"Capricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Of heedless Nature's die, 'Twould seem, that from so low Hath lifted man so high. If, then, our rise from gloom Hath this capricious air, What ground is mine to assume An upward process there, In yonder worlds that shine From upward tracts of sky? No ground to assume is mine Nor warrant to deny. Equal, my source of hope, my reason ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... honor of the successful candidates, in which his house was filled to overflowing. I passed the dwelling about midnight. Music rang from the illuminated parlor. The merry dance proceeded. All was life, gayety, and rich profusion. And Julia! even then she might have been whirling in the capricious movements of the dance with my happy rival—she as happy—unconscious of him who glided like some angry spectre beneath her windows, and almost within ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... for the light seemed now too dim to read by. However this may be, a rich and tender voice recited to Dieppe's sympathetic ears as pretty a little appeal (so the Captain thought) as had ever been addressed by lover to an obdurate or capricious lady. The Captain's eyes filled with tears as he listened—tears for the charm of the verse, for the sad beauty of the sentiment, also, alas, for the unhappy gentleman from whose ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... an opera buffa in two acts, words by Romani, was first produced in Milan, in 1832, and in English, at Drury Lane, in 1839, as "The Love Spell." The heroine of this graceful little opera is Adina, a capricious country girl, who is loved by Nemorino, a young farmer, whose uncle lies at the point of death, and by Belcore, a sergeant, whose troops are billeted upon the neighboring village. While Adina keeps both these suitors in suspense, Dr. Dulcamara, a travelling quack, arrives at the village ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... friendship; and closer still, perhaps, clings little Hannibal, a boy about whose parentage nothing is known until the end of the story. Hannibal is charmed into tolerance of the Judge's picturesque vices, while Miss Betty, lovely and capricious, is charmed into placing all her affairs, both material and sentimental, in the hands ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... on the text of the MSS. except the substitution of capital letters for small ones, where capitals would now be used. In this matter Lauder's practice is capricious, and it may safely be said that it was governed by no rule, conscious or unconscious. He spells the pronoun I with a capital, and usually begins a sentence with one. But names of persons and places are very often spelt with small letters. The use ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... English blood was up, and, rushing at the tyrant, he stayed his uplifted arm, and demanded the poor creature's life. He, of course, ran a great risk of losing his own; but the novelty of the event seemed to tickle the capricious chief, and he at once ordered ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... brilliant generals of his age, while he was hampered and thwarted by the intrigues and duplicity of Elizabeth, who was constantly engaged in half-hearted negotiations now with France and now with Spain, and whose capricious temper was continually overthrowing the best-laid plans of her councillors and paralysing the actions of her commanders. It was not until she saw her kingdom threatened by invasion that she placed herself fairly at the head of the national movement, and inspired her subjects ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... Taylor. He had not heard this. Rumor is very capricious. Therefore the Virginian told him, and the family ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... life's pleasures than incur the risks and responsibilities of matrimony. Not that she had been without offers. A girl as attractive and clever could hardly have failed to please the sterner sex. All sorts and conditions of men had prostrated themselves at her tiny, well-shod feet, but, capricious and headstrong, she would have none of them. She was what might be called a singular girl. She liked men, not because of their sex, but because their point of view was different, their grasp of things stronger than her own. One day she must marry. She knew that. It was, she insisted laughingly, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... merit in France and Germany than in the countries where Sterne's own tongue is spoken.[1] His place among the English classics has, from the foreign point of view, never been a dubious question, amatter of capricious taste and unstable ideals. His peculiar message, whether interpreted and insisted upon with clearness of insight, or blindness of misunderstanding, played its not unimportant part in certain developments of continental literatures, and his station in English literature, as viewed ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... evident to us that on our approach the Meer Walli was undecided whether he should treat us as friends or foes; it seemed that for the present he had determined in our favour, but distrusting his capricious disposition we were only the more anxious to get out of his reach, though we both agreed that the wisest and safest plan would be to carry our heads very high and put a bold front upon all our proceedings. This decision we came to whilst sitting in the garden in the presence ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... capricious carlin, Nature, To mak amends for scrimpit stature, She's turn'd you aff, a human creature On her first plan; And in her freaks, on every feature ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... changed, she ceased to resist; but when I asked her to go to a house with me, she said, "No, no, I am not coming to that." Now, though tranquil, she was more capricious, sometimes letting me feel her, or do it to her with impatience; at other times with evident desire to please; but I was so often baulked, and I plagued her so incessantly to meet me somewhere, that at length she did, saying, "Well, it little matters, as ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... of disapproving of the ardor of their pious wishes, Julian ingenuously confessed, that he was ambitious to attain a situation in which he might be useful to his country and to his religion. But this religion was viewed with a hostile eye by the successor of Constantine, whose capricious passions altercately saved and threatened the life of Julian. The arts of magic and divination were strictly prohibited under a despotic government, which condescended to fear them; and if the Pagans were reluctantly ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... we got down to the donkey. But here we have to break bulk from big ships to small craft; to send our stuff not to one but to several landings, to run the show with a mixed staff of Naval and Military Officers. No, give me deserts or precipices,—anything fixed and solid is better than this capricious, ever-changing sea. The problem is a real puzzler, demanding experience, energy, good temper as well as the power of entering into the point of view of sailors as well as soldiers, and of being (mentally) in at least three places ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... I do not prohibit it. I have heretofore made no arrangement for hearing from you, in turn, because I could not discover that any advantage would accrue from it. But it seems only fair, I confess, and you dare not think me capricious. So, three days hence, at six o'clock in the evening, a trusty messenger of mine will call at your door. If you have anything to give her for me, the act of giving it must be the sign of a compact on your part, that you will allow her to leave immediately, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... but soon glided up into the twigs and leaves of the elder-tree that stretched out over his head. It was as if the evening wind were shaking the leaves; as if little birds were twittering among the branches, moving their little wings in capricious flutter to and fro. Then he heard a whispering and lisping; and it seemed as if the blossoms were sounding like little crystal bells. Anselmus listened and listened. Ere long, the whispering, and lisping, and tinkling, he himself knew not ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... have plotted against me." Commended for this by the bystanders, he proceeded: "Call me neither Hercules nor the name of any other god;" not that he was unwilling to be termed a god, but because he wished to do nothing worthy of a god. He was naturally capricious in all matters, and would bestow great honors upon people and then suddenly disgrace them, quite without reason. He would save those who least deserved it and punish those whom one would never ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... fragrant local tobacco, and find some relief to the mind in relating tales of suffering under persecution. They said they had more reason to be satisfied with the rule of my host, Hhamed el Bek, than with that of Tamar Bek at Bint Jebail, which they described as most cruel and capricious. That I could easily believe after the incident that came to my knowledge in that vicinity five years before,—that of the wanton murder of a poor Christian, at the lime-kiln works, by a servant of that governor. I have already ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... Egremont's style of society, and dreading that Mark might be dragged into it, added her word, feeling on her side that it was desirable and just to hinder the family from sacrificing Mark's occupation and worldly interest to a capricious old roue, who might very possibly throw him over when it would be almost impossible to find anything else to do. Moreover, both she and Annaple believed that the real wish was to rescue the name of Egremont from association ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hundred times on the point of trying to seize his kingdom of heaven by violence, of throwing himself upon her with a tempest shock of reproach and appeal. But some secret instinct restrained him. She was wilful, she was capricious; she had a real and powerful distraction in her art. He must be patient and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been too idealistic: he wished to protect the Church as a sort of earthly paradise, of which the rules might seem to him as paternal as those of heaven, but might well seem to the king as capricious as those of Fairyland.' The tremendously suggestive thing of the whole story of Becket is that Henry II submitted to being thrashed at Becket's tomb. It was like 'Cecil Rhodes submitting to be horsewhipped by a Boer as an apology for some indefensible death incidental ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... not invariably—a right of way between the Porta della Carta and the Riva, across the courtyard, while the first floor gallery around it, gained by the Giants' Stairs, is also open. For one of those capricious reasons, of which Italian custodians everywhere hold the secret, the delightful gallery looking on the lagoon and Piazzetta is, however, closed. I once found my way there, but was pursued by a frantic official and scolded ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... advocates with a little industry to collect in its favor an array of contemporary documents as good as those which our publications present. These documents all relate to real experiences of persons. These experiences have three characters in common: They are capricious, discontinuous, and not easily controlled; they require peculiar persons for their production; their significance seems to be wholly for personal life. Those who preferentially attend to them, and still more ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... was a modern, his country, at least, had retained the charm of its ancient beauty. The road was as Norman a highway as one could wish to see. It had the most capricious of natures, turning and perversely twisting among the farms and uplands. The land was ribboned with growing grain, and the June grass was being cut. The farms stood close upon the roadway, as if longing ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... waking, he stared from his window in delight at the spectacle which the capricious weather had formed for him. The rain had increased as the night passed, and had frozen upon the chilled trees and house roofs. The linden on the Fletcher lawn was coated with fairy lace work, and the ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... was my position when I made the acquaintance of Marguerite. You can well understand that, in spite of myself, my expenses soon increased. Marguerite's nature was very capricious, and, like so many women, she never regarded as a serious expense those thousand and one distractions which made up her life. So, wishing to spend as much time with me as possible, she would write to me ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... prudent resolution to follow their vain hopes and desires: weakness that would have been blamable ill the pilot of a ship, how much more in the sovereign commander of such an army, and so many nations. But he, though he had often commended those physicians who did not comply with the capricious appetites of their patients, yet himself could not but yield to the malady and disease of his companions and advisers in the war, rather than use some severity in their cure. Truly who could have said that health was not disordered and a cure not required in the case ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of the elder writers 'anachronistic improprieties' (as Thomas Warton would say) are exceedingly rare. In John Woodvil it would not, I think, be easy to discover more than two: caprice, which, in the sense of 'a capricious disposition,' seems to belong to the eighteenth century, and anecdotes (i.e., 'secret Court history'), which, in its English form at least, probably does ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... doubtless be found comparatively tenantless. Owing to obstructions against the side windows, the whole place is dim and dusky; very much so, for the most part; yet, by starts, haggardly lit here and there by narrow, capricious sky-lights in the cornices. But there would seem no special need for light, the place being designed more to pass the night in, than the day; in brief, a pine barrens dormitory, of knotty pine bunks, without bedding. As with the nests in the geometrical towns of the associate ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... somewhat capricious by nature. As to the horse, as you say, my dear Patout, he wants nothing. You need only remove his bridle; leave him saddled. Oh, wait; put this pistol back in the holsters and take care of these other two for me." And the young man removed the two from his belt and handed ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... merry or sad, as the case might be, over her lover's few volumes; and when she had arranged them to suit her capricious self, she kissed her hand to Tom Hood, and locked them all—poets, romancers, and historians—in the black, sombre ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in war. They lay fallow for seventy-five years, and then gave the best of accounts of themselves. England did not quite know what to make of the Virginians; to judge by the reports of the governors, they were changeable as a pretty woman. But they were simply capricious humorists, full of life and intelligence, who did what they pleased and did not take themselves too seriously. They indulged themselves with the novel toy, the post-office; and founded William and Mary College in 1693. This venerable institution passed its second centennial ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the capricious mountain winds, suddenly swept their refuge with sheets of water. Randolph Shaw threw the raincoats over his companion and both laughed hysterically at ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... story, she would sigh; if a mournful one, she would laugh. For yes she would say 'no,' and for no, 'yes.'" She is in love with Colonel Raymond, but shows her love by teasing him, and Colonel Raymond is afraid of the capricious beauty.—Edward Moore, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... King was not only grievous, it was arbitrary, capricious, cruel, and without semblance of law. The austerity of the Conqueror had been conspicuous; equally conspicuous was the debauchery of his son. The Conqueror had been faithful and conscientious in seeing that vacancies in the Church were filled up quickly and wisely. The Red King preferred ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... old gods and their children, morose as some of the senior are, and mischievous as are some of the junior, I have never represented the worst of them as capable of inflicting such atrocity. Passionate and capricious and unjust are several of them; but a skin stripped off the shoulder, and a liver tossed to a vulture, are among ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... its misreading or misconception of the controlling statute, [Gryger v. Burke] in a matter so vital as imposing mandatory sentence or exercising discretion concerning it, has no such effect. Perhaps the difference serves only to illustrate how capricious are the results when the right to counsel is made to depend not upon the mandate of the Constitution, but upon the vagaries of whether judges, * * * will regard this incident or that in the course of particular ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... world, nothing is more capricious than posthumous fame. One of the most notable examples of posterity's lack of judgment is the Eleatic Zeno. This man, who may be regarded as the founder of the philosophy of infinity, appears in Plato's Parmenides in the privileged position ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... explosive composition which, for its regularity of effect and convenience in manufacture and use, is still preferred for general purposes to all the new and more violent but more capricious agents. In England it is composed of 75 parts saltpetre to 10 sulphur and 15 charcoal; these proportions are varied slightly in different countries. The ingredients are mixed together with great mechanical nicety, and the compound is then ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... brother. I do not love my brother, and it is because I do not love him, and because I do have affection and comradeship for him, that I do not turn away when he commits even a lurid act. Love, you will remember, takes its rise in the emotions, and is unstable and wanton and capricious. But affection takes its rise in the intellect, is based upon judgment of the brain. Love is unyielding tyranny; affection is compromise. Love never compromises, no more than does the mad little mating ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... him. Teresita was sweet and winsome and maddeningly alluring; he knew it, he felt it still. Indeed, he was made to realize it every time the whim seized her to punish Jack by smiling upon Dade. But she was as capricious as beauty usually is, and he knew that also; and after being used several times as a club with which to beat Jack into proper humility (and always seeing very clearly that he was merely the club and nothing more) he had almost reached the point where he ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... the French as a stock for large Vinifera cions, the size of the vine giving an opportunity for making a good graft. In the South, where the variety originated, Cunningham is not largely grown, as there are several other varieties of its type superior in fruit and vine. The vine is a capricious grower and is particular as to soil and climate. The grapes make a deep yellow wine of a very good quality but have little value as table-grapes. Cunningham originated with Jacob Cunningham, Prince Edward ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... most closely bound up. She has left it all to the dressmaker and to me. If poor Hartright had been the baronet, and the husband of her father's choice, how differently she would have behaved! How anxious and capricious she would have been, and what a hard task the best of dressmakers would have ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... dear wife, that I was right,' he said at last. 'Fortune is so capricious, you can never count on her. Run after her, and she is sure to fly from you; stay still, and she is sure ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... of the Italian; the forbidding Haughtiness of the German; the saturnine Gloominess of the Flandrican, nor the sordid Parsimony of the Dutchman: In short, they are neither whimsical, splenetic, sullen or capricious:—And, as for Cunning, Craft, or Dissimulation, these are such sorry Guests as never found Shelter in the generous Breast of an Irish Noble or Gentleman; so that, if we consider this Country, with regard to its military Fame, constitutional Wisdom, Learning, Arts, Improvements, ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... unoccupied tract of land, which the people of the neighborhood called the "plain," a small but very bright light was seen describing the most capricious evolutions. It moved here and there without any apparent aim, tracing the most inexplicable zigzags, sometimes sinking to the earth, sometimes rising to a height of four or five feet, at others remaining quite motionless, and the next second flying off like a ball. In ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... ask me if I can forget that I offered you my lips? No. Nor do I wish to. Why did I permit you to kiss me? I do not know. I could not analyze the impulse if I tried. Monsieur, I am a woman who demands much from those who serve her. I am capricious; my moods vary; I am unfamiliar with sentiment; I hate oftener than I love. Listen. There is a canker in my heart, made there by vanity. When it heals—well—mayhap you will find the woman you desire. Mind you, I make no promises. Follow me, if you will, but have patience; love me if ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... the only word that can in anyway describe her. As regarded her appearances in society, her acceptance of invitations, etc., she was usually regarded as capricious, to a fault. But this was as it appeared to those with whom she had to do. She had been known to refuse a banquet at the table of a prince, yet eat a dish of macaroni with a peasant, or boiled chestnuts with a ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... information, has drawn a very good picture of the position of the "roi des halles," the "king of the markets," in regard to Colbert and Louis XIV. Colbert wished to direct all the manoeuvres of the fleet from his study, while it was commanded by the naval grandmaster in the capricious manner which might be expected from his factious character and love of bluster (Eugene Sue, vol. i., 'Pieces Justificatives'). In 1699 Louis XIV sent the Duc de Beaufort to the relief of Candia, which the Turks were besieging. Seven hours after his ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... other lonely places. He was once found hiding in an empty tomb, which had been left open. His aversion to certain colors is remarkable. Generally speaking, he prefers bright tints to darker ones, but his likes and dislikes are capricious, and with regard to some colors his antipathy amounts to positive horror. Some shades have such an effect upon him that he cannot remain in the room with them, and if he meets any one whose dress has any of that particular color he will turn away or retreat so as to avoid passing that person. ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... till the following day that M. de Barrel succeeded in getting these orders revoked—that is to say, he obtained M. Notting's release from confinement; for Dupas would not be satisfied until he heard that the Senator had suffered at least the commencement of the punishment to which his capricious ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to the brink of the fall, is separated into half a dozen distorted channels which have zig-zagged their passage through the cement formation, working it into spires, pinnacles, towers and many other capricious objects. Many of these are of faultless symmetry, resembling the minaret of a mosque; others are so grotesque as to provoke merriment as well as wonder. One of this latter character we named "The Devil's Hoof," from its ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... her sister Anne, Countess of Sunderland, exercised, on no occasion for evil, on every occasion for a good purpose. Of the society of this excellent woman, who had devoted herself since his return to dull the edge of political asperity, and to control the capricious temper of her mother, Marlborough was likewise deprived. After bearing with Christian fortitude a painful and lingering illness, she was attacked, in the beginning of April, 1716, with a pleurisy, against which her enfeebled constitution proved unable to oppose itself, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... serious trees seem to love me, even as I love them. It is a savage, lonely, but not unhappy life I lead—far better for a man like me than servitude here, or degradation at the north. I have one faithful human friend at least. Cudjo, cunning and capricious as he seems, is ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... the cavalry crossed the river under shell fire directed on the bridge, and were massed at Fort Wylie, near Colenso. I rode along the railway line to watch the action from one of the low kopjes. A capricious shell fire annoyed the whole army as it sheltered behind the rocky hills, and an unceasing stream of stretchers from the front bore true witness to the serious nature of the conflict, for this was the third ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... nearest to the front of the house on the right-hand side of the landing. Capricious chance had deserted her already. The lock was turned. She tried the door opposite, on her left hand. The boots ranged symmetrically in a row, and the razors on the dressing-table, told her at once that she had not found the right room yet. She returned to the ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... reference to this idea of the supposed spirits of the elements, that the White Lady of Avenel is represented as acting a varying, capricious, and inconsistent part in the pages assigned to her in the narrative; manifesting interest and attachment to the family with whom her destinies are associated, but evincing whim, and even a species of malevolence, towards other ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... been disappointed in your marriage, I hear; but that need not make you as downcast as this. A woman as capricious as Miss Leighton might easily imagine she was too ill to go through the ceremony to-day. But she must have repented of her folly by this time, and in a week will reward you as your patience deserves. But what ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... Covenanters prove incontestably that those long-tried men and women submitted with unexampled patience for full eight-and-twenty years to the spoiling of their goods and the ruin of their prospects; but when it came to be a question of submission to the capricious will of the King or loyalty to Jesus Christ, thousands of them chose the latter alternative, and many hundreds sealed their testimony with ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... character, whose wrath they would deprecate, and whose doubtful favour they would propitiate on their own behalf. Even when they express their persuasion of their own interest in "special grace," it is more in the spirit of men who are conscious of being the favoured objects of capricious tyranny, than of that serene and hopeful and cheering confidence which inspires the devout heart, when it contemplates through a happier medium the beneficent and universal Father. Nor is this unnatural. The moral character of the Deity, as misrepresented by Calvinism, both unsettles all our ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... a hill-oasis, bleak mountains rising up on all sides save the south. There, where the two highest ranges converge from east and west, where the broad waterway of the Oued Baiesh has in olden days, when it wandered with less capricious flow, carved itself a channel through the opening—there, at the very narrowest point—sits the oasis. A tangle of palms that sweep southward in a radiant trail of green, the crenellated walls of the Kasbah gleaming through ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... 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. I was introduced to Anne (HEINEMANN) when she was fifteen, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... narrow disposition, which ran like veins abnormally distended over nearly all his habits of life, he could, and did at times, do liberal things. But even in such things he was capricious and eccentric; as when a highly esteemed Quaker, named Coates, asked him one day to make a donation to the Pennsylvania Hospital. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... serious check to emigration to Canada that it has never been renewed to the same extent since that time. Besides the chance of a check to emigration generally, the influx of strangers is often extremely capricious in the direction it takes, flowing one year into one particular locality, and afterwards into another. Both these results, neither of which was foreseen by any one, unfortunately for me, ensued just at that time. It seemed natural that emigrants should flow into a fertile ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... see any mark." This was Miss Grahame, examining the last trick. She put the ace, face down, before this capricious whist-player, who, however, adhered to her statement, saying incorrigibly:—"Well, look ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of the illustrious clients who crossed our humble threshold in Baker Street. Holmes, however, like all great artists, lived for his art's sake, and, save in the case of the Duke of Holdernesse, I have seldom known him claim any large reward for his inestimable services. So unworldly was he—or so capricious—that he frequently refused his help to the powerful and wealthy where the problem made no appeal to his sympathies, while he would devote weeks of most intense application to the affairs of some humble client whose case presented those ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shells falling at this corner as a concrete instance of what was happening at a dozen other points along the road. The fire of the German batteries was as capricious as the play of a search-light; one week, the corner and three or four other points would catch it, the next week the corner and another set of localities. And there were periods, sometimes ten days to two weeks long, ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... phenomena. No doubt, for all these little wills to constitute a "willed order," they must have accepted the direction of a higher will. But, on looking closely at them, we see that that is just what they do: our own will is there, which objectifies itself in each of these capricious wills in turn, and takes good care not to connect the same with the same, nor to permit the effect to be proportional to the cause—in fact makes one simple intention hover over the whole of the elementary volitions. ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... a muffled tone, she requested the baron to take her back to the tent, but while fulfilling her wish he wondered at the long strides of the capricious young lady at his side, and the mortifying inattention with which she received ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... procure nominations for the foundation. It was originally intended for the sons of poor and deserving clerics and laics, but many of the noble governors of the Institution, with an enlarged and rather capricious benevolence, selected all sorts of objects for their bounty. To get an education for nothing, and a future livelihood and profession assured, was so excellent a scheme that some of the richest people did not disdain it; and not only great ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... presented by the world's conceptions of Godhead, and the reality as unveiled in Christ! On the one hand you have gods lustful, selfish, passionate, capricious, cruel, angry, vile; or gods remote, indifferent, not only passionless, but heartless, inexorable, unapproachable, whom no man can know, whom no man can love, whom no man can trust. On the other hand, if you look at Christ's tears as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... had brought me into a strange old haunted forest, and that I had thrown myself down to rest at the gnarled mossy root of a great oak-tree, while all about me was nought but fantastic shapes and capricious groups of gold-green bole and bough, wondrous alleys ending in mysterious coverts, and green lanes of exquisite turf that seemed to have been laid down in expectation of some milk-white queen or goddess ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... frequently that, living on the same floor, we saw much of each other. Parent and child were often in great need,—lacking even fuel or food. Of course I assisted them to the utmost of my scanty means Much as I was fascinated by Louise Duval, I was not blind to great defects in her character. She was capricious, vain, aware of her beauty, and sighing for the pleasures or the gauds beyond her reach. I knew that she did not love me,—there was little, indeed, to captivate her fancy in a poor, thread-bare medical student,—and yet I fondly imagined that my own persevering devotion ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... until Oleron himself knew her? Lovely radiant creations are not thrown off like How-d'ye-do's. The men to whom it is committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit that, ever eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does not slacken. Let Oleron but hunt this Huntress a little longer... he would have her sparkling and panting in his arms yet.... Oh no: they were very far from the truth ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... fate capricious, And curse you duly, Yet now he deems your wiles delicious,— You perfect, truly! Pyrrha, your love's a treacherous ocean; He'll soon fall in there! Then shall I gloat on his commotion, ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this world was ruled by capricious and unworthy despots, and the next world was gloomy with terrors and almost unlighted by hopes. Such had become the popular mythology in its later day, and as contrasted with this the view and temper of Lucretius are rational and manly. His message went far beyond a negation; ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... stroke her brown hair and joke with her about her fits of good and ill humour. Sidney knew well enough what was in his friend's mind, and, though with no sense of constraint, he felt that this handsome, keen-eyed, capricious girl was destined to be his wife. He liked Clara; she always attracted him and interested him; but her faults were too obvious to escape any eye, and the older she grew, the more was he impressed and troubled by them. The thought of Clara became a preoccupation, and with the love ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... power of removal by the President was further maintained by arguments drawn from the danger of the abuse of the power; from the supposed tendency of an exposure of public officers to capricious removal to impair the efficiency of the civil service; from the alleged injustice and hardship of displacing incumbents dependent upon their official stations without sufficient consideration; from a supposed want of responsibility on the part of the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... where he smoked his most excellent tobacco in his best pipe, Selkirk smilingly contemplated the capricious bounds, the riotous sports of his cats and kids, their graceful postures, their fraternal combats, in which sheathed claws and the inoffensive horn were the only weapons used ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... apartments, which none may enter without permission, I shall tell Boges to keep you twelve days in confinement. Remember this, thoughtless child, and tell our mother, Bartja and I are coming to visit her. Now give me a kiss. You will not? We shall see, capricious little one!" And so saying the king sprang towards his refractory little sister, and seizing both her hands in one of his own, bent back her charming head with the other and kissed her in spite of her resistance. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... though free-hearted and reckless of expenditure, she had always enough for the present, and "a shot in the locker," to serve while he was tossing upon the main. But alas! she had occasion too soon to deplore the capricious uncertainty ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... danger from covetousness; the seven, a prison, and danger from the opposite sex; the six, competence by hard-working industry; the five, a happy but NOT wealthy marriage; the four, danger of misfortunes caused by inconstancy or capricious temper; the ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... is young, volatile, capricious, but generous as the day. Be open with her; tell her why you leave Oakhurst and how impossible ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... last few days Bruce had been greatly depressed, his temper more variable than ever, and he had managed to collect a quite extraordinary number of entirely new imaginary illnesses. He was very capricious about them and never carried one completely through, but abandoned it almost as soon as he had proved to Edith that he really had the symptoms. Until she was convinced he never gave it up; but the moment she appeared suitably anxious about one disease he adopted ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... certain period of life, but not when a youth is entering it, and rather looking out for some object whose affection may dignify him in his own eyes, than stooping to one who looks up to him for such distinction. Hence, though there can be no rule in so capricious a passion, early love is frequently ambitious in choosing its object; or, which comes to the same, selects her (as in the case of Saint Cecilia aforesaid) from a situation that gives fair scope for LE BEAU IDEAL, which the reality of intimate and familiar life rather tends to limit and ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... and, we suppose, always will be, capricious. Its uncertainty of character—in the Levant, as in the Atlantic, in days of old as now, was always the same—smiling to-day; frowning to-morrow; playful as a lamb one day; raging like ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... trodden so unworthily? Will they be taught these nice discriminations between wealth and no wealth? Must they, too, meet a struggling gentility with a haughty, overbearing carriage, and elbow out less independent aspirants, whom some capricious fortune has brought within their contact? Does one little star in the vault above shine less brightly or twinkle less gladly because myriads of others do likewise? After all, what vainglory need there be in accidents of birth ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... capricious to the last, died at Sompting in 1881, within a year of ninety. His body was removed to Gotha for cremation, and his ashes lie beside Shelley's ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... is one exception to all this in Moses' life. It stands out the more strikingly that it is an exception; the one exception of a very long line. Moses asked repeatedly for one thing. It was not given him. God is not capricious nor arbitrary. There must be a reason. There is. And it is fairly luminous ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... of sighting a problematical steamer could not bear calm examination. On the side where we were we had enough wind, at least from time to time, to struggle on toward the south. Enough, at least, to keep hope alive. But suppose that I had used those capricious gusts of wind to sail away to the westward, into some region where there was not a breath of air for days on end, what then? Perhaps my appalling vision of a ship floating with a dead crew would become a reality for the discovery weeks afterward ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... point of fact they will clearly illustrate the diversion of the tendency to rise, spoken of in the Report before alluded to, as resulting in ascending columns and sheets, between which wind flaws, capricious in their direction and intensity, and often amounting to sharp squalls, mark out the course of their feeders and the indraft of cooler air from a distance to supply their void. Hourly observations, with especial reference ...
— The Hurricane Guide - Being An Attempt To Connect The Rotary Gale Or Revolving - Storm With Atmospheric Waves. • William Radcliff Birt
... all old roads loved to do; ascend it, and bid the many-isled vision, in all its greatest glory, farewell. Thence upwards prevails the spirit of the mountains. The lake is felt to belong to them—to be subjected to their will—and that is capricious; for sometimes they suddenly blacken it when at its brightest, and sometimes when its gloom is like that of the grave, as if at their biding, all is light. We cannot help attributing the "skyey influences" which occasion ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... its name like a coward, throws itself into the Meuse near Rotterdam; the other still called the Rhine, but with the ridiculous surname of "curved," reaches Utrecht with difficulty, where for the fourth time it again divides; capricious as an old man in his dotage. One part, denying its old name, drags itself as far as Muiden, where it falls into the Zuyder-Zee; the other, with the name of Old Rhine, or simply the Old, flows slowly to the city of Leyden, whose streets it ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... are often owing to the irritation of undigested food in the intestinal canal. Attacks of indigestion are also known to produce temporary amaurosis [blindness], double vision, strabismus, and even hemiplegia. Nausea, and a diminished or capricious appetite, are often prominent symptoms of early pregnancy, induced by the peculiar condition of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... Who's just in her hey-day, And full of all mischief, I ween; So teasing! so pleasing! Capricious! delicious! And you know ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... not have preserved from death a man stricken with an ordinary illness, and that man one whom He seemed to have dearly loved, was an innuendo that the power possessed by Jesus was after all limited, and of uncertain or capricious operation. This manifestation of malignant unbelief caused Jesus again to groan with sorrow ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... began to read the argument of her advent. It was Dorothy's defense against him, and in its kind an insult. Mrs. Hanway-Harley also became more and more instructed in this love-match so near her heart, and those difficulties which the capricious coldness of Dorothy arranged for its discouragement. The placidity of Mrs. Hanway-Harley was becoming ruffled; the hour was drawing on apace when she would make clear her position. She would issue those commands which were to fix the attitude of Dorothy ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... people in Europe." Near Kirkmichael there was a fountain dedicated to St. Michael, and once celebrated for its cures. "Many a patient have its waters restored to health, and many more have attested the efficacy of their virtues. But, as the presiding power is sometimes capricious, and apt to desert his charge, it now lies neglected, choked with weeds, unhonored ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... feet. "Beautiful being," he cried, "if thou wilt but deign to accept all the devotion of my heart and soul— after Hastur be served—it is thine forever. But, alas! thou art capricious and wayward. Before to-morrow's sun I may lose thee again. Promise, I beseech thee, that however in my ignorance I may offend, thou wilt forgive ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... great Romantic period of 1798-1830 was done for it by itself, and in some cases by its greatest practitioners, not by its immediate successors. The philosophic as well as poetical intuition of Coleridge; the marvellous if capricious sympathy and the more marvellous phrase of Lamb; the massive and masculine if not always quite trustworthy or well-governed intellect of Hazlitt, had left no likes behind. Two survivors of this great race, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... ventosity beneath the sky. This will help to spread the philosophic reputation of this eccentric book. Oh yes; go on. He who cries "vermin powder," is more advanced than those who occupy themselves with Nature, seeing that she is a proud jade and a capricious one, and only allows herself to be seen at certain times. Do you understand? So in all languages does she belong to the feminine gender, being a thing essentially changeable and ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... faithful rebuke of every form of wrong, but in their tender humanity for the poor, the slaves, the victims of oppression, in their universal philanthropy, and in their precepts of patience under suffering, forbearance, forgiveness, and returning good for evil. Epictetus, the deformed slave of a capricious and cruel master, beaten and crippled in mere wantonness, enfranchised in his latter years, only to be driven into exile and to sound the lowest depths of poverty, exhibited a type of heroic virtue which has hardly been equalled, perhaps never transcended ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... insolently; she could efface nothing, and he—he would forget it! Indeed, it would have been a fine bit of folly to embarrass himself with this sort of mistress, who would eat into his artist life with the capricious teeth ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... that you should think that," John Saltram said gravely. "Yet you may be mistaken. A woman's love is such a capricious thing, and so often bestowed upon the least deserving amongst ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... self-reliant, we are, therefore, irreligiously defiant. The freer a people is, the nearer it is to God. The more subjective it is, through acquired self-rule, the more will it harmonize with the high objectivity of absolute truth and justice. For having thrown off the capricious secondary rule of man, we shall not be the less, but the more, under the steadfast, primary rule of God; for having broken the force of human, fallible prescription, we shall the more feel and acknowledge the supremacy of flawless, divine law; for ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... on the ordinary footing. The consul-general residing with that Regency has suddenly and without cause been banished, together with all the American citizens found there. Whether this was the transitory effect of capricious despotism or the first act of predetermined hostility is not ascertained. Precautions were taken by the consul on the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... capricious! I never notice it in you young people; you do nothing but play lawn tennis, and say that romance is dead, while the Miss Alans are struggling with all the weapons of propriety against the terrible thing. 'A really comfortable pension ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... more scattered around the country, Dad seemed to be laying the groundwork for a lively roundup one of his days. He said he'd been marrying women off and on for forty years. His easy plan seemed to be just to take one that pleased his capricious temper wherever he found her, ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... themselves so famous for it. The inspired Jew had divined a dream or vision which puzzled 'the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans,' and immediately was rewarded with the greatest gift at the disposal of a capricious despot. Most of the apologetic writers on witchcraft, in particular the authors of the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' accept the assertion of the author of the history of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar was 'driven from men, and did eat grass ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... of spirit the whole day: calm, kind attentive—half matronly, and half girlish. The three who had been longest acquainted with her expected every instant to see her capricious spirit break out in some whimsical change or sportive vagary. But their fears were quite unnecessary. Undine continued as mild and gentle as an angel. The priest found it all but impossible to remove his eyes from her; and he often ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... influence was closed to him and thrown open to the children of Old France. He saw whole tracts of the magnificent country lavished upon the favorites and military followers of the court, and, through corrupt or capricious influences, the privilege of exclusive trade granted for the aggrandizement of strangers at ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... rigged up a little awning on some sticks to keep off the sun and a shower, but of course when a storm came he was obliged to retreat. He was then allowed a shelter in the bank. The dust was a nuisance, for it was difficult to predict its capricious eddies, but he learnt its laws at last, and how to choose his station so as to diminish annoyance. At first he was depressed at the thought of sitting still for so many hours with nothing to do, but he was not left to himself so much as he anticipated. Two hours on ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... D. R. and L. with marked astigmatism. Fields and color vision normal. Left pupil about twice the size of the right. (A competent oculist could find no evidence of organic affection of the nervous system correlated with this.) Shape of head normal. Bowels regular. Appetite capricious. When first seen was anemic, but later color was very good. Temperature was taken regularly, but no significant observations made. Petite, pretty features, and unusually beautiful eyes. Complaint of frontal dull headaches, ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... "that I am right in accusing you; you must admit you are changeable, capricious, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... expected that this arrangement would have satisfied the nobles of Armenia, and have given that unhappy country a prolonged period of repose. But the personal character of Artaxerxes was, unfortunately, bad; the Armenian nobles were, perhaps, capricious; and after a trial of six years it was resolved that the rule of the Arsacid monarch could not be endured, and that Varahran should be requested to make Armenia a province of his empire, and to place it under the government of a Persian satrap. The movement was resisted with ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... exist in individuals are well illustrated by those that distinguish the two sexes, and which begin to assert themselves even in the nursery, where all the children are treated alike. One notable peculiarity in the character of the woman is that she is capricious and coy, and has less straightforwardness than the man. It is the same in the female of every sex about the time of pairing, and there can be little doubt as to the origin of the peculiarity. If any race of animals existed in whom the sexual ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... physical science? Belief, certainly, just now, in the permanence of natural laws. That is taken for granted, I hold, throughout the Bible. I cannot see how our Lord's parables, drawn from the birds and the flowers, the seasons and the weather, have any logical weight, or can be considered as aught but capricious and fanciful "illustrations"—which God forbid—unless we look at them as instances of laws of the natural world, which find their analogues in the laws of the spiritual world, the kingdom of God. I cannot conceive a ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... of awful images and associations. As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and reverential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, &c., is so impressive, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... which seems full of tragic indignation and wrath, while the eyes of the handsome brown Bedouins who use it remain unsearchable in their Oriental languor and pride; Jerusalem becomes to us more and more a symbol and epitome of that which is changeless and transient, capricious and inevitable, necessary and insignificant, interesting and unsatisfying, in the unfinished tragi-comedy of human life. There are times when it fascinates us with its whirling charm. There are other times when we are glad to ride away from it, to seek communion ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Personae (1864), and The Ring and the Book (1868-9), Browning's fame spread like a prairie fire; and it was quite natural that his immense reputation was a sharp spur to composition. One is more ready to speak when one is sure of an audience. Capricious destiny, however, willed that the books which sold the fastest after publication, were, with few exceptions, the least interesting and valuable of all the poet's performances. Perhaps he did not take so much care now that his fame was assured; ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... continue. An heiress and more so if she is an only child, is generally a very disagreeable person, headstrong, capricious, and puffed up with her own importance. She is utterly spoiled by the flattery to which she has been accustomed from her earliest years, and thinks that all the world is ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... practising the violin! Half-holidays, too, in hot weather, presented many temptations. The hay was down in the park on the side nearest the house, the strawberries were at their prime; there seemed always something else to do than struggling with the capricious little instrument, whose "contrariness," as he called it, really made Basil sometimes ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... not a force of nature, blind in its strength and capricious in its power, they would not be mistrusted. As it is one can't help it. You will say that this force having been in the person of Flora de Barral captured by Anthony ... Why yes. He had dealt with her masterfully. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... silence portentous and terrifying. With dress slashed and laced, rich in jewelry and precious stones, he remained motionless, regarding the motley gathering, while an ominous half-smile played about his features. He said nothing, but his reserve was more sinister than language. Capricious, cruel was his face; in his eyes shone covert enjoyment of ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... sense atrocious. He told lies as readily as the truth. He pilfered things to eat. He cunningly found a means of opening his master's private cabinet, and of using his master's best instruments by stealth. He wasted his time in idle and capricious tasks. When the man, with all the ravity of an adult moralist, describes these misdeeds of the boy, they assume a certain ugliness of mien, and excites a strong disgust which, when the misdeeds themselves are before us in actual life, we experience in a far more considerate ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... they would say when they saw him, "Here comes the Emperor," or "Here comes Old Dutch," and very often there would be quite a little crowd round him buying his things. Uncle regarded himself always as conferring a great dignity on any one that he sold a badge to, but he was very capricious and he had certain buttons and badges that he would only part with as a very special favour and honour. Uncle got on so fast that presently Cousin Ferdinand decided that it would be all right to know him again and so he came over and made a reconciliation and took away Uncle's money,—it was ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... suddenly capricious with the caprice that is the armour of her kind, she wished to be taken home. After he had left her, he walked the streets moodily for an ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... of the Organist Ignaz Laemml, introduces himself to Dal Segno, the celebrated Italian singing-master as the Bohemian singer Howora. He obtains lessons from the capricious old man, who however fails to recognize in him the long-absent son of his old enemy. Cornelia, Dal Segno's daughter however is not so slow in recognizing the friend of her childhood, who loves her ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... of color appealing to the eye only; or it was some touch in the ice-cream, or some daring substitution of a native dish for it, as strawberry or peach shortcake; or some bold transposition in the order of the courses; or some capricious arrangement of the decoration, or the use of wild flowers, or even weeds (as meadow-rue or field-lilies), for the local florist's flowers, which set the ladies screaming at the moment and talking of it till the next lunch. This would ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... picture of good humour; but, change the scene, and Favoretta no longer appeared the same person: when alone, she was idle and spiritless; when with her maid or with her brother and sisters, pettish and capricious. Her usual play-fellow was Herbert, but their plays regularly ended in quarrels—quarrels in which both parties were commonly in the wrong, though the whole of the blame necessarily fell upon Herbert, for Herbert ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... fetichism with Christian terminology which is far from having entirely disappeared. With certain men, in fact, piety consists in making one's self right with a king more powerful than any other, but also more severe and capricious, who is called God. One proves one's loyalty to him as to other sovereigns, by putting his image more or less everywhere, and punctually paying the imposts levied by his ministers. If you are stingy, if you cheat, you run the risk of being severely chastised, but ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... himself before the capricious damsel, he was disguised as a dashing warrior, for, thought he, a young soldier might perchance touch the maiden's heart; but when he again attempted to kiss her, she pushed him back so suddenly that he stumbled and fell ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... is entering. Hush! If I could but describe her! Languorous, slender and passionate. Sleepy eyes that see everything. An indolent purposeful step. An unimaginable grace. If you were /her/ lover, my boy, you would learn how fierce love can be, how capricious and sudden, how hostile, how ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... his very green crops were neglected, till, in some islands at least, he could not feed his cattle and mules with certainty; while the sugar-cane, to which everything else had been sacrificed, proved sometimes, indeed, a valuable servant: but too often a tyrannous and capricious master. ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... own will, and, had he desired to do so, could have overcome his evil tendencies; instead, he openly countenanced and even encouraged dissoluteness and elegant debauchery, as long as he himself was not deprived of the lady upon whom his capricious fancy happened to fall. His advances were but seldom repulsed; but upon making his usual audacious proposals to the Marquise de Guercheville, he was informed that she was of too insignificant a house to ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... the schooner must have begun to realise some part, but not yet the twentieth, of the dangers that environed their doomed ship. At every lull of the capricious wind they must have seen how fast the current swept them back. Each tack was made shorter, as they saw how little it prevailed. Every moment the rising swell began to boom and foam upon another sunken reef; ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his trunk, having first loosened them with his tusks, used as crowbars. At times he fails to effect his purpose; and it is only when the ground is loose or wet, as after great rains, that he can uproot the larger kinds of mimosas. Sometimes he is capricious; and, after drawing a tree from the ground, he carries it many yards along with him, flings it to the ground, root upwards, and then leaves it, after taking a single mouthful. Destructive to the forest is the passage of ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... Although the clever manoeuvre of the German squadron had frustrated the intended attack of the English, and inflicted very considerable losses upon them, it might still be possible for Sir Percy Domvile to atone for his mistake and to bind the capricious fortune of ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... the beech-trees begin there are those curious parasites which are the only plants they tolerate, the Listera Nidus-avis, birds'-nest orchis, the Monotropa Hypopitys, or yellow birds'-nest, the beautiful lily-like Epipactis Grandiflora; while helleborine and the curious and capricious tooth-wort, Spiraea Filipendula or drop-wort, Gentiana Amarella, and other distinctive ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... meda, which is from the same root. It is a power, but opinions differ as to how it is acquired. It is certain, as I was told by an old Passamaquoddy Indian, of Sebayk, near Campobello, that some children are born m'teoulin. They manifest it, even while babes, by being capricious, eccentric, and malicious. Others acquire the art as they grow older. From all that I have heard I infer that m'teoulin takes two forms,—one of witchcraft, the other of magic. The former is innate, or may be acquired; the latter, ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to which he annexed the flattering distinction of a robe of purple and gold. But of the whole series of Roman princes in any age of the empire Hannibalianus alone was distinguished by the title of king, a name which the subjects of Tiberius would have detested as the profane and cruel insult of capricious tyranny."—Gibbon, cxviii. The editor of Bohn's edition adds in a note: "The title given to Hannibalianus did not apply to him as a Roman prince, but as king of a territory assigned to him in Asia. This territory ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." If Jesus referred to Jehovah as his Father in heaven, the standard of perfection advocated was very low, for Jehovah was, as Thomas Jefferson put it, "cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust." ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... much from illness during his life; so that there was apparently no grounds for imagining that the end was near. But at this time Goldsmith began to suffer severe fits of depression; and he grew irritable and capricious of temper—no doubt another result of failing health. He was embroiled in disputes with the booksellers; and, on one occasion, seems to have been much hurt because Johnson, who had been asked to step in as arbiter, decided ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black |
