"Wilful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... soften much the warrior's heart, And make his wilful thoughts at last relent, So that he yields, and saith he will depart, And leave the Christian camp incontinent. His friends, whose love did never shrink or start, Preferred their aid, what way soe'er he went: He ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... many to know that I shall publish no other, but, like the player at cards, will "stand;" not that I have accomplished perfection, but because I can do no better with the cards in hand. Of omissions there are plenty, but of wilful perversion of ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... that his fate was hanging on her lips. His heart fluttered, and he became slightly perturbed; but he sat down manfully; determined to await the issue. Margaret welcomed him with more restraint than was her wont, but not—he thought and hoped—less cordially. Maidens are wilful and perverse. Why should she hold her head down, as she had never done before? Why strain her eyes upon her work, and ply her needle as though her life depended on the haste with which she wrought? Thus might she receive a foe; better treatment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the nobleness of that good and gentle lady, Mademoiselle la Princesse de Bourbon-Conti. Every Frenchman know' that her cousin is a bad rebel and ingrate, who had only honor and rispec' for her, but was so wilful he could not let even the king say, 'You shall marry here, you shall marry there.' My frien's," the young man turned to the others, "may I ask you to close roun' in a circle for one moment? It is clearly shown that the Duke of Orleans is a scurvy fellow, but not—" he ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... it. They seem to me wilful, unworthy of you, your reasons; it's perverse—yes, that is what it is, perverse! You are not really happy here; the life doesn't ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... 'Well, wilful will have his way,' said Mr. Thomas, nodding at the master; and as neither of them addressed Stephen again, he left the office, amazed to find that he was not forbidden to return to work on the ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... clamorous and wilful; Her feet abide not in her house; Now she is in the streets, now in the broad places, And lieth in wait at every corner. So she caught him, and kissed him, With an impudent face ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... Struggling like Lizzy," was the thought that rived The wretched mother's heart when she knew all. "But for my foolishness about that shawl— And Master would have kept them back the day; But I was wilful—driving them away In ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... August election showed that the Constitution of 1844 had been rejected a second time. But the majority against its ratification had been cut down by at least one half. Angry with disappointment the editor of the Iowa Capital Reporter declared that its defeat was due to "the pertinacious and wilful misrepresentation of the Whig press ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... might recompense thee for the favour that thou hast done me to-day. And what is my recompense for thee? To show thee how to turn from the evil and slippery road which thou hast trodden until now, and to journey along the straight and saving pathway which thou hast avoided, not in ignorance, but by wilful wrongdoing, throwing thyself into depths and precipices of iniquity. Understand then, Nachor, man of understanding as thou art, and be thou zealous to gain Christ only, and the life that is hid with him, and despise this fleeting and corruptible world. Thou shalt not live ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... forgetful of the boys' Thanksgiving offering and in high displeasure at what he deemed their wilful and deliberate ignorance, the Heer Governor turned the delegation into the street and hastened ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... possible means could there have been any armed resistance to the passage of the Huns. It was simply frightfulness on the part of the Uhlans, and what we saw later on the ground at Pezarches, Coulommiers, and La Fere was a clear indication of wilful and unnecessary destruction of private property. The sight of a draper's shop with every window smashed, every shelf emptied, and the contents thrown into the street was ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... said to do, and represented, like her, the Muses, and various statues. With the curtain and one light she managed to give a very statuesque effect. Mr. Lewis was evidently very proud of her grace and talent, and she had a pretty, wilful, bird-like way with him, that was fascinating, and did not seem, as I thought it must really be, mechanical. I felt, more than ever, how idle it must be to talk with her. The affectionate respect, the joyful uplooking of wifehood, was not to be taught by words, nor to be taught, in fact, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... give a practical answer to Bishop Butler's famous question, "What if a whole community were to go mad?" For the ratification of the Chicago Platform by the people would be an indorsement of violence and disorder, a direct approval of wilful rebellion, and an announcement that every election held in this country is to be followed by a revolutionary outbreak, until our condition shall have become even worse than that of Mexico, and we shall be ready to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... of the Medes, so Herodotus's revolt of the same people and commencement of their monarchy under Deioces falls almost exactly at the date when they entirely lose their independence. As there is no reason to suspect Herodotus either of partiality toward the Medes or of any wilful departure from the truth, we must regard him as imposed upon by his informants, who were probably either Medes or Persians. These mendacious patriots found little difficulty in palming their false tale upon the simple Halicarnassian, thereby ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... Quarter Sessions should inform the Country, that the Vintner who mixes Wine to his Customers, shall (upon proof that the Drinker thereof died within a Year and a Day after taking it) be deemed guilty of Wilful Murder: and the Jury shall be instructed to enquire and present such Delinquents accordingly. It is no Mitigation of the Crime, nor will it be conceived that it can be brought in Chance-Medley or Man-Slaughter, upon Proof that it shall appear Wine joined to Wine, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... guards, and look carefully to the censorship of the press. I find, as ever in your books, that one man has deserved well of mankind for restoring the Scholar's profession to its highest use and dignity.* I find also that you are very wilful, and have made a covenant with your eyes that they shall not see anything you do not wish they should. But I was heartily glad to read somewhere that your book was nearly finished in the manuscript, for I could wish you to sit and taste your fame, if that were ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... narrow-mindedness has poisoned even our so-called liberals, and has blinded them into joining the crusade against the very things born of the hypocrisy of Puritanism—prostitution and its results. In wilful blindness Puritanism refuses to see that the true method of prevention is the one which makes it clear to all that "venereal diseases are not a mysterious or terrible thing, the penalty of the sin of the flesh, a sort of shameful evil branded by purist ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... she may take a lawful pride in "fall," America need not boast the use of "gotten." The termination, which suggests either wilful archaism or useless slang, adds nothing of sense or sound to the word. It is like a piece of dead wood in a tree, and is better lopped off. Nor does the use of "bully" prove a wholesome respect for the past. It is true that our Elizabethans used this adjective in the sense of great ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... of affairs takes a young girl to wife, he expects to mold her to his nature, but he reckons without his host. Heinrich Schopenhauer's opposition to his wife's wishes was not strong enough to crush her—it simply developed in her a deal of wilful, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... to him. To accept the artistic conscience, the artistic aim, as the highest ideal of which the spirit is capable, is to be a Pharisee in art, to be self-sufficient, arrogant, limited. It is a kind of spiritual pride, a wilful deafness to more remote voices; and it is thus of all sins, the one which the artist, who lives the life of perception, whose mind must, above all things, be open and transparent, should be loth to commit. He should rather keep his inner eye—for ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... several points he had been painfully in doubt: whether he had done the deed in self-defence; whether he had meant to do it; whether it had not been a blind, mad accident, since swollen by fevered imagination into the likeness of wilful crime. But against such doubts arrayed itself the ineffaceable memory of that wild joy which had filled his soul, when he had felt his enemy in his power! Had the man survived, Balder might still have doubted; being dead, doubts were ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... concerned. Her bill on that question was framed and passed long ago. But, like all compulsory legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful in its operation. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience—incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime. Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you to find out why your ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... London merchant was committed to the Lollards' Tower for refusing to submit to an unjust exaction of mortuary;[99] and a few days after was found dead in his cell. An inquest was held upon the body, when a verdict of wilful murder was returned against the chancellor of the Bishop of London; and so intense was the feeling of the city, that the bishop applied to Wolsey for a special jury to be chosen on the trial. "For assured I am," he said, "that if my chancellor be tried by any twelve men in London, they be so ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... engage in business, it still discriminates in their favor in many particulars. No woman can be arrested in a civil action, or held by an execution against the body, except in cases in which it is shown that she has committed "a wilful injury to person, character, or property," or has been guilty of such an evasion of duty as is equivalent to a contempt of court. Thus a woman engaged in business cannot be arrested in an action ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse-proud as the other: and this law-suit begot higher oppositions, and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits; for you must remember that both were rich, and must therefore have their wills. Well! this wilful, purse-proud law-suit lasted during the life of the first husband; after which his wife vext and chid, and chid and vext, till she also chid and vext herself into her grave: and so the wealth of these poor rich people was curst into a punishment, ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... Botticelli and Rembrandt there is a close similarity. In temperament as well as in experience they seem to parallel each other. In boyhood Botticelli and Rembrandt were dull, perverse, wilful. Both were given up by teachers and parents as hopelessly handicapped by stupidity. Botticelli's father, seeing that the boy made no progress at school, apprenticed him to a metalworker. The lad showed the esteem in which he held his parent by dropping the family name of Filipepi ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... left me, and without reproach or contention, I might have pursued my plan. But I disdained the artifice; or rather in my wretchedness it was my only consolation to pour out my heart to you, my brother, my only friend. You will not dispute with me? You know how wilful your poor, misery-stricken sister is. Take my girl with you; wean her from sights and thoughts of sorrow; let infantine hilarity revisit her heart, and animate her eyes; so could it never be, were she near me; it is far better for all of you that you should never ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... from little Fay, who, hitherto, had obeyed nobody. Tony, less wilful and not so prone to be destructive, was secretly still unwon, though outwardly quite friendly. He waited and watched and weighed Jan in the balance of his small judgment. Tony was never in any hurry to make ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... night like this,— To stand full-face to Thy High Majesties, Thy myriad worlds in solemn watchfulness,— Watching, watching, watching all below, And man in all his wilfulness for woe! —Dear Lord, one wonders that Thou bearest still With man on whom Thou didst such grace bestow, And with his wilful faculty for woe! ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields of ether. He chases the rolling world. He gets between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the lap of patient Nature, and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred wilful fashions, to see how she will look nicest ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... teach them? I wish I was a student. I shouldn't have been given over to Aunt Jane then, or," with a rather wilful laugh, "if I had been I should have led her, oh!" rapturously, "such ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... this have happened arbitrarily, capriciously, mysteriously, without some gross and positive violation of social law, some wilful and therefore wicked departure from the known principles of science? Every random conjecture as to the causes of the prevailing distress implies an answer to the question, and it need not be repeated. It is more important to inquire ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... capital. During this pause careful orders were issued for the concentration of a strong French reserve at Smolensk. Victor was summoned to bring in his thirty thousand men from the Niemen so as to be ready in an emergency to advance even as far as Moscow. It seems like a case of wilful self-deception that on the tenth Napoleon wrote to Maret as if convinced that the exposure of his flanks would escape Kutusoff's notice, saying that the enemy struck in the heart was occupied only with the heart, and not with the extremities. This would have been a justifiable ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Brandilancia had looked upon these charms unmoved. All arrogance and self-confidence were gone or lay buried under the most appealing of coquetry, a shy tenderness apparently born of irresistible impulse showing itself in little wilful sallies, a glance or touch, seemingly instantly regretted, and followed by alternations of reticence. He admitted her bewitching but had no idea that he was himself bewitched. His was a literary passion. He was a student of life as well as of books, and he had never before had ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... been cases," Craig went on solemnly, "and I believe this to be one, where death has been pronounced to have been caused by wilful administration of a vegetable alkaloid, which toxicologists would now put down as ptomaine-poisoning cases. Innocent people have possibly already suffered and may in the future. But medical experts—" he laid especial stress ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... John, "that he killed him in cold blood. Yourself, Mrs. McKeon hasn't a kinder heart within you than that young man; he never would have committed a wilful, premeditated murder; I don't think yet it will come to be so bad as what McKeon says. But when did Feemy leave this? I thought she was here, and was to stay here for some time ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... leave the country and warned never to return, at the peril of his liberty. A description of him is with every post on the frontier. As for the Princess she is an interesting character. She was educated in this country and France. She speaks several languages. She is headstrong and wilful, and her royal guardian is only too anxious to see her married and settled down. She masquerades in men's clothes when it pleases her, she can ride a horse like a trooper, she fences and shoots, she has ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... beasts that speak no more, Spoils brought home from the fairy ground Only trod by youthful feet, Dreams of a future never found, Memories of a past still sweet, Half-writ poems, stories wild, April letters, warm and cold, Diaries of a wilful child, Hints of a woman early old, A woman in a lonely home, Hearing, like a sad refrain— "Be worthy, love, and love will come," In the falling ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... was getting hotter and hotter, and she thought again of the wonderful leaf which had spoken to her. She wanted to ask Rita questions about that, too, and she had learned by experience that there was more to be obtained from her wilful young friends by coaxing than ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... Vereker!" exclaimed my aunt in her terrible voice, and freed herself from his hold like an offended goddess. "O heaven, I might have known that you, George, would have abetted my poor, wilful boy in his dirt and bodily viciousness, and that you, Jervas, would have condoned his turpitude and moral degradation. None the less, though you both desert me in this dreadful hour, shirking your duty thus shamelessly, this woman's hand shall pluck my dear, loved nephew from the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... so wilful an act of disobedience, but it would be disobedience, notwithstanding. You see, Rollo," he continued, "when I tell you or any boy to come back in half an hour, there are two things implied in the command—first, that you should notice the time, and, secondly, that you should ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... says she, looking at us from Jack's arms, "and, Uncle Dick, dear, tender Uncle Dick, can you forgive your wilful maid?" ...
— The Honourable Mr. Tawnish • Jeffery Farnol
... own headache and Amyas's cold looks were lesson enough, and after another attempt to drown herself, the wilful beauty settled down for awhile; and what was better, could hardly be persuaded, thenceforth to her dying day, to ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... touching evidence of sweetness in the strong man who had been so readily accused of harshness by grasping courtiers. The ignorant ingratitude of the people was even perhaps more melancholy than the wilful ingratitude of the King. The great Colbert had to be buried by night, lest his remains should be insulted by the mob. He, whose heart had bled for the people's sore anguish, was rashly supposed to be the cause of that anguish. It was a sad conclusion to a great life. But he would have seen still ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... cases a married friend may intervene to prevent any scandal from touching the wilful bride. If the young folks will not listen to reason, it is as well for their folly to be carried out as respectably as possible; but all such sympathy should be tempered by judgment, for the making or marring of two lives is in the balance, ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... neighbouring slave States have actually abolished the like within the bounds of their separate jurisdiction, leaving to the free States the unenviable responsibility of enforcing laws too horrible for kidnappers. Take a specimen,—"A slave convicted of any petit treason, or murder, or wilful burning of a dwelling-house, to have the right hand cut off, to be hanged in the usual manner, the head severed from the body, the body divided into four quarters, and the head and quarters set up in the most public places of the county where ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... instant of death. It is being struck continually; and man's final destiny turns on how that balance stands at the close of his time of probation. So long as he keeps the substance of the moral law, the balance is in his favour. But one downright wilful and grievous transgression outweighs with God all his former good deeds. It is a defiance of the Deity, a greater insult than all his previous life was a service and homage. It is as though a loyal regiment had mutinied, or a hitherto decent and orderly citizen ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... ancient Rome, making possible the toleration of such colossal iniquity as marked the decline of the Empire. Such, then, was the aspect of court life, while above the social and political horizon were gathering clouds which prophesied the greatest cataclysm civilization had witnessed. The wilful short-sightedness, the supreme indifference to the principles of justice, liberty, and fraternity; the conspicuous absence of the spirit of humanity, which characterized those who might have averted the coming baptism ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... to stand at the receipt of custom, and be constantly on the lookout for windfalls. The true devotee in this way waits for the revelations of Fortune as the poet waits for the inspiration of the Muse, and does not rashly anticipate her favours. He must be neither capricious nor wilful. I have known people untrammelled in the ways of business, but with so intense an apprehension of their own interest, that they would grasp at the slightest possibility of gain as a certainty, and were led into as many mistakes by an overgriping, usurious ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... something wholly natural; he found her as truly a patrician as Wayne Wayland, her father, could wish. The old man's domain was greater than that of many princes, and his power more absolute. His only daughter he spoiled as thoroughly as he ruled his part of the financial world, and wilful Mildred, once she had taken an interest in the young college man so evidently ready to be numbered among her lovers, did not pause half way, but made her preference patent to all, and opened to him a realm of dazzling possibilities. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... necessary, dear Countess," he said. "The doors are open to you. But it is as clear as day that if you go to the hotel or near it you will at once be recognised, and recognition means arrest. There is a limit beyond which one cannot help a wilful woman. Take your life in your hands and go your own way, or trust in us who are doing our best ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the skirts. There is a voice which sounds like words from home, But, as I stumble on to reach it, seems To leap from rock to rock. Oh! if it is Willing obliquity of sense, descend, Heal all my wanderings, take me by the hand, And lead me homeward through the shadows. Let me not by my wilful acts of pride Block up the windows of thy truth, and grow A wasted, withered thing, that stumbles on Down to the grave with folded hands ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... husband's nearest approach to life have been labour in vain; that the "great mind" has been toiling, with feeble uncertain steps, in a path which has already been trodden into firmness and completeness; toiling in wilful and obdurate ignorance that other and abler natures have more than anticipated all he has been painfully and abortively labouring to accomplish. Again a cry bursts from the wounded heart, seemingly of anger against her informant, really of anguish—anguish, not for her own sinking hopes, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... voice with the last sentence, but I might just as well have raised it instead. I had said the same thing over and over again to see whether the wilful tautology would cause the secretary to open his eyes. It seemed to have had the very opposite effect. His head fell forward on the table, with never a quiver at the blow, never a twitch when I pillowed it upon one of his own sprawling arms. And there ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... respectable and worthy gentleman whom the liberals calumniated. Luckily for shrewd players, there are people to be found among the spectators who will always sustain them. Ashamed of having to defend a piece of wrong-doing, they stoutly deny it. Do not accuse them of wilful infatuation; such men have a sense of their dignity; governments set them the example of a virtue which consists in burying their dead without chanting the Misere of their defeats. If the chevalier did allow himself this bit of shrewd practice,—which, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... out," said Mrs. Ingleton tartly, "that Sylvia is a most wilful and perverse girl, and I think you are very unwise to put up with her whims. I should be ashamed to have a girl of that age still ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... [pointing.] There is my youngest blossom and my fairest, But my most wilful too—you'll pluck her not ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... society. The bright, sweet-natured girl had come as a welcome diversion to a couple who in seclusion did battle with tendencies to yawn. He was not quite convinced, for that matter, that the American lady always went to that trouble. She seemed to his observation a wilful sort of person, who would not be restrained by small ordinary considerations from doing the things she wanted to do. Her relations with her companion afforded him food for much thought. Without any overt demonstrations, she produced the effect of ordering Lady ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... and the formation of the character. The precise measure of a child's success, in every thing that pertains to his character and standing as a scholar, will in nine cases out of ten be his power and habit of attention. There are indeed lamentable cases of wilful and intentional disorder. Yet every teacher knows that by far the greater portion of the things which interrupt and disturb a school arise from thoughtlessness and inattention. There are also equally undoubted cases of ignorance that is no crime. Yet ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... named Brunhild, and she was the most beautiful of all the maidens that chose heroes for his war-host. But she was wilful too, and did not always obey the All-Father's behests. And when Odin knew that she had sometimes snatched the doomed from death, and sometimes helped her chosen friends to victory, he was very angry. And he drove her away from Gladsheim, and sent her, friendless and poor, to live among the children ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... face, with melancholy eyes, stern mouth, and the absent air of one who leads an inward life. The younger had a more attractive face, for, though bearing marks of dissipation, it betrayed a generous, ardent nature, proud and wilful, yet lovable in spite of all defects. He was very boyish still, and plainly showed how much he felt, as, with a hasty nod to Christie, he knelt down beside his sister, saying, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... best of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften the course I take, even ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... stomach it betrays With its exhilarating flow, And I confess that now-a-days I prefer sensible Bordeaux. To cope with Ay no more I dare, For Ay is like a mistress fair, Seductive, animated, bright, But wilful, frivolous, and light. But thou, Bordeaux, art like the friend Who in the agony of grief Is ever ready with relief, Assistance ever will extend, Or quietly partake our woe. All hail! my good old ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... Pomeroy,' the tutor answered, gently shaking his head, and avoiding the issue presented to him. 'You could not persuade her. She was in such a humour to-day, my lord had special advantages. Break it off between them, and she'll come to herself. And she is wilful—Lord! you don't know her! Petruchio could ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... spangling the blue cotton frock until it appeared a more regal vesture than purple and ermine; her head was bent, her body drooped like a lily in the noonday heat, her whole attitude was soft, and forlorn and appealing, as if she, this wilful, untamed creature, subdued herself to accept a wounding decree, and bore it with all the pathos ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... one wide and comprehensive means of salvation: a salvation which all are invited to partake; by a means which all are capable of using; which nothing but voluntary blindness can prevent our comprehending, and nothing but wilful error can ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... John Granger, on the charge of being concerned in the death of Corporal Eric Strangeways, and of the wilful murder of one Druce Spurling, your accomplice in the latter crime, whom you, well knowing that he was a fugitive from justice, assisted to escape ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... the difference between an infidel and a madman? The only difference is, that the madness of the infidel is wilful, while the madness of the poor lunatic is entirely involuntary. The one arouses our compassion, while the other excites our ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... grace, her slender hands and feet, and the type of her dark and unusual beauty. She was more a woman than either Dolly or Sattie, and the fact that Mr. Bassity was desperately in love with her fanned within her breast a wilful desire ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... she said, consolingly, "mother's often threatened and never done it before, and Elsie's a wilful child, with a spirit and temper that must needs be broken. But ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... about. He had a feeling, too, that he was behaving with something like the candor due his mother, in saying, "I could imagine her being imperious, even arrogant at times; and certainly she is a wilful person. But I don't see," he added, "why we shouldn't credit her with something better than pride in what she ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... sole object of our own existence was to give pleasure and amusement to our possessors, we have no hesitation in believing that we deserved a handsomer return than to have had our springs broken, our paint dirtied, and our earthly careers so untimely shortened by wilful mischief or fickle neglect. My friends, the ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... is quite as sacred to me as hers was to her. And in being an agnostic I object to being classed as blind, stubborn, wilful, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... some who seem to regard the genius of the Cape as a wilful, capricious jade, that must be courted and coaxed into complaisance. First, they come along under easy sails; do not steer boldly for the headland, but tack this way and that—sidling up to it, Now they woo the Jezebel with a t'-gallant-studding-sail; ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... foundation in fact? What were we two sensible and, as a rule, practical men thinking of, that we should ascribe to either of these dainty belles of a conventional and shallow society the wish to commit a deed calling for the vigour and daring of some wilful child of nature? It was not to be thought of in this sober, reasoning hour. We had given ourselves over to a ghastly nightmare, and would ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... little too—vivacious, you might say—"gushing" would perhaps be the word if you were speaking of a modern maiden with so exuberant a disposition as Juliet's. She was too romantic, too blossomy, too impetuous, too wilful; old Capulet had brought her up injudiciously, and Lady Capulet was a nonentity. Yet in spite of faults of training and some slight inherent flaws of character, Juliet was a superb creature; there was a fascinating dash in her frankness; her modesty and daring were as happy ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... her see finer pictures than even those she found in her fairy tales. But there were other times when he could make his violin terrible. He used to punish Ben in this way. When the latter had been over wilful, he made the boy stand before him. Then taking a position in front of him, he played things so wild, so fearful, that the boy would ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... groan'd for Apollo's wrong: Hermophrodite wept shewers and wisht his birth had neuer bin, or that he more had clung To Salmacis, and Clitie grieued in vaine: Leueothoes wrong, the occasion of her baine, my wilful eie (this should the burthen be) Hath rob'd me of, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... performed her duty as a member of the Roman Church. The princes of the League would then appear the sole authors of those evils, which the continuance of the war would unavoidably bring upon the Roman Catholics of Germany; they alone, by their wilful and obstinate adherence to the Emperor, would frustrate the measures employed for their protection, involve the church in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... be something, perhaps, to him if he saw you," replied the guttural voice of Von Glauben. "It is safer to be out of his way. You are a very wilful princess this afternoon! You must remember your husband ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... "My wife cannot bear the sound of his name when she is weak from fasting, so we call him 'IT' at this time of the year. He carried off our eldest daughter last summer. She was proud and wilful, and would not stay by her mother's side.... ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... first wilful, had its rise in the sixteenth century, in the furious attacks of a monk of Fontevrault, Gabriel de Puy-Herbault, who seems to have drawn his conclusions concerning the author from the book, and, more especially, in the regrettable satirical epitaph of Ronsard, piqued, it is said, that the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... she left the house for in that wilful way? He did not believe her excuses. Yet he was mystified. Did she realise that things were becoming serious, and did she not mean them to be serious? If so, who ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which meant that it was moving fast, perhaps faster than we. Could it be a motor-barge? But why should a motor-barge be forging out to sea, where no motor-barges or motor-boats of any sort, except racers, had any need to venture, unless they were navigated to gratify the whim of a wilful American girl? ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... establishing topics of conversation, they presently warmed into cordiality. I found them well informed and agreeable, less demonstrative in their self-assertion than their Northern sisterhood, but latently wilful, and assumptive of a superior elevation hardly justified by their general air of languid refinement. It reminded me, on the whole, of what I had heard complacently eulogized in Charleston as a tendency toward 'Orientalism' on the part of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a modern novelist, compare the case to that of "a practitioner doing his best for a wilful patient, with poor appliances and indifferent nursing." But if He could and will ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... The wilful misstatements of some nurserymen, and the ignorance or carelessness of others, has hindered the progress of nut growing. Fortunately we have several nurserymen who have made a study of the subject, who are honorable and truthful men, and on whose statements you may rely. The only possible qualification ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... of Christianity be thus plain, those who do not receive it must be either stupid or wilful. Its rejection argues a want of intellect or a bad heart. Heretics, therefore, ought logically to become to the Orthodox objects either of contempt or hatred. If they cannot see what is so plain, they must ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... any suspence," said Cecilia, "I am at least sure it must be wilful. But why should ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... it admits of no other cure but the possession of its object, which in this case ought always if possible to be obtained. The ruinous consequences arising from disappointment, which happen almost every day, are dreadful to relate; and no punishment can be too great for those whose wilful conduct becomes the occasion of such catastrophes. Parents are deeply laden with guilt, who by this means plunge their children into irretrievable ruin; and lovers are deserving of no forgiveness, whose treacherous conduct annihilates the hopes ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... ever made his peace with the provost-marshal of Petersburg we are not informed; but we will venture to say that his whims were not respected after the events we have narrated. He was a wilful man; but his guests were very sorry to be compelled to make him such an ungenerous return for his noble hospitality. When the war is ended, and he is enabled fully to understand the meaning of treason to our beneficent Government, ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... same cause. It is difficult in such instances to say with certainty whether the fish were in fault; whether there was not a peculiar susceptibility in the condition of the recipients; or whether the mischief may not have been occasioned by the wilful administration of poison, or its accidental occurrence in the brass cooking vessels used by the natives. The popular belief was, however, deferred to by an order passed by the Governor in Council in February, 1824, which, after reciting that "Whereas ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... pleasure in noticing them, and a still greater pleasure in telling them to myself over and over again. Surely then, he was more to me than all those other people who came and went and left not a trace of their personality inscribed upon my mind or heart. In spite of my wilful protestations, and avowals of indifference, I must have been living all along in the fetters of happy slavery, else, why so many fond recollections of a past that was, after all, but the interesting progress of a ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... men being sinners, there is a vast solidarity, which he describes as the Kingdom of Evil and sets over against the Kingdom of God, yet not so that the freedom or responsibility of man is impaired. God forgives all sin save that of wilful resistance to the spirit of the good. That is, Ritschl regards all sin, short of this last, as mainly ignorance and weakness. It is from Ritschl, and more particularly from Kaftan, that the phrases have been mainly taken which served ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... much to admire in Miss Wallace's gloves?" asked the wilful girl, biting her lip, as I fancied, to suppress a smile, though her cheeks were still suffused, and her eyes continued to give forth that indescribable expression of bewitching softness. "It is a pair my father presented to her, and ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... hold of my hair, which was rather short, drew it back from my forehead with a force that brought the tears to my eyes, and pressing his hand heavily on my head, he again asked if I was not sometimes a little wilful and disobedient. I was so much frightened at this, I turned to my father, and with tears and sobs entreated him not to send me away with that man, but allow me to stay at home with him. He drew me to his bosom, wiped away ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... verdict of wilful murder," said the coroner, and he entered it accordingly in his notes. The Court now rose. The spectators reluctantly trooped out, the jurymen stood up and stretched themselves, and the two constables, under the guidance of the sergeant, carried the wretched ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... was a sweet child she was a wilful one, and very early in life manifested a dominant nature. This was a secret pleasure to her father, who, never losing sight of his old idea that she was both son and daughter, took pleasure as well as pride out of each manifestation ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... as proud and wilful as himself; with more personal ambition however, and less of that easy, sensuous recklessness, that gambler's spirit, which had led his father into such quagmires. Duggy had shown up well these last weeks. He was not a boy to talk, but in acts ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... young! Art surely no mere clerk, but bishop or cardinal at the least. Shouldst have crozier for staff and mitre for cap. Well, well, for your sake I will forgive the Socman and take vengeance on none but on my own wilful self who must needs run into danger's path. So will ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... then, truly, that there are outlyers waiting for the fitting moment?" said the officer, with an interest so marked, as to cause even the but-half-pacified Faith to glance an arch look at her companion, though he still had reason to distrust a wilful expression that lurked in the corner of her eyes, which threatened at each moment to contradict his relation of the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... public estimation; but let the reader assure himself that even the Court of Chancery is not quite so black as it is painted; that the true ground for the delays and ruinous expenses in ninety-nine out of one hundred instances is not legal chicanery, still less the wilful circuitousness and wordiness of law processes, but the great eternal fact that, what through lapse of time, decays of memory, and loss of documents, and what through interested suppressions of truth, and the dispersions of witnesses, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... some cases the fault is man's, in others it is woman's. Perhaps in all cases both are somewhat at fault; yet the responsibility rests on woman to make home a delight. When she fails she must take the consequences. Failure with her is often a mistake. She knows no better. Ignorance, in some, is wilful, but in more it is educational. Their mothers, through ill-judged kindness, mistaken notions of life, or careless neglect, suffered them to grow up without the necessary practical training; or else they failed before them; and inefficiency ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... done well," said Peter, "have you not? Your fetters are, I hope, to your liking. Well! a wilful man must have his own way, and perhaps the next time you will be content to follow my advice. You must now free yourself, the best way you can, from these Moabites, and I promise you it will be no easy ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in Article xvi. that wilful sin after baptism is not, as some have taught, the unforgivable sin, but it seems rather to be "obstinate, resolute, and wilful impenitence, after all the means of grace and with all the strivings of the Spirit, under the Christian dispensation as distinguished from the Jewish, and amid all ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... windows. The sun, the dust, the acids of dripping water, and the other works of time, have in seven hundred years corroded or worn away or altered the glass, especially on the south side. Windows have been darkened by time and mutilated by wilful injury. Scores of the panels are wholly restored, modern reproductions or imitations. Even after all this loss, the glass is probably the best-preserved, or perhaps the only preserved part of the decoration in colour, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... have myself noted not a few faulty passages in Homer and in other authors of the highest rank, and though I am far from being partial to their failings, nevertheless I would call them not so much wilful blunders as oversights which were allowed to pass unregarded through that contempt of little things, that "brave disorder," which is natural to an exalted genius; and I still think that the greater excellences, though not everywhere equally ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... hoping that he might thereby arouse her better nature, and bring her in repentance back to him. And at first sight it seemed not impossible that such a thing might take place; for, in the midst of all her change of conduct and wilful avoidance of allusion to the past, she felt no dislike of him. It was merely her love for him that she had suppressed, and in its place there still remained a warm regard. If he could have been content ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... for a sensible man (to say nothing of the astute philosopher and the erudite theologian), you certainly do indulge in the most remarkable spasms of wilful, obstinate, premeditated blindness. You need not stare so desperately at that page, for I intend to talk to you, and it is useless to try to snub either me or my facts. Regina is young, I know, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... "Wilful creature, have I not already told you? On occasions of state you are to be one of my trainbearers; and when his majesty comes to visit me, you station yourself at my side. Then you are to drive out with me daily, and as you ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... quite in vain. Indeed, but for that grievous sin towards his eldest son, Mr. Ford's client would probably have become an utterly different man. But there is no rising far in the moral atmosphere with a wilful, unrepented sin as a clog. It was a miserable result of the weakness of his character that he could not see that the very nobleness of Lady Adelaide's should have encouraged him to confess to her what he dared not trust ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... who owing to the fiction that his predecessor was still alive had probably been brought up less strictly than usual, soon began to inspire alarm at Peking for he showed himself wilful and intelligent. He wrote love songs which are still popular and his licentious behaviour was quite out of harmony with the traditions of the holy see. In 1701, under joint pressure from the Chinese ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... the other. In a glance at her little peaked determined face, and obstinate mouth, Mrs. Minto's spirit suddenly failed. Where she had meant to be maternally peremptory she became querulous. "Wherever you going now?" she asked weakly. "Oh, you are a naughty wilful girl." ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... might have been presumed to be irresistible irradiations; every perversity of will which renders men as accountable and criminal for being ignorant as for acting against knowledge; and every form of practical mischief in which the natural tendency of ignorance, especially wilful ignorance, is shown. A great part of what the devout teachers of that people had to address to them, wherever they appeared among them, was in reproach of their ignorance, and in order, if possible, to dispel it. And were we to indulge our fancy in picturing the forms and ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... was the case with a late actor. Nothing could be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr. Emery; this told excellently in his Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage business, and wilful blindness and oblivion of everything before the curtain into his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with the rest of the Personae Dramatis. There was as little link between him and them as betwixt himself and the audience. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... everything else, to find out that everything else disappoints, and to come back to him, the fountain of all wholesome pleasure, the well-spring of all life fit for a man to live. When the fool finds out his folly; when the wilful man gives up his wilfulness; when the rebel submits himself to law; when the son comes back to his father's house—there is no sternness, no peevishness, no up-braiding, no pride, no revenge; but the everlasting and boundless love of God wells forth again as rich as ever. He ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... Simone, though a shrewd Frenchwoman, had never known that her mistress' name was not really Howard. At the time of her being engaged she was just leaving an American lady from the far West whom Mr. Parsons knew of, and she was delighted to come as maid and almost chaperon to this sweet, but wilful ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... themselves—saints, patriots; faces which have been washed in the salt tears dropped for others' sorrows and lighted by the fire of self-sacrifice. Sally Seabrook, the high-spirited, the radiant, the sweetly wilful, the provoking, to concentrate herself upon this narrow theme—to reconquer the lost paradise of ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... torture of the creatures whose marrowy bones are crunched by the epicure, without a thought of the suffering that preceded his intensely pleasurable emotions, and the bare mention of which, in this narrative, is almost more than sufficient, then, worst of all, the wilful prodigality and waste—the wickedness of casting to the dogs the healthy food for which whole families, widows, and beggared orphans are pining in the neighbouring street—the guilty indifference of him who finds the wealth for the profusion, and the impudent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... animal magnetism, always, in fact men were occupied more or less with this vital principle, principle of flux and influx, dynamic of our mental mechanics, human phase of electricity. Poetic observation was pure, there was no quackery in its free course, as there is so often in this wilful tampering with the hidden springs of life, for it is tampering unless done in a patient spirit and with severe truth; yet it may be, by the rude or greedy miners, some good ore is unearthed. And some there are who work in the true temper, patient and accurate in trial, not rushing to conclusions, ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... country by rendering it easy for slaves to secure their freedom; and the power of the master over his slave has been greatly restricted. A man is not allowed to marry a second or third wife, unless he can prove himself able to provide for each of the women and her offspring; wilful murder is always punished by death or long imprisonment, not merely by imposition of a ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... strange, and something with a fine shape and color to it. Adventure isn't in the quick fist and the nimble foot; it's in the hungry heart and the itching mind. Isn't it myself that knows, that was a wild and wilful girl, and went out into the world for more nor twenty years, and came back the like of an old bitch fox, harried by hunting, and looking for and mindful of the burrow where she was thrown?... As we're made, we're made, wee fellow; you're either a salmon ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... all kinds of trouble. Crowner's Quest was held on the "Beau;" and I only wonder that they did not bring it in murder against Me. The jury sat a long time without making up their minds, till the Parish constable ordered them in a bowl of Flip, upon which they proceeded to bring in a verdict of Wilful Murder against some person or persons unknown. I can scarcely, to this day, bring myself to suspect my pretty maid, that should have married the Pewterer, of such a bold Act, and the rather believe that it was the girl ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Devices absurd and inexplicable unless interpreted in a broad farcical spirit. 1. The running slave. 2. Wilful blindness. 3. Adventitious entrance. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... fugues that Rimsky composed in the course of a single month, complained that the latter "worshiped technique" and that his work was "Full of contrapuntal tricks and all the signs of a sterile pedantry." It was not that Rimsky was pedantic from choice, out of a wilful perversity. His obsession with intellectual formulas was after all the result of a fear of opening the dark sluices through which ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... of kindness, and fulfil them, better perhaps than I do mine. But I speak to you as representing your whole class, which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the less terribly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit is there to that ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Dale," said he, "but fortune is more wilful still. You would not woo her, therefore woman-like she loves you. You were stubborn, but she is resolute to overcome your stubbornness. But don't try her too far. She stands waiting for you open-armed. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... been torn out by a hurried hand. What name was it that had been in those hundreds of volumes? For what reason had it been so carefully removed? The girl had often speculated thereon, and fitted theory after theory; but never yet, wilful as she was, had she had the temerity to ask the only person who could have given ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... message, and obey His gracious inspiration, let Him speak through whatever means He will. He may come to us by some crisis in our life, either for sorrow or for bliss. He may come to us by a great failure; by a great disappointment—to teach the wilful and ambitious soul that not in that direction lies the path of peace; or He may come in some unexpected happiness to teach that same soul that He is able and willing to give abundantly beyond all that we can ask ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... had misunderstood, and in their maturity they had failed, each other; it was the fault of neither and Henrietta must not be the victim of their folly. Looking at the big fan of black feathers spread on her knee, Rose smiled a little, with a maternal tenderness. Henrietta was her father's daughter, wilful and lovable, but she was also the daughter of that mother who had been good and loving. Henrietta had her father's passion for excitement but, being a woman, she had the greater need of being loved, and Rose raised her eyes and looked at Charles with an ironical ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... the lists. If this fiction was intended merely to pacify our king at the expense of truth, it was evident that this object could not be attained without compromising him;—a kind of treatment wholly unmerited by a prince who was never guilty of wilful falsehood[4]. ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... will owe his freedom to my Jewish charity? He will burn the Temple first. This young man has the sword of Gideon. You know little of the world, Eva, and nothing of young Englishmen. There is not a race so proud, so wilful, so rash, and so obstinate. They live in a misty clime, on raw meats, and wines of fire. They laugh at their fathers, and never say a prayer. They pass their days in the chase, gaming, and all violent courses. They have all the power of the State, and all its wealth; and when they can wring ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... wilful and alert, and rather haughty. She is looking out of herself; her beauty is of a more human type, and she knows it. Saint Clotilde, is ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... a friend of one of her nephews? Hadn't he spent the Christmas holidays precisely three years before at her brother-in-law's in Yorkshire, taking that occasion to get himself refused with derision by wilful Betty, the second daughter of the house? Her sister, who liked the floundering youth, had written to her to complain of Betty, and that the young man should now turn up as an appendage of Flora's was one of those oft-cited proofs that the world ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... misery it will cause you, when you are brought to face the world, where there is so much to distrust, and so much that must be overlooked and blindly believed in. Can't you allow for others, some of the pride, the wilful temper and bitter hastiness that you know so well what it is to battle against, when I tell you that the greatest point of difference between your own and your great-uncle's disposition, is, that he is as hasty one way ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... Malcolm, with all his errors fresh upon him, in any state to dedicate himself worthily. The errors—which in Ralf Percy, or in most other youths, might have seemed slight—were heavy stains on one who, like Malcolm, had erred, not thoughtlessly, but with a conscience of them all, in wilful abandonment of his higher principles. On these the chaplain mostly dwelt; on these he tried to direct Malcolm's repentance; and, finding that the youth was in perpetual extremes of remorse, and that his abject submission was a sort of fresh form of wilfulness, almost passion at being ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nature of ravishment of ward. The activities of slaves were elaborately restricted; any property they might acquire was considered as belonging to their masters; their marriages were without legal recognition; and although the wilful killing of slaves was generally held to be murder, the violation of their women was without criminal penalty. Under the law as it generally stood no slave might raise his hand against a white person ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... person (who shall be nameless) conceived the dastardly idea of exposing private correspondence to the public eye. He proved wilful in the matter, and this book came into ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... study when she heard of it. Rose had been guilty of a little wilful self-deception, still ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... does not diminish the claims which Alice has on me, does not lessen the grateful affection that is due to her from yourself. Yes, Evelyn, we are not the less separated forever. But when I learned the wilful falsehood which the unhappy man, now hurried to his last account, to whom your birth was known, had imposed upon me,—namely, that you were the child of Alice,—and when I learned also that you had been hurried ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... my Divine Spouse, grant that my baptismal robe may never be sullied. Take me from this world rather than let me stain my soul by committing the least wilful fault. May I never seek or find aught but Thee alone! May all creatures be nothing to me and I nothing to them! May no earthly ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... stint of cloth for the day," he murmured. "A college professor in the making who has much to unlearn; a crude young giant who is fond of killing things, and cares for helpless children; and a beautiful, wilful, characterless girl to be shown into her womanly heritage. The clay is ready. It is the potter whose hands need skill. Victor Burleigh! Victor Burleigh! There's my greatest problem of all three. He has the strength of a Titan in those ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... Louis went on, "marriages like this must be sternly discouraged, or all order in our kingdom would be done away with. Wilful girls and headstrong soldiers cannot be permitted to arrange their affairs without reference to the plans of their parents, and in this instance it happened that the father's plans had received our approval. The great estates of France cannot be handed over to the first comer, who may perhaps ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... it necessary to impute to John conscious and wilful deception? By no means absolutely necessary;—as appeared by the following train[23] of thought. John tells us that Jesus promised the Comforter, to bring to their memory things that concerned him; oh that one could have the satisfaction of cross-examining ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... telegram which one of the two men had given him a moment since. It was a command which even he, wilful and disobedient as he was, dared not ignore. He ripped it into shreds and flung them out of the window. He did not apologize to the man into whose face the pieces flew. That gentleman reddened perceptibly, but he held his tongue. The ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... rain; and his daughters still persisting in their resolution not to admit his followers, he called for his horses, and chose rather to encounter the utmost fury of the storm abroad than stay under the same roof with these ungrateful daughters; and they, saying that the injuries which wilful men procure to themselves are their just punishment, suffered him to go in that condition and shut their ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... till it is made clear to me. Being in preference to doing is the great aim, and this comes to us rather by a resigned willingness than a wilful activity, which is a check to all divine growth," responded ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... and his after speeches are not so much directed to her as to the listeners and spies. Such a discovery in a mood so anxious and irritable accounts for a certain harshness in him;—and yet a wild up-working of love, sporting with opposites in a wilful self-tormenting strain of irony, is perceptible throughout. 'I did love you once:'—'I lov'd you not:'—and particularly in his enumeration of the faults of the sex from which Ophelia is so free, that the mere freedom therefrom constitutes her character. Note Shakspeare's charm of ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... Away from Paris they carry on a fairly regular correspondence. Such of Bakkus's letters as Lackaday has kept and as I have read, are literary gems with—always—a perverse and wilful flaw ... like ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... the low murmur of the Spanish girl's melodious voice. Nell lay in the hammock, her hands behind her head, with rosy cheeks and arch eyes. Indeed, she looked rebellious. Certain it was, Dick reflected, that the young lady had fully recovered the wilful personality which had lain dormant for a while. Equally certain it seemed that Mercedes's earnestness was not apparently having the effect it should ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the general rule. Like everybody else, Jason knew the parental purpose where those two were concerned, and he began to laugh at the daring presumptions of his own past dreams and to worship now only from afar. But he could not know the effect of that parental purpose on that wilful, high-strung young person, the pique that Gray's frank interest in Mavis brought to life within her, and he was not yet far enough along in the classics to suspect that Marjorie might weary of hearing ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... for a case of chronic constipation or diarrhea without first examining the sufferer for proctitis and colitis, is either ignorant or does wilful harm to his patient and injury to his practice. The abominable, aboriginal and almost universal custom at the present time of giving some physic to "cleanse" the gastro-intestinal canal is in every respect a deplorable mistake for a ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... from the church and from the company of women. When there is a case in which great injury has been done, it is punished with death, and they repay an eye with an eye, a nose for a nose, a tooth for a tooth, and so on, according to the law of retaliation. If the offence is wilful the Council decides. When there is strife and it takes place undesignedly, the sentence is mitigated; nevertheless, not by the judge but by the triumvirate, from whom even it may be referred to Hoh, not on account of justice but of mercy, for Hoh is able to pardon. They ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... that the mistress of 'The Seven Stars' could not become Mr. Gurd's partner and continue to reign over her own constellation as of old. Yet Nelly did not readily accept a fact so obvious, even under Mr. Legg's reiterated admonitions. She felt wayward—almost wilful about it: and there came an evening when Richard dropped in for his usual half hour of courting to find her in such a frame of mind. Humour on his part had saved the situation; but he lacked humour, and while Nelly, even as she spoke, knew she was talking nonsense and only waited his ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... think, because I'm the naughtiest and have the hardest work trying to be good. I'm often surprised at papa's patience with me and the trouble he takes to help me in my hard fight with my passionate, wilful temper." ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... a type very interesting to Shakespeare. He is wilful, complex, passionate, with a beauty almost childish and a love of pleasure that makes him greedy of all gay, light, glittering things. He loves the music that does not trouble with passion and the thought not touched with the world. He loves that kind of ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... else so fell a traitor find? The wilful, hard misleader of the blind And what can be the soul-perverter's meed, Plotting to lure his friend to such a deed, As made self-hatred on the conscience lay That heavy weight she never moves away? O! where the good man's inner barriers ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... because He didn't belong to their set. In their utterly selfish prejudice and wilful ignorance, these leaders shut Him out from the circles they controlled. But with great graciousness He received into His circle any, of any circle, high or low, who would receive Him into their hearts. To as many as received Him into ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... wilful folk, lad," was Mr. Sutherland's remark, one evening after I was able to leave my room. "Ye hae risen frae y'r bed like the crocus frae snaw. An' Frances were hangin' aboot y'r pillow, lad, I'm nae sure y'd be up sae ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... said Dame Burton, as she received the note again, "the provost guard is on the lad's track, and with a warrant. I told thee thy wilful ways would ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... under her breath like a wilful child, until the severe glances of her elder sister made her be silent, but she was still in a pet. Sometimes without any reason she had these exhibitions of ill-temper and rebellion, and Carmelita had to call all her authority ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... where hangs the whole: Would God that He had made thee clean of soul! Helen and thou—O, face and form were fair, Meet for men's praise; but sisters twain ye were, Both things of naught, a stain on Castor's star, And Helen slew her honour, borne afar In wilful ravishment: but thou didst slay The highest man of the world. And now wilt say 'Twas wrought in justice for thy child laid low At Aulis?... Ah, who knows thee as I know? Thou, thou, who long ere aught of ill was done Thy child, when Agamemnon scarce was gone, Sate ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... was, and held a great deal, though so tiny. Meadow-land came first, set with flowers, blue and red, like gems. Then a white road ran, with wilful, uncalled-for loops, up a steep, conical hill, crowned with towers, bastioned walls, and belfries; and down the road the little knights came riding, two and two. The hill on one side descended to water, tranquil, far-reaching, and blue; and a very curly ship lay at anchor, ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... services, saw that it was a Catholic cult: he had been sure at the outset that their rites were those of some little Protestant sect. The audience groveled: the disciples were pious, intolerant, aggressive on the smallest provocation: at their head was a man of a cold sort of purity, rather childish and wilful, maintaining the integrity of his doctrine, religious, moral, and artistic, explaining in abstract terms the Gospel of music to the small number of the Elect, and calmly damning Pride and Heresy. To ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... and the Company regarded as wilful misrepresentations had in the beginning been due to inexperience and ignorance of an undertaking which it required scientific knowledge to successfully carry out. When the truth had been gradually borne in upon him as the work progressed, he felt that it was ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... "No, Susy! You're wilful at times, and that's right enough. I don't like a girl without spirit. There's a mighty pretty girl comes to the dancing class; but she is all milk and water. Her eyes never flash like yours when you're put out; why, I can see them flame across the kitchen like a cat's in the ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... unhappy one wicked girl made her poor mother. I might tell you many such melancholy stories, all of which would be true. A few years ago there was a boy who began to be disobedient to his parents in little things. But every day he grew worse, more disobedient and wilful, and troublesome. He would run away from school, and thus grew up in ignorance. He associated with bad boys, and learned to swear and to lie, and to steal. He became so bad that his parents could do nothing with him. Every ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... Thompson with angry eyes. No one had ever before dared to speak sharply to her. She was about to tell the principal that she was not used to being addressed in that tone, but the words would not come. Something in the elder woman's quiet, resolute face as she sat writing checked the wilful girl, and though she felt deeply incensed at the reprimand, she managed to control herself and walked out of the office with her head held high, vowing to herself that Miss Thompson should pay for ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower |
