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More "Wayward" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as she expressed herself. It was only natural and right that she should do so. And really, when I think of all that she must have endured when she saw us tossing about on the waves, and knew that perhaps she would never see her beloved husband and wayward daughter again, the wonder is that she was not less composed than she was, and that she had trust and calmness enough to go down to the beach, and help us launch the boat. But, oh, Robert, if you could have seen the joy and thankfulness with which the poor creatures welcomed us—as if we had ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... venture was of a more compromising character. Intoxicated with popularity, he devoted three long poems to a systematic treatment of the Art of Love, on which he lavished all the graces of his wayward talent, and a combination of mythological, literary, and social allusion, that seemed to mark him out for better things. He is careful to remark at the outset that this poem is not intended for the virtuous. The frivolous gallants, whose sole end in ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... villages, literally bound down to the rock by enormous trunks of vine, which, first trained lightly over the loose stone roofs, have in process of years cast their fruitful net over the whole village, and fastened it to the ground under their purple weight and wayward coils, as securely as ever human heart was fastened to earth by ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... much less than one might have expected. He had not become a trim, self-satisfied city man. There was still something homely and wayward and definitely personal about him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very high collars, were a little unconventional. He seemed to shrink into himself as he used to do; to hold himself away from things, as if he were ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... of France to make war against the Dutch, who had befriended him. It was the French king, too, who sent him that insidious, subtle daughter of Brittany, Louise de Keroualle—Duchess of Portsmouth—a diplomat in petticoats, who won the king's wayward affections, and spied on what he did and said, and faithfully reported all of it to Paris. She became the mother of the Duke of Lenox, and she was feared and hated by the English more than any other of his mistresses. They called her "Madam Carwell," ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... as her dimpling smile. Would you know with more particularity how she appeared to him, look you straightway at the sweet maid in the foreground of that Coronation of the Virgin which Fra Lippo Lippi painted; and from the framing of wayward little curls that make their escape from a veil of silver tissue, a tangle withal to mesh a man's heart in, from that face, I say (though the painter-monk had ne'er the felicity to see her), Sancie's round eyes will search your soul ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... Is it not a marvelous degree of accuracy which enables an operator to exactly locate a fracture in a sub-marine cable nearly three thousand miles long? Our venerable "clerk of the weather" has become so thoroughly familiar with the most wayward elements of nature that he can accurately predict their movements. He can sit in Washington and foretell what the weather will be in Florida or New York, as well as if hundreds of miles did not intervene between him and the places named. And so in all departments of modern science, what ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... of the detective after he had reviewed the situation carefully. Was it possible that the son of the woman who had been murdered was guilty of the double tragedy? He remembered what he had been told about Tom Ostrello and his wayward brother Dick, and how mother and son had had an exciting meeting on the day ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... renovates earth and defies time. Had she been a pattern child, had her instructors (whoever they were) succeeded in moulding her into a mere machine, she might not so vividly have roused my interest; but there was something in her saucy independence, her wayward freaks, her coquettish airs, her fiery chase after the swallow, which—breaking in, as they did, upon the docility with which she otherwise went through her round of duty—revivified the desolation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove; Now drooping, woful wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... least her gratitude and esteem. But as the days flew by the young girl paled and drooped, and when the brief period of betrothal drew toward a close the mother's ingenuity must have been taxed to find excuses for the wayward moods and manifest misery of her unhappy child. She fell into melancholy, and sought in solitude opportunity for constant tears. Her favorite resort was a hill overlooking the road to Fontainebleau and Paris, and here ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... thought and discernment, for taste in literature is not always easy to develop, and may be spoiled by bad management at the beginning. We are not very teachable as a nation in this matter—our young taste is wayward, and sometimes contradictory, it will not give account of itself, very likely it cannot. We have inarticulate convictions that this is right, and suits us, and something else is wrong as far as our taste is concerned, and that we have ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... objects in proportion to the number of feet or inches which they occupy in space. No branch of science, moreover, has been more humbling to the boasted rapidity and omnipotence of the human reason, or has more taught those who have eyes to see, and hearts to understand, how weak and wayward, staggering and slow, are the steps of our fallen race (rapid and triumphant enough in that broad road of theories which leads to intellectual destruction) whensoever they tread the narrow path of true science, which leads (if I may be allowed to transfer our Lord's great ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... the difference between that man and this. I remember her speaking of my smile, telling me it was my one adornment, and taking it from me, so to speak, for a moment to let me see how she looked in it; she delighted to make sport of me when she was in a wayward mood, and to show me all my ungainly tricks of voice and gesture, exaggerated and glorified in her entrancing self, like a star calling to the earth: "See, I will show you how you hobble round," and always there was a challenge to me in her eyes to stop her if I dared, and upon them, when she ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... aunt sufficiently not to be extra wayward with her, and between the spillekens, and a long story about Cousin Dickie in New Zealand, all went well till bed-time. There was something in the child's nervous temperament that made the first hours of the night peculiarly painful ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heavily back to Aikenside, carried only Mrs. Noah, who, with her forehead tied up in knots, sat back among the cushions, thinking not of the peaceful dead, gone forever to the rest which remains for the people of God, but of the wayward Guy, who had resisted all her efforts to persuade him to return with her, instead of staying where he was, not needed, and where his presence was a restraint to all save one, and that one Maddy, ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... Hydrographer slid stern-ward into a slip cluttered with driftwood and bituminous dust, stopping within heaving distance of three coal-laden barges which in their day had reared "royal s'ls" to the wayward winds of the ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... with it. It was then youth's battleflag unfurled, and strong men were ready to follow. It was such a vivid possession that strangers were always suspicious of it, till they knew the girl, or saw it in its unshackled freedom. She had that wayward quality of charm, which visits at random a frail creature like Maude Adams, and a burly personality, such as that of Mr. Roosevelt. It is a pleasant endowment, for it leaves nothing for the possessor to do in life except to bring it along, in order to obtain what he is ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... Douglas," smiled the fair girl, who stood at the chamber door refusing his invitation to enter, with a flash of the eye and a quick shake of the head which betokened no small share of the same qualities; "is not that enough to excuse her for being wayward and headstrong?" ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows, And lovely the film of falling flakes; so wayward and slack; But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings, Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... promises to be fit to lead? Think over those you know in Cleveland, or Painesville, or Warren. Is somebody to come from somewhere else? Think of your own plans and expectations. Who can help you? I see possibilities in this wayward, passionate, hasty, generous youth. He is a tender and devoted son, and I am glad he came back; and nobody knows how he may be pushed against us ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... into my clothes, I made my way softly to the spot. There in the seat where I was wont to pursue my even tenor as an orchid slumbered Martin Dyke, amateur desecrator of other men's houses, challenger of the wayward fates, fanatic of a will-o'-the-wisp pursuit, desperate adventurer in the uncharted realms of love; and in his face, turned toward the polychromatic abominations of the house, so soon to be deserted, was all the pathos and all the beauty of ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... witchcraft. With considerable intervals between them, some few instances had occurred in New England of putting this sanguinary law in force; but in the year 1692, this weakness was converted into frenzy; and after exercising successfully its destructive rage on those miserable objects whose wayward dispositions had excited the ill opinion, or whose age and wretchedness ought to have secured them the pity of their neighbours, its baneful activity was extended to persons in every situation of life, and many of the most reputable members ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... writers as Addison; is there any pond- sailing in literature? that is, drowsy, slow, and of small compass? Perhaps we may say, some Sermons. But this is only conjecture. Certainly Jeremy Taylor rolls along as majestically as any of them. We have had Alfred Tennyson here; very droll, and very wayward: and much sitting up of nights till two and three in the morning with pipes in our mouths: at which good hour we would get Alfred to give us some of his magic music, which he does between growling and smoking; and so to bed. All this has not cured my Influenza as you may imagine: ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... keep them out; when the ark is in the Temple, Dagon will be lying, like the brute form that he is, a stump upon the threshold. The condition of our security is close contact with Jesus Christ. If we know the facts of life, the temptations that ring us round, the weakness of these wayward wills of ours, and the strength of this intrusive and masterful flesh and sense that we have to rule, we shall know and feel that our only ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... outworks of a girl's heart than reverie. If her fits of musing were a shade too pensive, the experienced eye of the observer descried no cause for discouragement in this feature. Rosa was a spoiled, wayward child, freakish and mischievous, to whom liberty was too dear to be resigned without a sigh. By and by, she would wear her shackles as ornaments, like all other sensible ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... interesting personality among these first settlers was Kendall. Wayward and erring, passionate and ungovernable as he was, a close study of his letters shows a depth of sin and penitence, together with a breadth and boldness of philosophical speculation, which fascinates the reader. Alone among the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... accident growing out of a momentary agitation, no sudden spasmodic pang, anomalous and transitory, appeared from other concurrent anecdotes of Canning, reported by gentlemen from Liverpool, who described to us most graphically and picturesquely the wayward fitfulness (not coquettish, or wilful, but nervously overmastering and most unaffectedly distressing) which besieged this great artist in oratory, and the time approached—was coming—was going, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Eug. A wayward destiny that night was mine; at once both saved and lost! a hidden passage dug beneath the rampart, twining through many a cavern'd maze, at distance opened to the woods. I reached the secret entrance of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... to be changed by the most skilful preceptress, without the aid of time. Miss Maude Germaine and her brother had tempers which tried Miss Locke's patience to the utmost; but, gradually, she acquired some influence over these wayward spirits. She endeavoured with her utmost skill to eradicate the jealousy which had been implanted in the minds of the brother and sister. They found that they were now treated with strict impartiality, and they began to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... I was wayward, you were kind, And sorrow'd when I went astray; For O, my strains were often wild, As winds upon a winter day. If e'er I led you from the way, Forgie your Minstrel aince for a'; A tear fa's wi' his parting lay,— Good night, and joy be wi' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... In the land which Catholics had opened for Protestants, the Catholic inhabitant was the sole victim to Anglican intolerance. Mass might not be said publicly. No Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice of persuasion. No Catholic might teach the young. If the wayward child of a Papist would but become an apostate, the law wrested for him from his parents a share of their property. The disfranchisement of the proprietary related to his creed, not to his family. Such were the methods adopted 'to ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... I was consulting with the Lord how to act, He having had even a greater experience with wayward children than myself (may He pardon me if I be too free with His holy name!)—just, I say, as I was asking Him to show me in what wise to proceed, up goes her hand, and she gives him a sound cuff o' th' ear (young Hacket's ear—not the Lord's; may ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... to read that might give pleasure to her kind old friend. For Willie in his next letter had betrayed, that the "something" which was never to be permitted to come between the friends to separate them, was the good-will of pretty and wayward Elsie Strong, who since she had come home from the school, where she had been for a year or more, "has been as changeable as the wind with me," wrote poor Willie, and greatly taken up, and more than friendly with Mr Beaton whenever he came out to the farm. ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... fear of blame and its consequences, the desire, as we say, for the "good-will" and "respect of others," will lead to all the public manifestations of virtue, "with a private vice or two to appease the wayward flesh." The utterance of conventional moral formulas by men in public, and the infringement of those high doctrines in private, needs unfortunately not to be illustrated. Moliere drew Tartuffe ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... half that the average man always feels to be more or less irrelevant. And, even at this, it is not infallible. This is not to disparage Mr. Shaw's contributions to the discussion of politics. That contribution has been brilliant, challenging, and humane, and not more wayward than the contribution of the partisan and the sentimentalist. It may be said of Mr. Shaw that in his politics, as in his plays, he has sought Utopia along the path of disillusion as other men have sought it along the path ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... punish this wayward monkey," I answered. "But thou knowest that monkeys are no less wayward than thou ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... silver-plate engraving. In Cooper's story the "Red Rover" appears on this Newport scene in the height of his career,—an outlaw in spirit, a corsair in deed. In early life he was of quick mind, strong will, with culture and social position, but wildly passionate and wayward; and smarting under official injustice, in an evil hour he casts his lawlessness loose on the storm-tide of life. The voice of an elder sister, who had given something of a mother's deep love and tenderness to the wayward youth, falls upon his ear. Old memories ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... standing boldly in their malice, enforce them to withstand the freedom of CHRIST's Gospel; for which freedom, CHRIST became man, and shed his heart's blood. And therefore it is great pity and sorrow that many men and women do their own wayward will; nor busy them not to know nor to do the ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... a description of that courageous and wayward spirit that literally haunts the footsteps of every great thinker and every great leader; sometimes with the result that it loses all aims, all hopes, and all trust in a definite goal. It is the case of the bravest and most ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... midnight shall be dear To her, and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place, Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty, born of murmuring sound, Shall pass into ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... Wild eccentricity always does that; but it is the light of Jack-o'-lantern. On a great question, so near my heart as this, give me the steady light of common sense, not the wayward coruscations of a fiery imagination. Bella dear, I shall send the boy to a good school, and so cut off at one blow all the low associations that ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... allowed themselves to be monopolized. Once in their lives, indeed, they will be, and ought to be, and that monopoly lasts, or should last, forever; but instead of destroying in them that which was their great charm, it only deepens and widens it, and the sympathy which was before fitful, and, perhaps, wayward, flows on in a calm and healthy stream, blessing and cheering all who come within reach of its exhilarating and ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Even the cows forsook their solemnity and broke into awkward gambols around her. As she walked home that evening a strange elation taught her feet to dance. Hither and thither she flitted in front of the beasts and behind them. Her feet tripped to a wayward measure. There was a tune in her ears and she danced to it, throwing her arms out and above her head and swaying and bending as she went. The full freedom of her body was hers now: the lightness and poise and certainty of her limbs delighted her, and the strength that did not tire delighted ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... candles in the room, and the flickering blaze played fantastic tricks on the pale gray walls. It seemed the festival of shadows. Processions of shapes, obscure and indistinct, passed across the leaden-hued panels and vanished in the dusk corners. Every fresh blaze flung up by the wayward logs created new images. Now it was a funeral throng, with the bowed figures of mourners, the shrouded coffin, the plumes that waved like extinguished torches; now a knightly cavalcade with flags and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... was not more wilful and wayward than is often the case with lads of his age, nor was he idle, or inclined to do less than his just share of what was to be done. On the contrary, he had great good sense and perseverance in carrying out any plans of work which suited his ideas of how work ought to be done. ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... fade, and wanton fields To wayward Winter reckoning yeilds A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... have smitten him with the flat side of his sword, but he didn't; he listened and smiled. Perhaps he felt as the really religious do about God, that the Hohenzollerns are so high up that criticism can't harm them, but I doubt it; or perhaps he regards Kloster indulgently, as a gifted and wayward child, but I doubt that too. He happens to be intelligent, and is not to be persuaded that a spade is anything but a spade, however much it may be got up to look like the Ark of the Covenant or anything else archaic and ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... these islands, had perfectly recovered my health, and became anxious for active employment. The brilliant successes of our rear-admiral at Washington made me wish for a share of the honour and glory which my brethren in arms were acquiring on the coast of North America; but my wayward fate sent me in ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... much of the staid calmness which is its usual accompaniment. A wonderfully grave, precise, and handsome piece of old china she looks, though her heart beats fast and her stomacher is ruffled more than even the remembrance of this wayward son has ruffled it ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... you cannot have too much forbearance: put off the evil day of force. Forgive him seventy times seven times a-day, and be assured that what does not come to-day will to-morrow. The grand thing is to get rid of dogged sulks and coltishness; of that wayward, swerving, hesitating gait, which says, "here's my foot, and there's my foot;" or, "there is a lion in the street, I cannot go forth." This is the besetting sin of colts; and this it is which, on the turf, gives so great an advantage to a young horse ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... and I have often seen the side-long glance of sly merriment, or loving shyness, or small coquetry; but I have never, in any other child, seen that look of self-protective speculation; and it used to make me uneasy, for of course, like every one else in the house, I loved the child. She was a wayward, often unmanageable creature, but affectionate,—sometimes after an insane, or, at least, very ape-like fashion. Every now and then she would take an unaccountable preference for some one of the family or household, at one time for ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... not explain to him what difficulties daily grew in the way of her coming, how rumor was alive, and how her stepmother had threatened more than once to tell Gray Michael that his wayward daughter was growing a gadabout. Joan had explained away her roaming with a variety of more or less ingenious lies, and she always found her brain startlingly fertile where the artist and his picture were concerned. She felt little doubt that three more visits to Gorse Point might be achieved—ay, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... the great-grandfather, the sky in the west was red like a glowing face. The sunset poured a soft mellow light upon the huge gray stone and the solitary figure beside it. It was the smile of the Great Spirit upon the grandfather and the wayward child. ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... Wayward and capricious heroines who marry young are entitled, I think, to a certain amount of introspective treatment by their authors. Without some knowledge of their mental working it is not very easy for the reader to have patience with them. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... suspected that the slowly moving meteor she beheld, denoted that a cigar was soothing the emotions excited by their dialogue. She mused long over that revelation of the motives of the life that had always been noble and generous in the midst of much that was eccentric and wayward, and constantly the beat of the waves repeated to her the half-comprehended ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... our most gracious Duke, in his restrictive plans, meant well with thee; and that altogether thy position and outlooks had now been better, hadst thou complied, and continued in thy country. Many a time I find thou hast wayward humours, that make thee to thy truest friend scarcely endurable; stiff ways which repel the best-wishing man;—for example, when I sent thee my excellent old friend Herr Amtmann Cramer from Altdorf near Speier, who had come to Herr Hofrath Schwan's in ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... circumstance. The central figure in each is unmistakably an Englishman, and quite as unmistakably a singular Englishman. Each bears witness to a fine eye for theatrical arrangement. But whereas Borrow stood for ever fortified by his wayward nature and atrocious English against the temptation of writing as he ought, Kinglake commenced author with a respect for "composition," ingrained perhaps by his Public School and University training. Borrow ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Emissa, a boy was dancing indolently to the kiss of flutes. A handful of Caracalla's soldiers passed that way, and thought him Bacchus. In his face was the enigmatic beauty of gods and girls—the charm of the dissolute and the wayward heightened by the divine. On his head was a diadem; his frail tunic was of purple and gold, but the sleeves, after the Phoenician fashion, were wide, and he was shod with a thin white leather that reached to the thighs. He was fourteen, and priest ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... man of dignified bearing. But the Mayor was not alone in his forced display of unseemly haste. Many other townspeople, long past the nimbleness of youth, rushed for shelter; and pride goeth before a collision with a wayward aeroplane. Jackson said the sky rained hats, market baskets, and wooden shoes for five minutes after his Bleriot had come to rest on the steps of the bureau de poste. ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... States for California with her husband in a few months. This was a slight superstructure for the airy castle which the master pictured for Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some loving, sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better guide her wayward nature. Yet, when the master had read the letter, Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to represent Clytemnestra, labeled "the white ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... and plunged his head into the water tank and went to the barn to hook up his team. As he led his horses to the door, a shadow fell across his path, and he saw Skinner rising in his stirrups. His rugged face was pale and worn with looking after his wayward flock, with dragging men into ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... for sounds of every kind now, and strained her ears to catch the faintest, in wayward enmity to her quiet of ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... considerations now? They were, indeed, forgotten. Everything was forgotten—everything save that the man who had stood in the position of father to him was dying—dying without a word of pardon to him, the most wayward (he felt at that moment of severe contrition)—the most wayward of prodigal sons. Everything was forgotten save that he was having a race with death—a ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... come soon, and she built upon the hope. She had given her heart to Fred, and she indulged in many a secret dream for the future while pursuing her little round of daily duties, and bearing patiently with the spoilt and wayward Mittie. ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... that small morsel of humanity demanded much of her time, because she released through the maternal floodgates a part of that passionate longing to bestow love where her heart willed. Sometimes she took issue with herself over that wayward tendency. By all the rules of the game, she should have loved her husband. He was like a rock, solid, enduring, patient, kind, and generous. He stood to her in the most intimate relation that can exist between a man and a woman. But she never fooled ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the heart of a bird? A child, possibly, or a poet; certainly not a philosopher. And happiness, too,—is that something of which the scientific mind can render us a quite adequate description? Or is it, rather, a wayward, mysterious thing, coming often when least expected, and going away again when, by all tokens, it ought to remain? How is it with ourselves? Do we wait to weigh all the good and evil of our state, to take an accurate account of it pro and con, before we allow ourselves ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... Westminster; where I understand the news that Mr. Montagu is last night come to the King with news, that he left the Queene and fleete in the Bay of Biscay, coming this wayward; and that he believes she is now at the Isle of Scilly. Thence to Paul's Church Yard; where seeing my Ladys Sandwich and Carteret, and my wife (who this day made a visit the first time to my Lady Carteret) come by ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... still over the coverlid; her lips never moved; the whole expression of her face had changed—the fever-traces remained on every feature, and yet the fever-look was gone. Her eyes were almost closed; her quick breathing had grown calm and slow. I touched her pulse; it was beating with a wayward, fluttering gentleness. What did this striking alteration indicate? Recovery? Was it possible? As the idea crossed my mind, every one of my faculties became absorbed in the sole occupation of watching her face; I could not have stirred ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... the representatives are chosen, and the want, in many instances, of a pecuniary independence among them, combined with a variety of other circumstances, place the members of the Legislatures under the direct control of the populace; they are its servile tools, and are subject to its wayward impulses and its proverbial fickleness; hence the remarkable absence of any fixed line of policy. The public acts of America are isolated; they appear to be framed for the necessities of the moment, under the influence of popular clamour ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... dead bronze horse stand on his hind legs. For twenty-five cents I have seen a man at the circus do something more wonderful,—make a very living bay horse dance a redowa round the amphitheatre on his (it occurs to me that hind legs is indelicate) posterior extremities to the wayward music of an out-of-town (Scotice, out-o'-toon) band. Now, I will make a handsome offer to the public. I propose for twenty-five thousand dollars to suppress my design for an equestrian statue of a distinguished general officer ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... of governments were not satisfied with these measures that aimed to present a strongly established church, capable of extending a fine moral, ethical, and religious influence over the colonists, and also to enforce upon the wayward, the careless, or the indifferent among them its support and their obedience. If these measures provided for the ordinary welfare of the community and for the usual relations b between the ministers and their people, ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... simple, modest way; an impulse to lift someone, to help an unfortunate person in distress. That sympathy might be expressed in the presence of some father, seeking pardon at the hands of the President in behalf of a wayward son, or some mother pleading for the release of a loved one, or it would show itself in full sway, as it often did, when I called his attention to some peculiar case that had evoked my sympathy and pity. And again I saw the Scotch in him—strict, upstanding, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... panel shows Tommaso praying with his two sons Antonio and Pigallo, the right his wife Maria Portinari and their adorably quaint little daughter with her charming head-dress and costume. The flowers in the centre panel are among the most beautiful things in any Florentine picture: not wild and wayward like Luca Signorelli's, but most exquisitely done: irises, red lilies, columbines and dark red clove pinks—all unexpected and all very unlikely to be in such a wintry landscape at all. On the ground are violets. The whole ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... perhaps in the evening when the crickets sang, perhaps over the moonlit waters, or with the little winds of dawn.... Such strength and kindliness, and the majestic eyes were troubled; for, sympathetic toward the wayward, the bothered, the weak.... They only hardened with the promise of terror for the hypocrite, the traitor, for those who devoured ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... stiff for presbytery; he approved of no people but Englishmen, and had a special prejudice against German Lutherans. His daughter believed firmly in his wisdom, and had been from infancy the old man's darling. She was fair, good, and clever; but the girl had a wayward pride, and a wit that was too ready for her judgment. Nevertheless, Hubert had found favour in her eyes as well as in those of her father, perhaps because he endeavoured earnestly to win it; while Christopher was composing tender verses, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... this crowd, among this people perhaps, little Lois Boriskoff must be looked for. Her friends would be the people's friends. Wayward as she was, a true child of the streets, Alban did not believe that she would remain at home this night or consent to forego the excitements of a spectacle so wonderful. Nor in this was he mistaken, for he had been but a very few minutes upon the balcony when he ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... 'how d—d foolish—in her, I mean. She is a wayward girl, sir, but yet I think she loves you. I tell you frankly that I ardently desire her to marry you; pardon me, then, when I say, that if you love her, do not be ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... of wealth? The probating of his will soon disclosed that he had virtually entailed it. About $90,000,000 was left to his eldest son, William H., and one-half of the remaining $15,000,000 was bequeathed to the chief heir's four sons. [Footnote: To Cornelius J. Vanderbilt, the Commodore's "wayward" son, only the income derived from $200,000 was bequeathed, upon the condition that he should forfeit even this legacy if he contested the will. Nevertheless, he brought a contest suit. William H. Vanderbilt ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... and many personal attractions of the young orator instantly caught the attention of the people, who always listened to him with favor; and it was not long before his constant participation in public affairs developed the splendid talents which he possessed. Wayward and affected in little things, Pitt attacked the great problems of government with the bold confidence of a master spirit, impressing the clear genius of his leadership upon the yearning heart of England in every ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... ball at [5] my heart, and I by firing first could kill him and save my own life, that this was right. I thought, also, that if I taught indigent students gratuitously, afterwards assisting them pecuniarily, and did not cease teachi ing the wayward ones at close of the class term, but [10] followed them with precept upon precept; that if my instructions had healed them and shown them the sure way of salvation,—I had done ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... with spasms after drinking some spirits and water. Peters had expressed to us his opinion that this man had been poisoned by the mate, and for this belief he had reasons, so he said, which were incontrovertible, but which he could not be prevailed upon to explain to us—this wayward refusal being only in keeping with other points of his singular character. But whether or not he had any better grounds for suspecting the mate than we had ourselves, we were easily led to fall in with his suspicion, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... has never been well since his return. His friends tell me that he has been wild, not that he was immoral, to use their own expression. He had been religiously trained in England, did nothing that the world would call bad; but he was wayward, and the occasion to them of great anxiety ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... wayward thoughts will slide Into a Lover's head— "O mercy!" to myself I cried, "If Lucy ...
— Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, 1800, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... stubborn mind to have mercy on the lacerated body, but without effect. His own wayward heart gave him the key to read the cipher of this man's life. "A noble nature ruined," said he to himself. "What is the secret ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... constantly underestimating the amount of sentiment among simple people. The songs which are most popular among them are those of a reminiscent old age, in which the ripened soul calmly recounts and regrets the sins of his youth, songs in which the wayward daughter is forgiven by her loving parents, in which the lovers are magnanimous and faithful through all vicissitudes. The tendency is to condone and forgive, and not hold too rigidly to a standard. In the theatres it is the magnanimous ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... a long while in that unbroken eloquent silence, hardly moving, never looking at one another. For her I was full of grief; a wayward thing it was, indeed, of fate to fashion out of Varvilliers' pleasant friendship this new weapon of attack. She had been on the way to contentment—at least to resignation—but was now thrust back. And she was ashamed. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... power would Sappho claim? Who scorns thy flame? What wayward boy Disdains to yield thee joy for joy? Soon shall he court the bliss he flies; Soon beg the boon he now denies, And, hastening back to love and thee, Repay the wrong ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... my yet greater surprise, the wayward girl burst out crying, and, breaking away from me, ran through the gate, and out of sight amongst the trees, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... was a strange and wayward wight, Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene. In darkness, and in storm, he found delight: Nor less, than when on ocean-wave serene The southern sun diffused his dazzling shene. Even sad vicissitude amused his soul: And if a sigh would sometimes intervene, ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... the opportunity of a more remiss discipline to gratify their passions, yet virtue preserved her natural superiority, and those who ventured to neglect were not suffered to insult her.' Oxford at this date was somewhat wayward in her love for religion. Whitefield records:—'I had no sooner received the sacrament publicly on a week-day at St. Mary's, but I was set up as a mark for all the polite students that knew me to shoot at. By this they knew that I was commenced Methodist, for though there is a sacrament at the beginning ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... us 'midst our playthings; snatches us, As a cross nurse might do a wayward child, From all our toys and baubles—the rough call Unlooses all our favourite ties on earth: And well if they are such as may be answered In yonder world, where all is ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... father-in-law is difficult to explain. It is not apparent that Flagler ever did anything which could justly offend him; indeed, he always seems to have spoken of his son-in-law with tolerance, and often with awe, as one would speak of a clever, wayward child. But Harden-Hickey chose to regard Flagler as his enemy, as a sordid man of business who could not understand the feelings and aspirations of a genius and ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... their lives to christianising brainless savages in a sparsely settled country; and any news of the outer world was very welcome. They pushed back their hoods and sat about the boys, their faces beaming with interest and amusement as they listened to the adventures of those wayward youths. And as all men, even priests, love courage and audacity, they clapped their hands together more than once or ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... every thing she sees: True grief is fond and testy as a child, Who wayward once, his mood with nought agrees: Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild; Continuance tames the one: the other wild, Like an unpractised swimmer plunging still, With too much labour drowns for ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... with the bright fire on the hearth, the heavy curtains shutting out all traces of the storm, and the smoking supper set so temptingly before him. And Morris felt the comfort of his home, thanking the God who had given him all this, and chiding his wayward heart that it had ever dared to repine. He was not repining to-night; he had not repined for many a day, though he never sat down at home after his day's labor in slippers and dressing-gown, with a new book beside him on the table, ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... There is not a thing in the western style in this gallery of Japanese painting that comes anywhere near giving one the artistic thrills won by their typically Japanese work. I think the sooner these wayward sons are brought back into the fold of their truly Oriental colleagues, the better it will be for the national art of Japan, the most profound art the ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... developed the system admirably. Its good results to the university have been acknowledged by all who have watched its progress. Farmers' boys,—slouchy, careless, not accustomed to obey any word of command; city boys, sometimes pampered, often wayward, have thus been in a short time transformed: they stand erect; they look the world squarely in the face; the intensity of their American individualism is happily modified; they can take the word of command and they can give it. I doubt ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... full grown, had lived with him since kittenhood, a kittenhood of perplexing sweetness and audacious mischief. Wayward it was and fanciful, ever playing its own mysterious games in the corners of the room, jumping at invisible nothings, leaping sideways into the air and falling with tiny mocassined feet on to another part of the carpet, yet with an air of dignified earnestness which showed that ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... dimly comprehend this charming allegory, they will recognize its truth. Pinocchio, the wayward and mischievous marionette, through his kindly actions grows to be a real little boy, with an unselfish loving heart. There are ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... we are magnetized to feel at home. It is consistent with its own amazing laws; the laws of the incredible Balzacian genius. Profoundly moral in its basic tendency, the "Human Comedy" seems to point, in its philosophical undercurrent, at the permanent need in our wayward and childish emotionalism, for wise and master-guides, both in the sphere of religion and in ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... should break away from their loving molecular embrace, and, by any process of differentiation or constructive agency of their own, seek an alliance with some living dog-germ in order to be built up into living dog-tissue, presents about as perverse and wayward an impulse on the part of matter as can well be imagined by the scientific mind. That the dog-germ should seek to get hold of, and differentiate them, we can well understand. The Circean witchery and enticement is all on the part of the dog-germ, ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... untrained but bright and attractive girl who marries a man of the world. The conflict of two strong, wayward natures is long and fierce, resulting in temporary separation, and the discipline of sorrow and absence in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... lost confidence in Drums after his wayward experiment with a potato-digging machine, which turned out a lamentable failure, and his premature departure confirmed our ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... full cry after them. Then we passed a train of camels, guided by two women mounted on little ponies. They had tied their babies to the camels' packs, and seemed to have no difficulty in managing their wayward beasts. Here a flock of sheep grazed peacefully in the deep green meadows beside the trail, undisturbed by a group of Mongols galloping townwards, lasso poles in hand, as though charging. Two women in the charge ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... with wizard's attributes, with the bloody footstep, and whose sudden disappearance became a myth, under the idea that the Devil carried him away. Yet, on the whole, this wild tradition, doubtless becoming wilder in Sibyl's wayward and morbid fancy, had the effect to give him a sense of the fantasticalness of his present pursuit, and that in adopting it, he had strayed into a region long abandoned to superstition, and where the shadows of forgotten dreams go when men are done ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... etc.—Why, dear Christian reader? Because she brought rays of heavenly sunshine of God's peace and gratitude and gladness into many a benighted heart; thus inspiring, encouraging, and arousing within the soul blessed remembrances of a covenant-keeping God, even toward His poor, wayward, backsliding children. ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... remembered that this Virginia was of the seventeenth, not of the nineteenth century. And law had cruel and idiot faces as well as faces just and wise. Hitherto the colony possessed no written statutes. The Company now resolved to impose upon the wayward an iron restraint. It fell to Dale to enforce the regulations known as "Lawes and Orders, dyvine, politique, and martiall for the Colonye of Virginia"—not English civil law simply, but laws "chiefly extracted out of the Lawes for governing the army in the Low Countreys." ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... folds of one of the window-curtains, which fell from the ceiling to the floor, was seen the white drapery of a lady's robe. It may appear strange that Alice Vane should have been there at such a time, but there was something so childlike, so wayward, in her singular character, so apart from ordinary rules, that her presence did not surprise the few who noticed it. Meantime, the chairman of the selectmen was addressing to the lieutenant-governor a long and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wisdom which the old woman had erst learned me, and for more wisdom I longed. Maybe this longing shall now make both thee and me happy, but for the passing time it brought me grief. For at first my Mistress was indeed wayward with me, but as any great lady might be with her bought thrall, whiles caressing me, and whiles chastising me, as her mood went; but she seemed not to be cruel of malice, or with any set purpose. But so it was (rather little by little than by any great sudden uncovering ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... have delighted, and still continue to delight, the hearts of so many. Though not marked with much that can be termed strikingly original, this, instead of militating against them, may have told in their favour. Wayward conceits, fanciful thoughts and expressions in songs, are like the hectic hue on the cheek of the unhealthy; it may appear to give a surpassing beauty, but it is a beauty which forebodes decay. "Oh, are ye sleeping, Maggie?" may be regarded as the most original of Tannahill's songs. It is more ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... wanting in faith.' And Miss Locke, who was used to these wild moods, patted her sister's shoulder, and bade her drink her tea before it got cold, in a sensible matter-of-fact way, that was not without its influence on the wayward creature; for she did not refuse ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... amounted to very little. Even her own daughter, Urraca, in spite of the fact that she undoubtedly inherited more from her father than she did from her mother, was, beyond peradventure, rendered more wayward and more reckless by the mother's narrow view of life. The gracious Eleanor, on the other hand, was more liberal-minded, did everything in her power to get into touch with her subjects, and by her kindliness and strength of character was able ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... distracts the mind, confuses every scheme, and confounds every hope, has often proved the real, though perhaps unknown or unacknowledged means of turning the feet of the transgressor into the way of peace. It has led the wayward mind to reflection, and the wandering heart to its rest. It has proved the first effectual means of exciting attention to religion; it has subdued and softened the mind, and subjected it to divine teachings; and the once untractable rebel has become ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... Thirst of Sway were the Motive of his Actions, why should Treaties be other than mere Words, or solemn national Compacts be any thing but an Halt in the March of that Army, who are never to lay down their Arms, till all Men are reduc'd to the necessity of hanging their Lives on his wayward Will; who might supinely, and at leisure, expiate his own Sins by other Mens Sufferings, while he daily meditates ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... new freemen may still be said to be in their infancy of freedom, and like children are wayward. On many of the estates they have repaid the kindness and forbearance of their masters; on others they have continued to take advantage of (what? the kindness and forbearance of their masters? No.) their new condition, are idle or irregular ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... moved, as the poem went on, partly by pity, partly by amusement, to shadow forth in his imaginary world, not merely Ralegh's brilliant qualities, but also his frequent misadventures and mischances in his career at Court. Of all her favourites Ralegh was the one whom his wayward mistress seemed to find most delight in tormenting. The offence which he gave by his secret marriage suggested the scenes describing the utter desolation of Prince Arthur's squire, Timias, at the jealous wrath of the Virgin ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... lurking in ambush everywhere. We wait to rob you of your last savings of withered hours to scatter them in the wayward winds. We shall bind you in flower chains where Spring keeps his captives, For we know you carry your jewels of youth hidden in your ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... Espronceda (1808-1842), Spain's greatest romantic poet, was born in Almendralejo (Badajoz). At the Colegio de San Mateo Espronceda was considered a precocious but wayward pupil. His poetic gifts won for him the lasting friendship of his teacher, Alberto Lista. At an early age he became a member of a radical secret society, Los Numantinos. Sent into exile to a monastery in Guadalajara, he there composed ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... handkerchief on purpose to come back and try a little test-work of her own. This was a piece of unstopped knotting in the panel of a hatchway, a resinous hole that must catch and keep any speck of dust meandering on the wayward will of wind. Her cambric came out as white as ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... on earth are of course men, and the words encourage us to dim hopes about which we cannot dogmatise of a time when all the wayward self-seeking and self-tormenting children of men shall have learned to know and love their best friend, and 'there shall be one flock ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... brought up by her uncle, Simon Kayser, a serious painter, indifferent to all that did not concern his art,—its morality, its dignity, its superiority—who had, under cover of his own ignorance, allowed the ardent dreams of his niece and her wayward fits to develop freely like poisonous plants; near this man, in the vicious atmosphere of an old bachelor's disorderly household, Marianne had lived the bitter life of a young woman out of her element, poor, but ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... She had found salvation in a strange thing which she called duty. "I am fulfilling an appointed task," she wrote, "and the measure of my success is the measure of my happiness. I am bringing consolation to a wayward and tormented spirit. A year has swept aside the petty feminine vanities, the opera-glasses, so to speak, through which a woman complacently views her influence over a man, and it has cleared my vision. A year has proved beyond ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... elder brother having died), enjoyed the soundest health. There is no better aid to life than a certain knowledge that our demise would confer a benefit on some fellow-creature. M. de Beauseant was one of those ironical and wayward beings who, like holders of life-annuities, wake with an additional sense of relish every morning to a consciousness of good health. For the rest, he was a man of the world, somewhat methodical and ceremonious, and a calculator of consequences, who could make a declaration ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... Already he was turning over in his mind the feasibility of Nixon's plan of escape and wondering if he could himself take advantage of it. He had been in the reform school over a year, but it had not reformed him. The new superintendent, with his kindness, had won the hearts of many of the most wayward boys, but no impression had he made on Glen. As a matter of fact the boy rather laughed at his foolishness. To put boys on their honor, to trust the merit boys to go into town without guard, all was new policy, and the only interest ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... the cost of knowledge; nor in a better sense has it yet gone from among us. Far more sublime than any known to the barbarian is the faith of the astronomer, who spends the nights in marking the seemingly wayward motions of the stars, or of the anatomist, who studies with unwearied zeal the minute fibres of the organism, each upheld by the unshaken conviction that from least to greatest throughout this universe, purpose and order ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... harmless humour by sending invitations in his own name to each of the Sovereigns and grandees then in Vienna. Much personal homage, some substantial kindness from these gaudy creatures of the hour, made the period of the Congress a bright page in that wayward and afflicted life whose poverty has enriched ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... high; it is reported that the guests left money under their plates to pay for what they had eaten. St. Evremond, poet and man of the world, was frequently there, and he seems to have constituted himself "guide, philosopher, and friend" to the wayward lady. She was only fifty-two when she died in 1699, and the chief records of her life are found in St. Evremond's writings. He, her faithful admirer to the end, ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... great flexibility of limb. His naturally dark complexion had been deepened by exposure to the tropical sun, and a mass of jetty locks clustered about his temples, and threw a darker shade into his large black eyes. He was a strange wayward being, moody, fitful, and melancholy—at times almost morose. He had a quick and fiery temper too, which, when thoroughly roused, transported him into ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... vanished. In an instant he was defensive and excited, resenting the unexpected need of the one and the distraction of the other. The sum of his episodic rambling on Brian's tongue was appalling. He was willing to concede that his imagination was wayward and romantic. But why in the name of Heaven must a man—and an Irishman—justify the indiscretions of his wit? Well, the lad had always had an unnatural trend for fact. Kenny remembered with resentment the Irish fairies that even in his childhood ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... many members of probity, loyal and honourable in their intentions, who would never become the destroyers of a limited legitimate monarchy, or the corrupt regicides of a rump Parliament, such as brought the wayward Charles the First, of England, to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 5 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... a little absence Has turned thine heart from me; I, knowing that inconstance, Have turned my heart from thee. No wayward beauty o'er me Such power shall obtain; We'll see, my fickle lassie, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... appreciated career, and latterly, to his honor, has been awakening among dramatic authors some emulation by offering handsome compensations for original plays. Junius Brutus Booth, the oldest of them all, most resembles in feature his wild and wayward father; he is not as good an actor as was Wilkes, and kept in the West, that border civilization of the drama; he now lies, on a serious charge of complicity, in Capitol Hill jail. Joseph Booth tried the stage as an utility actor and promptly failed. The best part he ever had to ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... he cried, throwing up his hands. 'The best of fathers! The kindest of kings! See that my words are placed upon the record, clerk! The most indulgent of parents! But wayward children must, with all kindness, be flogged into obedience. Here he broke into a savage grin. 'The King will save your own natural parents all further care on your account. If they had wished to keep ye, they should have brought ye up in better principles. Rogues, we shall be merciful ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... encountered M. Picot and his ward on the wharf. Her curls were more wayward than of old and her large eyes more lustrous, full of deep, new lights, dark like the flash of a black diamond. Her form appeared slender against the long, flowing mantilla shot with gold like any grand dame's. She wore a white beaver with plumes sweeping down on her curls. Indeed, little Hortense ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... rock protruding; also, an occasional sandy barrenness, like his beloved Cape Cod. In truth, he never quite completed the transition from the observer to the artist. With the power of constructing sentences as perfectly graceful as a hemlock-bough, he yet displays the most wayward aptitude for literary caterpillars'-nests and all manner of disfigurements. The same want of artistic habit appears also in his wilful disregard of all rules of proportion. He depicts an Indian, for instance, with such minute observation and admirable verbal skill ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... superior Circumstances to support them in Distinction, appears in no way so much as in the Domestick part of Life. It is ordinary to feed their Humours into unnatural Excrescences, if I may so speak, and make their whole Being a wayward and uneasy Condition, for want of the obvious Reflection that all Parts of Human Life is a Commerce. It is not only paying Wages, and giving Commands, that constitutes a Master of a Family; but Prudence, equal Behaviour, with Readiness to protect and cherish them, is what entitles ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... express order, attended them and well for her that, accustomed to severe weather, and exercise both on foot and horseback, she supported as firmly as the men the fatigues of the nocturnal ride. Ramorny was compelled to keep at the Prince's rein, being under no small anxiety lest, in his wayward fit, he might ride off from him entirely, and, taking refuge in the house of some loyal baron, escape the snare which was spread for him. He therefore suffered inexpressibly during the ride, both in mind and ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... them and many, if not all of them, may be long since dead; but I sometimes think of them as amongst the finest specimens of men that ever I was associated with. Their fine manhood towered over everything that was common or mean, in spite of their wayward talk. ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... force or logic, but the fluent speech and many personal attractions of the young orator instantly caught the attention of the people, who always listened to him with favor; and it was not long before his constant participation in public affairs developed the splendid talents which he possessed. Wayward and affected in little things, Pitt attacked the great problems of government with the bold confidence of a master spirit, impressing the clear genius of his leadership upon the yearning heart of England in every emergency of peace or war. Too great ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... "is what I am going to find out. There's a train going west in about two hours and if you wish me to carry your blessing to our wayward child I shall ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... then went down to his cabin, to reflect upon what plan he should proceed. As he looked out of the stern windows, and perceived the body of the young man still swinging in the wind, he almost wished that he was in his place, for then there would be an end to his wayward fate: but he thought of Amine, and felt, that for her he wished to live. That the Phantom Ship should have decoyed him to destruction was also a source of much painful feeling, and Philip meditated, with his hands ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... perturbed and harassed, and in reply to inquiries touching his health, answered that he was "completely shaken up, and unnerved, by a very stormy and disagreeable interview held that afternoon with the child of his wayward daughter Ellice. "When witness asked: "Did not the great beauty of the embassadress accomplish the pardon and restoration of the erring mother?" General Darrington had struck his cane violently on the floor, and exclaimed: "Don't talk such infernal nonsense! Did you ever hear of my pardoning ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... let me walk with thee In lowly paths of service free; Tell me thy secret; help me bear The strain of toil, the fret of care; Help me the slow of heart to move By some clear winning word of love; Teach me the wayward feet to stay, And guide them ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... truth he was a strange and wayward wight, Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene. In darkness, and in storm, he found delight: Nor less than when on ocean-wave serene The southern Sun diffused his dazzling sheen, [2] Even sad vicissitude ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... heifer is a parent once more, and I am trying in my poor, weak way to learn her wayward offspring how to drink out of a patent pail without pushing your old father over into the hay-mow. He is a cute little quadruped, with a wild desire to have fun at my expense. He loves to swaller a part of my coat-tail Sunday morning, when ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... and forward in his study; his brow was stern, and a strange fire flamed in his eye. He felt greatly agitated and oppressed, and scarcely knew the cause himself. Nothing had happened to disturb his equanimity and give occasion for his wayward mood. The outside world wore its accustomed gay and festal aspect. To-day, as indeed almost every day since the prince resided at Rheinsberg, preparations were being made for a gay entertainment. A country fete was to be given in the woods near the palace, and all the guests were to ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... show that many of the moral and mental obliquities of children may be traced to physical defects. In dealing with wayward and dull children, the visitor should bear this fact in mind, and, either by observation or by the help of a physician, discover wherein the child is defective. The sooner a defect is discovered, the easier it will be to cure it, and for this reason the ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... kept his secret. What did the word of man avail for good or evil? It would count for nothing at the last. Do justice and ask nought; neither praise, for it was a wayward wind, nor gratitude, for it was the breath ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... temptation to plunge into the boisterous merriment of a higher order of depravity than that to which she had been accustomed must have been very great to such a temperament as hers. But she worthily kept her wild, wayward spirit under restraint, and, according to Sir William Hamilton, she conducted herself in a way that caused him to be satisfied with his reforming guidance. She adapted herself to the ways of the more select social ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... fairer stores possest; For not alone they touch the village breast, But fill'd, in elder time, the historic page. 175 There, Shakespeare's self, with every garland crown'd, Flew to those fairy climes his fancy sheen, In musing hour; his wayward sisters found, And with their terrors drest the magic scene. From them he sung, when, 'mid his bold design, 180 Before the Scot, afflicted, and aghast! The shadowy kings of Banquo's fated line Through the dark cave in gleamy pageant pass'd. Proceed! nor quit the tales ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... the amount of sentiment among simple people. The songs which are most popular among them are those of a reminiscent old age, in which the ripened soul calmly recounts and regrets the sins of his youth, songs in which the wayward daughter is forgiven by her loving parents, in which the lovers are magnanimous and faithful through all vicissitudes. The tendency is to condone and forgive, and not hold too rigidly to a standard. In the theatres it is the magnanimous man, the kindly ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... thou art like our wayward race;— When not a shade of pain or ill Dims the bright smile of Nature's face, Thou lov'st ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... life of that wayward statesman,—down even to the beginning of the present civil war, and perhaps to this very moment,—there lingered in Richmond a memorial of those days, most peculiar and most instructive. Before the days of Secession, when the Northern traveller in Virginia, after traversing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... squirrel and wayward as the swallow, Swift as the swallow along the river's light, Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, Fleeter she seems in her stay than in ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Cecilia did not come up to the level of her ambition was a matter of course, and she was prepared for the disappointment. Whose first attempt in a new style ever paired with its conception? She felt that Mr. Hazard would think her wayward and weak. She could not tell him the real reason of her perplexity. She would have liked to work on patiently under Wharton's orders without a thought of herself, but how could she do so when Hazard was day by day coming nearer and nearer until already ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... considerably agitated; less so, however, than on the following day, when, as we learned afterward, our little steamer lost its rudder. Owing to the gorges in the mountains upon either side, through which winds rush unexpectedly, Tahoe has her dangers. She is a wild, wayward child, but thoroughly lovable throughout all her frowns as well as smiles, equally captivating in her moments of unconquerable willfulness as in her seasons of perfect submission. Reaching Tahoe City at four o'clock, we found the stage standing in readiness, and, with a last, hasty ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... taken through the first steps with much thought and discernment, for taste in literature is not always easy to develop, and may be spoiled by bad management at the beginning. We are not very teachable as a nation in this matter—our young taste is wayward, and sometimes contradictory, it will not give account of itself, very likely it cannot. We have inarticulate convictions that this is right, and suits us, and something else is wrong as far as our taste is concerned, and that we have rights to like what we like and ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... him of the ceasing of Undine's wayward moods after she had received her soul—of her docility—of her tenderness—of Huldebrand's certainty of her love. Then of his inevitable weariness. And at last of the Court, and the meeting again with Hildegarde, ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... after repeated failures, in dependence upon God. Ruth's self-sufficiency was gone, and she sadly admitted to herself that she was no better than Julia and the other girls. She had given up reading her Bible now, thinking its sweet messages were not for her, a wayward, erring one, and would scarcely dare to pray even for the safety and well-being of the dear ones at home. Too broken-spirited to make resolutions which she felt herself to be too weak to carry out, afraid to open her Bible and read therein ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... delightful familiar verses, unprinted during his lifetime, which he threw off with no other ambition than the desire to amuse his friends. 'Retaliation', 'The Haunch of Venison', the 'Letter in Prose and Verse to Mrs. Bunbury', all afford noteworthy exemplification of that playful touch and wayward fancy which constitute the chief attraction of this species of poetry. In his imitations of Swift and Prior, and his variations upon French suggestions, his personal note is scarcely so apparent; but ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... both to a more perfect work and to a truer life. She gave poise and purpose to the "versatile, high-strung, somewhat wayward nature" of her husband, and she "restrained, raised, ennobled, and purified" his life and thought. He stimulated and directed her genius life into its true channel, cared for her business interests with untiring faithfulness, made ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... maidens, I give ye back this accursed ring," she cried. "Give heed, ye wayward sisters; this ring which has brought so much sorrow to Gods and men, shall now become yours. I thus restore the Rheingold to its owners. I place the ring upon my finger, and when I have leaped into the flames beside ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... of the companionship of your children, why not occasionally join some of the rescue workers in their efforts to save somebody's wandering boy or girl, instead of sitting in a rocking-chair, nursing your sorrows? Speak the kindly, loving word of warning or advice; encourage the wayward son or daughter to reform; and thus better your condition as well as theirs. This will surely bring an indescribable peace and satisfaction to the soul, assuage much grief, and help to promote the Master's kingdom. He takes us at ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... her voice as from far off, for he was debating whether he would read her the "Sea Lyrics." He lay in dull despair, while she watched him searchingly, pondering again upon unsummoned and wayward thoughts of marriage. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Richard had seen naught in all his life so exquisite as her dimpling smile. Would you know with more particularity how she appeared to him, look you straightway at the sweet maid in the foreground of that Coronation of the Virgin which Fra Lippo Lippi painted; and from the framing of wayward little curls that make their escape from a veil of silver tissue, a tangle withal to mesh a man's heart in, from that face, I say (though the painter-monk had ne'er the felicity to see her), Sancie's round eyes will ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... again it seemed he was at fault; she was not merely a wayward girl in revolt against convention, saying what she deemed daring for the sake of saying it, and in the effort to be original. She was not posing as a Bohemian any more ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Golden-rod (With tender grace). This is a pure and delectable piece of lyrical work, in MacDowell's most delightful style. The verse tells of a lissom maid whose wayward grace neither sturdy Autumn nor the frown of Winter can ever efface. The words are obviously fanciful, but the song has ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... of the swamp, was a heathen hoyden of twelve wayward, untrained years. Slight, straight, strong, full-blooded, she had dreamed her life away in wilful wandering through her dark and sombre kingdom until she was one with it in all its moods; mischievous, secretive, brooding; full of great and awful visions, steeped body and soul in wood-lore. Her ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... a Douglas," smiled the fair girl, who stood at the chamber door refusing his invitation to enter, with a flash of the eye and a quick shake of the head which betokened no small share of the same qualities; "is not that enough to excuse her for being wayward and headstrong?" ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... pervading influence feel; 22 Be every weak and wayward thought repressed; And hide thou, as with plates of coldest steel, The faded aspect and the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... the Father of nature. I pause, feeling forcibly all the emotions I am describing; and (reminded, as I register my sorrows, of the sublime calm I have felt when, in some tremendous solitude, my soul rested on itself, and seemed to fill the universe) I insensibly breathe softly, hushing every wayward emotion, as if fearing to sully with a sigh ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... me, at the very sound of his voice (always gentle and restrained, and echoing of past sadness); under his mild, tender look; at the every fresh sign of his perpetual watchful anxiety—I give him wayward answers, frowning greetings, sighs, pouts; I feel at times a savage desire to wound, to anger him, and as far as I dare venture I have ventured, yet could not rouse in him one spark, even ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... their eyes drinking in beauty, and their ears harmony, the knight and his comrade moved along, guided by wayward fancy. Here a sparkling, dancing rivulet would entice them to follow its course, amid mossy rocks, flowery banks, and drooping trees, which whispered their secrets to its babbling waves; and then suddenly it would vanish into the earth, like a child playing at hide-and-seek, gurgling a merry ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... taught this wayward little girl to use these spectacles, and they proved a perfect blessing to her, and, step by step, led her up to a Christian ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... they are apt to lose hold of solid principle (Greek). They are like trees which have been frequently transplanted. The earth about them is loose, and they have no roots reaching far into the soil. They 'light upon every flower,' following their own wayward wills, or because the wind blows them. They catch opinions, as diseases are caught—when they are in the air. Borne hither and thither, 'they speedily fall into beliefs' the opposite of those in which they were brought up. They hardly retain the distinction of right and ...
— The Republic • Plato
... folks will be! Their cheek smoothed into the flesh of a little child. Their stooped posture lifted into immortal symmetry. Their foot now so feeble, then with the sprightliness of a bounding roe as they shall say to you: "A spirit passed this way from earth and told us that you were wayward and dissipated after we left the world; but you have repented, our prayer has been answered, and you are here; and as we used to visit you on earth before we died, now we visit you in your new home after our ascension." And father will say, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... formed at Montgomery a provisional government, and pursued their relentless purpose with such success that the Lieutenant General feared the city of Washington might find itself "included in a foreign country," and proposed, among the options for the consideration of LINCOLN, to bid the wayward States "depart in peace." The great republic appeared to have its emblem in the vast unfinished Capitol, at that moment surrounded by masses of stone and prostrate columns never yet lifted into their places, ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... portrays the Lesson of Life. The elders offer to hotheaded youth the benefit of their experience. The beautiful woman in the center draws to her side the splendid warrior, whose mother on his left gives her affectionate advice. On the right of the panel, a father restrains a wayward and jealous youth who has ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... flowers do fade and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields; A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring, but ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... son, named for his father, became dissatisfied with his home when Benjamin was an infant, ran away, and shipped as a sailor. The parents knew not where he had gone. Month after month they waited, in deep sorrow, for tidings from their wayward boy, but no tidings came. Years rolled on, and still the wanderer was away somewhere—they knew not where. Morning, noon, and night the memory of him lay heavy upon their hearts, turning their cup of earthly joy to bitterness, and furrowing ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... faithful christian worker, who did not become weary in well doing. He made his long journeys on horseback. He endeavored to arrive at his monthly appointments the previous day so as to have time for the discipline or reinstatement of wayward members, or hold an evangelistic meeting. He manifested so much of hopeful enthusiasm in his work that he seemed unmindful of the loneliness and wearisomeness of the long journeys in the wilderness and regarded it merely as a passing incident, when he had to spend a day or even a night in the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... that God pours out His life and love upon us as He does His sunshine upon the grass and flowers. "The Word of God is with thee before thou seekest; He gives before thou hast asked; He opens to thee before thou hast knocked." God like a Father deals with His wayward children. "Oh, blessed is the man," he writes, "who in his need finds the love of God and comes to Him for forgiveness!"[28] No one of us who has been washed from his sins, he beautifully says, ought to eat a piece of bread ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... from the thing she meant. Her mother, knowing better how the world goes on, promiscuously, and at leisure, and how the right point slides away when stronger forces come to bear, was very often vexed by the crotchets of the girl, and called her wayward, headstrong, and sometimes nothing milder ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... wood, now smiling as in scorn, Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove; Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or cross'd ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... end to the strange story of wayward love and maniacal frenzy which found an unusual habitat in a secluded hamlet like Steynholme, a small vignette of its normal life may be etched in. The trope ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... the newly wedded pair was short. Love soon changed to aversion, at least on the part of the bride. She was not of a tender nature; her temper was imperious, and she had a restless craving for excitement. Frontenac, on his part, was the most wayward and headstrong of men. She bore him a son; but maternal cares ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... accident," I answered, following the wayward lead my wit had opened. "The gods of birth were careless, and I was mislaid in a far land and nursed by an alien people. I am Korean, and now, at last, I have ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... very name and she was a tower of strength to him. 'Mothers!' he used to say, 'if you only knew your power! God be merciful to the wayward one ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... sort of a husband would this Pendennis be?" many a reader will ask, doubting the happiness of such a marriage and the fortune of Laura. The querists, if they meet her, are referred to that lady herself, who, seeing his faults and wayward moods—seeing and owning that there are men better than he—loves him always with the most constant affection. His children or their mother have never heard a harsh word from him; and when his fits of moodiness and solitude are ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "season" of pleasure did not last long; and the man who had "sowed to the flesh" was compelled to fill his bosom with an early harvest of misery. The hunger, nakedness, and shame that accumulated on the head of this wayward youth aptly represent the bitter fruits which sin, even in this life, bears as an earnest of the full wages in the second death, which it promises ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... and picturesque refinement. At first sight it seems a wilderness of loveliest reliefs and statues—of angel faces, fluttering raiment, flowing hair, love-laden youths, and stationary figures of grave saints, mid wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine and cupid-laden foliage; but the subordination of these decorative details to the main design, clear, rhythmical, and lucid, like a chaunt of Pergolese or Stradella, will enrapture one who ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... in the west was red like a glowing face. The sunset poured a soft mellow light upon the huge gray stone and the solitary figure beside it. It was the smile of the Great Spirit upon the grandfather and the wayward child. ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... inches which they occupy in space. No branch of science, moreover, has been more humbling to the boasted rapidity and omnipotence of the human reason, or has more taught those who have eyes to see, and hearts to understand, how weak and wayward, staggering and slow, are the steps of our fallen race (rapid and triumphant enough in that broad road of theories which leads to intellectual destruction) whensoever they tread the narrow path of true science, which leads (if ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... that he was alone he recalled her to memory. He remembered her tight black dress, her fur cloak, the warm collar of which had caressed him as he was covering her neck with kisses. He remembered that she wore no jewellery, except sparkling blue sapphire eardrops. He remembered the wayward blonde hair escaping from under the dark green otter hat. Holding his hands to his nostrils he sniffed again the sweet and distant odour, cinnamon lost among stronger perfumes, which he had caught from the contact ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... teachers have often understood the place and function of the imagination, and have sought to liberate and enrich it by intelligently planned study; but the schools of most, if not of all, times have treated it as a wayward and disorderly gift, not amenable to discipline and training, and of very doubtful value. There has always been, in every highly civilised society, a good deal that has appealed to this divinest of all the ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... would Sappho claim? Who scorns thy flame? What wayward boy Disdains to yield thee joy for joy? Soon shall he court the bliss he flies; Soon beg the boon he now denies, And, hastening back to love and thee, Repay the ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... doubt and conviction, ready at a touch to fall like the ripe and sickled grain in the lap of the husbandman. Wavering brethren had been fortified and were made stalwart again. Confirmed backsliders rubbed their wayward feet in the resin of faith and were boosted up the treacherous skids of their temptation and over the citadel walls to bask among the chosen in a Jericho City of repentance. Proselytes from other and hostile creeds trooped over with hosannas and loud outcries of rejoicing. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the dread, unknown, Yet solemn fact; I see the seeds of folly sown In wayward years, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... ill-informed about herself and about the realities of life, troubled with desires which she took for unsatisfied feelings, torn by the implacable duel between contrary instincts and possessing nothing to counteract her woman's nature but a wayward and melancholy virtue. ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... door of his palace, and many ornaments in stucco all over that palace, after the directions given to him by the painter Perino del Vaga. He made, also, a very beautiful portrait in marble of the Emperor Charles V. But since it was Silvio's habit never to stay long in one place—for he was a wayward person—he grew weary of his prosperity in Genoa, and set out to make his way to France. He departed, therefore, but before arriving at Monsanese he turned back, and, stopping at Milan, he executed in ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari
... its main purpose, to the neutral civilian, seemed certainly to be the wayward pleasure of complicating his life; and in that line it excelled in the last refinements of ingenuity. Instructions began to shower on us after the lull of the first days: instructions as to what to do, and what not to do, in order ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... to keep in the path of truth and duty. I really hoped that, if I had done wrong, or was then doing wrong, I might be convicted of my error. I prayed for light. I was afraid that I had been wilful and wayward; but as I knew that I was right so far as Poodles was concerned, I could not accuse myself of obstinacy in refusing to apologize. On the whole, I was satisfied with myself, though willing to acknowledge that in some things I had rather ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... heights and made him gaze on the infinite nature of God. The Epistles of St. Paul riveted his attention in his search after purest truth, and joined to the pious prayers of the Sainted Monica, who thus drew down abundant grace divine, completed the miracle of his conversion. The wayward Augustine wept for his sins, the learned philosopher bowed his head in faith and humility before the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the truth of God as revealed by Him. After a period of seclusion which he spent from August ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... good nature. Indolent himself, he hated to see anything or anybody worried; lazy, gentle, wayward, and spoilt by his own world, he was still never so selfish and philosophic as he pretended but what he would do a kindness, if one came in his way; it is not a very great virtue, perhaps, but it ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Union and Fort Craig. Alas, Sibley's place of recruiting and assembly has been ill chosen! The animals, crowded on the bare plains, suffer for lack of forage. Recruits are discouraged by the dreary surroundings. The effective strength has not visibly increased in three months. The Texans are wayward. A strong column, well organized, in the rich interior of Texas, full of the early ardor of secession might have pushed on and reached the Gila. But here is only a chafing body of undisciplined men. They are united merely by ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... whether this time of anticipation and desire, of endeavor and partial success, in which the new struggles with the old without conquering it, and the opposite tendencies in the conflicting views of the world interplay in a way at once obscure and wayward, is to be classed as the epilogue of the old era or the prologue of the new. The simple solution to take it as a transition period, no longer mediaeval but not yet modern, has met with fairly general acceptance. Nicolas of Cusa (1401-64) was the first to announce fundamental principles ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... hasty foot aside, Nor crush that helpless worm! The frame thy wayward looks deride Required a God ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... same thing happened again. The dreaded hour of suffering found the wayward beauty once more under the roof which had sheltered her in her former time of trial, and once more she rested her head in penitence and appeal against her owner's shoulder. Who could bear malice ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Philippa had been with her mother, living in Paris, or Dresden, or on the Riviera, as the elder lady's wayward mind directed. Mrs. Harford, who had mourned her husband with all sincerity for longer than her friends anticipated, had recently married again. Philippa had just bade good-bye to the bridal pair, and seen them start off on their journey to St. Petersburg, where her stepfather, ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... the moon lay upon them; and sometimes as if they appeared suddenly in the streets of the city after the people had passed by and the houses had gone to sleep. They were as light as thistle-down, as unsubstantial as mists upon the mountain, as wayward and flickering as will-o'-the-wisps. But there was something immortal about them, and the man knew that the world would be nothing to him without their ...
— The Unruly Sprite - The Unknown Quantity, A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... of girls"—or boys. If the choice graft of cultured manners (for it is a graft on the sturdy but wayward stock of human nature) is left to be choked out by the rank, wild growth of impulse, or if by some flagrant error in example and discipline it is practically cut down at the main branch, what can the careless trainer expect? He may weep ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... reverence yet in many lives as they recall the blessing given at meals and the evening hour of prayer. To the wayward and those living in the control of the outside things of life, it was an hour of bondage, but to those who were at all awakened to the call of the inside life, it was an even-tide of peace and power ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... three, Floats on above the long aerial winds, Nor with the brawling of the winds of air Mingles its liquid body. It doth leave All there—those under-realms below her heights— There to be overset in whirlwinds wild,— Doth leave all there to brawl in wayward gusts, Whilst, gliding with a fixed impulse still, Itself it bears its fires along. For, lo, That ether can flow thus steadily on, on, With one unaltered urge, the Pontus proves— That sea which floweth forth with fixed tides, Keeping one ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... the poem went on, partly by pity, partly by amusement, to shadow forth in his imaginary world, not merely Ralegh's brilliant qualities, but also his frequent misadventures and mischances in his career at Court. Of all her favourites Ralegh was the one whom his wayward mistress seemed to find most delight in tormenting. The offence which he gave by his secret marriage suggested the scenes describing the utter desolation of Prince Arthur's squire, Timias, at the jealous wrath of the Virgin Huntress, Belphoebe,—scenes, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... The Zwinger Palace at Dresden (Fig. 193), is the most elaborate and wayward example of the German palace architecture of the third period. Its details are of the most exaggerated rococo type, like confectioner's work done in stone; and yet the building has an air of princely splendor which partly atones ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... been a pattern child, had her instructors (whoever they were) succeeded in moulding her into a mere machine, she might not so vividly have roused my interest; but there was something in her saucy independence, her wayward freaks, her coquettish airs, her fiery chase after the swallow, which—breaking in, as they did, upon the docility with which she otherwise went through her round of duty—revivified the desolation of the old hall with a sudden outburst ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... sense of duty, unless immediately from God, I cannot tell; but it was wonderful to observe the expression of responsibility in their deportment, the anxious fidelity with which they discharged their unfit office, the tender patience with which they linked their less pliable impulses to the wayward footsteps of an infant, and let it guide them whithersoever it liked. In the hollow-cheeked, large-eyed girl of ten, whom I saw giving a cheerless oversight to her baby-brother, I did not so much ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... followest on our steps, a coaxing child Oft chidden hence, yet quickly reconciled, Still turning on us a glad, beaming brow, And red, ripe lips for kisses: even now Thou mindest me of him, the Ruler mild, Who led God's chosen people through the wild, And bore with wayward murmurers, meek as thou That bringest waters from the Rock, with bread Of angels strewing Earth for us! like him Thy force abates not, nor thine eye grows dim; But still with milk and honey-droppings fed, Thou leadest to the Promised Country fair, Though thou, like ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... and sweet to Paul Murray, in watching the love between his little daughter and the young girl. Kittie's slightest word was law to Pansy; and there was something so womanly in the way she exercised her influence, and made the child's love a source of benefit unto her spoiled, wayward little self. ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... counterbalance the dreadful anxieties of the past night. What a pure pleasure I now tasted a few moments! In a freak, I sat down and sketched The Demons' Palace, laughing defiance upon it all the while, with the wayward self-will and harmless spite of a child, I took this vengeance ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... is unfounded. Faith is dearly bought at the cost of knowledge; nor in a better sense has it yet gone from among us. Far more sublime than any known to the barbarian is the faith of the astronomer, who spends the nights in marking the seemingly wayward motions of the stars, or of the anatomist, who studies with unwearied zeal the minute fibres of the organism, each upheld by the unshaken conviction that from least to greatest throughout this universe, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... was surprised to find the memory of his faults and failings, short life and piteous death, grew dim, as if a kindly hand had wiped out the record and given him back to her in the likeness of the brave, bright boy she had loved, not as the wayward, passionate young man who had ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... Alexandra felt, much less than one might have expected. He had not become a trim, self-satisfied city man. There was still something homely and wayward and definitely personal about him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very high collars, were a little unconventional. He seemed to shrink into himself as he used to do; to hold himself away from things, as if he were afraid of being hurt. In short, he was ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... smile. "When I was at home, I remember my mother telling me more than once of this very cousin, who (she said) was a year older than I, and whose infant name was Pao-yue. She added that his disposition was really wayward, but that he treats all his cousins with the utmost consideration. Besides, now that I have come here, I shall, of course, be always together with my female cousins, while the boys will have their own court, and separate quarters; and how ever will there be any cause ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Originator of all things, he was led to a worship of sacrifice and offerings, and needed no Ideal. So, with a lavish hand, he appropriated the abundant Beauty of Nature, imitating its external expressions with his careful chisel, and suffering his sculptured lines to throw their wayward tendrils and vagrant leaflets outside the strict limits of his spandrels. The life of Gothic lines was in their sensuous liberty; the life of Greek lines was in their intellectual reserve. Those arose out of a religion of emotional ardor; these, out of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Calabria's coast, And Murat's little fleet wore sailing there; No peering moon lit up the lonely sea, But all was sable as his wayward fate. A storm dispers'd them, and Sardinia's isle Receiv'd the bark that held the hapless king, And morn beheld it on the main again; But far apart his faithful followers. Calabria's beach was gain'd; where Murat stood Amidst the dastard ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... itself; where one can file away the things others have no right to know, as well as things that one himself would fain forget! We are under no moral obligation to inflict upon others the history of our past mistakes, our wayward thoughts, our secret sins, our desperate hopes, or our heartbreaking disappointments. Still less are we bound to bring out from this secret chamber the dusty ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... clamoured to be recalled and set in order; but he kept them back; he could not face the task. He felt averse to any mental effort, in need of a repose as absolute as the very essence of silence itself. The sky was overcast; a wayward breeze blew coolly in upon him and refreshed him; a few single raindrops fell. In the air a gentle melancholy was abroad, and, as he stood there, wax for any passing mood, it descended on him and enveloped him. He gave himself up to it, unresistingly, allowed himself to toy with it, to sink beneath ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... repelling the advance, and silencing the muttered and confused words, of the boy—half affectionate as they were, yet half tetchy and wayward—glided from the chamber. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... alone they touch the village breast, But filled in elder time th' historic page. There Shakespeare's self, with every garland crowned,— [Flew to those fairy climes his fancy sheen!]— In musing hour, his wayward Sisters found, And with their terrors dressed the magic scene. From them he sung, when, 'mid his bold design, Before the Scot afflicted and aghast, The shadowy kings of Banquo's fated line Through the dark cave in gleamy pageant ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Gnome, through this fantastic band, A branch of healing spleenwort in his hand. Then thus addressed the power: "Hail, wayward Queen! Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen: Parent of vapours and of female wit, Who give the hysteric, or poetic fit, On various tempers act by various ways, Make some take physic, others scribble plays; Who cause the proud their visits to delay, And send ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... civilised human morality. In our arrogance we often assume that Morality is the master of Nature. Yet except when it is so elementary or fundamental as to be part of Nature, it is but a guide, and a guide that is only a child, so young, so capricious, that in every age its wayward hand has sought to pull Nature in a different direction. Even only in order to guide we must first ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... called upon Flora to talk over her projected emigration was a Miss Wilhelmina Carr—a being so odd, so wayward, so unlike the common run of mortals, that we must endeavour to give a slight sketch of her to our readers. We do not possess sufficient artistic skill to do Miss Wilhelmina justice; for if she had not actually ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... judges that nine-tenths of the girls who "go wrong," whether or not they sink in the world, do so owing to the inattention of their parents, and that in the case of most prostitutes the mischief is really done before the age of twelve; "every wayward girl I have talked to has assured me of this truth." He considers that nine-tenths of school-boys and school-girls, in town or country, are very inquisitive regarding matters of sex, and, to his own amazement, he has found that in the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that the slowly moving meteor she beheld, denoted that a cigar was soothing the emotions excited by their dialogue. She mused long over that revelation of the motives of the life that had always been noble and generous in the midst of much that was eccentric and wayward, and constantly the beat of the waves repeated to her the half-comprehended ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spoken impulsively, a rare thing with her, and occasioned in this instance by the painful consciousness of how she was judged, when she was really so kindly disposed toward the wayward girls. ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... pampering it grew so fast that in a month it had outgrown its house. A new one must be had forthwith, or the baby lily would be hopelessly dwarfed. Mr. Paxton was not disconcerted by this precociousness of his wayward pet, but at once put his talents to work to provide it with suitable accommodations. The greenhouse he next built was a more novel and elegant conservatory, and might rightly be styled the first ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... you, I love you well, as I have always done, though I may have erred a little, as women wayward and still unwed are apt to do. Olaf, they told me yonder how you had matched yourself against the god, with his priests for judges, and smitten him, and I thought this the greatest deed that ever ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... well; it was my privilege to give her some happiness and some change from grime and gloom, to take her away sometimes from the wayward shuttle and rattling machine. I knew that she would have selected such a death could she have chosen, for she dreaded the parish. I think, too, that she would have wished for her old machine to be buried with her, and for its silent shuttle to be beside ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... spot, and wandered upward through embarrassed and obscure paths, starting forward or checking my pace, according as my wayward meditations governed me. Shall I describe my thoughts? Impossible! It was certainly a temporary loss of reason; nothing less than madness could lead into such devious tracks, drag me down to so hopeless, helpless, panicful a depth, and drag me down ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... to fear She should be cold or insincere; That aught like meanness should debase One of our rash and wayward race, No! most I dread intemperate pride, Deaf ardour, reckless, and untried, With firm controul and skilful rein, Its hurrying ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... of wealthy parents, petted, caressed and idolized, she had sprung into womanhood, with every wish anticipated, every desire gratified ere half expressed, if within the reach of human possibility, what wonder, then, that she grew wayward and willful, and at length rashly dashed the cup of happiness of which she had drank so freely in her sunny youth from her lip, by disobeying her too fond and doating parents, in committing her life's destiny to the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... a regular reception committee, whose membership varied, but included always the most intoxicated cowpunchers who happened to be in town. Its leading spirits were Bill Williams, the saloon-keeper, Van Zander, the wayward but attractive son of a Dutch patrician, and his bosom friend, Hell-Roaring Bill Jones; and if they were fertile in invention, they were no less energetic in carrying their inventions into execution. To shoot over the roofs of ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... to us his opinion that this man had been poisoned by the mate, and for this belief he had reasons, so he said, which were incontrovertible, but which he could not be prevailed upon to explain to us—this wayward refusal being only in keeping with other points of his singular character. But whether or not he had any better grounds for suspecting the mate than we had ourselves, we were easily led to fall in with his suspicion, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... attributes, with the bloody footstep, and whose sudden disappearance became a myth, under the idea that the Devil carried him away. Yet, on the whole, this wild tradition, doubtless becoming wilder in Sibyl's wayward and morbid fancy, had the effect to give him a sense of the fantasticalness of his present pursuit, and that in adopting it, he had strayed into a region long abandoned to superstition, and where the shadows of forgotten dreams go when men are done with them; where past worships are; ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the composer to gratify a harmless humour by sending invitations in his own name to each of the Sovereigns and grandees then in Vienna. Much personal homage, some substantial kindness from these gaudy creatures of the hour, made the period of the Congress a bright page in that wayward and afflicted life whose poverty has enriched mankind with ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... something beyond mere money in compensation for his toil. Can it be called toil? Does he not for the most part, after the first and essential preliminaries are of the past, permit Nature to have her own wayward will with his dutiful trees? Does he always and invariably cut out the dead wood which tells of much too strenuous efforts on their part to justify their existence and his care? Does he attempt to exterminate the pretty flies which send to the ground a ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... this time the Baron seemed to feel the effects of solitude strongly. Solitude revives the simple instincts of primitive man, and lonely country nooks afford rich soil for wayward emotions. Moreover, idleness waters those unconsidered impulses which a short season of turmoil would stamp out. It is difficult to speak with any exactness of the bearing of such conditions on ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... in February, 1495, the reigning family fleeing before him. So early and important an accession of strength to the French Crown had hardly been anticipated, and the European sovereigns made haste to form a League against France. Spain was desirous of bringing England into the league; but the wayward Maximilian was still determined to support Perkin Warbeck, apparently thinking that by substituting a Yorkist prince for Henry he would secure ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... estates reverted to him, as heir of entail. But freedom and wealth were unable to restore the equipoise of his mind; to the former his grief made him indifferent—the latter only served him as far as it afforded him the means of indulging his strange and wayward fancy. He had renounced the Catholic religion, but perhaps some of its doctrines continued to influence a mind, over which remorse and misanthropy now assumed, in appearance, an unbounded authority. His life has since been that alternately of a pilgrim and a hermit, suffering the most severe ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... way of Aix, Napoleon took the unlucky Lucien with him. This wayward but independent younger brother, making no allowance, as he tells us in his published memoirs, for the disdain an older boy at school is supposed to feel for a younger one, blood relative or not, had been repelled by the cold reception his senior had given him at Brienne. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... which runs smoothly and efficiently when the manager is not managing, and to that other maxim that the highest aim of the competent manager should be to make himself unnecessary. Hence he was perfectly at liberty to be wayward and freakish in his activities from time to time. And this happened to be one of his wayward and freakish mornings. There were, however, few young women in the common room to behold his aberration, for the hour was within two minutes of nine, and at ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... grace, "though he roared so loud, and looked so wondrous grim," was, in action, afraid of every shadow. Right glad was he to have his political vaunts made good by a coadjutor of commanding talents, resource, and civil courage. Yet, as Lord Oldborough observed, with a man of such wayward pride and weak understanding, there was no security from day to day for the permanence of his attachment. It was then that Commissioner Falconer, ever ready at expedients, suggested that an alliance between his grace's family and his lordship's ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... holy that even the heavens are not clean in His sight; and I had no idea how sinful sin is, how contrary in every way to God. I had little thought that God, my loving Father, would hear the prayers of so wicked, wayward a child as I was, and as I am indeed still, if left to myself in my own nakedness; but I know now that He does not look at me as I am in myself, but as I am clothed with Christ's righteousness. Trusting in Him, I am no longer naked, but dressed in ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... father and a mother incapable of influencing the deeper springs of character, Goethe passed through childhood and boyhood without the discipline of temper and will which only the home can give. And the lack of this discipline is traceable in all his actions till he had reached middle life. Wayward and impulsive by nature, he yielded to every motive, whether prompted by the intellect or the heart, with an abandonment which struck his friends as the leading trait of his character. "Goethe," wrote ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... Let my woman's heart of flesh die! Saviour, let my heart die. And save my child. Let my heart die from the world and from the flesh. Oh, destroy my heart that is so wayward. Let my heart of pride die. Let ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... weary as to bring her to the point of exhaustion. This time they went farther than Amalia really intended, and had left the paths immediately about the cabin, and climbed higher up the mountain. Here there was no trail and the way was rough indeed, but Madam Manovska was in one of her most wayward moods and insisted on going higher ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... had ruined forever his reputation as a man of dignified bearing. But the Mayor was not alone in his forced display of unseemly haste. Many other townspeople, long past the nimbleness of youth, rushed for shelter; and pride goeth before a collision with a wayward aeroplane. Jackson said the sky rained hats, market baskets, and wooden shoes for five minutes after his Bleriot had come to rest on the steps of the bureau de poste. And ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... century, and lay in a pile upon the floor. I was in no humour to listen to a lecture, particularly when my own faulty temper was to be the principal subject, and form the text. Harrison watched my movements for some time in silence, with a provokingly-amused air; not in the least discouraged by my wayward mood; but ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... charity—that his life has probably been shortened by his scrupulous regard for justice. His career was one splendid refutation of the popular fallacy, that genius has of necessity vices—that its light must be meteoric—and its courses wayward and uncontrolled. He has left mankind two great lessons,—we scarcely know which is the most valuable. He has taught us how much delight one human being can confer upon the world; he has taught us also that the imagination may aspire to the wildest flights ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... the forest, not a quarter of a mile from the house. Shaded by giant oaks, whose gnarled roots lay like serpents, half hidden in the moss, ran a streamlet, covered with sunny speckles, where parted leaves admitted the sunshine. Flowers grew along its banks in wild profusion, and it held its wayward course with many a rippling fall and fantastic turn, until it was lost in the shades of ...
— Po-No-Kah - An Indian Tale of Long Ago • Mary Mapes Dodge
... arm as she walked, a tiny dog over which her fair head was bent in endearing caresses; indeed such was her attention to the dog Vi (his full name was Velocity but he was called Vi for short) that her wayward footsteps carried her not in a straight line but in a direction so constantly changing as to lead that acute observer, Professor Murray, to the conclusion that her path could only be described by the amount of attraction ascribable ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... hour or more there was silence, not peaceful, but tense, for Grandmother was thinking of things she might say to the wayward Rosemary. Then the culprit came in, cheerfully singing to herself, and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... That full justice might be done to the eloquence of the composition, the favorite part of the esquire was supported by Toby Matthew, whose father was afterwards archbishop of York; a man of a singular and wayward disposition, whose prospects in life were totally destroyed by his subsequent conversion to popery; but whose talents and learning were held in such esteem by Bacon, that he eagerly engaged his pen in the task of translating into Latin some of the most important of his ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... talking very seriously to her in regard to the ill-temper she has shown during the past few days," Violet said to herself. "Poor wayward child! I hope she will take the lesson to heart, and give him less trouble and anxiety ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... Edwin Booth was associated with his father in all the wanderings and strange and often sad adventures of that wayward man of genius, and no doubt the many sorrowful experiences of his youth deepened the gloom of his inherited temperament. Those who know him well are aware that he has great tenderness of heart and abundant playful humour; that his ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... venerable matron thought Of all the ills by talent often brought; Could she have seen me when revolving years Had brought me deeper in the vale of tears, Then had she wept, and wish'd my wayward fate Had been a lowlier, an unlettered state; Wish'd that, remote from worldly woes and strife, Unknown, unheard, I might have pass'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... under their plates to pay for what they had eaten. St. Evremond, poet and man of the world, was frequently there, and he seems to have constituted himself "guide, philosopher, and friend" to the wayward lady. She was only fifty-two when she died in 1699, and the chief records of her life are found in St. Evremond's writings. He, her faithful admirer to the end, ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... of Disraeli's character and career, it is impossible not to be fascinated in watching the moral and intellectual development of this very remarkable man, whose conduct throughout life, far from being wayward and erratic, as has at times been somewhat superficially supposed, was in reality in the highest degree methodical, being directed with unflagging persistency to one end, the gratification of his own ambition—an ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... the trend of upper air streams, to whose wayward courses and ever varying conditions we are now to be introduced, that much of our most valuable information has come, affecting the possibility of forecasting British wind and weather. It should need no insisting ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... servants stared. And as the day wore on, And evening came, and then another day, And yet another, till a week had gone, The wonder spread, and riders sent in haste Scoured the country, dragged the neighboring streams, Tracked wayward footprints to the great chalk bluffs, But found not Regnald, lord of Garnaut Hall. The place that knew him knew him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... I have heard, could neither write nor read.' The author is indeed a striking example of native genius bursting through the obscurity of poverty and the obstructions of laborious life. He is said to be a common ploughman; and when we consider him in this light, we cannot help regretting that wayward fate had not placed him in a more favoured situation. Those who view him with the severity of lettered criticism, and judge him by the fastidious rules of art, will discover that he has not the doric simplicity of Ramsay, nor the brilliant imagination of Ferguson; but to those who ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... coat-flower of gold-and-white such as no other in New York could wear, since only in one conservatory was that special orchid successfully grown. By it Banneker recognized Poultney Masters, Jr., the son and heir of the tyrannous old financier who had for years bullied and browbeaten New York to his wayward old heart's content. In his son there was nothing of the bully, but through the amiability of manner Banneker could feel a ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... and 4ab2cc4bde2ff4e, 2: One year after leaving her home in wayward love, her father writes her of her mother's death and forgives her, ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... nights he spent by moonlight pale To wood and stream his teal, to wail, Till, frantic, he as truth received What of his birth the crowd believed, And sought, in mist and meteor fire, To meet and know his Phantom Sire! In vain, to soothe his wayward fate, The cloister oped her pitying gate; In vain the learning of the age Unclasped the sable-lettered page; Even in its treasures he could find Food for the fever of his mind. Eager he read whatever tells Of magic, cabala, and spells, And every dark pursuit allied To curious ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... proverbial wanderers, and of a wayward spirit, and not easy of restraint. They are often very honest too, and refuse to flatter. As the youth lay on his back gazing dreamily from that giddy height on the first faint tinge of light that suffused the eastern sky, his thoughts rambled on ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... dreams, if the sermons touched him not, was yet thrilled to the depths of his being by that tall preacher. Somewhere, I said, he had a spark within him. I think he never knew it: or if he knew it, he regarded it as a wayward impulse that might lead him from his God. It was a spark of poetry: strange flower in such a husk. In times of emotion it bloomed, but in daily life it emitted no fragrance. I have wondered what might have been if some one—some understanding woman—had recognised ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... you've got your own back for little Rosie Deverill, haven't you? Remember how heart-broken you were at sixteen, when she turned her rather wayward affections to me? Now—the tables have turned. Well, I wish you luck. Think I'll be getting along. I've a good deal of work to do this evening, and I'll be shipping for Cairo, I hope, next week. That's what I came to ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... the Chemist; not with the least expression of interest, but with a moody, wayward kind of curiosity. "Why? How comes it that you have sought to keep especially from me, the knowledge of your remaining here, at this season, when all the rest have dispersed, and of your being ill? I want to know why ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... pathway unto freedom Ever mark a crimson line, And the eyes of wayward mortals Always close to ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... pencilling darkened his upper lip: His slightly effeminate style of beauty, the graceful curves of his figure, his expression, sometimes coaxing, sometimes saucy, reminding one of a page, gave him the appearance of a charming young scapegrace destined to inspire sudden passions and wayward fancies. While his pretended uncle was making himself at home most unceremoniously, Quennebert remarked that the chevalier at once began to lay siege to his fair hostess, bestowing tender and love-laden glances on her behind ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... we see a face That trembles in a forest place Upon the mirror of a pool For ever quiet, clear, and cool; And, in the wayward glass, appears To hover between smiles and tears, Elfin and human, airy and true, And backed by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 'Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer;' and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him; and again, 'He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love.' Eternal death, then, is to love no one; to be shut up in the dark prison-house of our own wilful and wayward thoughts and passions, full of spite, suspicion, envy, fear; in fact, in one word, to be a devil. Oh, my friends, is not that damnation indeed, to be a devil here on earth, and for aught we know, ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... safe to say that he kept his word, and was to the last, the same genial, warm-hearted, impulsive, wayward man who had by these and other engaging qualities made for himself so large a place in the heart of his countrymen, during the long years he had wandered over her moors and hills, seeing all her beauties, and describing them as ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... where you remember I was praying for your success— and safety, I nearly died of joy. For you know I had been, well, attached to you—to Shabaka, I mean—all the time—that's my part of the story which I daresay you did not see. Although I seemed so cold and wayward I could love, yes, in that life I knew how to love. And Shabaka looked, oh! a hero with his rent mail and the glory of triumph in his eyes. He was very handsome, too, in his way. But what nonsense ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... and bent his bow, "Just watch this famous shot; See that old willow by the brook— I'll hit the middle knot." Swift flew the arrow through the air, Madge watched it eager-eyed; But, oh! for Harry's gallant vaunt, The wayward ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... mower back angrily, inspecting its mechanism in the manner of a mother with a wayward son and began again. There was desperate determination in his shoulders as he added his forward thrust to the protesting rhythm. The machine went at the grass like a bulldog attacking a borzoi: it bit, chewed, held ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... patches of mellow light upon the floor seemed more bright here than anywhere else. If it rained, this place was less dreary than any other, and in sun or storm it was the only spot that Nan felt had the power to quell her wayward mood when it rose against her will and urged her back to her hoydenish exploits ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... is acting?" The echo was a faint, undecided one, and Mostyn's eyes groped back to the wayward face at his side. "Yes, and it is town talk," Marie went on. "You know people in the lower and middle classes will gossip about you lucky high-flyers. They know every bit as much about what is going on in your set as you do. They can't have the fun you have, so they take pleasure ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... your grandfather, Harry Warrington; and there were eels for supper, as we have had them to-night, and it was that dish of collared eels which brought the circumstance back to my mind. I had been just as wayward that day, when I was seven years old, as I am to-day, when I am seventy, and so I confess my sins, and ask to be ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... training, and the position of Charlotte Bronte, as they have been made known to us by her biographer's unsparing revelations. It was not to be expected that any one should have imagined the life of Howorth [Trasncriber's note: sic] parsonage; the gifted, wayward, and unhappy sisterhood in their cheerless home; the rudeness of the only society which was within their reach; while their views of anything beyond their own immediate circle, and certain unpleasing forms of ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... among this people perhaps, little Lois Boriskoff must be looked for. Her friends would be the people's friends. Wayward as she was, a true child of the streets, Alban did not believe that she would remain at home this night or consent to forego the excitements of a spectacle so wonderful. Nor in this was he mistaken, for he had been but a very few minutes upon the balcony ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... in the stable was for the delectation of the horses, had been feeding them largely with oats—a delicacy with which, in the plenty of other provisions, they were very sparingly supplied; and the consequences had begun to show themselves in the increased unruliness of the more wayward amongst them. Gibbie had long given up resorting to the ceiling, and remained in utter ignorance of the storm that was brewing because ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... return; to be the soul's sweet necessity, the life's household partner to him who receives all thy faith and devotion,—canst thou influence the sources of joy and of sorrow in the heart that does not heave at thy name? Hast thou the charm and the force of the moon, that the tides of that wayward sea shall ebb and flow at thy will? Yet who shall say, who conjecture how near two hearts can become, when no guilt lies between them, and time brings the ties all its own? Rarest of all things on earth ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thing she sees: True grief is fond and testy as a child, Who wayward once, his mood with nought agrees: Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild; Continuance tames the one: the other wild, Like an unpractised swimmer plunging still, With too much labour drowns for want ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... scheme; what I dwell upon is its intense humanity, alike in its greatness and its littleness, its glory and its shame. As the cares and joys of human life, so the structure of society below is reflected, by the wayward wit of man, on heaven above. Though the names and fundamental traditions of the several deities were wholly or in great part imported from abroad, their characters, relations, and attributes passed under a Hellenizing process, which gradually marked ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... 'midst our playthings; snatches us, As a cross nurse might do a wayward child, From all our toys and baubles—the rough call Unlooses all our favourite ties on earth: And well if they are such as may be answered In yonder world, where all ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... merriment, or loving shyness, or small coquetry; but I have never, in any other child, seen that look of self-protective speculation; and it used to make me uneasy, for of course, like every one else in the house, I loved the child. She was a wayward, often unmanageable creature, but affectionate,—sometimes after an insane, or, at least, very ape-like fashion. Every now and then she would take an unaccountable preference for some one of the family or ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... brought into his heart a strange little wayward emotion that was hard to account for—a feeling of unexplained uneasiness and disquieting joy. For behind it, woven through it rather, ran a faint exhilaration that connected remotely somewhere with that touch of delicious alarm, that tiny anticipating "dread," that so puzzled him when he ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... of this vivid, high-spirited girl seemed to be an echo of her impetuous, wayward temper. Even a concern as natural as that excited by her cousin's present plight, was charged with an intensity which made me wonder what the effect might be if her feelings were ever deeply or ruthlessly stirred. ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... languish or die for home. What a fine instrument the human heart is! Who shall touch it? Who shall fathom it? Who shall 'sound it from Its lowest note to the top of its compass?' Who shall put his hand among the strings, and explain their wayward music? The heart alone, when touched by sympathy, trembles and responds ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
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