"Inconstancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or a reap-hook. With such a man there can be no peace; and, as far as children are concerned, the false accusation is nearly equal to the reality. When a wife discovers her jealousy, she merely imputes to her husband inconstancy and breach of his marriage vow; but jealousy in him imputes to her a willingness to palm a spurious offspring upon him, and upon her legitimate children, as robbers of their birthright; and, besides this, grossness, filthiness, and prostitution. She imputes to him injustice and cruelty: but ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... with what processional gravity, with what hieratic dignity, with what sacramental intentness he endows it; the eloquence of the greatest critics has here found a darling subject. But let us look a moment at certain of his symbols in the Arena at Padua, at the "Inconstancy," the "Injustice," the "Avarice," for instance. "What are the significant traits," he seems to have asked himself, "in the appearance and action of a person under the exclusive domination of one of these vices? Let me paint the person with ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... Wordsworth's defects one by one. The first, he says, is an inconstancy of style. For a moment he appears to invoke his principles: 'Wordsworth sinks too often and too abruptly to that style which I should place in the second division of language, dividing it into the three species; first, that which is peculiar to poetry; second, that which is proper ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... 1731, as an episode of the first of these, is a tale of fatal and irresistible passion. The heroine is divided in heart between her mundane tastes for luxury and her love for the Chevalier des Grieux. He, knowing her inconstancy and infirmity, yet cannot escape from the tyranny of the spell which has subdued him; his whole life is absorbed and lost in his devotion to Manon, and he is with her in the American wilds at the moment of her piteous death. The admirable literary style of Manon Lescaut is unfelt and disappears, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... us at this time that the imprudence of the Cardinal was greater than the inconstancy of the Duc d'Orleans, for a little before the Queen returned an answer to the remonstrances, he talked very roughly to the Duke in the Queen's presence, charging him with putting too much confidence in me. The very day that the Queen made the aforesaid answer ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the effect of my father's influence, but because I think my mother had some qualities from which my best are derived, and which I should like to see completely carried out in the life of a man, while I recognize in a certain vagarious tendency in my father the probable hereditary basis of the inconstancy of purpose and pursuit, which may not have deprived my life of interest to others, but which has made it comparatively barren of practical result. As a study of a characteristic phase of New England life which has now entirely disappeared, I believe that a picture of her and her ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... fact, we were richer. The captain had the usual sailor's provision of quack medicines, with which, in the usual sailor fashion, he would daily drug himself, displaying an extreme inconstancy, and flitting from Kennedy's Red Discovery to Kennedy's White, and from Hood's Sarsaparilla to Mother Seigel's Syrup. And there were, besides, some mildewed and half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over which Nares would sometimes sniff ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... night seemed as vast as all space, and as enduring as eternity itself. It's true the sea is an uncertain element, but no sailor remembers this in the presence of its bewitching power any more than a lover ever thinks of the proverbial inconstancy of women. And Mr. Powell, being young, thought naively that the captain being married, there could be no occasion for anxiety as to his condition. I suppose that to him life, perhaps not so much his ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... fantasies still. In spite of himself, the sight of the new moon, as representing one who, by her so-called inconstancy, acted up to his own idea of a migratory Well-Beloved, made him feel as if his wraith in a changed sex had suddenly looked over the horizon at him. In a crowd secretly, or in solitude boldly, he had often bowed the knee three times to this sisterly divinity on her first ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... black nurse's hand and I near a man grown, and though I had naught to hope for save a fleeting grasp of her rosy fingers and a wavering smile from her sweet lips and eyes, ere she flung the offering away with innocent inconstancy. ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... her sex with whom to gossip," he remarked, looking at Ed and deliberately closing an eye at him. "It doesn't bother a man so much—this being alone. If he is a drinking man there are the saloons; if a poet he may write wise saws concerning the inconstancy of women; he may punch cows, another man's head—or run a newspaper. In any case his mind ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... character and my feeling are wholly different from yours. My conscience is less tender, less trembling than yours. To become a Lutheran does not appear to me a crime, not even a fault, more particularly as this change is not the result of fickleness or inconstancy, but ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... agreed, Sir George Templemore," resumed Eve, "though we might differ as to the cause. The inconstancy of which you speak, is more connected with moral than physical causes, perhaps, and we, of this region, might claim an exemption from some of them. But, Mrs. Bloomfield is to be distinguished from her European rivals, by a frame so singularly feminine as to appear fragile, a ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... to temperate force: but it seems force was liberty, and much good may it do the French with being delivered from every thing but violence!—which I believe they will soon taste pro and con.! You may make me smile by desiring me to continue my affection. Have I so much time left for inconstancy? For threescore years and ten I have not been very fickle in my friendship: in all these years I never found such a pair as you and your sister. Should I meet with a superior pair,-but they must not be deficient in any one of the qualities which I find in you two,-why, Perhaps, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... when old—when hungry than when our appetite is satisfied—in the night than in the day—when peevish than when cheerful. Thus, varying every hour, by a thousand other circumstances, which keep us in a state of perpetual inconstancy and instability." Every day may be seen children, who, to a certain age—display a great deal of ingenuity, a strong aptitude for the sciences, who finish by falling into stupidity. Others may be observed, who, during their infancy, have shown dispositions but little favourable to improvement, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... the end of the year 1773. The rich and vast province of Orenbourg was inhabited by a number of tribes, half civilized, who had just recognized the sovereignty of the Russian Czars. Their continual revolts, their impatience of law and civilized life, their inconstancy and cruelty, demanded on the part of the government a constant watchfulness to reduce them to obedience. Fortresses had been erected in favorable places, and Cossacks, the former possessors of the shores ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... a remarkable Cornish tale of a nymph or mermaiden, who thus vanished, leaving a daughter who loved to linger on the beach rather than sport with other children. By and by she had a lover, but no sooner did he show tokens of inconstancy, than the mother came up from the sea and put him to death, when the daughter pined away and died. Her name was Selina, which gives the tale a modern aspect, and makes us wonder if the old tradition can have been modified by some report of ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... transformed into traitors and rebels; lovers forsworn; do not Christians renounce their baptism and abjure their faith; and is not friendship become a cloak to conceal the informer and assassin? Whom shall we acquit of inconstancy, if either Eustace or De Vallance are false? How shall we depicture fidelity and honour if they dwell not in the open front of heroic candour, or the mild suavity of undeviating rectitude? Away!—the report of Williams ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... have also to be thankful that the fault has not been on our side." Miss Altifiorla had almost brought herself to believe that the man had made love to her, and proposed to her, that she in a moment of weakness had accepted him, and that she now had been luckily saved by his inconstancy. ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... although disguised as a shepherdess, stands out in the midst of all other women, an imperial queen! a queen of beauty, grace, and fascination! This charming, innocent, and modest young woman belongs to me; she is my wife; and I have your inconstancy to thank you for this rare gem. Oh, madame, I have indeed reason to forgive you for the past, to be grateful to you as long as I live. But for you I should never have married the Princess Wilhelmina. What no menaces, no entreaties, no commands of the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... one would ever think of inquiring, into the truth. They thus went on day after day, muttering, complaining, and consulting together; and though the admiral was not fully aware of the extent of their cabals, he was not entirely without apprehensions of their inconstancy in the present trying situation, and of their evil intentions towards him. He therefore exerted himself to the utmost to quiet their apprehensions and to suppress their evil design, sometimes using fair ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... lovable woman whom he had ever known. But when she played this role of a feminine providence, who was apparently free from the ordinary weaknesses of her sex, when she carefully repressed every emotion of jealousy at the sight of his inconstancy, she was not free from a selfish motive. She still hoped that some day he would grow weary of pursuing the blue will-o'-the-wisps of fleeting sham loves; he would at last long to escape from the ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... surrounded by seven former husbands, and there being hardly any difference between legitimacy and illegitimacy. Another old writer, Rev. S. Gobat, describes the Abyssinians as light-minded, having nothing constant but inconstancy itself. A more recent writer, J. Hotten (133-35), explains, in the following sentence, a fact which has often ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... but myself," said Eugene. "It is all with myself. I will take the blame of it all, sweet," and he smoothed her hair and kissed her and held her close and tried to comfort her; and it seemed to him that he could indeed take all the blame of her inconstancy and distrust, and could even bear his self-reproach for her sake, so much he ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that is generally a charm sufficient to turn the scale in one's favour. I had been loved by Marcellus. Antony said he loved me when he pledged to me his faith. Perhaps he did for a time; a new handsome woman might, from his natural inconstancy, make him forget an old attachment. He was but too amiable. His very vices had charms beyond other men's virtues. Such vivacity! such fire! such a towering pride! He seemed made by nature to command, to govern the world; to govern it with such ease that ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... is brave and generous, but of an Humour so uneasy and inconstant, that the victory over his Heart is as soon lost as won; a Slave that can add little to the Triumph of the Conqueror: but inconstancy's the Sin of all Mankind, therefore I'm resolv'd that nothing but Gold ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... great importance to impress upon savage minds the sanctity of an oath, by some particular and extraordinary circumstances. They would not have recourse to the black stones, upon small or common occasions, and when they had established their faith by this tremendous sanction, inconstancy and treachery were ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... which governed her after-life. She arrived in her new kingdom young, hopeful, and happy—young, and her youth was blighted by neglect; hopeful, and her hopes were crushed by unkindness; happy, and her happiness was marred by inconstancy and insult. Her woman-nature, plastic as it might have been under more fortunate circumstances, became indurated to harshness; and it is not they who strive to work upon the most solid marble who should complain if the ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... romance called Women, by the Rev. C.R. Maturin. An Irishman, made up of contradictions and improbabilities. He is in love with Zaira, a brilliant Italian, and also with her unknown daughter, called Eva Wentworth, a model of purity. Both women are blighted by his inconstancy. Eva dies, but Zaira lives to see De Courcy perish ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the inconstancy and unkindness of a lover, I hope, a true and plain relation of my misfortunes may be of use and warning to credulous maids, never to put too much ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy,[1] and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. Her mind being now as depraved, as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. An example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant. The Hebrew is represented at breakfast with his mistress; but, having come earlier than was expected, the favourite has ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... to a long and unsuccessful opposition) would now scrutinize our conduct with unusual severity,—that the very vicissitudes and shiftings of ministerial measures, instead of convicting their authors of inconstancy and want of system, would be taken as an occasion of charging us with a predetermined discontent which nothing could satisfy, whilst we accused every measure of vigor as cruel and every proposal of lenity as weak and irresolute. The public, he said, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the second. We determine the dates of those that have occurred in the early times of history, and find calculation and history in harmony. Anomalies and perturbations in the planets have been over and over again observed; but these, instead of demonstrating any inconstancy on the part of natural law, have invariably been reduced to consequences of that law. Instead of referring the perturbations of Uranus to any interference on the part of the Author of nature with the law of gravitation, the question which the astronomer proposed ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... feeling resentment on account of his want of fidelity, I was rather disposed to rejoice at it. I could appreciate his want of merit, and his unfitness to be the husband of such a woman as Grace, even at my early age; but, alas! I could not appreciate the effects of his inconstancy on a heart like that of my sister. Could I have felt as easy on the subject of Mr. Andrew Drewett, and of my own precise position in society, I should have cared very little, just then, ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... then. The serenity of the peaceful night seemed as vast as all space, and as enduring as eternity itself. It's true the sea is an uncertain element, but no sailor remembers this in the presence of its bewitching power any more than a lover ever thinks of the proverbial inconstancy of women. And Mr Powell, being young, thought naively that the captain being married, there could be no occasion for anxiety as to his condition. I suppose that to him life, perhaps not so much his own as that of others, was ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of our late solemn confession of sinnes, and engagement unto duties, sealed with the renewing of the Covenant and the Oath of God; Which some men have so far already forgotten, as to return with the dogge to the vomit, and with the sow to the puddle: And many signes of inconstancy and levity do appear among all sorts and ranks of persons, who seem to want nothing but a sutable tentation to draw them away from their stedfastnesse; Our Army is not yet sufficiently purged, but there be still in it Malignant and scandalous men, whose fidelity and constancy, as ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... that departed souls dwell among the caves and rocks of the cliffs, and that the echoes often heard there are their voices. Ruskin suggests that the cause of the Greeks surrounding the lower world residence of Persephone with poplar groves was that "the frailness, fragility, and inconstancy of the leafage of the poplar tree resembled the fancied ghost people." We can very easily imagine how, in the breeze at the entrance ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... takes a special interest in all its love affairs. She knows of every courtship that is going on; every love-lorn damsel is sure to find a patient listener and sage adviser in her ladyship. She takes great pains to reconcile all love quarrels, and should any faithless swain persist in his inconstancy, he is sure to draw on himself the ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... decree and will of God alone that each thing should be what it is, for otherwise God would not be the cause of all things. It is also admitted that all God's decrees were decreed by God Himself from all eternity, for otherwise imperfection and inconstancy would be proved against Him. But since in eternity there is no when nor before nor after, it follows from the perfection of God alone that He neither can decree nor could ever have decreed anything ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... brimming water-course. The conversion of Java to the materialistic creed for which she forsook the subtleties of an impersonal Buddhism, though shallow was complete, and the doctrine of impermanence, inculcated by the discarded faith, continued an essential factor in spiritual development, for the inconstancy of the national mind only found a temporary halting-place in each successive creed which arrested it. The seed was sown, the bud opened, and the flower faded, with incredible rapidity, but the growth while it lasted, showed ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... died an exclusive, matter-of-fact, joyless death, even as she had lived. Ben came to the funeral. He called on Hattie the next day. Inconstancy was not one of his weaknesses, and the veil of her Commencement beauty had clung to her through these many years, in her old lover's eyes. He was again impetuous and offended every conservative ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... Inconstancy of False Religion, 34 Fruitfulness of True Piety, 34 Fruits of the True and False Professor contrasted, 35 Fruit-bearing the test of Christian Character, 36 The Fruits of the Spirit, 36 Love, as in the Experience of David, 37 Manifested in ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... their character explains the inconstancy and fickleness exhibited by the Christianized Manbos at the beginning of their conversion. These were due to the call of the forest hailing them back to their old haunts. These characteristics will explain also a host of anomalies that are ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... her from Edinburgh. The Cuif held forth upon the great event every night when he came over to hold the tails of Meg's cows. Jock Forrest still went out, saying nothing, whenever the Cuif came in, which the Cuif took to be a good sign. Only Ebie Fairrish, struck to the heart by the inconstancy of Jess, removed at the November term back again to the "laigh end" of the parish, and there plunged madly into flirtations with several of his old sweethearts. He is reported to have found in numbers the anodyne for the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... himself! He felt sure that many, even of the best of men, might have erred in the same way; but this was an argument which would have much more weight with his own sex than with women. Men know their own frailties, and are therefore charitable; women consider inconstancy to be the one unpardonable sin, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... the sages upon the vicissitudes of fortune and the inconstancy of human affairs would prove unfounded if this expedition had terminated profitably and happily; but the ordering of events is inevitable, and those who tear up the roots, sometimes find sweet liquorice and sometimes bitter cockle. Woe, however, to Pariza! ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... is a slight consciousness of mental processes, but the mind rarely watches itself work; the neurasthenic is unable to concentrate, and gets charged with inconstancy and shiftlessness. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... twa excellent similes, I vow, Mr. Egerton.— Excellent! for they illustrate the vagaries and inconstancy of my dissipated heart as exactly as if you had meant to describe it. ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... appearance, but a tempest was in his brain and freezing cold in his heart. What he had just seen and comprehended seemed to him incomprehensible. Was it doubt, inconstancy, betrayal? ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... upon their liberties in the moment when the nation was intoxicated and dazzled with their genius, their prowess, and success; but a sudden revulsion of popular feeling, and an explosion of popular indignation, would overturn the one, and ostracism expel the other. Thus while inconstancy, and turbulence, and faction seem to have been inseparable from the democratic spirit, the Athenians were certainly constant in their love of liberty, faithful in their affection for their country,[33] and invariable ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... poets, were especially calculated to foment his own rapidly developing fancy. He fell in love, was accepted, and ultimately cast off—incidents which afforded him opportunities of celebrating the charms, and deploring the inconstancy of the fair. He composed a poem, of fifteen hundred lines, entitled "Mahomet, or the Hegira," and performed the extraordinary mental effort of retaining the whole on his memory, at the period being ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... moments pass on pinions fleet, And youth in beauty effloresces, The joy that finds itself complete In honeyed words and soft caresses, Alas! an index seems to be Of perilous inconstancy. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... have gained from their intercourse a certainty of power and promise of greater power. Silly people fill the world with lamentation over human inconstancy; but if we follow love, we cannot cling to the beloved. We must love onward, and only when our friends go before us can we be true both to friendship and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... with those of Settle. But the meretricious ornaments which he himself had introduced were within the reach of the meanest capacity; and, having been among the first to debauch the taste of the public, it was retributive justice that he should experience their inconstancy. Indeed Dryden seems himself to admit, that the principal difference between his heroic plays and "The Empress of Morocco," was, that the former were good sense, that looked like nonsense, and the latter nonsense, which yet ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... it be A dashing damsel, gay and pert, A pattern of inconstancy; Or selfish, mercenary flirt? Quoth ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... was," quoth Ganymede, "that they were women's sons, and took that fault of their mother, for if man had grown from man, as Adam did from the earth, men had never been troubled with inconstancy." ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... seasons cease to change, Inconstancy forgets to range; When lavish May no more shall bloom, Nor gardens yield a rich perfume; When Nature from her sphere shall start, I'll tear my ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... in Rome, 2; attitude of the government toward, 11; evidence of the graffiti on, 12; difficulties and inconstancy of Christian converts, 14; mixed marriages, 15; friendly relations between pagans and Christians, 16; military service under the Empire, 18; the gradual change under Constantine, 20; spread of Christianity under Gregory the Great, 228; the persecutions under Nero ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... name of Gibbon was become as notorious as that of Middleton, it was industriously whispered at Oxford that the historian had formerly "turned Papist;" my character stood exposed to the reproach of inconstancy.' Gibbon's Misc. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... to love of Viola without any other reason than the discovery of Viola's sex. In the same way Romeo turns from Rosaline to Juliet at first sight. This trait has been praised by Coleridge and others as showing singular knowledge of a young man's character, but I should rather say that inconstancy was a characteristic of sensuality and belonged to Shakespeare himself, for Orsino, like Romeo, has no reason to change his love; and the curious part of the matter is that Shakespeare does not seem to think that the quick change in Orsino requires any explanation ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... works. Therefore, it comes about that, as Paul says, they run uncertainly, beating the air. Their hearts are unstable and wavering before God, and they are changeable and fickle in all their ways, James 1, 8. Since they are aimless and inconstant at heart, this will appear likewise as inconstancy in regard to works and doctrines. They undertake now this and now that; they cannot be quiet nor refrain from factional strife. Thus they miss their aim or else remove the goal, and cannot but deviate from the true and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... interested in politics, and many of Balzac's political ideas are set forth in his letters to her when he was a candidate for the post of deputy. She reproached him for a mobility of ideas, an inconstancy of resolution, and feared that the influence of the Duchesse de Castries had not been good for him. To this last accusation, he replied that she was unjust, and that he would never be sold to a ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... observed in Hungary." Ye poor malicious blood-suckers of the virtuous! Ye shall not be able to hurt a hair of my head. Ye cannot injure the man who has sixty years lived in honour. I will not, in my old age, bring upon myself the reproach of inconstancy, treachery, or desire of revenge. I will betray no political secrets: I wish not to injure those by whom I have been injured.—Such acts I will never commit. I never yet descended to the office of spy, nor will ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... him I have gained that, during your captivity, you were much with Miss Montgomerie, (he pronounced the name with an involuntary shuddering), all I ask, therefore, is whether your wretchedness proceeds from the rejection of your suit, or from any levity or inconstancy you ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... what that meant—nothing. It was a case of my subconscious mind pointing out that the available present was more desirable than the unavailable not-present. At first I resented my apparent inconstancy in forming an esper projection of Marian Harrison when I was trying to project my blank telepathic inadequacy to Catherine. But as the weeks faded into the past, the shock and the frustration began to pale and I found ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... to inconstancy in her nature—a nature, to those who contemplate it from a standpoint beyond the influence of that inconstancy, the most exquisite of all in its plasticity and ready sympathies. Partly, too, Stephen's failure to make his hold on her heart a permanent one was his too timid habit ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... said that the power of preventing bad laws includes that of preventing good ones, and may be used to the one purpose as well as to the other. But this objection will have little weight with those who can properly estimate the mischiefs of that inconstancy and mutability in the laws which form the greatest blemish in the character and genius of our governments." (Federalist, No. 73.) And again in No. 62 of the same work he observes: "The facility and excess of law-making seem ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Sir John Hawkins, he procured the establishment of the Chest at Chatham for the relief of aged or sick seamen, out of their own voluntary contributions. The faults ascribed to him are ambition, inconstancy in friendship, and too ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... of Valerian was distinguished by a levity and inconstancy ill suited to the gravity of the Roman Censor. In the first part of his reign, he surpassed in clemency those princes who had been suspected of an attachment to the Christian faith. In the last three years and a half, listening to the insinuations of a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... expresses his plaintive moans, his remorse, and his overpowering longing for his enchanted queen. The stone is moved by the magic of his love: the beloved one is released. Fairyland with all its marvels opens its portals, and the mortal learns that, owing to his former inconstancy, Ada has lost the right to become his wife on earth, but that her beloved, through his great and magic power, has earned the right to live for ever ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... honour heads the mutineers within; honour, whom my late mighty fears had almost famish'd and brought to nothing, warm'd and reviv'd by thy new-protested flames, makes war against almighty love! and I, who but now nobly resolv'd for love, by an inconstancy natural to my sex, or rather my fears, am turn'd over to honour's side: so the despairing man stands on the river's bank, design'd to plunge into the rapid stream, 'till coward-fear seizing his timorous soul, he views around once more the flowery plains, and ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... X-rays was followed closely by that of the N-rays, by the two Curies, husband and wife. This further discovery was a still greater surprise to the scientific world than the former one; for by its aid was established nothing less than the inconstancy of matter. Hitherto science, dealing not with knowledge, but with opinions, had held the belief that the atom is the ultimate form of matter and that no chemical or physical force can divide it, a ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... city of Paris came to his relief with a donation of twenty thousand livres. He had even sold his vessels of gold and silver, for the sum of two hundred thousand livres. Being thus relieved, with the inconstancy of men, he began to think of another wife, and in September, 1514, the magistrates of the city went out in state to meet the ambassadors of England who had arrived to negotiate a match with the Princess Mary, daughter of their sovereign. For this fickleness ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... Others, and those very frequent, smoothed the cadence, or regulated the measure; on these I have not exercised the same rigour; if only a word was transposed, or a particle inserted or omitted, I have sometimes suffered the line to stand; for the inconstancy of the copies is such, as that some liberties may be easily permitted. But this practice I have not suffered to proceed far, having restored the primitive diction wherever it could for any reason ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... thus upborne by Him who is alike her Prophet, Priest, and King, for love is strong as death; and jealousy, or ardent love, retentive as the grave. Not that she doubts the constancy of her Beloved, but that she has learned, alas! the inconstancy of her own heart; and she would be bound to the heart and arm of her Beloved as with chains and settings of gold, ever the emblem of divinity. Thus the Psalmist prayed, "Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... a perpetual inconstancy which causes our heart to attach itself to all the qualities of the person we love in succession, sometimes giving the preference to one, sometimes to another. This constancy is merely inconstancy fixed, and limited ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... absence, though so short, You, Rosette, had changed your mind: Learning your inconstancy, I, another mistress find. Never more shall charms so free Gain ascendancy o'er me. We shall see, oh light Rosette, Which ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... evil of the materialists is inconsiderable besides the mischief effected and occasioned by the sentimental philosophy of Sterne and his numerous imitators. The vilest appetites and the most remorseless inconstancy towards their objects, acquired the titles of the "heart," "the irresistible feelings," "the too-tender sensibility"; and if the frosts of prudence, the icy chain of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... by us both in some measure. It will be very important to missionaries to be men of calmness and evenness of temper, and rather inclined to suffer hardships than to court the favour of men, and such who will be indefatigably employed in the work set before them, an inconstancy of mind being quite injurious ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... still as simply arranged as possible, had an indescribable air of care and taste that added to the effect of grace and pleasantness, and made Rachel feel convinced in a moment that the wonder would have been not in constancy to such a creature but in inconstancy. The notion that any one could turn from that brilliant, beaming, refined face to her own, struck her with a sudden humiliation. There was plenty of conversation, and her voice was not immediately wanted; indeed, she hardly attended to what was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be love? Her tenacity and reserve were ill matched with Fina's native inconstancy of purpose and childish incontinence of speech; her pride of race resented her father's adoption of a stranger into the penetralia of the family; and to share the name she had inherited from her mother with the daughter of that mother's rival ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... lightest presumption of his wife's fidelity would have been more delicious than the absolute restoration of all his jewels, and who, indeed, had with the utmost difficulty been brought to entertain the slightest suspicion of her inconstancy, immediately abandoned all distrust of both her and his friend, whose sincerity (luckily for Wild's purpose) seemed to him to depend on the same evidence. He then embraced our hero, who had in his countenance all the symptoms of the deepest concern, ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... with the failure of the Commercial Bank, which occurred about that time, but no one who knew Sir Alexander Galt would waste time in seeking to account for his actions, which often could only be accounted for by his constitutional inconstancy. In saying this I do not for a moment wish to ascribe any sordid or unworthy motive to Galt, who was a man of large and generous mind and of high honour. He was, however, never a party man. He could not be brought to understand the necessity for deferring sometimes to his leader. That spirit ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... Polonia, yes, for he Who betrays inconstancy Has no reason for complaining That another love is gaining On his own; that fault will be Ever punished so. For who Proudly soars that doth not fall? Therefore 'tis that I forestall Philip's love ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Men, but without any manner of Scruple break off when there was no Provocation. Her Ill-Nature and Vanity made my Friend very easily Proof against the Charms of her Wit and Conversation; but her beauteous Form, instead of being blemished by her Falshood and Inconstancy, every Day increased upon him, and she had new Attractions every time he saw her. When she observed WILL. irrevocably her Slave, she began to use him as such, and after many Steps towards such a Cruelty, she at last utterly banished him. The ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... ever in the wrong? Does virtue ne'er seduce the venal tongue? Yes; if well brib'd, for virtue's self they fight; Still in the wrong, tho' champions for the right: Whoe'er their crimes for interest only quit, Sin on in virtue, and good deeds commit. Nought but inconstancy Britannia meets, And broken faith in their abandon'd sheets; From the same hand how various is the page! What civil war their brother pamphlets wage! Tracts battle tracts, self-contradictions glare; ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... enveloped with spray, but never after was a trace of the canoe or its passengers discovered. Yet the Indians imagine that often in the morning a voice is heard singing a mournful song along the edge of the fall, and that it dwells on the inconstancy of a husband. They assert that sometimes a white dove is seen hovering over the neighbouring sprays; at other times, Ampato Sapa wanders in her proper person near the spot, with her children wrapped in skins, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... virtue's sake alone such men love them Determined to cultivate ability rather than scrupulousness Disenchantment which follows possession Have not that pleasure, it is useless to incur the penalties Inconstancy of heart is the special attribute of man Knew her danger, and, unlike most of them, she did not love it Put herself on good terms with God, in case He should exist Two persons who desired neither to remember ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... discover their retreat. Howbeit I pretend not hereby to banish Shipwrecks from Romanzes, I approve of them in the works of others, and make use of them in mine; I know likewise, that the Sea is the Scene most proper to make great changes in, and that some have named it the Theatre of inconstancy; but as all excess is vicious, I have made use of it but moderately, for to conserve true resembling: Now the same design is the cause also, that my Heros is not oppressed with such a prodigious quantity of accidents, as arrive unto some others, for that according to my sense, the ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... for the formation, of a whole. Oberon is desirous of relieving the lovers from their perplexities, but greatly adds to them through the mistakes of his minister, till he at last comes really to the aid of their fruitless amorous pain, their inconstancy and jealousy, and restores fidelity to its old rights. The extremes of fanciful and vulgar are united when the enchanted Titania awakes and falls in love with a coarse mechanic with an ass's head, who represents, or rather disfigures, the part of a tragical lover. The droll wonder of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... his character. Towards the close of his career he had the mortification to endure the loss of his foreign possessions, having been baffled in every attempt to defend them. He felt, too, the decay of his authority at home, from the inconstancy and discontents of his subjects. Though his earlier years had been spent amid the din and tumult of war and the business of the camp, yet was he, at this period, almost wholly given up to pleasure and the grossest of sensual indulgences. Alice Pierce, to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... nativity, and taking up his abode with the savages, on the first year behaved himself so among them as to draw from them their inexpressible esteem. He married a woman of the nation, and repudiating their example, did not change his wife, by which he taught his wild neighbors that God did not love inconstancy. By this woman, his first and only wife, he had one son and two daughters, the latter were afterwards married, "very handsomely, to Frenchmen, and had good dowries." Of the son there is preserved a single touching incident. In person the baron was strikingly handsome, a fine form, a well featured ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... first lodging in their house. I was often invited there and consulted in their affairs, wherein I sometimes was of service. I piti'd poor Miss Read's unfortunate situation, who was generally dejected, seldom chearful, and avoided company. I considered my giddiness and inconstancy when in London as in a great degree the cause of her unhappiness, tho' the mother was good enough to think the fault more her own than mine, as she had prevented our marrying before I went thither, and persuaded the other match in my absence. ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... quality of the mind, by which some happy characters are enabled to avoid the most distant approaches to any thing like affectation, inconstancy, or design, in their intercourse with the world. It is much more easily understood, however than defined; and consists not in a specific tone of the voice, movement of the body, or mode imposed by custom, but is the natural ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... contiguity and succession; which I have already regarded as imperfect and unsatisfactory. Shall the despair of success make me assert, that I am here possest of an idea, which is not preceded by any similar impression? This would be too strong a proof of levity and inconstancy; since the contrary principle has been already so firmly established, as to admit of no farther doubt; at least, till we have more fully ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... examined by the true rules of criticism, no such contradiction will be found. Farther, if, as I have advanced in years, conversation with able men, and a more perfect examination, have made me change my sentiments, I ought not on that account to be accused of inconstancy, no more than St. Augustin, who retracted many things." He again touches on this point in his Votum pro pace[633]. "If in my youth, says he, having less knowledge than now, the prejudices of education, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... had begun more for the sake of honour, and instinctive clinging to hereditary faith, without the sense of heroism or enthusiasm for martyrdom which sustained Estelle, and rather with the feeling that inconstancy to his faith and his Lord would be base and disloyal. But, as the long days rolled on, if the future of toil and dreary misery developed itself before him, the sense of personal love and aid towards the Lord and Master whom he served grew upon him. Neither the gazelle-eyed ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that the British tar would scarcely be the "soaring soul" that he is were it not for the influence—not always a beneficial influence, by the way, of the softer sex. And here, a word for him with special respect to what people are pleased to call his inconstancy. With all his vagaries, and from the very nature of his calling he has many, I think there are few other professions which would bear weighing in the balance with his and not be found as wanting in this ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... for he is an abstract, with the lines somewhat subdued by the advance of civilisation, of the national character. For them his vices, his treachery, his heartlessness, have nothing repellent; nor does his inconstancy rob him of feminine sympathy. He is, indeed, a far greater favourite with the ladies than John Bull. The Englishman they respect, they know he will make a good husband and a model father; but he is too monogamous to ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... become a woman-hater. On Sundays he went into the suburbs to fish along with his colleague Lapersonne, wearing the tall hat that never left him since he had become a Minister. And both of them, forgetting the fish, complained of the inconstancy of women and mingled ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... so much probability in the circumstances, that they are always eloquently proper. He does everything, as it were, the reverse of other poets; in the air and sea, which have been in all times the emblems of change and the similitudes of inconstancy, he has discovered the very principles of permanency. The ocean in his view, not by its vastness, its unfathomable depths, and its limitless extent, becomes an image of deity, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... leave even external forms obscure, degrades them before he can feel them to be demoniacal; so also John Bunyan: both of them, I think, having firmer faith than Milton's in their own creations, and deeper insight into the nature of sin. Milton makes his fiends too noble, and misses the foulness, inconstancy, and fury of wickedness. His Satan possesses some virtues, not the less virtues for being applied to evil purpose. Courage, resolution, patience, deliberation in council, this latter being eminently a wise and holy character, as opposed to the "Insania" of excessive ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... of Tivoli is one of the largest and liveliest in all Europe. In costume, there is such a thing as individuality; in manners, somewhat of independence. The Danish nature appears to be more pliant and flexible than the Swedish, but I cannot judge whether the charge of inconstancy and dissimulation, which I have heard brought against it, is just. With regard to morals, Copenhagen is said to ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... knows they do, amazingly fast," he returned, with a sigh and a far-away look. "But what you say applies to all men. If you ever marry you must run the risk of inconstancy in the man you accept. I am at least old enough and experienced enough to value a good woman when I have found one, especially when she does not make her goodness a bore. And you—you have inspired me with something different ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... insistent visitor. Certainly they impressed Burke with a belief in their sincere but secret sympathy with the royalist cause. The three men also agreed in suspecting Leopold, though Burke tried to prove that his treachery was not premeditated, but sprang from "some complexional inconstancy." Pitt and Grenville, knowing the doggedness with which the Emperor pushed towards his goal, amidst many a shift and turn, evidently were ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... thought that it might be the subject of the consultation. The suspicion, however, if there had ever been any, quickly vanished. The symptoms entirely changed twelve hours later, and the next day the sick man felt pains quite the opposite of those which had previously distressed him. This very inconstancy of the distemper served to puzzle the doctor's conclusions. Sauvresy, in these latter days, had scarcely suffered at all, he said, and had slept well at night; but he had, at times, strange and often distressing sensations. He was evidently failing ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... surprised—forced in some measure from the husband she had just married—ashamed to meet her former lover, to whom, doubtless, she had made many a vow of love, and ne'er a true one—what wonder that, unsupported by her bridegroom, she should have changed her tone, and thrown all the blame of her own inconstancy on the absent swain?—A woman, at a pinch so critical, will make the most improbable excuse, rather than be found ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Perfidiousness in her Sisters, fill'd Liamil with Rage. As she had imagined the King's Heart to be her Property by right of Prescription, she bitterly reproach'd him for his Inconstancy. But her Reign was over, for Zeokinizul dismissed her coldly, without so much as even debating the Matter with her, and within a few Hours, he notified to her by one of his Eunuchs, that she should immediately leave the Court. This was a Step of Lenertoula's Policy. This ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... night, about a lady of the place, between her various lovers, occasioned a midnight discharge of pistols, but nobody wounded. Great scandal, however—planted by her lover—to be thrashed by her husband, for inconstancy to her regular Servente, who is coming home post about it, and she herself retired in confusion into the country, although it is the acme of the opera season. All the women furious against her (she herself having been censorious) for being found out. She is a pretty woman—a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... "Oh! the inconstancy, the fancifulness of these English," he generalized, with suppressed passion, right into my face. "I don't know what's worse, their fury or their pity. The childishness of it! The childishness.... Do you imagine, Senor, that Manuel or the Juez O'Brien ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... third day his spirits unaccountably began to rise. As a matter of fact youthful spirits must seek their natural level no less surely than water, but Stonor was angry with himself, accusing himself of lightheadedness, inconstancy and what not. His spirits continued to rise just the same. There was a delight in providing everything possible for her comfort. The mere thought of going away with her, under any circumstances ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner |
