"Inconstant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... carefully to study how to behave and how to pick out subjects of conversation, as if he were courting the most inconstant of women. It is for him that a philosopher has made the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Christ? A divine Savior betrayed and abandoned by cowardly disciples, persecuted by pontiffs and hypocritical priests, ridiculed and mocked in the palace of Herod by impious courtiers, placed upon a level with Barabbas, and to whom Barabbas is preferred by a blind and inconstant people, exposed to the insults of libertinism, and treated as a mock king by a troop of soldiers equally barbarous and insolent; in fine, crucified by merciless executioners! Behold, in a few words, what is most humiliating ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... of "The Inconstant," when Bisarre is first addressed by Mirabel and Duretete, Miss Farren, playing Bisarre, held a book in her hand, which she affected to have been reading before she spoke. Mrs. Jordan, we are told, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... found sufficiently true to themselves to be true to an old idea. It is no proof of an inconstant mind, but exactly the opposite, when the idea will not bear close comparison with the reality, and the contrast is a fatal shock to it. Such was Clennam's case. In his youth he had ardently loved this woman, and had heaped upon her all the locked-up wealth of his affection and imagination. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... amour with this lady lasted not long; for, as we have before observed, he was the most inconstant of all human race. Mrs. Trent's passion was not however of that kind which leads to any very deep resentment of such fickleness. Her passion, indeed, was principally founded upon interest; so that foundation served ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... precious stones, "Vous me faites oublier les heures," once adorned the slender waist of some dainty dame,—a nuptial gift. The silvery sound of its bell often reminded her of the flight of Time, and her caro sposo of the effects of it on his inconstant heart, long before her mirror told her of the ravages of the tyrant. The flacon so tastefully ornamented, has been held to delicate nostrils when the megrim—that malady peculiar to refined organisations and susceptible nerves—has assailed its fair ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... apt to refuse The guidance of bit and of bridle— Still blankly demur, spite of whip and spur, Unimpassioned, inconstant, or idle; Only let me puff, puff, till the brain cries, "Enough!" Such excitement is all I'm in lack o', And the poetic vein soon to fancy gives rein, Inspired by ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Inconstant in everything, they soon cast aside the toy which had taught them so great a lesson and served them so well, carrying them so far in the direction they wished to go. And no sooner had they cast it aside than a fresh toy, another ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... the reach of rivalry. The complaint of Gallus disappointed in his love, is full of such sentiments as disappointed love naturally produces; his wishes are wild, his resentment is tender, and his purposes are inconstant. In the genuine language of despair, he soothes himself awhile with the pity that shall be paid him ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... educated, but a big child completely developed in his passions. He acts not from conscience but from fear; he is moved not by reasons but by impressions; a friend of novelties and spectacles, he acts to the tune of the various impressions which he receives. Naturally he is inconstant and flighty, desiring one thing and another, now liking what he formerly disliked, without firmness nor stability in anything, without knowing many times what to like, nor what befits him. Such ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... just requisite; but the other Metals have not such fixt bodies, for their pores are open, and far extenuated, therefore the Tincture Spirit can the more abundantly pass thorough and possess them. But because the bodies of the other Metals are inconstant, the Tincture cannot remain with those inconstant bodies, but must depart. And whereas the Tincture of Gold is found in none more plentiful than in Mars and Venus, as Man and Wife, their bodies therefore are destroyed, ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... women whose will power is feeble. But these easily become the prey of prostitution, which causes their disappearance. This is perhaps one of the causes which have strengthened by selection the will power in women. Man is impulsive and violent as regards his will power, but often inconstant and irresolute, yielding as soon as he has to strive persistently for a certain object. From these facts it naturally results that, on the average, it is the man in the family who provides the ideas and impulses, but the woman who, with the finesse of her tact and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... religious observances are merely the formality of lip service; if she be petulant to her friends, pert and disrespectful to her parents, overbearing to her inferiors; if pride, vanity, and affectation be her characteristics; if she be inconstant in her friendships; gaudy and slovenly, rather than neat and scrupulously clean, in attire and personal habits: then we counsel the gentleman to retire as speedily but as politely as possible from the pursuit of an object quite unworthy of his admiration and love; nor ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... soft evening breeze fanning his temples, was far more delightful, than to recline in his soft-cushioned box at the Opera, listening even to the delicious notes of a Pico, with bright jewels, and still brighter eyes flashing around him, and his cheek kissed by the inconstant air wafted from the coquettish fan in the hands of smiling beauty. And, moreover, that the book of human nature, to be studied in the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... and a looser-built vessel than Hero; rather credulous, unstable, inconstant, and very much the sport of slight and trivial occasions. A very small matter suffices to upset him, though, to be sure, he is apt enough to be set right again. All this, no doubt, is partly owing to his ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... never really improve until the Russian railways were linked up with the British-Indian system, a proposition which responsible Indian Officials viewed with a marked lack of enthusiasm. The Czarevitch was courteous, gentle and sincere, but though full of good intentions, he was fatally inconstant of purpose, and his mental endowments were insufficient for the tremendous responsibilities to which he was to succeed, and in that one fact lies the pathos of the story of this most ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... not prize Love's warm fidelity. But Passion, selfish, proud, and murderous, Seizes the pistol or the knife, and kills;— And cozened juries make a heroine Of her who, stung with jealousy or pride, Or, by some meaner motive, hurled a wreck, Assassinates her too inconstant wooer. ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... there who has not heard of Peter Cooper? He was born in the city of New York in 1791. His father was a man who possessed some ability, but was so inconstant that the poor boy received only about six months' schooling, and he received that before ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... mentioned, he expressed a wish to take part in "Cato" himself in 1758, and a year before he had subscribed to the regimental "players at Fort Cumberland," His diary shows that in 1768 the couple at Mount Vernon "& ye two children were up to Alexandria to see the Inconstant or 'the way to win him' acted," which was probably an amateur performance. Furthermore, Duer tells us that "I was not only frequently admitted to the presence of this most august of men, in propria persona, but once had the honor of appearing before him as one of the dramatis ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... his wife, dated 19th September, 1901, and written the very day before his death. We purposed to forward that letter, but the following day the bag was retaken. Not only was it taken, but also the gun, while 20 burghers were captured and one—Myburgh—was killed. We were again surprised. Inconstant are the fortunes ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... Many embraced the truth only in part; some professed it from improper motives. The Lenten preachers whose leaning towards "Lutheranism" was sufficiently marked to attract the hatred of the Sorbonne, were generally orators, more solicitous of popularity than jealous for the truth—fickle and inconstant men whose apostasy inflicted deep wounds upon the cause with which they had been identified, and more than neutralized all the good done by their previous exertions. But now a brotherhood of theologians took their place, not less zealous for the faith than disciplined ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... that he should be First Consul for ten years, and he replied to the vote of confidence that "Fortune had smiled upon the Republic; but Fortune was inconstant; how many men," said he, "upon whom she has heaped her favours have lived too long by some years, and that the interest of his glory and happiness seemed to have marked the period of his public life, at the moment when the peace of the world is proclaimed." Then with one of ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... pleasure, But parting is grief, An inconstant lover Is worse than a thief; For a thief at the worst Will take all that I have; But an inconstant lover Sends me ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... call me still your Life.—Oh! change the word— Life is as transient as the inconstant sigh: Say rather I'm your Soul; more just that name, For, like the soul, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... were castles in the air: his talk was rhodomontade. He took no thought for the morrow: he treated the Court as if the King were already a prisoner in his hands: he built on the favour of the multitude, as if that favour were not proverbially inconstant. The signs of the coming reaction were discerned by men of far less sagacity than his, and scared from his side men more consistent than he had ever pretended to be. But on him they were lost. The counsel of Achitophel, that counsel which was as if a man ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... caught the dead termite by two of its legs. Close to two hundred pounds the mass weighed; but strength is an inconstant thing, and increases or decreases according to the vital needs ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... excellent and well-matched pair. Of course they had their disagreements. Newts are by nature fickle and inconstant. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... My Springtime girl, who walked with flower-shoon! But near me, nearer, steals a deep-eyed maid With creeping glance that sees and will not see, And blush that would those yea-sweet eyes upbraid,— O, might I woo her nor inconstant be! But is not Autumn dreamtime of the Spring? (Yon scarlet fruit-bell is a flower asleep;) And I am not forsworn if yet I keep Dream-faith with Spring in Autumn's deeper kiss. Then so, brown maiden, take this true-love ring, ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... soothed his soul with the charms of literature and the simple pleasures of the country. Niebuhr pronounces the elegies of Tibullus to be doleful, but Merivale thinks that "the tone of tender melancholy in which he sung his unprosperous loves had a deeper and purer source than the caprices of three inconstant paramours.... His spirit is eminently religious, though it bids him fold his hands in resignation rather than open them in hope. He alone of all the great poets of his day remained undazzled by the glitter of the Caesarian usurpation, and pined away in unavailing despondency ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... writings may be justly described in the words he himself uses of a book by one of his opponents, as calculated "to gain a short, contemptible, and soon-fading reward, not to stir the constancy and solid firmness of any wise man ... but to catch the worthless approbation of an inconstant, irrational, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... pleasures end in pain, and our highest delights are crossed with deepest discontents. The joys of man, as they are few, so are they momentary, scarce ripe before they are rotten, and withering in the blossom, either parched with the heat of envy or fortune. Fortune, O inconstant friend, that in all thy deeds art froward and fickle, delighting, in the poverty of the lowest and the overthrow of the highest, to decipher thy inconstancy. Thou standest upon a globe, and thy wings are plumed with Time's feathers, that thou mayest ever be restless: thou art double-faced ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... to complain. And though both, he who lends his heart to whosoever pleases it, and he that gives it entirely to one, do both of them require the exactest devoir from their wives, yet I know not if it be not better to be wife to an inconstant husband (provided he be something discreet), than to a constant fellow who is always perplexing her with his inconstant humour. For the unconstant lovers are commonly the best humoured; but let them ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... benumbs, thither with speed returned 40 In the long grass they skulk, or shrinking creep Among the withered leaves, thus changing still, As fancy prompts them, or as food invites. But every season carefully observed, The inconstant winds, the fickle element, The wise experienced huntsman soon may find His subtle, various game, nor waste in vain His tedious hours, till his impatient hounds With disappointment vexed, each springing lark Babbling pursue, far scattered o'er the fields. 50 Now golden Autumn from her ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Capricious man! to good and ill inconstant, Too much to fear or trust is equal weakness. Sometimes the wretch, unaw'd by heav'n or hell, With mad devotion idolizes honour. The bassa, reeking with his master's murder, Perhaps, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... e'en give her over for good and all; you can have no hopes of getting her for a mistress; and she is too proud, too inconstant, too affected and too witty, and too ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... which fortune presented to him, that it seemed as if he had foreseen or desired them. He knew how to put a good gloss upon his failings, and oftentimes verily believed he was really the man which he affected to be only in appearance. He was a man of bright parts, but no conduct, being violent and inconstant in his intrigues of love as well as those of politics, and so indiscreet as to boast of his successful amours with certain ladies whom he ought not to have named. He affected pomp and splendour, though his profession demanded simplicity and humility. He was ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... so much the duration as the nature and quality of these shiftings of character to higher levels. Men lapse from every level—we need no statistics to tell us that. Love is, for instance, well known not to be irrevocable, yet, constant or inconstant, it reveals new flights and reaches of ideality while it lasts. These revelations form its significance to men and women, whatever be its duration. So with the conversion experience: that it should for even a short time show a human being what the high- water mark of his spiritual capacity is, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... essential, and not merely incidental to their origin. A whirlpool phase not unfrequently accompanies their formation, and may be renewed at periods of recrudescence or dissolution; but it is both partial and inconstant, sometimes affecting only one side of a spot, sometimes slackening gradually its movement in one direction, to resume it, after a brief pause, in the opposite. Persistent and uniform notions, such as the analogy of terrestrial storms would absolutely require, are not to be found. So that the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... of the Senate. "Senators," said he, "the honorable proof of esteem embodied in your deliberation of the 18th will be always graven upon my heart. In the three years that have just passed away, fortune has smiled upon the Republic; but fortune is inconstant, and how many men whom she has loaded with her favors have lived ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... Horace that in the very next satire he makes his own servant Davus tell him that his rhapsodies about the country and its charms are mere humbug, and that, for all his ridicule of the shortcomings of his neighbours, he is just as inconstant as they are in his likings and dislikings. The poet in this way lets us see into his own little vanities, and secures the right by doing so to rally his friends for theirs. To his valet, at all events, by his own showing, he is ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... occasioned his sudden disappearance with his infant daughter. Some said he died abroad. Others, that he had appeared again for a brief space at the hall. But all now concurred in a belief of his decease. Of his child nothing was known. His inconstant wife, after enduring for some years the agonies of remorse, abandoned by Sir Reginald, and neglected by her own relatives, put an end to her existence by poison. This is all that could be gathered of the story, or the misfortunes ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... full of fire, Since from out of my blood and bone Poured a heavy flame To you, earth of my atmosphere, stone Of my steel, lovely white flint of desire, You have no name. Earth of my swaying atmosphere, Substance of my inconstant breath, I cannot ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... alack, had contributed to their own undoing. Had they not both trifled with the mysterious test of life—he no less than she? And out of the dark had come the axe-stroke that ends weakness, and crushes the unsteeled, inconstant will. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inexhaustible in his resources; active and enterprising. But these splendid accomplishments were attended with such defects as rendered them pernicious to his country, and even ruinous to himself: he was volatile, inconstant, faithless, revengeful, malicious; restrained by no principle or duty; insatiable in his pretensions: and whether successful or unfortunate in one enterprise he immediately undertook another, in which he was never ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... many years of fidelity, the right to be sometimes inconstant to our English watering-place, we have dallied for two or three seasons with a French watering-place: once solely known to us as a town with a very long street, beginning with an abattoir and ending with a steam-boat, which it seemed our fate to behold only at daybreak ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... minute is to me? More than that, time is not constant even in the same individual. How many hours are shorter to you than others? How many days have been almost interminable? No, instead of being constant, there is nothing more inconstant than time." ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... her anxieties, "but I find it hard to keep up the deception that I am heart-whole and fancy-free, and yet indifferent to Count Hendrick's attentions. Indeed, my father openly upbraids me with being fickle, inconstant, unmaidenly, and I know not what besides, until I am driven to my wit's end to keep the peace between us. Yet I doubt not, if he knew the truth, he would marry me willy-nilly to ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... has gathered together an assembly of the people of Rome; he advances gravely towards them, and thus does he speak: "I, who never yet feared anything that was human, have, amongst such as were divine, always had, a dread of fortune as faithless and inconstant; and, for the very reason that in this war she had been as a favourable gale in all my affairs, I still expected some change and reflux of things. In one day I passed the Ionian Sea, and reached Corcyra from Brundisium; ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... / who that is inconsta[n]te A waueryng eye / glydyng sodeynly [Sidenote: an inconstant man with a wavering eye and a wandering foot] Fro place to place / & a foot varia[n]te 108 That in no place / abydeth stably These ben [th]^e signes / the wiseman seith sikerly Of suche a wight / as is vnmanerly nyce And is ful likely disposid vnto vyce 112 [Sidenote: ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... to them in a savage state, than the properties of wine exist in the grape. Society begins with families. In the beginning, the old savage has a great wish to rule his children, but has no capacity for government. He is inconstant and violent in his desires, and incapable of any steady conduct. What at first keeps men together is not so much reverence for the father, as the common danger from wild beasts. The traditions of antiquity are full of the prowess of heroes in killing dragons and monsters. ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... Athenians were remarkable for the ardor and vivacity of their temperament,—that they were liable to sudden gusts of passion,—that they were inconstant in their affections, intolerant of dictation, impatient of control, and hasty to resent every assumption of superiority,—that they were pleased with flattery, and too ready to lend a willing ear to the adulation of the demagogue,—and that they were impetuous ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... who had to treat with the native prince solely on lofty political lines were hardly likely to remember how largely he bulked in the humbler relations of trade; but there was more than one Calcutta establishment, Mr. Kauffer declared, that would be obliged to put up its shutters without this inconstant and difficult, but liberal customer. I waited with impatience. I could not for the life of me see Armour's connection with the native prince, who is seldom a patron of the arts for ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... steamed back into their faces in clouds; the slide and crunch of snow-shoes, and the creaking of the sledge sounded under foot. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the early darkness had come swiftly marching down from the north, bringing in its train the fickle, inconstant beauty of the aurora. Great streamers of color shot silently from horizon to zenith, and flickered with eerie dimness across the white gleam ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... in common human relations was true in a far more wonderful way of the friendship of Jesus. We have only to recall the story of his three years with his disciples. They gave him at the best a very feeble return for his great love for them. They were inconstant, weak, foolish, untrustful. They showed personal ambition, striving for first places, even at the Last Supper. They displayed jealousy, envy, narrowness, ingratitude, unbelief, cowardice. As these unlovely things appeared in the men Jesus had chosen, his friendship ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... all Madness and Folly, Alone I lie, Toss, tumble, and cry, What a happy Creature is Polly! Was e'er such a Wretch as I! With rage I redden like Scarlet, That my dear inconstant Varlet, Stark blind to my Charms, Is lost in the Arms Of that Jilt, that inveigling Harlot! Stark blind to my Charms, Is lost in the Arms Of that Jilt, that inveigling Harlot! This, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... bad lad, though inconstant. Give me a kiss, and good luck go with you. Be a man,' she added in a whisper. 'Say a few kind words to the poor ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... this young fool in spite of his madness, and never had he failed to bring his enterprises to their fore-arranged end. And there was sentiment between all this, sentiment he would not have been ashamed to avow. Upon chance, then, fickle inconstant chance, depended the success of the seven years' labor. If by this time the wine had not loosened their tongues, or if ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... the tree, 125 With charms inconstant shine; Their charms were his, but woe to me! Their constancy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... treatise on Gipsies, says:—"They are lively, uncommonly loquacious and chattering, fickle in the extreme, consequently inconstant in their pursuits, faithless to everybody, even their own kith and kin, void of the least emotion of gratitude, frequently rewarding benefits with the most insidious malice. Fear makes them slavishly compliant when under subjection, but ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... when sober Evening sheds Her dusky mantle o'er the grassy meads: Nor yet the pale stars trembled thro' the trees, Nor sparkling quiver'd on the inconstant seas; Nor yet the moon illumed the solemn scene: The fields were silent, and the heavens serene. The sheep had sought the fold; nor yet arose Night's listless bird from her dull day's repose. When in a vale with shadowy firs replete, Whose broad ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... mistress. Be that as it may, after Shelley's death they parted, and doubtless it will be said she treated her lover ill. To us it appears that he gave as good as he got. She was mercenary, and he was inconstant. If we read Letter XX aright, when she did offer, after some months of prudent dalliance, to live with him at Florence, he replied that he had but L500 a year, which was not enough for two. An establishment on the confines of respectability was the last thing ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... disciple, he was clothed in the mantle of a philosopher, or a mendicant; his countenance was hideous; his face was overshadowed with black hair; his beard long an uncombed; his deportment rustic; his temper gloomy and inconstant; nor could he grace his discourse with the ornaments, or even the perspicuity, of Latin elocution. But his mind was stored with a treasure of Greek learning: history and fable, philosophy and grammar, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... the cabin, into the fresh, brisk gale that was blowing. A gibbous moon hung in the eastern star-specked sky. Scurrying moonlit clouds off in the west sped northward on the sweep of the inconstant wind, which had shifted within the hour. A light shone dimly through the square little window of the bedroom. Kenneth's imagination penetrated to sacred precincts beyond the solid logs: he pictured her in the other frock, moving gracefully before the fascinated eyes of the settler's wife, proud ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... simple. He shows us two charming young men becoming morally blind with passion, in a company not so blinded. The only other "inconstant" person in the play (Sir Thurio) is inconstant from that water-like quality in the mind that floods with the full moon, and ebbs like a neap soon after. Even the members of the sub-plot, the two servants, are constant, the one to his master, who beats him, the ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... Theramenes, respect the name Of Theseus. Youthful errors have been left Behind, and no unworthy obstacle Detains him. Phaedra long has fix'd a heart Inconstant once, nor need she fear a rival. In seeking him I shall but do my duty, And leave a place I ...
— Phaedra • Jean Baptiste Racine
... not so inconstant in your love, But let the young Arabian [149] live in hope, After your rescue to enjoy his choice. You see, though first the king of Persia, Being a shepherd, seem'd to love you much, Now, in his majesty, he leaves those looks, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... time the relative popularity of painters shifts strangely, but no matter what inconstant fashion may dictate, or what may be the cult of the hour, certain paintings never lose their prestige, but annually attract as many ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... with an amazing air of detached insistence. The machine-guns strike in battle quite a note of their own. Shells, screeching and roaring in their frenzy, give an impression of passion, of untameable wrath. Rifle-fire is as inconstant in volume as piano music; there is something of human effort to be heard in the "tap ... tap ... tap ... tap-tap-trrrrapp" of its crescendos and diminuendoes. But the machine-gun is different from these. It strikes a higher ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... imploring his Forgiveness. He loaded her with a thousand Reproaches; nor did he spare to chastise her in the most outrageous Manner. By the Egyptian's cruel Deportment towards her, he concluded that the Man was a jealous Husband, and that the Lady was an Inconstant, and had defil'd his Bed: But when he reflected, that the Woman was a perfect Beauty, and to his thinking something like the unfortunate Astarte, he perceiv'd his Heart yearn with Compassion towards the Lady, and swell with Indignation against her Tyrant. For Heaven's sake, ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... how Long He would Love Her" George Etherege To Aenone Robert Herrick To Anthea, who may Command him Anything Robert Herrick The Bracelet: To Julia Robert Herrick To the Western Wind Robert Herrick To my Inconstant Mistress Thomas Carew Persuasions to Enjoy Thomas Carew Mediocrity in Love Rejected Thomas Carew The Message Thomas Heywood "How Can the Heart forget Her" Francis Davison To Roses in the Bosom of Castara William Habington To Flavia Edmund Waller "Love not Me for Comely Grace" Unknown ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... perhaps too purely French to have exercised much influence abroad. Nevertheless his influence on England is not to be disdained. Shakspere appreciated him (le goutait); he has inserted in the TEMPEST a passage of the chapter DES CANNIBALES; and the strong expressions of the ESSAYS on man, the inconstant, irresolute being, contrary to himself, marvellously vain, various and changeful, were perhaps not unconnected with (peut etre pas etrangeres a) the conception of HAMLET. The author of the scene ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... this asylum. It would seem that lies were as rife before the art of printing had been pressed into their service, or newspapers known, as they are to-day, for she had been taught to think him dead or inconstant; it was much the same to her. The castle which overlooked the island was built for his abode, and here the legend is prudently silent. Although one is not bound to believe all he hears; we are all charmed with the images which such tales create, especially when, as in ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... novels (which his father—sentimental as he—read with him), poetry, and gushing biographies; although a little later he became, with impartial facility, equally delighted with the sturdy Plutarch. His nature was passionate and inconstant, his sensibilities morbidly acute, and his imagination lively. He hated all rules, precedents, and authority. He was lazy, listless, deceitful, and had a great craving for novelties and excitement,—as he himself says, "feeling everything and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... 'and is it upon such vague hopes as these, the inconstant humour of a crowd or of a disbanded soldiery, that men of honour are invited to risk their families, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... illumine the King's Highway! They shine from above, with increasing splendor, while these cast forth, from below, their uncertain lights. It seems to me that the farther we go the darker becomes the way, and its lights the more inconstant,—so fitful is their ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... triumphantly replaced by the grateful citizens,—rejuvenated, repainted, revarnished, with the best materials Halifax could furnish, the "General" having been brought there by the youngsters of the "Inconstant" frigate, Captain Pring, from Quebec. It would appear the roystering middies, having sacrificed copiously to the rosy god, after rising from a masonic dinner in the Albion Hotel, in Palace street, had noticed the "General" by the pale moonlight, looking very seedy, and considering ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Fl. out of Thom. Walsi. Hypod. pag. 161.] In this yeare Roger of Walden departed this life; who hauing bene tossed vp and downe with sundrie changes of fortune, tried in a short time how inconstant, vncerteine variable, wandering, vnstable, and flitting she is; which when she is thought firmelie to stand, she slipperinglie falleth; and with a dissembling looke counterfaiteth false ioies. [Sidenote: Roger of waldens variable fortune.] For by the meanes of hir changeablenesse, the said Roger ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... it, for others to rest upon, he becomes a reed, which no man will vouchsafe to lean upon. Like a floating island, when we come next day to seek it, it is carried from the place we left it in, and, instead of earth to build upon, we find nothing but inconstant ...
— Book of Wise Sayings - Selected Largely from Eastern Sources • W. A. Clouston
... Inconstant, blind, Deserting friends at need, and duped by foes; Loud and seditious, when a chief inspired Their headlong fury, but, of him deprived, Already slaves that lick'd the ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... am mortal: and I cannot write Aught that may foil the fatal wing of Time. Silent, I look at Fame: I cannot climb To where her Temple is—Not mine the might:— I have some glimmering of what is sublime— But, ah! it is a most inconstant light." ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... maidens." "I will give thee good counsel," said he. "All my Earldom will I place in thy possession, if thou wilt dwell with me." "That will I not, by Heaven," she said, "yonder man was the first to whom my faith was ever pledged; and shall I prove inconstant to him?" "Thou art in the wrong," said the Earl; "if I slay the man yonder, I can keep thee with me as long as I choose; and when thou no longer pleasest me, I can turn thee away. But if thou goest with me by thy own ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... Mentall Discourse, is of two sorts. The first is Unguided, Without Designee, and inconstant; Wherein there is no Passionate Thought, to govern and direct those that follow, to it self, as the end and scope of some desire, or other passion: In which case the thoughts are said to wander, and seem impertinent one to another, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... shepherds and dogs; the toils of agriculture, harvesting, gardening. And among all this variety of representations there was neither man nor boy to be seen—not so much as a little winged Cupid; so highly had the princess been incensed against her inconstant husband as not to show the least favor ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... ye powers that sway eternal seats, And guide this massy substance of the earth, If you retain desert of holiness, As your supreme estates instruct our thoughts, Be not inconstant, careless of your fame, Bear not the burden of your enemies' joys, Triumphing in his fall whom you advanc'd; But, as his birth, life, health, and majesty Were strangely blest and governed by heaven, So honour, heaven, (till ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... An Inconstant Lover, called Phaon, occasioned great Calamities to this Poetical Lady. She fell desperately in Love with him, and took a Voyage into Sicily in Pursuit of him, he having withdrawn himself thither on purpose to avoid her. It was in that Island, and on this ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... mirrored in nature. Wayward, inconstant, always seeking rest, always impelled by new evils, the greatest of which he himself creates,—protecting and cherishing or blighting and destroying the fragmentary life of a fallen nature,—incapable himself of creating new capacities, but nourishing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... rude disposition, with a weak understanding, headstrong, a gadder, who would be constantly changing his situations and inclinations, sleeping every night in a new place, and every day forming some new intimacy. Young men may be lively and handsome, but they are inconstant in their attachments. Look not thou for fidelity from those who, with the eyes of the nightingale, are every instant singing upon a different rose-bush. But old men pass their time in wisdom and good manners, not in the ignorance and frivolity of youth. Seek one better than yourself, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... delicious wild fruit, for present use or dried for winter,—the whole backed by abundant breadstuffs. The quota of the farmers along the rivers, whose fertile banks were dotted by windmills, whose great arms stayed the inconstant winds, and yoked the fickle couriers to the great car ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... to an inoffensive wife; for her sake he had squandered his people's money, and outraged every moral law; and it may be that she remembered these things, and hated him the more fiercely for them when he was inconstant. She was a woman of extremes, in whose tropical temperament there was no medium between ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... in Greek and French, and many of his Latin poems were published under the title 'Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum' (Amsterdam, 1637). His English poems on such themes as a 'Love Dirge,' 'The Poet Forsaken,' 'The Lover's Remonstrance,' 'Address to an Inconstant Mistress,' etc., do not show depth of emotion. He says ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... The fantastic and inconstant outline of the Corbiere, as we were hurried swiftly past it, was a subject of surprise and admiration. When first seen through the haze of morning, it resembled a huge elephant supporting an embattled tower; a little after, it assumed the similitude of a gigantic warrior in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... water from it after sunset, for fear of the spirit that dwelt unquietly within. The tradition was always current in people's mouths; and three centuries after, a young man of the neighbourhood, who had been jilted and mocked by an inconstant mistress, determined to bear his ills no longer, so he rushed to the Puits, and took the fatal leap. The result was not what he anticipated: he did not, it is true, jump into a courtly assembly of knights and gallants, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... of Dorimant was supposed to represent the earl of Rochester, who was inconstant, faithless, and undetermined in his amours; and it is likewise said, in the character of Medley, that the poet has drawn out some sketch of himself, and from the authority of Mr. Bowman, who played Sir Fopling, or some other ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness. They have been so tried among the inconstant squalls and currents, so often sailed for islands in the air or lain becalmed with burning heart, that they will risk all for solid ground below their feet. Desperate pilots, they run their sea-sick, weary bark upon the dashing rocks. It seems as if marriage ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is entirely false, or common, or ordinary, or trifling, or made up of remote suppositions; if the definition contained in it be faulty, if it be controverted, if it be too evident, if it be one which is not admitted, or discreditable, or objected to, or contrary, or inconstant, or adverse to ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... ornament. They shaved the beard on the chin; that on the upper lip was suffered to remain, and grow to an extraordinary length, to favor the martial appearance, in which they placed their glory. They were in their natural temper not unlike the Gauls, impatient, fiery, inconstant, ostentatious, boastful, fond of novelty,—and like all barbarians, fierce, treacherous, and cruel. Their arms were short javelins, small shields of a slight texture, and great cutting swords with a blunt point, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... on the look-out for us. Our fleet was under the command of Admiral Hotham. You may be sure that we kept a bright look-out for the enemy. At last they hove in sight, and one of our frigates, the 'Inconstant,' got so close that she brought to action the 'Ca Ira,' a French eighty-four, which had carried away her main and foretop masts. The 'Inconstant,' however, was obliged to bear away, and a French frigate came up and took the line-of-battle ship in tow, while ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Everglades. Nanca's beauty must have driven him quite mad, I think. At any rate he wooed and won. Nanca begged the young foreigner to divorce her, which he did. The Seminole divorce custom is lenient when the marriage is childless. The artist, I fancy, was merely a wild, reckless, inconstant sort of chap who did not regard the simple Seminole marriage tie as binding. After the birth of his daughter, a tiny little elf whom Nanca has named "Red-winged Blackbird," he tried to run away, and the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... and when that of desiccation is about to commence, which ordinarily happens towards the ninth or tenth day of the eruption. The desiccation and the desquamation occupy an exceedingly variable length of time; and so, indeed, do all the different periods of the disease. What is the least inconstant, is the duration of the serous eruption, which is about four days, if it has been distinctly produced and guarded from all friction. If the general character of the pustules is considered, it will be observed, that, ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... too high an opinion of the sex at large, I fear, Mr. Verty," she said; "some of them are very inconstant; you ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... fear to revive the poisonous snake, and after the hail to be burned in the fierce fire; indeed, I fear the objects of these several desires, this whirling in the stream of life troubles my heart, these five desires, the inconstant thieves—stealing from men their choicest treasures, making them unreal, false, and fickle—are like the man called up as an apparition; for a time the beholders are affected by it, but it has no lasting hold upon the mind; so these five desires are the great obstacles, forever disarranging the ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... of the tree, With charms inconstant shine; Their charms were his; but, woe to me, ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... and Swiss are "as short and as broad as those of the Tartars," etc.); and so it is with every other character. Now all naturalists have learnt by dearly bought experience, how rash it is to attempt to define species by the aid of inconstant characters. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... people! They are always called inconstant: but nothing in them changes. Olivier, looking backward, saw in Gothic statuary all the types of the provinces of to-day: and so in the drawings of a Clouet and a Dumoustier, the weary ironical faces of worldly ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... light, their lids half close, modestly hiding the joy I feel at seeing you again, and my inscrutable countenance shows but the semblance of a thought painted there in fawn color and black.... Your crackling drowns the soft sound of my purr. Don't snap too much. Be merciful, O inconstant Fire! Don't sputter sparks on my fur. Allow me to adore ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... the poor fellows on reaching home found domestic trouble—a wife had proved inconstant and married another man. As the men had generally more wives than one, Livingstone comforted them by saying that they still ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... literature,—complained of his pen having caught up a hair, and forthwith begins, with more eloquence than common sense, an affectionate expostulation with that useful implement, upbraiding it with being the quill of a goose,—a bird inconstant by nature, as frequenting the three elements of water, earth, and air indifferently, and being, of course, 'to one thing constant never.' Now I protest to thee, gentle reader, that I entirely dissent from Francisco de Ubeda in this matter, and hold it the most useful quality of ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a grotto in your dreams, is a sign of incomplete and inconstant friendships. Change from comfortable and simple plenty will ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... "Inconstant, my friend! Where is the man who can guarantee that he will be constant in love. No one is so wise or cautious that he knows for certain how to conduct himself. Love often drives both sense and ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... not mistaken her power over the feeble intellect and the inconstant will of her son. Terrified less by the prospect of a Huguenot supremacy which she held forth, than by the menace of her withdrawal and that of Anjou, Charles, who was but too well acquainted with their cunning and ambition, admitted his fault in concealing his plans, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... trouvais que de tous les sens, l'oeil etait le plus superficiel; l'oreille, le plus orgueilleux; l'odorat, le plus voluptueux; le gout, le plus superstitieux et le plus inconstant; le toucher, le plus profond et ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... exiled king's side; nor had the banished family any warmer supporter than that kind lady of Castlewood, in whose house Esmond was brought up. She influenced her husband, very much more perhaps than my lord knew, who admired his wife prodigiously though he might be inconstant to her, and who, adverse to the trouble of thinking himself, gladly enough adopted the opinions which she chose for him. To one of her simple and faithful heart, allegiance to any sovereign but the one was impossible. To serve King William for interest's sake would ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray |
