"Caprice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... caprice seized her. "Why, I think I'll wear it!" she answered. "Just help me on with it, Oskar. And thank you so much for helping me select it. Here comes Mr. Wentworth, now. I wonder whether he will like it. I'm crazy about it. What kind of a ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... duty of Canada should be assimilated to the prohibitory rates of the United States; and very especially was I unwilling that any such arrangement should be entered into with the United States, dependent on the frail tenure of reciprocal legislation, repealable at any moment at the caprice of either party." Unless a fair treaty for a definite term of years could be obtained, he thought it better that each country should take its own course and that Canada should seek new ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... in respectable situations. The manner in which these accusations were received, evidenced such a degree of public credulity, that the impostors seem to have been convinced of their power to assail with impunity, all whom caprice or malignity might select for their victims. Such was the prevailing infatuation, that in one instance, a child of five years old was charged as an accomplice in these pretended crimes; and if the nearest relatives of the accused manifested either tenderness ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... (Bloch considers that Goethe had probably heard of the Japanese custom, Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 241.) Professor E.D. Cope ("The Marriage Problem," Open Court, Nov. 15 and 22, 1888), likewise, in order to remove matrimony from the domain of caprice and to permit full and fair trial, advocated "a system of civil marriage contracts which shall run for a definite time. These contracts should be of the same value and effect as the existing marriage contract. The time limits should be increased rapidly, so as to prevent women of mature years being ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... woman's wild caprice? 'It played with Goethe's silvered hair, And many a Holy Father's "niece" Has softly ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... too. In wars that were neither of her making nor her choosing she has borne the hardest blows—a poor little buffer state thrust in between great and truculent neighbors. To strike at one another they must strike Belgium. By the accident of geography and the caprice of boundary lines she has always been the anvil for their hammers. Jemmapes and Waterloo, to cite two especially conspicuous examples among great Continental battles, were fought on her soil. Indeed, ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... offered no remark, and again the signs and tokens of incredulity showed themselves in her face. Vacillation of purpose was not at all unusual in her experience of her master. But on this occasion she believed that his caprice of conduct was assumed for the purpose of gaining time to communicate with North Shingles, and she accordingly set her watch on him once more with doubled and ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion, which, divested of imagination, are other names for caprice and appetite. The period in our own history of the grossest degradation of the drama is the reign of Charles II, when all forms in which poetry had been accustomed to be expressed became hymns to the triumph of kingly power over liberty and virtue. Milton stood alone illuminating ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was owing to the caprice of the bride, who would not have any one in the room with her, not ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... advantages. But Horace Walpole panted with a secret desire for literary celebrity; a full sense of his distinguished rank long suppressed the desire of venturing the name he bore to the uncertain fame of an author, and the caprice of vulgar critics. At length he pretended to shun authors, and to slight the honours of authorship. The cause of this contempt has been attributed to the perpetual consideration of his rank. But was this bitter contempt of so early a date? Was Horace Walpole a Socrates before his time? ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... the book? "Ah, yes!" is the answer. "But what of that? It is only the roue Byron that speaks!" Is a kind, a generous action of the man mentioned? "Yes, yes!" comments the sage; "but only remember the atrocities of 'Don Juan:' depend on it, this, if it be true, must have been a mere freak of caprice, or perhaps a bit of vile hypocrisy." Salvation is thus shut out at either entrance: the poet damns the man, and the ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... work to restrain and subdue it, and must charge itself therewith, without intermission, and have a care of the flesh that it do not destroy faith. Therefore those persons deceive themselves, who indeed say they have faith, and imagining that this is enough, live thenceforth according to their own caprice. Where the faith is genuine it must control the body and hold it in check, so that it shall not do what it lusts after. Therefore St. Peter says that we ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... the prince a chill. If that were to happen, I don't know what I should do! I should be the most miserable of women. It would be too cruel, after all I 've suffered to make her what she is, to see the labor of years blighted by a caprice. For I can assure you, sir," Mrs. Light went on, "that if my daughter is the greatest beauty in the world, some of the credit ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... to get at her at intervals, but it was no use. "It's caprice," said I with my prick out, "you let me when I wanted it three weeks ago, why not now?" "I can't,—I dare not,—it might be certain ruin now." "What does a fellow care about ruin, when his hand is outside a cunt, ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... honor, robs you of the applause of all posterity. For, if you now pronounce, that, as my public conduct hath not been right, Ctesiphon must stand condemned it must be thought that you yourselves have acted wrong, not that you owe your present state to the caprice of fortune. But it cannot be! No, my countrymen! it cannot be you have acted wrong, in encountering danger bravely, for the liberty and the safety of all Greece. No! by those generous souls of ancient times, who were ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... quoth the Vidame. "And I have no time to lose, splitting hairs here. Set it down to what you like. Say it is a whim of mine, a fad, a caprice. Only understand that Madame de Pavannes stays. We go. And—" he added this, as a sudden thought seemed to strike him, "though I would not willingly use compulsion to a lady, I think Madame ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... years of unhappy married life Alice Benden had experienced enough of her husband's constant caprice and frequent brutality; but this new development of it astonished her. She had not supposed that he would descend so far as to take the price of innocent blood. The tone of her voice, not indignant, but simply astonished, increased Mr Benden's anger. The more gently she spoke, the ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... never-to-be-altered costume lasted less than two years, to the great relief of the courtiers, especially of those who had risked betting with the king himself on its speedy disappearance. Expressing nothing but a caprice, it had the futility and the impermanence ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... of June, 1832, a company of the National Guards from the suburbs, commanded by the Captain Fannicot, above mentioned, had itself decimated in the Rue de la Chanvrerie out of caprice and its own good pleasure. This fact, singular though it may seem, was proved at the judicial investigation opened in consequence of the insurrection of 1832. Captain Fannicot, a bold and impatient bourgeois, a sort ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... service the wearisome steps to be taken, Neither the bitter sweat of a labor that presses unceasing; Since the industrious freeman must toil as well as the servant. But 'tis to bear with the master's caprice when he censures unjustly, Or when, at variance with self, he orders now this, now the other; Bear with the petulance, too, of the mistress, easily angered, And with the rude, overbearing ways of unmannerly children. All this is hard to endure, and yet to go on with thy duties ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... capable of supporting them. The Government is anxious for that land to be occupied. The people are eager to obtain and capable of cultivating every piece of waste that can be placed at their disposal. If, instead of leaving it to individual caprice and effort to carry on in the present haphazard and redtape fashion, we are able on the one hand to combine this mass of labor, and to obtain on the other hand from Government the particulars of the land they are desirous of having ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... License is, in its limited sense, a permission or privilege granted by adequate authority, a bounded liberty; in the wider sense, license is an ignoring and defiance of all that should restrain, and a reckless doing of all that individual caprice or passion may choose to do—a base and dangerous counterfeit of freedom. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... happy. Can there be a rival? But no! we live so quietly that she has met no one who could win her affection. Why can she not turn to me? Surely, I am not so ill-favored, and though twice her age, I am still a young man. Nay, it is only a young girl's caprice. She shall yet come to ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... happy with a present enjoyment, by the very expression of devout gratitude for happiness already enjoyed, it would not be easy to estimate the amount of positive misery which must result from the mere contemplation of a tyrant in the heavens, and of a creation subject to his cruelty and caprice." [272] The above quoted line from Lucretius—To such evils could religion persuade!—is more than the exclamation of righteous indignation against the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her father, Agamemnon, at the bidding of a priest, to ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... motion to get an invitation to Almack's. Very often persons whose rank and fortunes entitled them to the entree anywhere, were excluded by the cliqueism of the Lady patronesses; for the female government of Almack's was a despotism, and subject to all the caprice of despotic rule. It is needless to say that, like every other despotism, it was not innocent ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... Greville, referring to her surroundings before she passed into his hands, "what a charming creature she would have been, if she had been blessed with the advantages of an early education, and had not been spoilt by the indulgence of every caprice." ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... only in a peculiar and restricted sense. It is not property, as your house or horse is property. It vests you with no fee in the soil; you cannot use it in any way, and in every way, and at all times, as your pleasure or caprice may dictate; you cannot put it to any common or unhallowed uses; you cannot remove it, nor injure it, nor destroy it. In short, you hold by purchase, and may sell the right to, the undisturbed possession of that little space within the church edifice which you call your pew during the hours ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... work is studied even to-day by modern craftsmen, as something very rare. On the other side of the Madonna, opposite to S. Thomas, Jacopo made a bear that is climbing a pear-tree; and with regard to this caprice, even as many things were said then, so also there could be others said by me, but I will forbear, wishing to let everyone believe and think in his own fashion in the ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... less susceptible of passion, than the higher races of men, the Hurons were notoriously dissolute, far exceeding in this respect the wandering and starving Algonquins. [ 1 ] Marriage existed among them, and polygamy was exceptional; but divorce took place at the will or caprice of either party. A practice also prevailed of temporary or experimental marriage, lasting a day, a week, or more. The seal of the compact was merely the acceptance of a gift of wampum made by the suitor to the object of his ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... German. M. Huret sang his praises in the Figaro. Even the arch-Germanophobe Monsieur Andre Tardieu was coaxed into writing a whole volume of panegyric on the irresistible Chancellor. Before the caprice of his Imperial master sent him into premature retirement, Buelow had succeeded in marshalling all the intellectual forces of the German Empire. Whilst Bismarck had frittered away his energies quarrelling with von Virchow, with Windhorst, ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... this latter those of a similar nature floating about in the invisible world, for they instinctively come to vitalise and invigorate themselves by contact with him; they radiate around him a contagious atmosphere of good or evil, and when they have left him, hover about, at the caprice of the various currents, impelling those they touch towards the goal to which they are making. They even recoil on the visible form of their generator; it is for this reason that physical is closely connected with moral well-being, and most of our diseases are nothing else than the outer expression ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... rest prosper who change the open free market into a carrion-pit of extortion and a den of robbery, where the poor are daily overcharged, new burdens and high prices are imposed, and every one uses the market according to his caprice, and is even defiant and brags as though it were his fair privilege and right to sell his goods for as high a price as he please, and no one had a right to say a word against it. We will indeed look on and let these people skin, pinch, and hoard, but we will trust in God — who will, however, ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... been married next spring, but now Edna declares that nothing would induce her to marry him. She will have it that he is jealous and monopolizing, and that he distrusts her. Over and over again she told us both that she would be the slave of no man's caprice. Of course it is all her temper; she is just mad with him because he is always in the right, and she knows how ungenerously she has acted; but bye and bye she will repent, and break her heart, for she is certainly fond of him, and then it will be ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... could be admitted into an Eastern dwelling-house, but he was not one of those who thought everything should be in keeping. He liked incongruities, being an inveterate romancist and only a bedouin by caprice. One appreciates sheets after months of pilgrimage, and one appreciates a good meal after having eaten nothing for a long while better than sand-goose roasted at the camp fire. More than the pleasure of the table was the pleasure of conversation with one speaking in his native language. Beclere's ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... the bloody and bitter and servile experience of centuries, are striving toward unity as the blessing above all others desirable, we are to allow a Union, that for almost eighty years has been the source and the safeguard of incalculable advantages, to be shattered by the caprice of a rabble that has outrun the intention of its leaders, while we are making up our minds what coercion means! Ask the first constable, and he will tell you that it is the force necessary for executing the laws. To avoid the danger of what men who have seized ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... thoughts dwell upon caprice or tricks of woman, for if you say me nay, yet will I make you my wife, and force you unto me. But you will not gainsay me, for behold you love me, so rest upon your bed for the three weeks which must pass before the caravan is ready ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... know all and to speak my heart to you. The emperor has withdrawn his consent to your marriage with Arria. I shall explain everything but the purpose of the emperor, and who may understand him? If it be due to caprice or doubt or anger he will do you justice. But if a deeper motive is in his mind ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... representative of Death. The second always represents a class; and in this figure every rank, from the very highest to the lowest, finds its type. The number of these groups or pictures varies considerably in the different dances, according to the caprice of the artist, or, perhaps, to the expense of his time and labor which he thought warranted by the payment he was to receive. But all express, with sufficient fulness, the idea that Death is the common lot of humanity, and that he enters with impartial feet the palace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... thinks less of his own work than you seem to think of it yourself, sir, for I have frequently heard him laugh at it, as a mere enlargement of the merits of the composite order. He calls it a caprice, rather than a taste: nor do I see what concern a majority, as you term them, can have with a house that does ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... havanas, and manillas; and, in an open cabinet, a collection of German pipes, of chibouques, with their amber mouth-pieces ornamented with coral, and of narghiles, with their long tubes of morocco, awaiting the caprice or the sympathy of the smokers. Albert had himself presided at the arrangement, or, rather, the symmetrical derangement, which, after coffee, the guests at a breakfast of modern days love to contemplate through the vapor that escapes from their mouths, and ascends in long and fanciful ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... daughter, by making him stand all these months like a marble statue in a block of stone. I have punished you for your ill-conduct in going away in a ship without my permission, by showing you your two children, your two jewels, killed by their own father. And I have punished the King for the caprice he took into his head, by making him first the judge of his brother, and afterwards the executioner of his children. But as I have wished only to shear and not to flay you, I desire now that all the poison may turn into sweetmeats for you. Therefore, go, take ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... confounded liars, they forced robbers to give back their stolen goods, they granted the prayers of childless wives, they brought the dying back to life. Nothing was impossible for them; in fact the Invisible reigned, and the only law was the caprice of the supernatural. In the temples the sorcerers mix themselves up with the popular idea, and scythes cut the grass without being held, brass serpents move, and one hears bronze statues laugh and wolves sing. Immediately the saints reply and overwhelm them. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... five minutes the tent would become completely filled with smoke, so that I was driven into the open air for breath. Then I would seat myself on one end of the huge log, as near the fire as possible, for it was dismally cold, but the wind seemed actuated by a kind of caprice, for in whatever direction I took my seat, just that way came the smoke and hot ashes, puffing in my face until I was nearly blinded. Neither veil nor silk handkerchief afforded an effectual protection, and I was glad when the arrival of our huntsmen, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... is that of some great unseen hand writing cabalistic sentences (perhaps the "Mene, Mene" of De Wet!), with a pen dipped in fire. This night there was scarcely a breath of wind to determine the track of the fires, or quicken their speed, and they wound and intersected at their own caprice, describing fantastic arcs and curves from which one could imagine pictures and letters. The valley gradually became full of a dull, soft glow, and overhung with red, murky smoke, through which the moon shone down with the strangest mingling of diverse lights. Very suddenly a faint breeze began ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... said Nikolai Petrovitch thickly, and his fingers again strayed over his eyebrows and forehead. 'Your suppositions are just in fact. Of course, if this girl had not deserved.... It is not a frivolous caprice. It's not easy for me to talk to you about this; but you will understand that it is difficult for her to come here, in your presence, especially the first ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... the best sense—full of sympathy, full of observation and quick understanding of others' needs and thoughts and feelings; absolutely sincere, of a constant and even temper, and a cheerfulness that never failed—the result of her splendid health; without caprice, without a spark of vanity, without selfishness of any kind—generous, open-handed, charitable to a fault; always taking the large and generous view of everything and everybody; a little impulsive perhaps, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... were able or unable to render any economic service, received an equal share with all others of the national product, and such provision was made for the needs of children as should absolutely safeguard their interests from the neglect or caprice of selfish parents. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... undulation. Wave (verb), brandish, flourish, flaunt, wigwag. Weariness, languor, lassitude, enervation, exhaustion. Wearisome, tiresome, irksome, tedious, humdrum. Wet (adjective), humid, moist, damp, dank, sodden, soggy. Wet (verb), moisten, dampen, soak, imbrue, saturate, drench Whim, caprice, vagary, fancy, freak, whimsey, crotchet. Wind, breeze, gust, blast, flaw, gale, squall, flurry. Wind, coil, twist, twine, wreathe. Winding, tortuous, serpentine, sinuous, meandering. Wonderful, marvelous, phenomenal, miraculous. Workman, laborer, artisan, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... years of age at the time of her death, left two daughters, but no son. Monsieur soon dried his tears. He sought a new marriage with his rich, renowned cousin, the Duchess of Montpensier. But she declined his offered hand. With inconceivable caprice, she was fixing her affections upon a worthless adventurer, a miserable coxcomb, the Duke de Lauzun, who was then disgracing by his presence the court of the Louvre. This singular freak, an additional evidence that there is no accounting for the vagaries of love, astonished ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... in my situation, she proposed to me to become a member of her own family. No proposal could be more acceptable. I was fully acquainted with the character of this lady, and had nothing to fear from injustice and caprice. I did not regard her with filial familiarity, but my attachment and reverence would have done honour to that relation. I performed for her the functions of a steward. Her estates in the city were ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... constitutes a nominative case absolute."—Bicknell cor. "The relative will be of that case which the verb or noun following, or the preposition going before, uses to govern:" or,—"usually governs."—Adam, Gould, et al., cor. "In the different modes of pronunciation, which habit or caprice gives rise to."—Knight cor. "By which he, or his deputy, was authorized to cut down any trees in Whittlebury forest."—Junius cor. "Wherever objects were named, in which sound, noise, or motion, was concerned, the imitation by words was abundantly ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of preference, which I have wanted The leisure to examine—learn the choice, These grounds have motived, that it may be mine. In confidence I ask it. How you startle, And weigh me with your eye! It may well be I'm the first sultan to whom this caprice, Methinks not quite unworthy of a sultan, Has yet occurred. Am I not? Speak then—Speak. Or do you, to collect yourself, desire Some moments of delay—I give them you - (Whether she's listening?—I must know of her If I've done right.) Reflect—I'll ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... of the Solar System and the heavenly forces, would have been shut up at once—as a lunatic likely to become dangerous. But suppose him to have escaped that; still, as a divine teacher, he has no liberty of caprice. He must stand to the promises of his own acts. Uttering the first truth of a science, he is pledged to the second: taking the main step, he is committed to all which follow. He is thrown at once upon the endless controversies which ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... nicely fitted cabinet, and the Chinese flower-stands were handsomely filled. The bed, the toilet-table, the wardrobe with its mirror, the little sofa, and all the lady's frippery bore the stamp of fashion or caprice. Though everything was quite third-rate as to elegance or quality, and nothing was absolutely newer than three years old, a dandy would have had no fault to find but that the taste of all this luxury was commonplace. Art, and the distinction that comes of the choice of things that taste assimilates, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of volcanic impetuosity, a puzzling mixture of contradictory emotions. In but very few of his great works is the element of humor omitted, and its expression ranges all the way from the uproariously comic to the grimly tragic. Some of his scherzos reveal the same fantastic caprice which is found in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... experience, of being on better terms with him afterwards than before, they pursued their object with obstinacy. By dint of much plotting and scheming, and by the aid of their creatures, they contrived to overcome the repugnance of M. de Mantua to Mademoiselle d'Elboeuf, which at bottom could be only caprice—her beauty, her figure, and her birth taken into account. But Mademoiselle d'Elboeuf, in her turn, was as opposed to marriage with M. de Mantua as Madame de Lesdiguieres had been. She was, however, brought round ere long, and then the consent of the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... except that it was a caprice of hers," he answered, laughing. "At first I thought she was vexed at my having gone to B a, but she denied that, and finally I believe I became angry myself, and concluded to let her have her own way. Nevertheless, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... formidable items in your bills. A long passage—one of those luxuries of rainy, muddy Paris, lined with stores that you cannot help lingering over, if for nothing else, to wonder at the fertility of the human brain when it makes itself the willing minister of human caprice—covers the whole space which the hotel stood on, and unites the Neuve St. Marc with the once ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... these enforced separations. But as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, so were divorces made acceptable to Roman ladies. No woman was disgraced by a divorce, and they who gave over their husbands at the caprice of a moment to other embraces would usually find consolation. Terentia when divorced from Cicero was at least fifty, and we are told she had the extreme honor of having married Sallust after her break with Cicero. They say that she married ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Holland. Louis would not then have fled from Amsterdam, and I should not have been compelled to unite his kingdom to mine—a measure which contributed to ruin my credit in Europe. Many other events might also have taken a different turn. Perhaps an excuse might be found for the caprice of Louis's disposition in the deplorable state of ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... received by their acquaintances at Jerusalem. Two days afterwards, the pasha of Damascus sat down before the city, with three thousand soldiers, to collect his annual tribute. The amount to be paid by each community was determined solely by his own caprice, and what he could not be induced to remit was extorted by arrest, imprisonment, and the bastinado. Many of the inhabitants fled, and the rest lived in constant terror and distress. So great was the confusion and insecurity ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... these floating prisons to keep each man's crime a secret from his fellows, so that if he chose, and the caprice of his gaolers allowed him, he could lead a new life in his adopted home, without being taunted with his former misdeeds. But, like other excellent devices, the expedient was only a nominal one, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... sell with ye, and talk with ye, I will neither eat with ye, drink with ye, nor pray with ye. They made me, without my search, a species of popular idol; they, without reason or judgement, beyond the caprice of their good pleasure, threw down the image from its pedestal; it was not broken with the fall, and they would, it seems, again ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... very singular and foreign to his general turn of mind. He seems to forget the people he sees every day, and thinks of them in a moment when they least expect it; his attention seems ill-timed; his presents are dictated by caprice and not by propriety. He gives or sends in an instant whatever comes into his head, be the value of it ever so small. A young Genevese, desirous of entering into the service of Prussia, made a personal application to him; his lordship, instead of giving him a letter, gave him ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... that popularity which he had earned during the last ten years; and the security in which he indulged hurried him on to other acts of despotism, which inevitably led to his ruin. He raised money by forced loans; he compelled the judges to expound the law according to his own prejudices or caprice; he required the former adherents of Gloucester to purchase and repurchase charters of pardon; and, that he might obtain a more plentiful harvest of fines and amercements, put at once seventeen counties out of the protection of the law, under the pretence that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... but the vivid conception which went before and compelled the simplicity, that is impressive. We believe Mr. Newman is right in refusing to sacrifice a good word because it may be pronounced mean by individual caprice, wrong in attempting the fatal impossibility of rescuing a word which to all minds alike conveys a low or ludicrous meaning, as, for example, pate, and dopper, for which he does battle doughtily. Mr. Newman is guilty of a fallacy when he brings up brick, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... believe, is the true history of that public feeling on the subject of Reform which had been ascribed to causes quite inadequate to the production of such an effect. If ever there was in the history of mankind a national sentiment which was the very opposite of a caprice, with which accident had nothing to do, which was produced by the slow, steady, certain progress of the human mind, it is the sentiment of the English people on the subject of Reform. Accidental circumstances may have brought that feeling to maturity ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... country and his vigorous counter-measures were invariably successful. The exalted part he took in the defeat of the Armada has been briefly referred to in another part of this book. He was then at the height of his imposing magnificence and fame, but owing to the caprice of his royal mistress, who had an insatiable habit of venting her Tudor temper indiscriminately, he fell under her displeasure, and for a time was in disgrace; but she soon discovered that his services, whatever his lack of success on apparently rash enterprises may ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... his mental films a succession of meteorological changes quite past computation. Yet if one were as willing to be honest as one is willing to be graphic, one would allow that probably the weather on the other side of the Atlantic was then behaving with quite as swift and reckless caprice. The difference is that at home, having one's proper business, one leaves the weather to look after its own affairs in its own way; but being cast upon the necessary idleness of sojourn abroad, one becomes critical, becomes censorious. If I were to be a little honester still, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... for a wonder, sitting idle. Sometimes he smiled to himself, and once or twice he laughed a little, but for the most part his pleasant, impassive face reflected no emotion and he sat with his useless eyes tranquilly fixed on an unseen distance. It was a fantastic caprice of the man to mock his sightlessness by a parade of light, and under the soft brilliance of a dozen electric brackets the room was as bright as day. At length he stood up and ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... natural and confiding; spoke freely of Malcolm's mania, which she seemed to accept as a hallucination or a conviction with equal cheerfulness, and, in brief, convinced the consul that her connection with the scheme was only the caprice of inexperienced and unaccustomed idleness. He left her, promising to return the next day and arrange for their ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and function. Ghosts are shadowy doubles of human beings, sometimes nameless, wandering about without definite purpose except to procure food for themselves, uncertain of temper, friendly or unfriendly according to caprice or other circumstances, able to help or to harm, and requiring men to be constantly on the alert so as not in an unguarded moment to offend them. Souls of recently deceased ancestors, more highly organized ghosts, conceived of also as attenuated bodies, have ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... me," he said, "that you're foolish enough to have any feeling beyond caprice. That would be too much!" And ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his witness, "I know that my Redeemer liveth"? Have I a calm assurance that my ruler is not caprice, and that my comings and goings are not determined by unfeeling chance? When death knocked at my door, did I know that the King had sent him? When some cherished scheme toppled into ruin, had I any thought that the Lord's hand was concerned in the shaking? Even ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... act for the caprice of which I cannot wholly account, presently let in a flood of imaginative light which was certainly hostile to my heavenly calling. My instinctive interest in geography has already been mentioned. ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... farther any day on such a business. I read the letter to him. He deems it authentic and peremptory. Our conversation naturally fell upon pieces, different sorts of pieces,—what is the best way of offering a piece; how far the caprice of managers is an obstacle in the way of a piece; how to judge of the merits of a piece; how long a piece may remain in the hands of the managers before it is acted; and my piece, and your piece, and my poor brother's piece,—my poor brother was all ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... support while they are working in their prime? Why should a doctor reach his highest professional value at seventy, and a parson be past the "dead-line" at forty-five? Here he was, subject to the caprice and ill-will of a sour and miserly Senior Warden, and a cowed and at least partially "bossed" vestry—and he, the rector, with no practical power of appeal for the enforcement of his legal contract. ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... Family, without a Scrutiny first made into the Value of it. This, I say, inclines me to distrust the Authority of the Relation: but, notwithstanding such an apparent Improbability, if we really lost such a Treasure, by whatever Fatality or Caprice of Fortune they came into such ignorant and neglectful Hands, I agree with the Relater, the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... bonds, taking away the bar, and putting a tight bracelet round one wrist, with a padlocked chain running through a loop on it. Thus we were still ironed, six together, but had a greater freedom and more scope to move. And more than this, the man who shifted the chains, whether through caprice, or perhaps because he really wished to show us what pity he might, padlocked me on to the same chain with Elzevir, saying, we were English swine and might sink or swim together. Then the hatches were put on, and there they left us in ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... shall not Sir— You, the Town, are a Monstor, made up of Contrarieties, Caprice Steers— Steers your Iudgement— Fashion and Novelty, Your Affections; Sometimes so Splenitic, as to damn a Cibber, and, even a Congreve, in the Way of the World;— And some times so good-Natured as to run in Crowds after a Queen Mab, or ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... that you have no more prejudices than I have or ever had. What I am going to ask of you is merely what I should in your place under like circumstances be willing to do, without a moment's hesitation. Indeed, I have never hesitated, at the call of destiny or as the outcome of caprice, to commit a rascality, or rather, that to which fools give such a name. Like you, Lorenzi, I have ever been ready to hazard my life for less than nothing, and to call it quits. I am ready to do so now, if my proposal ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... margin of gain is afforded which appeals to producers, sets competition working, and brings the quantity made up to the full amount which can be sold at cost. The amount of the supply itself is therefore not a matter of chance or caprice. It is natural that a certain quantity of each article should be supplied, and that the price should hover about the level which the final utility of that quantity of the good fixes. "Natural" or "normal" price is, in this view, the market price of ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... some particular flower nominated in the cantata? And how, growing older and shyer, we still preserved our youthful fancy even to the day I struck out into the world, both believing in the endurance of the tie that would draw me back? What caprice of fate is it that dispels the illusions of youth and restores them tenfold in the reflection of after years and over the gulf of the grave? Did ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... course, in its origin or its failure. There are many examples in the shorter dramatic pieces, as In a Balcony; and even in the longer dramas certain sharp climaxes of love are recorded, not as if they belonged to the drama, but as if they were distinct studies introduced by chance or caprice. In the short poems called "dramatic" these studies are numerous, and I group a few of them together according to their motives, leaving out some which I shall hereafter treat of when I come to discuss the women in Browning. Evelyn Hope has nothing ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... in 1862-'3, quite apart from the aboriginal cruelty and ferocity of the Indian nature. We all know that the carnal Indian man is a bad enough fellow at the best, and capable of dreadful crimes and misdemeanors, if only to gratify his whim or the caprice of the moment. And when he is bent upon satiating his revenge for some real or imaginary wrong, I would back him in the horrible ingenuity of his devices for torture, in the unrelenting malice of his vengeance, against any—the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... estate, and almost requiring a tutor still. And therefore men of sense prune the excessive wealth of their wives, as if it had wings that required clipping; for this same wealth implants in them luxury, caprice, and vanity, by which they are often elated and fly away altogether: but if they remain, it would be better to be bound by golden fetters, as in Ethiopia, than ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... every thoughtful man must come at times with bitterness the reflection of how utterly we are at the mercy of Fate, the victims of her every whim and caprice. We may set out with the loftiest, the sternest resolutions to steer our lives along a well-considered course, yet the slightest of fortuitous circumstances will suffice to force us into a direction that we had ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... insensible, but sure degrees, of producing lingering torments, and death in its most fearful form. Accordingly it appears that, as there were certain magicians who were as Gods dispensing benefits to those who best deserved it, so there were others, whose only principle of action was caprice, and against whose malice no innocence and no degree of virtue would prove a defence. As the former sort of magicians were styled Jogees, and were held to be the deputies and instruments of infinite goodness, so the other sort were named Ku-Jogees, that is, persons who possessing the same species ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... no matter of carnal impulse or of emotional caprice.... Love is a kind of exalted but unspecialised Telepathy;—the simplest and most universal expression of that mutual gravitation or kinship of spirits which is the foundation of the telepathic law. This is the answer to the ancient fear; the fear ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... that your evident restraint towards me, so different from what perhaps my vanity induced me to hope, has been to me a source of wonder as well as regret. May I flatter myself that this rumour has been the occasion of an apparent caprice, which I never could have imagined that Miss Etheridge would ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... her sketch, and was so far convinced of her own instincts, and the profound impression the fountain had made upon her, that she was enabled to secretly finish her interrupted sketch from memory. For Miss Charlotte Forrest was a born artist, and in no mere caprice had persuaded her father to let her adopt the profession, and accepted the drudgery of a novitiate. She looked earnestly upon this first real work of her hand and found it good! Still, it was but a pencil sketch, and wanted the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... manhood, or be reckoned among the beasts which perish; whether his bones and sinews shall be his own, or another's; whether his child shall receive the protection of its natural guardian, or be ranked among the live-stock of the estate, to be disposed of as the caprice or interest of the master may dictate; whether the sun of knowledge shall irradiate the hut of the peasant, or the murky cloud of ignorance brood darkly over it; whether "every one shall have the liberty to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience," or man assume ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... after four years spent in school I returned to find a great change in my father. He would at times be gloomy and morose for days together, keeping the whole house in a state of fear and discomfort by his sudden caprice and unreasonable exactions. This would pass away and he would appear as usual. These attacks grew to be more frequent, and at last came to be his habitual frame, and his frequent absence from home, which at first was a great sorrow to me, ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... palettes on nails, high up, and tall flowers in vases on brackets, and a life-study in plaster by one of the girls, in a corner of the room. It all had the charm of tasteful design yielding here and there to happy caprice; this mingling of the ordered and the bizarre, expressed the spirit, at once free and submissive, of the place. There had been a great deal of trouble which at times seemed out of all keeping with the end to be gained, but when it was all over, the trouble seemed nothing. The exhibition ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... barren platitude, and if he means, as I think he does, that the faculty of handling is more instinctive than that of drawing, I should like to point out to him that handling did not become a merely personal caprice until the present century. A collection of ancient pictures does not present such endless experimentation with the material as a collection of modern pictures. Rubens, Hals, Velasquez, and Gainsborough do not contradict ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... our remarks on this subject, we should remember with gentleness the order of society from which our nurses are drawn; and that those who make their duty a study, and are termed professional nurses, have much to endure from the caprice and egotism of their employers; while others are driven to the occupation from the laudable motive of feeding their own children, and who, in fulfilling that object, are too often both selfish and sensual, performing, without further ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... to arrange that little affair for me in some way by correspondence. The bulk of my communication was a eulogy of May, of youth, of flowers, of birds, all of which were saluting me as I scribbled from the beautiful little grove outside my casement. Treating the diplomate as an intimate friend—a caprice of the moment on my part—I begged him to go back with me to Marly, promising him the joys described in old Thomas Randolph's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... I that am alone to blame, I, that am guilty of love's treason; Since your sweet breast is still the same, Caprice must ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... blink, nor wink, nor inkling of my labour ever tells. It would have been better to leave unburned, and to keep undevoured, the fuel and the food of life. But if I have laboured not, only acted by some impulse, whim, caprice, or anything; or even acting not at all, only letting things float by; piled upon me commendations, bravoes, and applauses, almost work me up to tempt once again (though sick of it) the ill luck ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Hartledon, surveying the well-spread table with complacency; for it appeared to be rather more elaborately set out than usual, and no one loved good cheer better than she. When she saw two cups and saucers on the cloth instead of one, it occurred to her that Maude must, by caprice, be coming down, which she had not done of late. The dowager had arrived at midnight from Garchester, in consequence of having missed the earlier train, and found nearly all the house in retirement. She was in a furious humour, and no one had ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... repaired at pleasure. A similar neglect of uniformity may be seen in Hungary and in Eastern Europe generally, even in the present day. The roads are made by each county, and as it depends in great measure upon the caprice or convenience of the particular proprietors or townships whether there shall be a road at all, or whether it shall be at all better than a drift-way or a bridle-track, it often happens that after bowling along for a score of miles upon a highway ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... as have been inspired to compose pieces founded on Cuban music, are also included in Don Laureano's repertory. Ravina's far-famed 'Habaneros,' Gottschalk's 'Ojos Criollos' and Salaman's 'Spanish Caprice,' are favourites with a Cuban audience. But, like all Cuban and Spanish music, they require to be played with a certain local sentiment, and it is for this reason that the most accomplished European performers often fail to satisfy the Cuban musical appetite. ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... His remark was heard by the rest of the company, who were now returning, and they all insisted that he should try it. He played the allegro, and all applauded except Lundholm, who looked angry. "You think you can play anything," he said, and, taking a caprice of Paganini's from the stand, he added, "Try this." It happened that this caprice was a favourite of the young violinist, who had learned it by heart. He therefore played it in fine style, and received the hearty applause of the little audience. Lundholm, however, ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... other and kissed again. He told her that she was just as he had seen her first in her white dress, just as he had always imagined her in his days at sea, only more beautiful. She was so pale in the moonlight, and her lips so happy. She was glad that an inspired caprice had made her ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... chance do something for those who will do nothing for themselves? Dost thou think that the monotonous life I lead in the conclave and in the church was intended for a spirit like mine? Am I born for all these ridiculous and superstitious ceremonies? If nature had not by foolish caprice brought my brother into the world before me, would not all those situations, all those honours, by which men are alone enabled to perform great actions, have fallen to my lot? Does my brother know how to profit by the advantages which the Pope and blind Fortune fling in his way? Let me once ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... activity of imagination is often shifting the scenes of expectation, are frequently subject to such sallies of caprice as to make all their actions fortuitous, destroy the value of their friendship, obstruct the efficacy of their virtues, and set them below the meanest of those that persist in their resolutions, execute what they design, and perform what ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... the greatest absurdity to think they can be supplied by affected tones of voice, particular grimaces, or extravagant and unnatural modes of dress; which, far from becoming the real test of gentility, have in general no other origin than the caprice of barbers, tailors, actors, opera-dancers, milliners, fiddlers, and French servants of both sexes. I cannot help, therefore, asserting," said he, very seriously, "that this little peasant has ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... fact, quite as much anger as grief which caused her nervous paroxysms. Mabel Lawrence had never since her infancy known what it was to be thwarted in a wish. Both parents had been slaves to her slightest caprice and she had ruled the household with a look or a word. Death had suddenly deprived her of a mother who was necessary to her comfort and to whose presence she was accustomed, and her heart was full of angry resentment at the fate which had dared to take away a member of her ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... of human conduct, Duke of Otranto, and the wily artisan of the Second Restoration, was trying the fit of a court suit, in which his young and accomplished fiancee had declared her wish to have his portrait painted on porcelain. It was a caprice, a charming fancy which the Minister of Police of the Second Restoration was anxious to gratify. For that man, often compared in wiliness of intellect to a fox but whose ethical side could be worthily symbolised by nothing less emphatic than a skunk, was as much possessed by his love ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... something much more high. Thus it was an unhappy day for Marpessa when, as she sat alone by the fountain which dripped slowly down on the marble basin, and dreamed of her lover, Idas, Apollo himself, led by caprice, noiselessly walked through the rose bushes, whose warm petals dropped at his feet as he passed, and beheld a maiden more fair than the fairest flower that grew. The hum of bees, the drip, drip of the fountain, these lulled her mind and heart ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... writings; "Confessions d'un Enfant du Siecle" appeared in 1836, and is a significant confession of his life at this time; two years later he was appointed librarian at the Home Office, and in 1847 his charming comedy, "Un Caprice," was received with enthusiasm; in 1852 he was elected to the Academy, but his work was done, and already an ill-controlled indulgence in alcohol had fatally undermined his never robust strength; his writings, besides possessing ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... the card in astonishment, debating with herself what it might mean—such a formality was absurd between them. Why had not Elfrida come up at once to this third-story den of theirs she knew so well? What new preposterous caprice was this? She went down gravely, chilled; but before she reached the drawing-room door she resolved to take it another way, as a whim, as matter for scolding. After all, she was glad Elfrida had come back to her on any terms. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... there is no liberty in obedience. I tell you there is no liberty except in loyal obedience. Did you ever see a mother kept at home, a kind of prisoner, by her sick child, obeying its every wish and caprice? Will you call that mother a slave? Or is this obedience the obedience of slavery? I call it the obedience of the highest ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... report further stated that these special rates conformed to no system and varied without rule, that every application for a special rate was judged by itself and with reference to its own peculiar circumstances, and that it depended upon the judgment, or rather caprice, of the officer to whom the application was made, whether and to what extent a special rate should be granted. The reductions made to privileged merchants often amounted to more than what would be a fair profit to the dealer on the commodities shipped. The privileged dealer was thus enabled ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... Montrose had submitted with what grace he could; and the Highlanders, with some of the Irish among them, had marched off with promises of speedy return. But, at the same critical moment, Viscount Aboyne, hitherto the most faithful of the Gordons, had "taken a caprice," and gone off with his horse. He had been lured away, it was suspected, by his uncle Argyle, who had come back from his sea-voyage to Newcastle, and was busy in Berwickshire. Then Montrose's negotiations with the Border ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... forward. They instinctively rallied to uphold Law, the slow product of centuries of growth, the sheet anchor of Society in a time of change. Where could we look for solidity, or permanence, if judicial decisions could be recalled at the caprice of the mob—the hysterical, the uninstructed, the fickle mob? The opinion of one trained and honest judge outweighs the whims of ten thousand of the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... on the election; and by involving their capital in an enterprise which, without him, they would feel a gulf and a snare, he bound them to him by self-interests so firmly that there was nothing to fear from their caprice ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... tyranny of custom; it has its dangers in that, resting as it does in the last resort on the personal and the concrete, it tends in ill-balanced minds to neglect the value of ancient and dear illusions, and to degenerate into chaos and caprice. Chaos, however, is not so much to be feared as those "little provisional fools' paradises of belief" exposed so brilliantly ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... and in another minute, by a strange caprice of fate, those Edouard had come to intercept, quickened their pace to intercept him. As soon as he saw their intention he thrilled all over, but did not slacken his pace. He told Dard to take his coat and throw it over his foot, for here ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Caprice and accident may influence my choice; but the dexterity of self-love will contrive to applaud either ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... heard an Officer, ready enough to take such Advantages, urge to him, that none of all those Posts we were become Masters of, were tenable; that to offer at it would be no better than wilfully sacrificing human Lives to Caprice and Humour; and just like a Man's knocking his Head against Stone Walls, to try which was hardest. Having over-heard this Piece of Lip-Oratory, and finding by the Answer that it was too likely to prevail, and that all I was like to say would ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... son of the Old Dessauer's], in his Betrachtungen uber die Kriegskunst, is the first that alludes to it in print. (Leipzig, 1797,—page in SECOND edition, 1798, is i. 219)."] much more to Friedrich's disadvantage than it now looks when wholly seen into. Not change of plan, not ruinous caprice on Friedrich's part, as Berenhorst, Retzow and others would have it; only excess of brevity towards Moritz, and accident of the Olympian fire breaking out. Friedrich is chargeable with nothing, except perhaps (what Moritz knows the evil of) trying for a short-cut! Such is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... to death before her father's eyes: then turning fiercely upon the spectators, he said that if any of her relations wished to avenge her, they might always find him at his lodge; but the fate of the woman had not sufficient interest to excite the vengeance of the family. The caprice or the generosity of the same chief gave a very different result to a similar incident which occurred some time afterwards. Another of his wives eloped with a young man, who not being able to support her as she wished ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... showed little inclination to perform this noble act of self-effacement. On no account would {115} he have a dictator imposed upon him to shape the fortunes of Greece according to his caprice, unfettered by "military advisers of limited perceptions." If Greece was to have a dictator, the King had said long ago, he would rather be that dictator; though he had no objection to a Cabinet with a Venizelist ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... but don't read; and some neither read nor mean to read, but borrow to give you an opinion of their sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends the justice to say that there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in them. When they borrow money they never fail to make use ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... human folly has so recently allotted you. Oh! listen to me, my prince. I do not jest. I have a heart, and mind, and soul, and can read your own,—aye, even to its depths. I will not take you unready for your task, in order to cast you into the crucible of my own desires, of my caprice, or my ambition. Let it be all or nothing. You are chilled and galled, sick at heart, overcome by excess of the emotions which but one hour's liberty has produced in you. For me, that is a certain and unmistakable sign ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... supervision whatever. Provided they went to bed early, so that they used the least possible fire and light, he was satisfied. Their day was cut up into class hours, to be sure, but these were interfered with by every caprice of the principal, who sent the pupils hither and thither ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet |
