"Mutable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an annual vote, was obviously uncertain; and it became necessary to declare the terms on which it was enjoyed. The minister of the day notified to the officers of the Anglican and Scotch churches that incomes dependent on variable resources and mutable opinions were liable to casualties. He therefore warned them that, beyond the fair influence of the crown and the equitable claims of existing incumbents, no guarantee could be given.[223] During a financial crisis these views were reiterated by one governor, who ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... were a composite people; their blood was a blend of all the strains known in their time. Their government, while they had one, being merely a loose and mutable expression of the desires and caprices of the majority—that is to say, of the ignorant, restless and reckless—gave the freest rein and play to all the primal instincts and elemental passions of the race. In so far and for so long as it had ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... have given me youth, and I accept it," he said aloud, perhaps addressing that mutable goddess who presides over all follies. "Regret it in my old age? Not I! I shall have lived for one short month. Youth was given to us to enjoy, and I propose to press the grape to the final drop. And when I grow old this adventure shall be the tonic ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... away, so I cannot presume to say that men may not attain to a clearer, at the same time more full, comprehensive, and balanced sense of those words, than has as yet been generally received in the Christian world. As all else is transient and mutable, these only eternal and universal, assuredly whatever light may be thrown on the mental constitution of man, even on the constitution of nature and the laws which govern the world, will be concentered so as to give a more penetrating vision of those undying truths.... ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... spoken, and we cannot comfort a sister if she cannot divine the thought; but to brood over these inevitable changes is as idle as it is to lament that we were born into this mutable world. After all, it is because of the losses, the sadnesses, that the world is so infinitely sweet to us. The thought is in Cory's Mimnernus ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... "Too bright—too mutable," answered the doctor, shaking his head. "She is right. You keep her too close. Let her run wild, like any other country girl. Let her rise early and go out into the barnyard, see the cows milked, inhale their odorous breathings, wander in the fields among ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... rolling mists; I have but copied the names that appear upon the pointers, the names of definite and famous cities far distant, and now perhaps basking in sunshine; but Christina remained all these hours, as it were, at the foot of the post itself, not moving, and enveloped in mutable and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heat of noon retired, To respite his day-labour with repast, Or with repose; and such discourse bring on, As may advise him of his happy state, Happiness in his power left free to will, Left to his own free will, his will though free, Yet mutable; whence warn him to beware He swerve not, too secure: Tell him withal His danger, and from whom; what enemy, Late fallen himself from Heaven, is plotting now The fall of others from like state of bliss; By violence? no, for that shall be withstood; But by deceit and lies: ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... coloured, and it is upon this fact that primary divisions in the genus Agaricus are based, inasmuch as colour in the spores appears to be a permanent feature. In white-spored species the spores are white in all the individuals, not mutable as the colour of the pileus, or the corolla in phanerogamic plants. So also with the pink spored, rusty spored, black spored, and others. This may serve to explain why colour, which is so little relied upon in classification amongst the ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... short," said Harley. "I re- piqued him," answered the old man, with joy sparkling in his countenance. Harley wished to be re-piqued too, but he was disappointed; for he had the same good fortune against his opponent. Indeed, never did fortune, mutable as she is, delight in mutability so much as at that moment. The victory was so quick, and so constantly alternate, that the stake, in a short time, amounted to no less a sum than 12 pounds, Harley's proportion of which was within half-a-guinea of the money he had in his pocket. ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... has objected that the variations produced by artificial and natural selections are mutable, while sudden mutations have a much more stable character. But we have just seen that these mutations themselves are evidently only the delayed ecphoria of a long ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... right and steady, as his had never been in spite of all his culture. And then he could not see her come into a room without a sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovely and mutable on the surface but still and passionate in ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Cuthbert was, in the choice of his sepulchre, one of the most mutable and unreasonable saints in the Calendar. He died A. D. 688, in a hermitage upon the Farne Islands, having resigned the bishopric of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, about two years before. {1} His body ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... Truth! O sacred bond Unlovely grown! O faith so mutable! Shades of my fathers, not august but fond! How hollow were the darlings of my dream! But she, O Lotus-flower, my promised bride, Star of my youth, my pure unspotted dove! Again I see her in her gentle pride, Her starry eyes meet mine with melting beam; Unsightly ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... designs on my peace in standing for our county at the next election, I wished to defeat them, and I have done so; and now I have commenced a course of travel. I had intended on starting to confine it to my native country. Intentions are mutable. I am going abroad. You shall hear of my whereabout. I write this from the house of Leopold Travers, who, I understand from his fair daughter, is a connection of yours; a man to be ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those white-rose cheeks, would have been worth while. The slight, tall, girlish figure in its dainty creamy draperies had passed out of sight now between its two black-robed guardians. And had not Luck, that mutable-minded deity, given the golden chance to a hulking stranger in white drill, his, Beauvayse's, might have been the hand to intervene in the matter of the Colonel's restive charger, and his the ears to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... themselves are mutable," he maintained. "They get out of date. And there are, besides, exceptional characters that do not come under the common law of humanity; exceptional temperaments, and exceptional circumstances to which common principles are inapplicable, or for ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... goes on to taunt them with cowardice (Act 3, Sc. 3). They are the "mutable, rank-scented many" (Act 3, Sc. 1). His friend Menenius is equally complimentary to his fellow citizens. "You are ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it. Neither (for the same reason) becomes it a Law to other Judges, though sworn to follow it. For though a wrong Sentence given by authority of the Soveraign, if he know and allow it, in such Lawes as are mutable, be a constitution of a new Law, in cases, in which every little circumstance is the same; yet in Lawes immutable, such as are the Lawes of Nature, they are no Lawes to the same, or other Judges, in the like ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes |
