolute power of the Pharaoh and the unrestrained enforcement of his merest whim. The edict referred to the scarcity of bread and the multitude of foreigners who were flocking to the city to secure it, and provided (ostensibly for the good of the Kemish people) that no man in the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... present excited state she would have torn up her best dress with equal readiness. She was elated with her success in the cricket field—what the Scotch call "fey"; and so long as she gratified her present whim, she had no thought at all ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... "It is a true word. We have gained a little experience of the wrong sort: we have learnt how to adapt our poor little gifts to the whim of the moment. Such as our talent has been, we have made a servant of it to minister to our physical necessities. We have lived little lives, ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to an edge by school and story and half-awakened thought. Ill could they be content, born without and beyond the World. And their weak wings beat against their barriers,—barriers of caste, of youth, of life; at last, in dangerous moments, against everything that opposed even a whim. ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... the privilege of getting out by herself into the sunshine which was so in harmony with her own bright mood. Still she could not help feeling that it was rather inconsiderate of Mrs. Montague to require her to walk two miles simply to gratify a mere whim. ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... a dull world. John Raikes! thou livest in times. I feel warm in the sun of your prosperity, Harrington. Now listen to me. Propound thou no inquiries anywhere about the old fellow who gave the supper. Humour his whim—he won't have it. All Fallow field is paid to keep him secret; I know it for a fact. I plied my rustic friends every night. "Eat you yer victuals, and drink yer beer, and none o' yer pryin's and peerin's among we!" That's my rebuff from Farmer Broadmead. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was a most excellent craftsman and a very good fellow to boot, high-spirited and frank in all his ways. My father would not let him give me wages like the other apprentices; for having taken up the study of this art to please myself, he wished me to indulge my whim for drawing to the full. I did so willingly enough; and that honest master of mine took marvellous delight in my performances. He had an only son, a bastard, to whom he often gave his orders, in ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... help making a study of that singular man. He appeared to me the marked type of a class which ought to exist somewhere but which was unknown to me. One could never tell whether his outbursts were the despair of a man sick of life, or the whim of a ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... the Carlos Hills were seen, and there Jo knew fresh men and mounts were waiting, and that way the indomitable rider tried to turn, the race, but by a sudden whim, of the inner warning born perhaps—the Pacer turned. Sharp to the north he went, and Jo, the skilful wrangler, rode and rode and yelled and tossed the dust with shots, but down on a gulch the wild black meteor streamed and Jo could only follow. Then came ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... water and a piece of dry bread for her breakfast. On account of this abstinence, Henrik now jested, and Petrea answered him quite gaily; Louise, on the contrary, took up the matter quite seriously, and thought—as many others did—that this whim of Petrea's had a distant relationship to folly; and folly, Louise—the sensible Louise—considered the most horrible of horrors; Louise, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... wanted, but he must needs begin setting a bad example to the donkey, telling him as plainly as one animal could tell another that he did not mean to be caught, and, as "evil communications corrupt good manners," the donkey took the same whim into his great rough ash-grey head, and galloped after the pony as hard as he could. It was of no use to say, "come then," or "coop—coop—coop," for both of the four-footed beasts seemed to have an idea that they were to race and tear ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... not be dependent upon her husband's whim or pleasure for her milliner's bill or her private charities,' answered her lover, smiling at her eagerness ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... hands of one man—the ballet-master—and that man knows his business. Fortunately, he is in a position to dictate the rate of movement to the orchestra, for the expression as well as for the tempo, and he does so, not according to his individual whim, like an operatic singer, but with a view to the ensemble, the consensus of all the artistic factors; and now, of a sudden, it comes to pass that the orchestra plays correctly! A rare sense of satisfaction will be felt by everyone ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... governess who lived in the house with the lady instructed Kiisike and Elsie for some hours daily in reading and writing, and in all kinds of fine work. Elsie learned everything easily, but Kiisike had more taste for childish games than for her lessons. When the whim took her, she threw her work away, caught up her little box, and ran out of doors to play on the lake, and nobody scolded her. Sometimes she said to Elsie, "It's a pity you've grown so big: you can't play with ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... out;—at any rate, I cannot help thinking she wills her strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may have been a whim, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... our Harlequin and all his lifeless family are condemned to perpetual silence. They came to us from the genial hilarity of the Italian theatre, and were all the grotesque children of wit, and whim, and satire. Why is this burlesque race here privileged to cost so much, to do so little, and to repeat that little so often? Our own pantomime may, indeed, boast of two inventions of its own growth: we have turned Harlequin into a magician, and this produces the surprise of sudden ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... We can look after the children ourselves. You better save what you get to look after yourself when those two get over this whim!" ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... king returns again to the charge, and determines to carry out his tyrannical whim by the following order of the Council:—"The Council threaten the Lord Mayor and aldermen with imprisonment, if they do not forthwith enforce the king's command that all shops should be shut up in Cheapside and Lombard Street that were not goldsmiths' shops." ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... little girl's confidential friend as well as her mother. The child, quite unreservedly, told her what she wanted and why she wanted it. It was no weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a genuine respect for another person's rights as an individual—even though that individual was merely a little child—that led that mother to allow her daughter to have what she wanted. May not some subtle sense of this have been ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... made, how many have lived and suffered, and died, unlettered and unsung—snatched by a tyrant's whim from life to death, in the glory of the sun, in the gloom of night, in blood and flame, and torment? ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... migration as in civic relations, not by the will or whim of the individual, but by the welfare of the state. Further than this, the government has the right to deport at any time any aliens who may be regarded as unfit to remain. There ought to be no confusion as to rights in ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... truth to Matilda, and she were the first To release him: he had but to wait at the worst. Matilda's relations would probably snatch Any pretext, with pleasure, to break off a match In which they had yielded, alone at the whim Of their spoil'd child, a languid approval to him. She herself, careless child! was her love for him aught Save the first joyous fancy succeeding the thought She last gave to her doll? was she able to feel Such a love as the love he divined in Lucile? He would seek her, obtain ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... The hero of a victorious war, at the height of his popularity, his party in undisputed and seemingly indisputable supremacy, made the attempt. Congress, good-naturedly tolerating what it considered his whim of inexperience, granted money to try an experiment. The adverse pressure was tremendous. "I am used to pressure," said the soldier. So he was, but not to this pressure. He was driven by unknown and incalculable currents. He was enveloped ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... over the pages of the best comedies, we are almost transported to another world, and escape from this dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and humour. The curtain rises, and a gayer scene presents itself, as on the canvas of Watteau. We are admitted behind the scenes like spectators at court, on a levee or birthday; but it is the court, the gala-day of wit and pleasure, of gallantry and Charles II.! ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... There lurks in each several portion something which they who experience it not know nothing of, but which makes the sufferer wince. Besides, the more favoured a man is by Fortune, the more fastidiously sensitive is he; and, unless all things answer to his whim, he is overwhelmed by the most trifling misfortunes, because utterly unschooled in adversity. So petty are the trifles which rob the most fortunate of perfect happiness! How many are there, dost thou imagine, who ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... And Kauffman beside, And the Jessamy Bride, With the rest of the crew. The Reynoldses too, Little Comedy's face, And the Captain in Lace— Tell each other to rue Your Devonshire crew, For sending so late To one of my state. But 'tis Reynolds's way From wisdom to stray, And Angelica's whim To befrolic like him; But alas! your good worships, how could they be wiser, When both have been spoil'd in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... others into the thing we call a man. The encysted child developed until it reached years of virility, until those later Oxford days in which Hogg encountered it; then, bursting at once from its cyst and the university, it swam into a world not illegitimately perplexed by such a whim of the gods. It was, of course, only the completeness and duration of this seclusion—lasting from the gate of boyhood to the threshold of youth—which was peculiar to Shelley. Most poets, probably, like most saints, are prepared for their mission ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... beautiful embroidered silk coverlet, and surrounded by everything that heart could wish for, lying there wan, peevish, irritable, dissatisfied with everybody and everything, seemingly because his doting parents had gratified his every whim and humoured his every caprice. It was quite evident that he regarded me with almost if not quite as great distaste as ever; he even seemed to consider it a grievance that he owed his life to a despised Britisher; and seeing how acutely his mother was distressed ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... her face a fascinating study while she talked, and pointed them, as it were, with all the little poises and expressions and reserves which are commonly a feminine result of considerable social training. Kendal, entering into her whim, inwardly compared her with an acknowledged successful girl of the season with whom he had sat out two dances the night before in Eaton Square, to the successful girl's disadvantage. Finding something lacking in that, he came upon a better analogy in a young ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... weather for outdoor sports and sometimes the lads would go out for a game of baseball, or football, just as the whim seized them. Of course the college had its regular teams on the diamond and the gridiron, but the Rovers did not care enough for the sport to try for these, even though they had made creditable records ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... accomplishment of your designs? Why not fly with your honourable lover, and thus wring the fond hearts of your parents at once to the utmost? Why retract now, when it will be only to delude again? Miserable and deluded girl, what new whim has caused this sudden change? Wherefore wait till it be too late to repent—to persuade us that you are an unwilling abettor and assistant in this man's schemes? Go, fly with him; it were better to reconcile your indulgent mother to an eternal separation, than ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... that it should be as she wished; and that my coach should set us down there and come again when the play was over. So the threads are caught up in those great unseen shuttles that are guided by God's Hand, and the whole pattern changed, it would appear, by a moment's whim. And yet I cannot doubt—for if I did, my whole faith would be shattered—that even those whims are part of the Divine design, and that all is done according to ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... understanding of him, it would be impossible to make the rest of the world, of the world in which she lived and to which she clung, see anything of what she saw. They would laugh if her new position were a passing whim; they would be scornful and angry ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... the Orphan Butte. Ha! why should I not be upon the butte—on its summit? I remember going down to the plain; and there being struck senseless to the earth. For all that, I may have been brought up again. The savages may have borne me back to satisfy some whim? They often act in such strange fashion with, their vanquished victims. I must be on some eminence: since I cannot see the earth before me? In all likelihood, I am on the top of the mound. This will account for my not having a view of the ground. It ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... usual but foolish," Rochester answered. "I need no thanks, I deserve none. I yield to a whim, nothing else. I do this thing for my own pleasure. The sum of money which I propose to put into your hands will probably represent to me what a five-shilling piece might to you. This may sound vulgar, but it is true. I think that I need not warn you never to come to me for ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Baron, rising after the silence which followed that imprudent whim of a man beside himself, "we will confer again with our client. If you wish, we will resume this conversation tomorrow at ten o'clock, say here or in any place convenient to you.... You will excuse me, Marquis. Dorsenne has no doubt ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the Igorot illustrates what seems to be the first distinctively commercial activity. Preceding it is the stage of barter between people who casually meet and who trade carried possessions on the whim of the moment. If we wish to dignify this kind of barter, it may properly ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... on him in this period, finding him bereft of an adviser, and ready to be swayed by whatever whim should come. Perhaps he was attracted by the barber's hardihood, perhaps the absurdity of his inspiration had some fascination for him, perhaps he merely saw that the thing was new and, feeling jaded, let the barber have his way. And so the frivolity became ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... old friend of mine. He's an American named Gunn. He's joined the Papal Zouaves from some whim, and a deuced good thing it is for them to get hold of such a man. I happened to call one day, and ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... her mother, who would have been there to watch over her, was alas! sleeping in the very churchyard in which, in the shade of the evening, she first met her seducer. Enough,—the heartless man of the world obtained the love of the poor and simple Herminie,—and his whim, his ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... I asked, with a shrug for the woman's whim. "Why, for Strelsau. She gave no reasons for going, and took with her only one lady, Lieutenant von Bernenstein being in attendance. It was a bustle, if you like, with everybody to be roused and got out of bed, and a carriage to be made ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... his part, had—even although pushed without ceremony through a door—behaved with perfect confidence, for he knew that, whatever her whim or her sense of humor, or her impudence, Yasmini would not fail him in the pinch. Even she, whose jest it is to see men writhe under her hand, has to own somebody her master, and though she would giggle ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... but for the whim of renting this tumble-down house with its great gardens out on the suburb, we could have had snug rooms in some business street, where I could have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... of these roads. Somebody is always driving recklessly." Lorelei smiled at memory of the miles they had covered so swiftly; but she saw that he was serious and in a sour temper. "One risks his life on the whim of some drunken idiot the moment he enters a motor-car. Now for a telephone." A terse question to his man served to ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... conscientious teacher to tell the pupil that she should work with the C Major Sonata of Haydn instead. The pupil, with a kind of confidence that is, to say the least, dangerous, imagines that the teacher is trying to keep her back, and often goes to another teacher who will gratify her whim. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... been a dance at Piping Tree, and because she had danced twice with Gay (who had ridden over in obedience to a whim), Abel had parted from her in anger. For the first time she had felt the white heat of his jealousy, and it had aroused rebellion, not acquiescence, in her heart. Jonathan Gay was nothing to her (though he called her his cousin)—he had openly ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... collared for myself. I deceived you both. . . . It's all over and done with, it's no use to be ashamed. And indeed, judge for yourself, Boris Petrovitch, weren't you the very person for me to get money out of? . . . You were a wealthy man and had everything you wanted. . . . Your marriage was an idle whim, and so was your divorce. You were making a lot of money. . . . I remember you made a scoop of twenty thousand over one contract. Whom should I have fleeced if not you? And I must own I envied you. ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... taken too much for granted, you and Betty. Ten years ago your sister gave herself to me. She is mine. I will not for a whim, for a passion, for a temporary alienation, let her go. Neither will I have my good name and the name of a good woman besmirched for the sake of this impertinent desire for a release. I love my wife"—his voice was especially Hebraic and especially abhorrent to the other—"and as a husband ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... all the giving! I've never told you, Esteban, but I'm quite rich." Holding the man away, she smiled into his eyes. "Yes, richer than I have any right to be. I had no need to come to Cuba; it was just the whim of an irresponsible, spoiled young woman. I gave a huge amount of money to the New York Junta and that's why I was ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... reflects all the results of later scholarship on the matters of origins and interpretations. Its bibliographies and extended commentaries make it invaluable. The story of Phaethon is usually thought of as a warning against presumption, conceit, whim, self-will. It was probably invented in the first place to account for the extremely hot weather of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... message for you, Miss Innes," he said, rising at last. "Mrs. Armstrong asked me to thank you for your kindness to Louise, whose whim, occurring at the time it did, put her to great inconvenience. Also—and this is a delicate matter—she asked me to appeal to your natural sympathy for her, at this time, and to ask you if you will not reconsider your decision about the house. Sunnyside is ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Messieurs, vous y serez parfaitement bien," quoth our civil conducteur, haranguing, handing, and shoving at the same time. The alacrity with which he and his merry little dog Carlin did the honours of the vehicle, and the stout active appearance of the horse (to say nothing of the whim of the moment, and the fine morning), reconciled us to a mode of conveyance no better than that which calves enjoy in a butcher's cart; and for the first few miles we forgot even ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... Holy Spirit. Others speak of a want of respect for the aged, and especially for parents, as a fault of young women. "How often is the kind advice a father and mother set aside, just because it goes against some whim or fancy of their own! A desire on the part of a young lady to live in the fashion, to be well-dressed at all hours and ready for callers—how much toil and sacrifice often fall to a good mother from such an ambition!" The writer gives other illustrations of the same spirit ...
— Girls: Faults and Ideals - A Familiar Talk, With Quotations From Letters • J.R. Miller
... fine whim you took into your head, to write a letter to Mr. Solmes, to persuade him to give up his pretensions to you!—Of all the pretty romantic flights you have delighted in, this was certainly one of the most extraordinary. But to say nothing of what fires ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... had grown into the habit of coming there rather more often than mere neighborliness called for, and it was palpable that he did not come to hold converse with Benton or Benton's gang, although he was "hail fellow" with all woodsmen. At first his coming might have been laid to any whim. Latterly Stella herself was unmistakably the attraction. He brought his sister once, a fair-haired girl about Stella's age. She proved an exceedingly self-contained young person, whose speech during the hour of her stay ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... precluded the suspicion of artifice. Something was clearly, radically wrong. She knew that Alfred had six hundred a year from his father. She had no profound respect for that gentleman; but men are willful. Suppose he should take a whim to stop it? On the other side, she knew that Boniface Newt was an obstinate man, and that fathers were sometimes implacable. Sometimes, even, they did not relent in making their wills. She knew all about Miss Van Boozenberg's marriage with Tom Witchet, for it was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... little bewildered;—but he has been anxious, I find, for poor Mary, and 'tis national in him to blend eccentricity with kindness. John Bull exhibits a plain, undecorated dish of solid benevolence; but Pat has a gay garnish of whim around his good nature; and if, now and then, 'tis sprinkled in a little confusion, they must have vitiated stomachs, who are ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... fired his revolver at a wooden-legged man, who proved to be a harmless tradesman canvassing for orders. We had to pay a large sum to hush the matter up. My brother and I used to think this a mere whim of my father's, but events have since led ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of my story. My father has an amiable whim of his own—he always prefers to have deserters from the army as his assistants. He is well aware that men of that kidney have practically renounced the world. Now who do you think rushed into his house one evening ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... she had not seen for many years. Aunt Lucinda was busily employed at the ironing-board, but looked often to see that her mother's wants were all supplied; nothing could exceed the affection and care she seemed to bestow upon her aged parent, indulging every whim, so that the old lady hardly can realize that she is old and almost helpless. We were soon seated at the supper table, and they all must have had the idea that I had brought with me from Elmwood ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... make war on the King of England, and negotiate with the pope on the subject of the Albigensians; but at one time he followed, without well understanding it, his father's policy, at another he neglected it for some whim, or under some temporary influence. Yet he was not unsuccessful in his wax-like enterprises; in his campaign against Henry III., King of England, he took Niort, St. Jean d'Angely, and Rochelle; he accomplished ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to rodeo work; indeed, he was anxious to go. But, not being a morbid young man, he did not contemplate carrying a broken heart with him. Teresita was sweet and winsome and maddeningly alluring; he knew it, he felt it still. Indeed, he was made to realize it every time the whim seized her to punish Jack by smiling upon Dade. But she was as capricious as beauty usually is, and he knew that also; and after being used several times as a club with which to beat Jack into proper humility (and always seeing very clearly that he was merely ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... home after leaving the fete next door. There were no signs of a struggle in the garden, nor had there been the slightest noise to attract the attention of the waiting maid. It was not impossible, after all, that she had slipped away of her own accord, possessed of a sudden whim or impulse. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... swinging and squeaking. He straightened himself out, slowly descended the tree, and set off along the top of the fence toward the farmyard. Never before had it occurred to him to visit the farmyard; but now that the moon had put the madness into his head, he acted upon the whim without a moment's misgiving. Unlike the rest of the wild kindreds, he stood little in awe of either the works or ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the division among the Cardinals reflecting the jealousies of the Roman families of Orsini and Colonna, caused a vacancy in the papal office for more than two years. Then by a sudden whim, which in the event of a successful result would have been called an inspiration, the name of a hermit, Peter, whose austerities in his cell on Monte Murrone in the Abruzzi had won him great reverence, was suggested apparently in all ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... to be understood that a child must have everything that it desires and every whim and wish to receive special recognition by the parents. Children can soon be made to understand the necessity of obedience, and punishment can easily be brought about by teaching them self-denial. Deny them the use of a certain ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Crosby had done to England, or England to him, I can't say, but he never went near his native country. For years and years he had lived abroad—not in any settled place of residence: they would travel about, and remain a year or two in one place, a year or two in another, as the whim suited them. A respectable, portly man, of quiet and gentlemanly manners, looking as little like one who need be afraid of the laws of his own land as can be. Neither is it said or insinuated that he was afraid of them. A gentleman who knew him had told, many years before, in answer to a doubt, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... married. Her father, I fear, will leave her too much to herself, and in that case I scarce know what may become of her; she has neither judgment nor principle to direct her choice, and therefore, in all probability, the same whim which one day will guide it, will the next ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... however, in inducing others to take a part in this strange whim. Had it been bull-baiting or badger-drawing or cock-throwing or horse and donkey racing, hundreds would have been found ready to engage in the sport. But for a tournament! Most people did not even know the name of it, and Mr. Mumbles' description was in no way calculated to elucidate its ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... giddiness of being a land-owner for the first time, or perhaps it was the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner. I had spent one night here, and did not welcome the prospect of a second. A return to New York was not practicable, because I had arranged to meet several ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... them the finishing stroke by declaring that there never had been, and never could be positive orthography. They concluded that syntax is a whim ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... flattered the precocity with a kind of worship that proved, as it was bound to prove, disastrous. It seems to have been Henry Fox's deliberate belief that the best way to bring up a spirited, gifted, headstrong child was to gratify every wish, surrender to every whim, and pander to every passion that ebullient youth could feel. The anecdotes of the day teem with tales of the fantastic homage that Fox paid to the desires and moods of his imperious infant. He made him his companion while he was still in the nursery; ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... out to be of more interest than you think. You remember that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation. It may be ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... been in the habit of going on shooting trips at short notice, and so it was his rule to keep a supply of canned eatables in the house to be ready whenever the whim took him. On these he now depended, and was not a little annoyed to find the kitchen store room where they were ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... 'A whim, a sick man's fancy. Perhaps because it is not so very remote from Old Calabar, the country of Philippa's own father. Mother, tell me, how do ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... awful?" returned Cora, aghast, thinking of her own merry, enjoyable life, with every whim gratified. "To be so young and attractive and actually buried alive! Don't you think she is a ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... "A woman's whim, Dr. Watson. When you know me better you will understand that I cannot always give reasons for what I say ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... said Mademoiselle gently. "Must you continue this after it has turned into a farce? Must you continue acting from pique, when the thing has been over for more years than you care to remember? Must you keep on now because of a whim to make your life miserable and the lives of others? Will you threaten fifty men with death and ruin, because you once were called a thief? It is folly, sir, and you know it, utter useless folly! Pray do not stare ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... persons of the drama. On the other hand, they show themselves insensible to all genuine illusion, that is, of entering vividly into the spirit of the fable: for them Ralph, however heroically and chivalrously he may conduct himself, is always Ralph their apprentice; and in the whim of the moment they take upon them to demand scenes which are quite inconsistent with the plan of the piece that has been commenced. In short, the views and demands with which poets are often oppressed by ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... little as I dreamt he could be so base, how he could best destroy her prospect of happiness. He resorted, for this purpose, to a most crafty expedient, which I, poor fool, took for nothing but what he feigned it to be. He pretended that a whim had come into his head for seeming to prosper in his suit, out of a kind of revenge for his not being able to do so in reality; and, in order to indulge this whim, he requested me to dress myself in the identical clothes which ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt |
