"Caprice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Amsterdam, and I should not have been compelled to unite his kingdom to mine—a measure which contributed to ruin my credit in Europe. Many other events might also have taken a different turn. Perhaps an excuse might be found for the caprice of Louis's disposition in the ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... way, and the horse, whether through some wild caprice of its own, or some touch of its dying rider, circled back, galloping down the long slope toward the man who had come to help Hall adjust his differences with these contemptible sheepmen. Hall's hat fell off as his head sank forward; he bent, grappling his horse's mane. So for a little way he rode, ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... this caprice? He had never seen any proof of the presence of such an infirmity in her. And yet, how could he account for those strange words—that manner so full of offended pride? What had he been saying? How had she misconceived him? He took her hand earnestly in his own. She would have withdrawn it; ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of Brand was 'all or nothing'; that of Peer Gynt 'to be master of the situation.' Both are studies of egoism, in the finding and losing of self; both are personal studies and national lessons. Of Peer Gynt Ibsen said, 'I meant it to be a caprice.' It is Ibsen in high spirits; and it is like a mute dancing at a funeral. It is a harlequin of a poem, a thing of threads and patches; and there are gold threads in it and tattered clouts. It is an experiment which has hardly succeeded, because it is ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... foreigners as have been inspired to compose pieces founded on Cuban music, are also included in Don Laureano's repertory. Ravina's far-famed 'Habaneros,' Gottschalk's 'Ojos Criollos' and Salaman's 'Spanish Caprice,' are favourites with a Cuban audience. But, like all Cuban and Spanish music, they require to be played with a certain local sentiment, and it is for this reason that the most accomplished European performers often fail to satisfy the Cuban musical appetite. Under the practised ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Violin Concerto in A major given by the Philharmonic Society in New York City, with Henri Marteau as soloist. Also Guiraud's "Caprice" for violin. ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... drift. There was no caprice to offend when he turned with courtly logic from one great ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... strange caprice, she finally confessed her girlish idea. She wanted to wait, hoping that a day would come when she could get married, and have her union blessed in the church. My first burst of anger having passed, I cannot tell you all the fine reasons she gave me to ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... medium through which his art finds manifestation—does anything at random. "The wind bloweth where it listeth" only in appearance; in reality, it is governed by immutable law. Similarly, the outward form of an art is only apparently dictated by caprice and freedom from rule. The effective presentation of every art is based on well-defined and accepted principles. And it is with the earnest desire to throw light on this most important phase of vocal art, that I present the principles of ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Caprice and accident may influence my choice; but the dexterity of self-love will contrive to applaud either active ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... said, "that you're foolish enough to have any feeling beyond caprice. That would be too much!" ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the world in its caprice Deigned to proclaim "I know you both, Have recognized your plighted troth, Am sponsor for you: live in peace!"— How many precious months and years Of youth had passed, that speed so fast, Before we found it out at last, The world, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... neither is that name of Peru so ancient, nor does it properly belong to that great country as its universal appellation. It has been a general practice among discoverers to apply names to new found ports and lands, just as occasion offered, or accident or caprice directed; and accordingly, the Spaniards who made the first discovery of that kingdom, applied to it the name of the river they first landed at, or that of the cacique who governed the district. Besides, the similarity of words is too trivial a circumstance on which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... industrial districts as a grave reproach to the nation. The lust for wealth and other unlovely aspects of competitive commercialism were most repugnant to him. He knew that Nature cares not a rap for equality and lavishes her gifts with a strange caprice. But though there is inequality of natural gifts, he thought it was the duty of the State to ensure equality of opportunity to all its citizens. His ideal was a co-operative commonwealth, in which the competitive spirit would be held in check by communal ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... in my diary at Mourzuk, that one of our blacks had exercised the privilege of divorce with respect to his wife. This lady did not leave the caravan, but has since passed from tent to tent, as the caprice of fortune carried her. She was first taken up by Sakonteroua; then by En-Noor, our Kailouee guide; and afterwards by some other person. Yesterday I saw her in the tent of the Sfaxee. The poor woman submits to ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... Each section of shutter denotes a degree of relationship. For a father or mother they close all but one, for a cousin they close one only, for a brother two, and so on. It appears that the custom is very old, and it still continues, because in that country no custom is discontinued for caprice; nothing is changed unless the alteration becomes a matter of serious importance, and unless the Hollanders have been more than persuaded that such a change ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... second must break like froth in a wine glass; an instant's perplexity, a slackening of the tension, and those flaccid intellects would relax into native inertia. Incapable of self-amusement, depending utterly upon superior minds for a respite from ennui, their caprice controlled his fate; and he ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... by the Indian hunters. These difficulties would doubtless have smothered the infant nation in its cradle, had it not been for the untiring zeal and constancy of its great founder. At every step he met with new trials from the indifference, caprice, or contradiction of his associates, but, with his eye steadily fixed upon the future, he devoted his fortune and the energies of his life to the cause, and rose ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... brilliant rake. "Behold, Flirtilla, at thy feet a man grown gray in the study of those noble arts by which right and wrong may be confounded; by which reason may be blinded, when we have a mind to escape from her inspection, and caprice and appetite instated in uncontrolled command and boundless dominion! Such a casuist may surely engage with certainty of success in vindication of an entertainment which in an instant gives confidence ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... word can be said to honor our nature, while many make us almost ashamed of it. The curtain is seldom drawn aside without exhibiting to us beings worn out with vicious indulgence, diseased in mind, if not in body, the creatures of caprice and insensibility. On the other hand, since the foundation of the American Republic, the chair has never been filled by a man, for whose life (to say the least,) any American need once to blush. It must, therefore, be some compensation to the Americans for the absence of pure monarchy, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... being restricted in his action; but he knows very well that the latitude allowed him became less and less circumscribed; and that, hitherto, he was well content to operate within the prescribed limits. Therefore, if it was not a silly caprice, it was a deliberate purpose, to escape a cloud of odium he knew must sooner or later ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... disappointments of this time—struggles that were to be repeated when, more than twenty years later, Tristan and the Mastersingers were produced in Munich. More need not be quoted, for the story is always the same—delays caused by intrigues and the whims and caprice of singers, and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... most unlikely, therefore, that he should ever want his father's assistance. His father had no apprehension of it. The aunt was a capricious woman, and governed her husband entirely; but it was not in Mr. Weston's nature to imagine that any caprice could be strong enough to affect one so dear, and, as he believed, so deservedly dear. He saw his son every year in London, and was proud of him; and his fond report of him as a very fine young man had made Highbury feel a sort of pride in him too. He was looked on as sufficiently ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... to receive such a guest. Besides, the hour is most suited to the convenience of one of thy quality who would breathe the fresh evening air on the canals. Were I to limit thee to hours and minutes, some truant wish of the moment—some innocent caprice of thy sex and years, might go ungratified. Ah! Donna Florinda, we may well pray that all our affection—not to call it weakness—for this persuasive girl, shall not in the end lead ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... from Duerer to Boecklin. But the mediaeval Dance of Death was stately allegory, showing the pageant of life brooded over by the shadow of mortality. In M. Raemaekers' cartoon there is no dignity, no lofty resignation. He shows Death summoned in a mad caprice and kept as companion till the revel becomes a ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... showing benevolence and kindness, the other violence and rage. In many of the deities both male and female principles were represented in one,—an Androgyne deity—which was an ideal frequently attempted. The idea that these grotesque deities were merely the expression of eccentricity or caprice on the part of their originator is not to be entertained. Richard Payne Knight has pointed out that they occur almost entirely on national coins and emblems, and so were the expression of an ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... to drive out with you whenever you please, without getting out of the carriage, but I know you would not care for that. No, your affection was only a temporary caprice." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... he saw faces suddenly turn cold as soon as he explained the purpose of his visit. "What! you are no longer with Hemerlingue and Son? How does that happen?" He would explain the condition of affairs as best he could, attributing it to a caprice of his employer, that violent-tempered Hemerlingue whom all Paris knew; but he was conscious of a cold, suspicious accent in the uniform reply: "Come and see us after the holidays." And, timid as he was at best, he reached ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... mark'd his strength of love, He lived a fixture on the place, In spite of tendency to rove So natural to his race. But brother sprites conspiring With importunity untiring, So teased their goblin chief, that he, Of his caprice, or policy, Our sprite commanded to attend A house in Norway's farther end, Whose roof was snow-clad through the year, And shelter'd human kind with deer. Before departing to his hosts Thus spake this best of busy ghosts:— ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... council. Bougainville describes them as they stalked gravely to the place of meeting, wrapped in colored blankets, with lances in their hands. The accomplished young aide-de-camp studied his strange companions with an interest not unmixed with disgust. "Of all caprice," he says, "Indian caprice is the most capricious." They were insolent to the French, made rules for them which they did not observe themselves, and compelled the whole party to move when and whither they pleased. Hiding the canoes, and lying close in ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... bursting forth from their chrysalides of Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon, and company. A young girl, with the consent of her parents, has for some time promised her hand to an honest youth. The old mother, in despite of her word, has taken a caprice to give her daughter to another suitor. The father, though much under the sway of his spouse, is in his heart desirous to keep his engagement, and has called in the notary to draw the contract. At this moment the scene begins, the actors ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... during the last ten years; and the security in which he indulged hurried him on to other acts of despotism, which inevitably led to his ruin. He raised money by forced loans; he compelled the judges to expound the law according to his own prejudices or caprice; he required the former adherents of Gloucester to purchase and repurchase charters of pardon; and, that he might obtain a more plentiful harvest of fines and amercements, put at once seventeen counties out of the protection of the law, under the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... is stated to have been known to descend suddenly from its flight, and from some unknown caprice, to attack a horse and its rider with great violence; and with such blind fury as to suffer itself to be seized by the traveller rather than attempt an escape. Two instances of this kind are recorded in the Gentleman's Magazine of about ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... son, Filippo: he was nearly of my age, prepossessing in his appearance, and fascinating in his manners; he attached himself to me, and seemed to court my good opinion. I thought there was something of profession in his kindness, and of caprice in his disposition; but I had nothing else near me to attach myself to, and my heart felt the need of something to repose itself upon. His education had been neglected; he looked upon me as his superior in mental powers and acquirements, and tacitly acknowledged my superiority. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... prepared for this, and further was resolved not to expose himself to any manifestation of her caprice. He perceived Miss Thorne was disinclined to converse, and fancied she was preparing to be reserved. So he passed quietly into the next room, where he found Miss Innis quite ready to welcome him, though surrounded by a number ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... dealt with romance he never gave the advantage of an inch to the wiles of bizarre witchery, the grotesque masks of wanton caprice in imagination—those elements which exhibit the intoxication of talent. His terrors were those of our own hearts; his playfulness had the merit of the sunlight. In short, he was artistically con-. secrated, guiding the forces he used with the ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... touched with irony. "The fact of our engagement has been published. Our marriage is looked for by a host of friends and acquaintances, and even by the mere readers of the newspapers. All but at the last moment, on a caprice, an impulse you do not pretend to justify to one's intelligence, you declare it is all at an end. Pray, how do you propose to satisfy natural curiosity ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... have swept away all trace of this kingly caprice and the art treasures it contained. Alone, the marble horses of Coustou, transported later to the Champs Elysées, remain to attest the splendor of ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... she consulted her sketch, and was so far convinced of her own instincts, and the profound impression the fountain had made upon her, that she was enabled to secretly finish her interrupted sketch from memory. For Miss Charlotte Forrest was a born artist, and in no mere caprice had persuaded her father to let her adopt the profession, and accepted the drudgery of a novitiate. She looked earnestly upon this first real work of her hand and found it good! Still, it was but a pencil sketch, and wanted the vivification ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... assent to the barbarous licence which these kinsmen of mine have assumed, to forsake their wives or chastise them when the humour takes them; and as I do not intend to do anything which calls for punishment, I will not take for my mate one who will abandon me at his own caprice." ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... time, mademoiselle," he said, "will you speak? Will you assign a reason for this change, this fickleness, for this caprice?" ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there is no record of its existence in those of our Journals which affect to strike the key-note only of what is valuable in science, literature, and the fine arts. Painful as it must ever be to my feelings to contrast the avidity of former purchasers to become possessed of it with the caprice and non-chalance which have marked the conduct of those possessors themselves, I will yet hope that, in the bosom of the SUCCESSOR to this matchless Library—as well as to the name and fortunes of its late owner—there will ever remain but one feeling, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... that pretty face! Thy cheek all on fire, and thy hair all uncurled: Prithee quit this caprice; and (as old Falstaff says), Let us e'en talk a little like ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... upon its being cast again, but in no regular Form; for all Forms and Regularity they look'd upon superstitious. Their Disputes on this Subject ran so high, that they came to Blows, and each Party, as it was victorious, modelled the Globe to his own Humour or Caprice. But the Ball being so often melted, and Part of the Gold being lost in each Fusion, it was at last almost imperceivable. These Bickerings shed a great deal of Blood, and being at length tired with worrying each other upon this Account, a new Globe was cast, but not exactly ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... sedate in good times and debonair in evil. A king may be unkinged, as befell him whom in my youth we called the Royal Martyr, but he need not be unmanned. He has tasted of what men count the best, and, having found even in it much bitterness, turns to greet fortune's new caprice smiling or unmoved. Thus it falls out that though princes live no better lives than common men, yet for the most part they die more noble deaths; their sunset paints all their sky, and we remember not how they bore their glorious burden, ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... about twelve years old my mother died, and after four years spent in school I returned to find a great change in my father. He would at times be gloomy and morose for days together, keeping the whole house in a state of fear and discomfort by his sudden caprice and unreasonable exactions. This would pass away and he would appear as usual. These attacks grew to be more frequent, and at last came to be his habitual frame, and his frequent absence from home, which at first was a great sorrow ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... philosophical treatment because it is dependent on caprice, and subject to no law. If its highest aim be to reveal to the human consciousness the highest interest of the mind, it is evident that the substance or contents of the representations are not given up to the control ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... circumstances had helped to make her proud. Her father, Lord L'Estrange, died when she was quite a child, leaving her an enormous fortune that was quite under her own control. Her mother, Lady L'Estrange, had but one idea in life, and that was indulging her beautiful daughter in her every caprice. Proud, beautiful, and wealthy, when she most needed her mother's care that mother died, leaving her sole mistress of herself. She was but seventeen then, and was known as one of the wealthiest heiresses and loveliest girls of the day. Her first step ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... dyspepsia. It was cut into equal parts according to the number of men who were to share it. On Sundays a few currants or raisins were scattered amongst the flour and water; this was considered a luxury which was often taken off at the caprice of the captain. Sailors have the character of being born grumblers, and their knowledge of maritime law is much exhibited by them at meal times. Poor creatures, what trouble they get themselves into at times through this belief of theirs in their legal acquirements! ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... remarks on this subject, we should remember with gentleness the order of society from which our nurses are drawn; and that those who make their duty a study, and are termed professional nurses, have much to endure from the caprice and egotism of their employers; while others are driven to the occupation from the laudable motive of feeding their own children, and who, in fulfilling that object, are too often both selfish and sensual, performing, without further interest than is ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... separated one aria from another was improvised by the singer, and was accompanied on the harpsichord by the kapellmeister, who was naturally obliged to improvise his part on the spur of the moment, following the caprice of the singer. There was no creating an atmosphere for a tragic or dramatic situation by means of the accompaniment; as soon as the situation arrived, an aria was sung explaining it. Now, as the singer was given much latitude in ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... child. He says he ought to remember his duty to others, and save the community from having the child grow up into a capricious, wilful woman. Putney was very hard upon your sex, Miss Kilburn. He attributed nearly all the trouble in the world to women's wilfulness and caprice." ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... taken from him by anyone who wishes to have it. Worse than that: he disowns the movement, turns his back upon the future, and throws himself again into the past. For what reason? Very often he does not know. Passion, bitterness, caprice, wounded pride—these have more influence with him than the serious things of life. He is a man at ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... manners, and things. As we said before, Australia was the very apex of singularities in the way of Dame Nature's fancy-work, long before the gold mania broke out; but now she seemed bent on a general and miscellaneous freak, making the staid, matter-of-fact Englishmen as full of caprice as the land they ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... you explain Ariel's irrelevant rejoinder: 'Yes, Caliban, her son'; and Prospero's angry, 'Dull thing, I say so,' etc.? Do you think Moulton right in supposing that Prospero governs 'this incarnation of caprice by outcapricing him'; Rolfe, in supposing that Prospero is irritable because under the strain and suspense of conducting affairs within three hours perfectly, and upon which accuracy hangs his future and the happiness of his daughter? ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... of the displeasure of Him who created man after His own image, at the unnatural attempt to govern the bones and sinews, the bodies and souls, of one portion of His children by the caprice, the avarice, the lusts of another; at that utter violation of the design of His merciful Providence, whereby the entire dependence of millions of His rational creatures is made to centre upon the will, the existence, the ability, of their fellow-mortals, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... whose fancy is touched is—what she is," he commented, generally. "Truly it would be a more thankless task, even, than approaching the king. For women were ever creatures of caprice, not to be governed by any court of logic, but by the whimsical, fantastic rules of Marguerite's court. Court!" he exclaimed. "The word suggests law; reason; where merit hath justice. Call it not Love's Court, but love's caprice, or crochet. But look you, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... comes with a solemn appeal and commandment to every one of us professing Christians. Think of these men, dragged at the conqueror's chariot-wheels, abject, with their weapons broken, with their resistance quelled, chained, yoked, haled away from their own land, dependant for life or death on the caprice of the general who rode before them there. It is a picture of what you Christian men and women are bound to be if you believe that God in Christ has loved you as we have been saying that He does. For abject submission, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... unless he happens to have learned it; yet the name serves its purpose as well as if it were "Rooke's Nest." Every Newton or Newport year by year grows old, but to alter the name would cause only confusion. If such names were given by mere caprice it would make no difference; and they could not be more cumbrous, ugly, or absurd than many of those that are ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... ear. They come as dulcet-surprises, and mostly occur in highly-wrought situations, or they are used to convey a vivid sense of something exquisite in art or nature. We give one or two instances of these little eddies of song set like gems in the prose. Their introduction seems due to whim or caprice, but really is due to profound study of the situation, as if the tale-teller felt suddenly compelled to break into the rhythmic strain. The prose ripples and rises to dancing measure when the King of the Age, wandering in a lonely palace, comes ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... The lawgiver prophesied well, "There shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot." But we are not concerned here with the victim of expulsion and persecution. The wayfarer with whom we shall deal is the traveller, and not the exile. He was moved by no caprice but his own. He will excite our admiration, perhaps our sympathy, only ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... different matter. She had become the wife of a Shoshonie brave. It is true, he had another wife, of older date than the one in question; who, therefore, took command in his household, and treated his new spouse as a slave; but the latter was the wife of his last fancy, his latest caprice; and was precious in his eyes. All attempt to bargain with him, therefore, was useless; the very proposition was repulsed with anger and disdain. The spirit of the trapper was roused, his pride was piqued as well as his ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... the landscape, and immensely serviceable to the agriculturist. But one cares for other things as well. And I had always fancied that the crowning virtue of this bit of water (since you mention it) was its amenability to the caprice ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... to that. In America, where fortunes are made or lost in a day, the millionaire may have his wealth suddenly swept from him, and one of humble position as suddenly attain to affluence. An unlooked for turn in the tide of affairs, a seeming caprice of the fickle goddess Fortune, who saw fit to frown where she had always smiled, and Grosvenor Graystone was a ruined man. The shock was too much for him, and he died of grief and despair. It was nothing new, there are hundreds of such cases every day. People commented, some ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... remember ever having been unhappy before. All her life she had done exactly as she wished to do. Her grandfather had never gainsaid her: had always indulged her every caprice, and had supported her even when she had been to all outward seeming in the wrong. He used to say in his whimsical manner that explosions never did any one any harm.... 'It is all wrong,' thought she, as she left the sanctum, ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... Sir, is excellently said: 'tis noble theory; and if the tutor be a man void of resentment and caprice, and will not be governed by partial considerations, in his own judgment of persons and things, all will be well: but if otherwise, may he not take advantage of the confidence placed in him, to the injury of some worthy person, and by degrees monopolize the young ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of Schiller's "Mary Stuart", a character which may be supposed especially to interest Americans and English, Rachel is not less excellent. The sad grace, the tender resignation, the poetic enthusiasm, the petulant caprice, the wilful, lovely womanliness of the lovely queen, are made tragically real by her representation. Perhaps it is not the Mary of Mignet nor of history. But Mary Queen of Scots is one of the characters which ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... night. So we mounted the horses instead of re-embarking, having first secured the boat, and cantered home. We passed several smaller lakes; there is a perfect chain of them among these hills, and I was much amused at the names bestowed on them, according to the tastes or caprice of the station-owners whose runs happen to include them: for instance, two are called respectively "Geraldine" and "Ida," whilst three, which lie close together, rejoice in the somewhat extraordinary names of "the World," "the ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... the head is shaved, leaving a transverse crest—a practice seldom seen among the men but not uncommon among women and children, from Darnley Island down to Cape York. At the last place and Muralug the hair is almost always kept short—still caprice and fashion have their sway, for at Cape York I have at times for a week together seen all the men and lads with the hair twisted into little strands well daubed over with red ochre and ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... the Countess had yielded, she was assailed by fears for Bertin's constancy. Nothing held him but his masculine will, his caprice, his passing fancy for a woman he had met one day just as he had already met so many others! She realized that he was so free, so susceptible to temptation—he who lived without duties, habits, or scruples, like all men! He was handsome, celebrated, much sought after, ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... complete, and more effective." Yet France is a republic with manhood suffrage and with an elective legislature. But its courts are not vested with any power to conserve any rights of the people against legislative caprice. ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... has acknowledged no other limits than its own strength. The central power to which the Revolution gave birth made more rapid advances than any of its predecessors, because it was stronger and wiser than they had been; Louis XIV committed the welfare of such communities to the caprice of an intendant; Napoleon left them to that of the Minister. The same principle governed both, though its consequences ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... excise duty of Canada should be assimilated to the prohibitory rates of the United States; and very especially was I unwilling that any such arrangement should be entered into with the United States, dependent on the frail tenure of reciprocal legislation, repealable at any moment at the caprice of either party." Unless a fair treaty for a definite term of years could be obtained, he thought it better that each country should take its own course and that Canada should ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... Edith"—she spoke with increased animation—"that you are my caprice. You are the possession that I am proudest of and fondest of. There is nothing else that appeals to me a hundredth part as much as you do. Since I became independent, the one real satisfaction I have had is in being able to do things for you—to have you with me, and ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... the satin shoes which I gave you to carry the night of that adorable ball, and which you would not give back, but nailed up on the wall on either side of your bed and put matches in, I was seized with an almost invincible desire to steal them. I don't know why, un caprice de femme. No one but you would have ever thought of converting satin shoes into match boxes. I wore them at that delicious ball; we danced all night together, and you had an explanation with my ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... filled with smoke, so that I was driven into the open air for breath. Then I would seat myself on one end of the huge log, as near the fire as possible, for it was dismally cold, but the wind seemed actuated by a kind of caprice, for in whatever direction I took my seat, just that way came the smoke and hot ashes, puffing in my face until I was nearly blinded. Neither veil nor silk handkerchief afforded an effectual protection, and I was glad when ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... compatriot Mirza Abu-Taleb,[19] and in much the same line of argument—to the effect that the dowery which the eastern husband is bound by law to pay over in money to his wife in the event of a separation, is a far more effectual protection to the wife from the fickleness and caprice of her partner, ("whose interest it thus becomes, setting affection wholly out of the question, to remain on good terms with her,") than any remedy afforded by the laws of England; where a wife, though bound by ties less easily dissolved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... also be well to note the efficacy of the people's call upon the Government in those early days, and how quickly the response came; not by yielding to gusts of popular whim and caprice; not by conferring benefits upon the few at the expense of the many; but by a quick observation of the fact that the withdrawal of certain rightful privilege by another nation from American settlers had caused them distress, and by a ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... laugh raised against him on account of his having confessed that he knew not when he had been in a church in his own country. 'All our ministers are so vile,' said he. The mischief of allowing the clergy to depend on the caprice of the multitude he thought more than outweighed all the evils of an establishment."[331] In December, 1792, Wordsworth had returned to England, and in the following year published "Descriptive Sketches" and the "Evening Walk." He did this, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... neither is he arguing that pleasure is the chief good, but that we should have a principle of choice. He did not intend to oppose 'the useful' to some higher conception, such as the Platonic ideal, but to chance and caprice. The Platonic Socrates pursues the same vein of thought in the Protagoras, where he argues against the so-called sophist that pleasure and pain are the final standards and motives of good and evil, and that the salvation of human life depends ...
— Philebus • Plato
... political society, the well-matured, long and deliberately formed will of the undoubted majority can be persistently and successfully thwarted, in the amendment of its organic law, by the will of the minority, there is just as much danger to the state from revolution and violence as there is from the caprice of the majority, where the sovereignty of the bare majority is acknowledged. The safeguards against too radical change must not be exaggerated to the point of dethroning ...
— The Spirit of American Government - A Study Of The Constitution: Its Origin, Influence And - Relation To Democracy • J. Allen Smith
... such a life without becoming morbid, but Anne was fashioned upon generous lines. She strove ever to maintain the calm level of reason wherewith to temper the baleful influence of her husband's caprice. She never argued with him; argument was worse than futile. But steadfastly and incessantly she sought by her moderation to balance the difficulties with which she was continually confronted. And to a certain extent she succeeded. Open struggles were very rare. Sir Giles knew that there was a limit ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... hour of success, not less nobly than despair in the day of misfortune, attracted the French philosopher, habituated as he was, in the history of his own nation, to the association of warlike and civic fame with the extremes of zeal and indifference, of violence and caprice. In his estimation, the good sense and moral consistency of Washington and his compatriots naturally offered the most remarkable problem. Accordingly, Guizot bears witness chiefly to this unprecedented union ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... On those who cry, Ah, well-a-day! Lamenting Polynices still! We will go forth and, side by side With her, due burial will provide! Royal he was; to him be paid Our grief, wherever he be laid! The crowd may sway, and change, and still Take its caprice for Justice' will! But we this dead Eteocles, As Justice wills and Right decrees, Will bear unto his grave! For—under those enthroned on high And Zeus' eternal royalty— He unto us salvation gave! He saved us from a foreign yoke,— A wild assault of outland ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... among themselves, they left bad manners and the duello to political adventurers and cubbish peers, or to the gentlemen of the quarter sessions and the local ordinary. It was with a mighty disgust, therefore, that Sir George considered alike the predicament into which a caprice had hurried him, and the insufferable young Hector whom fate had made his antagonist. They would laugh at White's. They would make a jest of it over the cakes and fruit at Betty's. Selwyn would turn a ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... could; and the Highlanders, with some of the Irish among them, had marched off with promises of speedy return. But, at the same critical moment, Viscount Aboyne, hitherto the most faithful of the Gordons, had "taken a caprice," and gone off with his horse. He had been lured away, it was suspected, by his uncle Argyle, who had come back from his sea-voyage to Newcastle, and was busy in Berwickshire. Then Montrose's negotiations with the Border lords had come ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... home suffer and half starve in their old age, and even fails to give them decent support while they are working in their prime? Why should a doctor reach his highest professional value at seventy, and a parson be past the "dead-line" at forty-five? Here he was, subject to the caprice and ill-will of a sour and miserly Senior Warden, and a cowed and at least partially "bossed" vestry—and he, the rector, with no practical power of appeal for the enforcement of his legal contract. It was only thanks to Jonathan Jackson, the Junior Warden, that any revenue at all reached ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... few changes made at the opening of any Congress. The old members generally choose to retain their accustomed seats, and the small number that come in as new Senators choose among the vacant seats, as convenience or caprice may dictate. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Elizabeth's character was fully balanced by her feminine foibles. Her vanity was inordinate. Her love of adulation and passion for display, her caprice, duplicity, and her reckless love- affairs, form a strange background for the calm, determined, masterly statesmanship under which ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... additional proof that the nobles amidst all these changes were still as dependent as ever on the arbitrary will or caprice of the Monarch, we have only to glance at their position in the time of Paul I., the capricious, eccentric, violent son and successor of Catherine. The autobiographical memoirs of the time depict in vivid colours the humiliating ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... oftentimes even to the unfair accidents of luck that befall books. For it is well known to all who watch literature with vigilance, that books and authors have their fortunes, which travel upon a far different scale of proportions from those that measure their merits. Not even the caprice or the folly of the reading public is required to account for this. Very often, indeed, the whole difference between an extensive circulation for one book, and none at all for another of about equal merit, belongs to no particular blindness in men, but to the simple fact, that the one ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... also in characters of caprice and affectation, from the high-bred Lady Fanciful to the vulgar Mrs. Heidelberg; in country girls, romps, hoydens and dowdies, superannuated beauties, viragos and humourists; she had an inimitable talent in ridiculing the extravagant action and impertinent ...
— The Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... questioned concerning the Bounty, they referred the captains to an old man on shore, the only surviving Englishman, whose name, they said, was John Adams, but who proved to be the identical Alexander Smith before-mentioned, having changed his name from some caprice or other. The officers went ashore with the youths, and were received by old Adams (as we shall now call him), who conducted them to his house, and treated them to an elegant repast of eggs, fowl, yams, plantains, bread-fruit, etc. They now learned ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... without a sense of fatigue, and made Spahis cry quarter, who never gave it by any chance in the battlefield; and she was dancing now like a little Bacchante, as fresh as if she had just sprung up from a long summer day's rest. Dancing as she would dance only now and then, when caprice took her, and her wayward vivacity was at the height, on the green space before a tent full of general officers, on the bare floor of a barrack-room, under the canvas of a fete-day's booth, or as here in the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... strangely enough, of those wars I can recall nothing now; they have vanished from my vision. To wars also I looked to advance me in the future, who was no courtier, but a soldier, whom circumstances had brought to Court. Well, thanks to Martina, as she said, or to some caprice of the Empress, I had a new commission that was of more worth to me than her random kisses, and I ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... using our power of changing our chief magistrate when the welfare of the country does not require it. In the present election there has, doubtless, been much honest, warm, grateful feeling toward Jackson, but I fear much pique, passion, and caprice ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... opinion which bore hardly against the wanton expenditure of honestly got wealth. It would be hard if a man who has passed the greater part of his life at the desk or counter could not at last innocently gratify a caprice; and all the best and most sacred ends of almsgiving would be at once disappointed, if the idea of a moral claim took the place of affectionate gratitude in the ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... and labor than on any other of his works, was never a favorite either with the public or among the critics. With the best will in the world, however, it is not easy to find full enjoyment in this gigantic work, which by some caprice of style defiant of analysis, lacks the vitality which is usually characteristic of Ibsen's least production. The speeches put into the mouths of antique characters are appropriate, but they are seldom vivid; as Bentley said of ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... pine-apples of a home-growth; and the blessed fortune of that nation, which did not depend for their supply of fruit upon a foreign country, was eagerly expatiated on. Secure from extortion and independent of caprice, the Vraibleusians were no longer to be insulted by the presence of foreigners; who, while they violated their laws with impunity, referred the Vraibleusians, when injured and complaining, to ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... boundless Freedoms. There is a kind of Nature that is to be observed in this sort of Compositions, as well as in all other, and a certain Regularity of Thought [which [1]] must discover the Writer to be a Man of Sense, at the same time that he appears altogether given up to Caprice: For my part, when I read the delirious Mirth of an unskilful Author, I cannot be so barbarous as to divert my self with it, but am rather apt to pity the Man, than to laugh at ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... commentary on Heb. xii., hom. xxxi., vol. xii., p. 289, he further says: "Let us not be content with calling ourselves sinners. But let us examine and number our sins. And then, I do not tell you to go and confess them, according to the caprice of some; but I will say to you, with the prophet: "Confess your sins before God, acknowledge your iniquities at the feet of your Judge; pray in your heart and your mind, if not with your tongue, and you shall ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... unrestrained either by prudence or principle, he found means to render himself in the end odious, and even insignificant. The least interest could make him abandon his honor; the smallest pleasure could seduce him from his interest; the most frivolous caprice was sufficient to counterbalance his pleasure*[**missing period] By his want of secrecy and constancy, he destroyed his character in public life; by his contempt of order and economy, he dissipated his private fortune; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... taking from me the angel who guided me to all good, and kept me from all evil; the one pure motive and holy influence of my life? If you call this the chastening of a loving father, I must say it looks more to me like the caprice ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... perhaps make a request with a view to the exercise of two rights, both of which are indispensable to her happiness: individual liberty, that is, the privilege of going and coming according to the caprice of her will; and the liberty of the press, that is, the privilege of writing and receiving letters ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... on during the whole time of his stay, and there was no help for it. Elsie made him a perfect slave, and Tom no more thought of disputing her wildest caprice, than if he had been some untutored fawn, made captive to ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... mocking shaft, so carelessly discharged, went straight to his heart. You can have no idea of the point to which he carried submissiveness. I had only to tell him to go and leave me alone, and the caprice, however wounding to him, would be obeyed without a murmur. His last breath was spent in blessing me and in repeating that a single morning alone with me was more precious to him than a lifetime spent with another woman, were she even the Marie of his youth. My tears ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... over a stick of wood in his way, and the physician who stands at his post, tenderly and wisely caring for the fever-stricken patients in the Memphis hospitals, laying down his life for strangers; between the man who follows the caprice of this or that moment, as a desire for present pleasure may suggest, and the noblest Christian who daily sacrifices his own to the Divine will, there is but one difference—that of Education. The natural part of any one of us is, in any significant sense, simply the uneducated ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... He spoke of one as controlling the destinies of the European continent, of the other as domineering upon the ocean, and of both as overleaping "the settled principles of public law, which constituted the barriers between the caprice, the avarice, or the tyranny of a belligerent, and the rights and independence of a neutral." But Jonas Platt, betrayed by his prejudices against Jefferson and France, went on with an argument well ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander |
