"Wilful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not compromised. He will himself bring the Count's answer. In the presence of that saintly man, and in mine, out of respect for your own dignity, you must read it, or you will be no better than a wilful, passionate child. You must make this sacrifice to the world, to the law, ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... when once he had begun to define and explain, he was carried further and further along that perilous way without being fully conscious of whither he was tending. Yet his persistent accumulation of harsh and dread traits seems wilful in its nature; he bases his description, no doubt, on hints from Scripture, but he pays no attention to any that do not fall in with his own narrow and gloomy conception. Satan is permitted to rise from the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... mother sees her own youthful shallowness, frivolity, untruthfulness, deceit and parsimony in her daughter, for whose morality and religion she would willingly give up her own soul. And then our children, who were to be our staff and our crown, so early take their own so wilful and so unfilial way in life. They betake themselves, for no reason so much as just for intended disobedience and impudent independence, to other pursuits and pleasures, to other political and ecclesiastical parties than we have ever gone with. And when it is too ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... jingle of spur, And the fluttering sash of the queen went wild In the wind, and the proud king glanced at her As one at a wilful child—, And as knight and lady away they flew, And the banners flapped, and the falcon too, And the lances flashed and the bugle blew, He ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... is in a death-like repose, no living thing save a few innocent pigeons, half wild; but there has been a tremendous confusion, a wild and wilful uproar of rending, and a crash of headlong havoc, every angle is surrounded with desolation, and the whole is a monument of state vengeance and destruction. But here is the land—the home of my fathers—which ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... distinguished by the University, entered for the general examinations, and finally pass through the Ecole Normale to a professorship. Alas! at school Paul took prizes for nothing but gymnastics and fencing, and distinguished himself chiefly by a wilful and obstinate perversity, which covered a practical turn of mind and a precocious understanding of the world. Careful of his dress and his appearance, he never went for a walk without the hope, of which he made no secret to his ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... present know their duties of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps than I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class, which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the less terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit is there to that of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... at the face of the world sees evidence on all sides of the presence of something blighting and poisonous, something diabolic and malign in the way things are now organised. He traces the cause of this to the wilful evil in the heart of man, and he finds the only cure for it in ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... beyond the reach of the very general reader. The notable point is that he refrains from passing judgment on the entire body of French poetry because it is unlike English poetry. He is not infected with the wilful provincialism of Lamb nor with the spirit of John Bullishness which seriously proclaims in its rivals "equally a want of books and men."[57] "We may be sure of this," says Hazlitt, "that when we see nothing but grossness and barbarism, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... in pain, and told him so, and that it wasted his spirits, and weakened him; and he confessed it did, but said, his "life could not be better spent, than in the service of his Master Jesus, who had done and suffered so much for him. But," said he, "I will not be wilful; for though my spirit be willing, yet I find my flesh is weak; and therefore Mr. Bostock shall be appointed to read prayers for me to-morrow; and I will now be only a hearer of them, till this mortal shall put on immortality." And Mr. Bostock did the next day undertake and continue this ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... priest. "Even zeal is nought without obedience. If you could serve the Church better than by going into a convent, would you be wilful?" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and said, Now, take up thy lute and sing me a song setting out my case with three damsels who hold the reins of my heart and make rest depart; and they are thyself and that wilful one and another I will not name, who hath not her like.'[FN366] So she took the lute and playing a lively measure, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... whirled away, a sad, sad moan sighed through the branches of the old Oak. 'Twas a cry of anguish for its wilful child. ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... may be negligent, foolish, and fearful; In every one of these no man is free, But that his negligence, his folly, fear, Among the infinite doings of the world, Sometime puts forth: in your affairs, my lord, If ever I were wilful-negligent, It was my folly; if industriously I play'd the fool, it was my negligence, Not weighing well the end; if ever fearful To do a thing, where I the issue doubted, Whereof the execution did ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... appeared to show as the melancholy desolation of all their cherished hopes. Hence gloom and misanthropy have become the characteristics of the age in which we live, the solace of a disappointment that unconsciously finds relief only in the wilful exaggeration of its own despair. This influence has tainted the literature of the age with the hopelessness of the minds from which it flows. Metaphysics (I ought to except sir W. Drummond's "Academical ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... services and warmest sympathies of numerous men and women who have been honorably distinguished for their intellectual attainments and moral character, must have possessed elements of truth and moral worth. A contemptuous treatment of monasticism implies either an ignorance of its real history or a wilful disregard of the deep significance ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... "Wilful trespass," wheezed Plant. "That's what, young man. His sheep grazed over our line. He's lucky that I don't have him up before the United States ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... his liberty. A description of him is with every post on the frontier. As for the Princess she is an interesting character. She was educated in this country and France. She speaks several languages. She is headstrong and wilful, and her royal guardian is only too anxious to see her married and settled down. She masquerades in men's clothes when it pleases her, she can ride a horse like a trooper, she fences and shoots, she has fought ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... to see, and pleasant; it is well On the banks of its broad river 'neath the maple trees to dwell; But the heart is very wilful, and in sorrow or in mirth, Mine will turn with sore love-longing to the land that gave me birth; And I wish that, oh but once again! my longing eyes might see The green island that lies smiling on the bosom of the sea; ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... smallest impression on the vast multitude contained in one of these flocks,—computed by Wilson to consist of more than twenty-two hundred millions,—yet to Booth the destruction seemed wasteful, wanton, and from his point of view was a wilful and barbarous murder. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... called "Christabel." It was not till after these lines were written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem recited; and the MS. of that production I never saw till very recently, by the kindness of Mr. Coleridge himself, who, I hope, is convinced that I have not been a wilful plagiarist. The original idea undoubtedly pertains to Mr. Coleridge, whose poem has been composed above fourteen years. Let me conclude by a hope that he will not longer delay the publication of a production, of which I can only ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the Hebrew law for the occasional manslayer surely casts a severe reflection on the millions who, many of them through no fault of their own, represent the submerged tenth! Let us leave for the time being the wilful criminals who are the open enemies of society to be dealt with as severely as you like by the arm of the law. Turn for a moment a pitying gaze towards those hungry destitute multitudes, who cannot it may be, plead their own ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... Minister in many respects, was a wilful, hot-headed man, who was over-fond of acting on the spur of the moment without consulting his Sovereign. His dispatches, written as they so often were in a moment of feverish enthusiasm, frequently gave offence to foreign monarchs and statesmen, and were ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... a branch, or the fruits of this wilful murder. Indeed, sins carry in them not only a curse with respect to eternity, but are also the cause of all the miseries of this life. "God turneth—a fruitful land into barrenness, for the wickedness of them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sin superior to every other, it is that of wilful and offensive war.... He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death." (A copy of this, together with the President's recent message, ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... Summer lies Adream beneath cool April skies; About her blossoms fall On her long limbs and secret eyes. Still she sleeps, virginal; Then—hark! June's clarion call! She lifts her wistful wilful eyes, Springs light afoot and away she flies. But ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... knew her own wilful heart. She had seen the world bow to every caprice of hers, but she never had one principle to guide her, except her own pleasure. She was now like a goddess of earth, fallen in an effort to reconcile impossibilities ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... poor Catholic in Ireland may be tried by twelve Percevals, and destroyed, according to the manner of that gentleman, in the name of the law, and with all the insulting forms of justice. I will not go the length of saying that deliberate and wilful injustice is done. I have no doubt that the Orange Deputy-Sheriff thinks it would be a most unpardonable breach of his duty if he did not summon a Protestant panel. I can easily believe that the Protestant panel may conduct themselves very conscientiously in hanging the gentlemen of the Crucifix; ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... Chapman, in his comedies generally, shows a kind of philosophical contempt for woman, as a frailer and flimsier, if fairer, creature than man, and he sustains his bad judgment with infinite ingenuity of wilful wit and penetration of ungracious analysis. In "The Widow's Tears" this unpoetic infidelity to the sex pervades the whole plot and incidents, as well as gives edge to many an incisive sarcasm. My sense, says Tharsalio, "tells me how short-lived widows' tears are, that their weeping is in truth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... sorry to inform you that Mr Spinney's gone—poor old man! There must be a coroner's inquest. Now, it would be as well if you were not to be found, for the verdict will be 'Wilful Murder!'" ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... longing love upties me and unties me; * Till with her honey dew of inner lip she plies me: I brought the chess board and my liefest lover plays me * With white and black,[FN197] but black cum white ne'er satisfies me: 'Twas as if King for Castle I were fain to place me * Till wilful loss of game atwixt two queens surprise me: And if I seek to read intent in eyes that eye me * Oh man! that glance askance with hint of wish ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... pre-Deuteronomic passage, Exodus xxi. 14, the use of the altar as an asylum is postulated, though denied to the wilful murderer. This is a survival of the ancient belief that the deity resided in the pillar or stone-heap, and that the fugitive was placing himself under the protection of the local numen by seeking sanctuary. From 1 Kings i. 50 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Nevertheless, darkness settled over the waters, and the "Drake" was still far in the lead. It was not until the next day that the runaway was overhauled. Upon boarding the "Drake," Jones found, to his intense indignation, that not to the revolt of the captives, but to the wilful and silly insubordination of Lieut. Simpson, the flight of the captured vessel was due. This officer, feeling himself aggrieved by something Jones had said or done, had determined to seize upon the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... sorry page of wilful neglect to one that records the grand achievement of modern antiquaries, the rescue and restoration of the beautiful specimen of Saxon architecture, the little chapel of St. Lawrence at Bradford-on-Avon. ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... sure," returned the stranger. "I am somewhat suspicious of you. But wilful woman must, I ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome
... from a wilful hand Has met unkindness; so indeed he told me, And you remember such was my report: From what has just befallen me I have cause To ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... chiefly on color, the engraver gets unavoidably embarrassed, and must be assisted by some change or exaggeration of the effect; but the more frequent case is, that the engraver's difficulties result merely from his inattention to, or wilful deviations from his original; and that the artist is obliged to assist him by such expedients as the ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... their chosen representatives. The initiative, referendum, recall, and the withholding of important subjects from the legislature's power, are among the devices intended to free the people from the machinations of their wilful representatives. ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... in a court of justice that which is not true," for the purpose of bringing discredit upon the testimony given by Mr. Adams in the same cause. But Mr. Adams says of this that he cannot bring himself to believe that Crawford has been guilty of wilful falsehood, though convicted of inaccuracy by his own words; for "ambition debauches memory itself." A little later he would have been less merciful. In some vexatious and difficult commercial negotiations which Mr. Adams was conducting with France, Crawford ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... absurd question! I would not have Edna go for worlds. Neville only said the other day how much he disliked the Grants, and how he hoped Edna kept them at a distance. I think he has heard something to Captain Grant's disadvantage; but you know how wilful she is; you might have carried your point with a little tact and finesse, but you are ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... liberals calumniated. Luckily for shrewd players, there are people to be found among the spectators who will always sustain them. Ashamed of having to defend a piece of wrong-doing, they stoutly deny it. Do not accuse them of wilful infatuation; such men have a sense of their dignity; governments set them the example of a virtue which consists in burying their dead without chanting the Misere of their defeats. If the chevalier did allow ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... Leaving that form he succeeds in regaining his status as a human being of the regenerate order. If the preceptor kills, without reason, his disciple who is even as a son to him, he has, in consequence of such a wilful act of sin on his part, to take birth as a beast of prey. That son who disregards his father and mother, O king, has to take birth, after leaving off his human form as an animal of the asinine order. Assuming the asinine form he has to live for ten ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... before? No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call; All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more. Then, if for my love, thou my love receivest, I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest; But yet be blam'd, if thou thy self deceivest By wilful taste of what thyself refusest. I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, Although thou steal thee all my poverty: And yet, love knows it is a greater grief To bear love's wrong, than hate's known injury. Lascivious grace, in whom all ill well shows, Kill me ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... the Decretals (XXII, qu. i, can. Praedicandum): "They should know that the same penance is to be enjoined for perjury as for adultery, fornication, and wilful murder and other criminal offenses." Therefore simple fornication is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the contrary was called injustice. Early ethics did not take much note of the animus of the violator of the rules. But civilization could not advance far, without the establishment of a capital distinction between the case of involuntary and that of wilful misdeed; between a merely wrong action and a guilty one. And, with increasing refinement of moral appreciation, the problem of desert, which arises out of this distinction, acquired more and more theoretical and practical importance. If life must be given for life, yet it was recognized ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... struggling, the Prophet and his two valued friends emerged and speedily found themselves in a very large hall, which was nearly full of very large powdered footmen. In the distance there was the sound of united frivolities, a band of twenty guitars thrumming a wilful seguidilla. Roses bloomed on every side, and beyond the hall they beheld a vision of illuminated vistas, down which vague figures came ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... carefully away from him on the outside. A wag would have arranged the party to suit himself, but that was beyond Ernest. He meekly sat down beside me, with a helplessness possible only to the sturdiest athlete in the room when in the hands of a fair and wilful maid. I could have come to his rescue, but deemed it wiser not to thrust him upon Dawn for the present. We had arrived very early, so there was time for conversation. Encouraged by me, Ernest leant forward and addressed a few remarks to Dawn, which she received ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... so repellent, to believe a lover guilty even of a trivial error, we may readily suppose that Lucy never for a moment admitted the supposition that Clifford had been really guilty of gross error or wilful crime. True that expressions in his letter were more than suspicious; but there is always a charm in the candour of self-condemnation. As it is difficult to believe the excellence of those who praise themselves, so it is difficult to fancy those criminal ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... authorities I have been guided by in these matters, that I may not be censured as having given way, either to a thoughtless credulity on the one hand, or, what would be a much more criminal imputation, to a wilful and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... gain was the sole or even the main cause of his decision. Had he considered that the investiture of Nicomedes would have been more acceptable to the home government, the King of Bithynia would probably have been willing to pay an adequate sum for his advocacy. He may have been guilty of a wilful blunder in alienating Phrygia at all. The senate soon discovered his and its own mistake. The disputed territory was soon seen to be worthy of Roman occupation. Strategically it was of the utmost importance for the security of the Asiatic ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... it is not already too late to appeal to the Government to extricate the Empire from the perilous position in which their wilful stupidity has placed it. The news from Bobadig is exceedingly serious. Another of the affronted mules has perished in circumstances of the foulest indignity; it only remains for the other two to die for the triumph of British statesmanship ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... up the small steamer, and towing her to a Hudson Bay Company's Post we put her "on the hard," photographed the hole, with all the splintering on the outside, and had a proper survey of the hull made by the Company's shipwright. The unanimous verdict was "wilful murder." In the fall as her own best witness, we tried to tow her to St. John's, but in a heavy breeze of wind and thick snow we lost her at sea—and with her our own case as well. The law decided that there ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... that in some minds there is a certain wilful and prejudiced self-blindness which no reasoning can overcome, and granting also that men very much preoccupied with any one pursuit (more especially a scientific one) will be apt to give but scant and divided attention to arguments upon other ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... them? I wish I was a student. I shouldn't have been given over to Aunt Jane then, or," with a rather wilful laugh, "if I had been I should have led her, ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... appropriateness. The wool stockings made them such a tight fit that they pinched considerably, but the pinching was more than compensated for by the shapely appearance of her trim little feet. Besides there was a vast amount of satisfaction to the wilful child in the mere knowledge that she ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... padded after the manner of a well-known gipsy girl who excelled in this once fashionable accomplishment. Even then a woman’s instinct impels her to guard her chest more carefully than she guards her face, and this leads to disaster. Altogether Borrow, by his wilful exaggeration, makes the reader a little sceptical about Isopel, who was really an East Anglian road-girl of the finest type, known to the Boswells, and remembered not many years ago. All that Dr. Knapp has derived ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... from her went a long way towards reassuring Angelot, who had been a little puzzled by the sudden appearance of the soldier. But he was not curious; his father was by no means in the habit of telling him everything, making indeed a thin cloud of wilful mystery about some of his doings. It had always been so; and Angelot had grown up with a certain amount of blind trust in the hand which had guided his mother and himself through the thorny ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... longed and hoped and waited in the Desert! for this she envied the red fox and the ostrich! for this her dumb lips parted, in their struggle after speech, to ask of earth and air some solace to her solitude! for this, for these, she poured out her dim life in one strong, wilful aspiration! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... for all women to engage in business, it still discriminates in their favor in many particulars. No woman can be arrested in a civil action, or held by an execution against the body, except in cases in which it is shown that she has committed "a wilful injury to person, character, or property," or has been guilty of such an evasion of duty as is equivalent to a contempt of court. Thus a woman engaged in business cannot be arrested in an action for ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... with them Islam has for centuries waged equal war, for their time was not yet come, and the mission of Mohammed was not for them. But the years of probation have expired, and the nations of the West remain in wilful darkness. They receive not the commandments of the Prophet; they drink fermented liquor, they eat the unclean beast, their worship of gold and science has become a real idolatry. Another prophet has arisen for their destruction, and Asia and ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... premised, I shall confine myself to a brief explanation of the manner in which I have endeavoured to perform my self-imposed task. For one wilful, but as I trust excusable, inaccuracy, I throw myself on the indulgence of my critics. Finding my pages already overloaded with names, and that they must consequently induce a considerable strain upon the memory of such readers as might not chance to be intimately ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... Sir, I should have some hesitation in speaking. I can only now say thus much, that I'm satisfied, he, Charles Archer, in swearing as he did, committed wilful perjury.' ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... he amended. "My wife cannot bear the sound of his name when she is weak from fasting, so we call him 'IT' at this time of the year. He carried off our eldest daughter last summer. She was proud and wilful, and would not stay by her mother's side.... She had ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... know by what witchery!" But Alison Williams, her listener, turned on her such great eyes of wilful want of comprehension, that she held ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mind, as you once proposed, what other ladies will say; but to appear as my wife ought to do. Else it would look as if what you thought of, as a means to avoid the envy of others of your sex, was a wilful slight in me, which, I hope, I never shall be guilty of; and I will shew the world, that I value you as I ought, and as if I had married the first fortune in the kingdom: And why should it not be so, when I know none of the first quality that ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... in silence; but Bob Hale assured me that it was with compressed lips, and a fixed determination to carry out the plan which had been agreed upon while the boys were watching the chase on the lake, and which had not been modified by the wilful destruction of ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... bidding William Van Beuren Portlaw of Camp Chickadee, town of Pride's Fall, Horican County, New York, to defend a suit for damages arising from trespass, tree-felling, the malicious diversion of the waters of Painted Creek, the wilful and deliberate killing of game, the flooding of wild meadow lands in contemptuous disregard of riparian rights and the drowning of certain sheep thereby, had been impending since the return from Florida to her pretty residence at Pride's Fall of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... man's self, these, I say, are the bottom of this vain persuasion, that possesseth the generality of men. Now, what it wants of knowledge, it hath of wilfulness. It is a conceit altogether void of reason, but it is so wilful and pertinacious, that it is almost utterly inconvincible, and so it puts souls in the most desperate forlorn estate that can be imagined. It makes them, as the apostle speaks, (Eph. v. 6) {GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON}{GREEK SMALL ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... and that the strain or stock common to all is scribe or (as sometimes modified) script. What does this strain signify? The idea of writing. The scribes are a writing clan. Some of them, to be sure, have strayed somewhat from the ancestral calling, for words are as wilful—or as independent—as men. Ascribe, for example, does not act like a member of the household of writers, whatever it may look like. We should have to scrutinize it carefully or consult the record for it in that verbal Who's Who, the dictionary, before we could understand how it came ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... melodious voice. Nell lay in the hammock, her hands behind her head, with rosy cheeks and arch eyes. Indeed, she looked rebellious. Certain it was, Dick reflected, that the young lady had fully recovered the wilful personality which had lain dormant for a while. Equally certain it seemed that Mercedes's earnestness was not apparently having the ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... chair in meditative ease, leaning her cheek against one hand, whose elbow the rail of the seat sustains; the other is outstretched upon her knee, nipping its forefinger upon the thumb thoughtfully, as though some firm, wilful purpose filled her brain, as it seems to set those luxurious features to a smile as if the whole woman 'would.' Upon her head is the coif, bearing in front the mystic uraeus, or twining basilisk ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... calculated effects. She was a surface, a sham, a Lorelei. Beneath that surface I could not discover anything individual at all. Fear and a grasping quality, such as God gave us all when he gave us hands; but the individual I knew, the humorous wilful Spotless Leopard was gone. Whither, I cannot imagine. An amazing disappearance. Clean out of space and time like ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... attendants, who, in their anxiety to keep him from danger, checked and interfered with his boyish wish to signalize himself by some daring deed of agility and skill, at length separated himself, except from one or two as wilful, and but little older than himself. The young lord possessed all the daring of his race, but skill and foresight he needed greatly, and dearly would he have paid for his rashness. A young and fiery bull had chanced to cross his path, and disregarding ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... moved when at parting Mrs. Usher pressed him by the hand and asked him to be gentle with her girl. There was no harm, Mrs. Usher said, in poor Vi. She was a bit wilful and wildlike; all for life was Violet—but there, she'd be as good as gold when she had a home and a kind husband and children of her own. "Mark my words," said Mrs. Usher, "once the babies come ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... when he wakes? and creep into the jaundice, By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio,— I love thee, and it is my love that speaks; There are a sort of men, whose visages Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond; And do a wilful stillness entertain, With purpose to be dressed in an opinion Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit; As who should say, I am Sir Oracle, And, when I ope my lips, let no dog bark! O, my Antonio, I do know of these, That therefore ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... so ingenious. Baumeister has fallen on those who, in place of two hymns, Delian and Pythian, to Apollo, offer us half-a-dozen fragments. By presenting an array of discordant conjectures as to the number and nature of these scraps, he demonstrates the purely wilful and arbitrary nature of the critical method employed. {16b} Thus one learned person believes in (1) two perfect little poems; (2) two larger hymns; (3) three lacerated fragments of hymns, one lacking its beginning, the other wofully deprived of its end. Another savant detects no less ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... opened to him which may lead him into regions which are at present closed to him. To accept the artistic conscience, the artistic aim, as the highest ideal of which the spirit is capable, is to be a Pharisee in art, to be self-sufficient, arrogant, limited. It is a kind of spiritual pride, a wilful deafness to more remote voices; and it is thus of all sins, the one which the artist, who lives the life of perception, whose mind must, above all things, be open and transparent, should be loth to commit. He should rather keep his inner eye—for the artist is like the ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... first wilful, had its rise in the sixteenth century, in the furious attacks of a monk of Fontevrault, Gabriel de Puy-Herbault, who seems to have drawn his conclusions concerning the author from the book, and, more especially, in the regrettable satirical epitaph of Ronsard, piqued, it is said, that ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... event of your contemplating an offer of eightpence, on no account make the tender, or show the money, until you are safely on the pavement. It is very bad policy attempting to save the fourpence. You are very much in the power of a cabman, and he considers it a kind of fee not to do you any wilful damage. Any instruction, however, in the art of getting out of a cab, is wholly unnecessary if you are going any distance, because the probability is, that you will be shot lightly out before you ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... characteristic of the frontier is evident in the accounts of these towns, such as Pynchon's in 1694, complaining of the decay of the fortifications at Hatfield, Hadley, and Springfield: "the people a little wilful. Inclined to doe when and how they please or not at all."[51:2] Saltonstall writes from Haverhill about the same time regarding his ill success in recruiting: "I will never plead for an Haverhill man more," and he begs that some meet person be sent "to tell us ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... spirits to take any shape; and not nicely attending to the question of identity, shewed from oral testimony, that they sometimes appeared as a glazed pipkin, and sometimes as the skeleton of a horse's head. The exertion of endeavouring to enlighten wilful absurdity increased the debility of De Vallance. Jobson's forebodings were turned into certainties, and he walked into the church-yard to see in what spot he should bury his master, and hoping to hear the death-watch, as a sign that he ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... poignant satire upon the wilful corruption of the stage, the degeneracy of the public taste, and the reigning follies of the British nation can scarcely be imagined than the following, which, with several more under the same signature, has appeared in a celebrated ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... of the round-house was tried but acquitted of wilful murder. [The keeper, whose name was William Bird, was tried at the Old Bailey in October, and received sentence of death; which ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... she kissed her on either side of the face; "you know, my dear Fleming, that I have to contend with both my father's lofty pride, and with my mother's high spirit—God bless them! they have left me these good qualities, having small portion to give besides, as times go—and so I am wilful and saucy; but let me remain only a week in this castle, and oh, my dear Fleming, my spirit will be as chastised ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... helped her. Instead, he left her to help herself. Gwen was wilful with all of her girl playmates, but she would agree to anything that Max proposed, so when, in the afternoon of the following day, he told her that he was going to take a long tramp, Gwen was wild to know just where he was going, ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... not teach you French, ma toute belle" she said, indicating the Abbe, by a pretty, wilful gesture; "I will teach you;—and you shall teach me English. Oh, I shall try so hard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... insisted with the utmost firmness on refraining from taking any further share in the management of the theatre, and I had most cogent reasons to bring forth in defence of my conduct. All my endeavours to set in order the wilful chaos which prevailed in the use of the costly artistic materials at the disposal of this royal institution were repeatedly thwarted, merely because I wished to introduce some method into the arrangements. In a carefully written pamphlet which, in addition to my other ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the jury deliberated in low gruff sorrowful murmurs, and after a few minutes, turned round to announce with much sadness that they could do no otherwise than return a verdict of wilful murder ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... necessary to appoint a select committee "to inquire as to the best means of preventing the destruction of the lives of infants put out to nurse for hire by their parents." "Improper and insufficient food," said the committee, "opiates, drugs, crowded rooms, bad air, want of cleanliness, and wilful neglect are sure to be followed in a few months by diarrhoea, convulsions and wasting away." These unfortunate children were nearly all illegitimate, and the mere fact of their being hand-nursed, and not breast-nursed, goes some way (according to the experience of the Foundling hospital and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... our soul acquits us. Could it do more in the scandal and the prejudice that assail us in private life? You are silent; but note how much deeper should be the comfort, how much loftier the self-esteem; for if calumny attack us in a wilful obscurity, what have we done to refute the calumny? How have we served our species? Have we 'scorned delight and loved laborious days'? Have we made the utmost of the 'talent' confided to our care? Have we done those good deeds to our race upon which we can ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... most suitable for them; and if they don't like them—if Uncle William says he can't bear the girl we have invited up to love him—that he positively hates her, we till tell him that it is only his wilful temper, and that he's got to like her because she's good for him; and don't let us have any of his fretfulness. And if Grandmamma pouts and says she won't love old man Jones merely because he's got a red nose, or a glass eye, or some silly ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... ye were talking of our medicines, or perhaps praising the Teton beasts. For the knaves love to hear their horses commended, the same as a foolish mother in the settlements is fond of hearing the praises of her wilful child. So; pat the animal and lay your hand on the gewgaws, with which the Red-skins have ornamented his mane, giving your eye as it were to one thing, and your mind to another. Listen; if matters are managed ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... probably—innocent man along with them, a shout of rage would ascend from that virtuous nation amongst whom Charlotte Winsor, the professional infant-murderess, walks a free woman, notwithstanding a jury's verdict of wilful murder and a judge's ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... the voluntary acts of his mind and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving;—the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for they do not distinguish between perception ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... assault), neglect, abandonment or exposure of the child in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health, including injury to or loss of sight, hearing or limb, or any organ of the body or any mental derangement; and the act or omission must be wilful, i.e. deliberate and intentional, and not merely accidental or inadvertent. The offence may be punished either summarily or on indictment, and the offender may be sent to penal servitude if it is shown that he was directly or indirectly interested in any sum of money payable on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... earlier period would Hungary have acted with full unanimity in so decisive a step. To have delayed it longer would not have averted Russian invasion, and would have caused deep discontent in Hungary. Nothing but the wilful disobedience of Goergey, who wasted a month at Buda at this very crisis, saved the Hapsburgs from being conquered in Vienna, before the Russian armies could possibly ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... strike vpon the earth, that Daphnes roote groan'd for Apollo's wrong: Hermophrodite wept shewers and wisht his birth had neuer bin, or that he more had clung To Salmacis, and Clitie grieued in vaine: Leueothoes wrong, the occasion of her baine, my wilful eie (this should the burthen be) Hath rob'd me of, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... wilful youth] [W: witless] Dr. Warburton confounds the time past and present. He has formerly lost his money like a wilful youth, he now borrows more in pure innocence, without disguising his former fault, or ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... forgave those that had sinned against him. If he lacked the time, were he dying, a priest might yet save him with words whispered in the ear. That was the extreme unction, hardly administrable, however, in case of wilful omission of the darun, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... take the angles out of the bough of a tree an inch thick. You may break it, but you cannot destroy its angles. That is so, no doubt, with one's racial tendencies. The girl is wilful and romantic. It will be very bad for them both if there is no love on her side. She is capable, I should ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... and porter? Surely not; for the smile breaks under the highest patronage; nay, even broad grins would have the noblest warranty, for his Grace the Duke of Wellington has pronounced rags to be the livery only of wilful idleness—has stamped on the withering brow of destitution the brand of the drunkard. Therefore, clap your hands to your pulpy sides, oh well-dressed, well-to-do London, and disdaining the pettiness of a simper, laugh an ogre's laugh at the rags of Manchester—grin ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... may happen, I accept; they are sent to try me and to purify, and come from Thee; but sin, I have no pleasure in it! Oh! when in the hour of temptation I fall away, LORD, hearken to the cry that I now raise to Thee in all sincerity; I will it not! it is not wilful! I go from Thy Presence, but, JESUS, Thou art with me! In work, in prayer, in suffering, let all be done ...
— Gold Dust - A Collection of Golden Counsels for the Sanctification of Daily Life • E. L. E. B.
... 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 home was out of doors, the cabin of Elspeth her port ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that he himself (judging from some passages in his Autobiography) hardly possesses a proper degree of pride, or the due feeling of self-respect. The Christian in the novel is the butt and laughing-stock of a proud, wilful young beauty of the name of Naomi; yet does he forsake the love of a sweet girl Lucie, to be the beaten spaniel of this Naomi. He has so little spirit as to take her money and her contempt at the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... which he had provided himself, empowering him to arrest the said Henry P. Tobias, or the person passing under that name, on two counts: First, that of seditious practices, with intent to spread treason among His Majesty's subjects, and, second, that of wilful murder on the high seas. I should say that, following my recital of the eventful cruise of the Maggie Darling, old Tom and I had been required to make sworn depositions of Tobias's share in the happenings of ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... responsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they "understood just as well, and even better, than we do now;" and twenty-one of them—a clear majority of the whole "thirty-nine"—so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross political impropriety and wilful perjury if, in their understanding, any proper division between local and Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... like a shower of gold, spangling the blue cotton frock until it appeared a more regal vesture than purple and ermine; her head was bent, her body drooped like a lily in the noonday heat, her whole attitude was soft, and forlorn and appealing, as if she, this wilful, untamed creature, subdued herself to accept a wounding decree, and bore it with all the pathos ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... been possible to predict, from the mere look with which he had risen to his feet, the kind of cross-examination in store for each witness called by the prosecution, so it was obvious now that his own witness had come forward from her own wilful perversity and in ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... blockhead!" said the carrier; "'Twixt you and us there is no barrier. Your headstrong youth and wilful heart Reduced you to a servile part; And every carrier on the road Avers your oats are ill-bestowed. But, know that you do not inherit From dam or sire any merit. We give your ancestors their due, But any ass is good ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... is very little in this world that money won't settle," he wrote to his sister; "and I anticipate that enlightened stage of our criminal code when wilful murder will be a question of pounds, shillings, and pence. I fancy it in a police report: 'The fine was immediately paid, and Mr. Greenacre left the court with his friends.' I have some invitation to go back to ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... above an allusion to the most unpleasant inquirers, those who are either on the verge of insanity or are victims of that singular malady, hypochrondriasis. A patient clearly staggering to and fro on the border line of sanity consults you. Here is a wilful, terrified being, eager to know the truth. "Am I becoming insane? Will I end in an asylum?" How can you answer? You see clearly, are sure the worst is coming. What shall you do with this morbid, ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... ascribed to the same cause. It is difficult in such instances to say with certainty whether the fish were in fault; whether there may not have been a peculiar susceptibility in the condition of the recipients; or whether the mischief may not have been occasioned by the wilful administration of poison, or its accidental occurrence in the brass cooking vessels used by the natives. The popular belief was, however, deferred to by an order passed by the Governor in Council in February, 1824, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... help me, they spake not a word; But, like dumb statues or breathing stones, Star'd each on other, and look'd deadly pale. Which when I saw, I reprehended them; And ask'd the mayor what meant this wilful silence: His answer was—the people were not us'd To be spoke to but by the recorder. Then he was urg'd to tell my tale again,— "Thus saith the duke, thus hath the duke inferr'd;" But nothing spoke in warrant from himself. When ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... change in the law, transportation only; unless, indeed, loss of human life occur in consequence of the felonious act; in which case, the English law construes the offence to be wilful murder, although the incendiary may not have intended the death or injury ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440 - Volume 17, New Series, June 5, 1852 • Various
... unquestionably true that it was a difficult task to keep under control the spirit of rebellion of that period, as it is to-day. Doubtless those in authority were, in their judgment, compelled to rule with a heavy hand in order to keep in check wilful ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... character, and sometimes hereditary disadvantages which it is hard to battle with. But patient forbearance and gentle treatment and time do so much for them. And often a kind farmer has asked to be allowed to keep, and "try again" the wilful little fellow who has tried to run away or proved ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... see. A fellow who is for ever putting his hindering spoke in the wheel of others, is safe to get hindering spokes put into his. I am not a pattern model," comically added John Massingbird; "but I have never done wilful injury to others, and my worst enemy (if I possess one) can't ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... was a wilful thing, and though her name was Ruth, she objected to following the example of her namesake in ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan
... suddenly, making a wilful anti-climax to her speech, and, as Stair knew very well, not in the least finishing as she had meant to. But her housekeeping pride was aroused. He must eat. She would heap his plate. She had heard him late last night moving about. Had he not slept well? That was why she had ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... place, a wilful interpretation, and secondly, it is absurd; for what sort of flesh and blood would incorruptible flesh and blood be? As well might we speak of marble flesh and blood. But in Taylor's mind, as seen throughout, the logician was predominant over ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... education is settled so far as Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and passed long ago. But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience—incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... visit the west, and he improved the opportunity to satisfy himself that the charge committed to him by the dying father was well cared for. On his arrival he was not pleased with the relations subsisting between Fanny Jane and her aunt. Mrs. Grant declared that the child was stubborn, wilful, and disobedient, needing frequent and severe punishment. On the other hand, Fanny said that her aunt abused her; worked her "almost to death;" did not give her good things to eat, and whipped her when she "did ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... all, the girl of his boyhood's dream. His memory had been accurate enough with the passengers in the train. There was no confusion there. But this gentle married woman, who sang to her own accompaniment at her father's request, was not the mischievous, wilful creature who had teased and tortured his heart in years gone by, and had helped him construct the sprites and train and star-trips. It was, surely, the other daughter who had played that delicious role. Yet, either his memory was ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... "abuse is one thing and perversion of fact is another. When you stated, in answer to my sermon, that I knew the identity of the anonymous writer, you made a mistake,—I do not accuse you of wilful falsehood,—and stated what was untrue. I am to this day quite ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich |
