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More "Caprice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Socialist party, have their turn of satire and appreciation, for Heine deals out both with an impartiality which made his less favorable critics—Borne, for example—charge him with the rather incompatible sins of reckless caprice and venality. Literature and art alternate with politics: we have now a sketch of George Sand or a description of one of Horace Vernet's pictures; now a criticism of Victor Hugo or of Liszt; now an irresistible caricature of Spontini or Kalkbrenner; and occasionally the predominant satire ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... hungry traveller. Formerly, when he reconsidered at night the behaviour of the family, he used to be able to account for all their actions, and could testify that their time was virtuously and wisely employed, without the least alloy from caprice, indolence, or inconsiderateness. Dr. Beaumont and Constantia went at their appointed hour to visit the villagers; Mrs. Mellicent sorted her simples, compounded her medicines, and examined her patients; Isabel superintended the domestic management.—Williams was caterer, gardener ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... unless in return you could give her your heart. Nor was she willing you should know that she made this request, but wished me to introduce you, as it were by stratagem. Confident, however, that you would thus far yield to the caprice of a lady, I chose to tell you the truth. She resides near by, and it ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... mean the same if they were on the left-hand side? Plate I enables us to say that they would, since one of these inner ovals has been put by the artist on that side by accident or by an allowed caprice. It is by furnishing us with tests and criteria like these that the proof of the identity of these two plates is immediately important. In other ways, too, the proof is valuable and interesting, but we need not ...
— Studies in Central American Picture-Writing • Edward S. Holden
... observe that our SAVIOUR quotes from those very parts of Daniel which have been objected to. You cannot get rid of those parts of Daniel therefore. You are not to suppose that the Bible is like an old house, where a window may be darkened, or a door blocked up, according to the caprice of every fresh occupant. The terms on which men dwell there are that every part of the structure shall be inhabited; and that every part shall be retained in its integrity. What I am insisting upon is, that the sacred Writers plainly say,—We stand or we fall together. ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... for the orator so much authority and belief, if once departing from the character of a good man, he degenerates into a brawler and barker, conforming himself not to the disposition of the judge, but to the caprice ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... have rejected such illustrious and wealthy suitors to woo a lad hardly yet arrived at man's estate, and almost requiring a tutor still. And therefore men of sense prune the excessive wealth of their wives, as if it had wings that required clipping; for this same wealth implants in them luxury, caprice, and vanity, by which they are often elated and fly away altogether: but if they remain, it would be better to be bound by golden fetters, as in Ethiopia, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Athens once more, and thence to the Morea; but my stay depends so much on my caprice, that I can say nothing of its probable duration. I have been out a year already, and may stay another; but I am quicksilver, and say nothing positively. We are all very much occupied doing nothing, at present. We have seen every thing but the mosques, which we are ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... 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, unconditional surrender, the yielding up of our whole will to Him, the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... been desired. At this moment he had just held a conference with his private tutor. It took the form of a remonstrance and an explanation. The remonstrance pointed out that his work was desultory and liable to be interrupted at any moment, for any caprice: that steady grind was incompatible with the giving away of whole mornings to musical dreams at the piano, or to rambles in the woods, a book of poetry in hand. The explanation was to the effect that the great prizes of the world are all within the reach of every clever lad ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... with perfect fairness among her own kin. In the matter of wills, personal qualities were subordinate to the great fundamental fact of blood; and to be determined in the distribution of your property by caprice, and not make your legacies bear a direct ratio to degrees of kinship, was a prospective disgrace that would have embittered her life. This had always been a principle in the Dodson family; it was one form if that sense of honor and rectitude which was a proud tradition in such families,—a ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... developed in the saddened home of her widowed mother. Ivan IV. was a man of ungovernable passions, and accustomed only to idleness, he devoted himself to the most gross and ignoble pleasures. Mercilessly he confiscated the estates of those who displeased him, and with caprice equal to his mercilessness, he conferred their possessions upon his favorites. He seemed to regard this arbitrary conduct as indicative ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... sprightly caprice prompted Denry to raise his hat to two young women who were crossing the road in front of them. Neither of the two young women responded to ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... You, the Town, are a Monstor, made up of Contrarieties, Caprice Steers— Steers your Iudgement— Fashion and Novelty, Your Affections; Sometimes so Splenitic, as to damn a Cibber, and, even a Congreve, in the Way of the World;— And some times so good-Natured as to run in Crowds after a Queen Mab, or a ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... representative assembly of all the classes and families of the world, that by disposition facilitate, and, by exciting curiosity, open the avenues to science? If by great permanent establishments, all these objects of expense are better secured from the inconstant sport of personal caprice and personal extravagance, are they worse than if the same tastes prevailed in scattered individuals? Does not the sweat of the mason and carpenter, who toil in order to partake the sweat of the peasant, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... complete indifference shown to her wishes as to the furnishings of the Tower; these various happenings had at last brought her to an unwelcome commerce with the bare truth. She had married a selfish eccentric, who had chosen her for a caprice and was now tired of her. She had not a farthing, nor any art or skill by which to earn one. Her family was as penniless as herself. There was nothing for it but to submit. But her temper and spirits had ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... is distributed by favouritism. There were several others, all equally candidates for remunerative situations, but equally unfortunate in obtaining them: proving conclusively that life is indeed a lottery in which there may be a few prizes, usually going, by the caprice of Fortune, to the undeserving, while the blanks went ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... that morning very tired, very hungry, very down in the mouth, staring at the cork ball on the jet of water under the glass shade, and drearily likening it to my own mental condition, flung hither and thither, drenched, rolled over, lifted and dropped by a caprice beyond the power of resistance. It was at this mournful moment that I found my first friend in London. The story of that event shall be told hereafter. What I want to say now is that the sight of ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... I tell you. He is bound to us as we are to him. Secondly: In the exercise of his authority he shall neither exert arbitrary power, nor exhibit caprice, himself, nor shall he, either directly or indirectly, ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... was, Peter succumbed. It was better that she should indulge her astounding caprice under his roof than elsewhere. It would not do for the sister of an Atherly to provoke scandal. He gave entertainments, picnics, and parties, and "Jinny" Atherly plunged into these mild festivities with the enthusiasm of a schoolgirl. She not only could dance with feverish ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... have seen, persevered in considering Mary's rejection of him as merely a "charming caprice." If she were at work, Sally Leadbitter was sure to slip a passionately loving note into her hand, and then so skilfully move away from her side, that Mary could not all at once return it, without making some sensation among the workwomen. She was even forced ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Sinding's 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
... of his power over the miller's wife, and was apt to indulge in caprice. So he only shook his head, and cuddled the kitten more ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of purpose or will. His acts do not come from caprice, nor are done as experiments, but are the stable expression ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... quite guiltless in this respect, since it often happens that they refuse partners from simple caprice, and no gentleman likes to be refused, even for a quadrille. It may be added that these introductions necessitate no after acknowledgments on either ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... McMurtagh for advice, he saw him holding, and in awkward yet tender manner trying to caress and soothe, the little lady with the yellow hair. The second pirate had sought to hand her, too, to Bowdoin, but some caprice had made the little maiden shy, and she had run and buried her face in the arms ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... reefs upon the west coast of America, nor upon the west coast of Africa; and it is a general fact that the reefs are interrupted, or absent, opposite the mouths of great rivers. The causes of this apparent caprice in the distribution of coral reefs are not far to seek. The polypes which fabricate them require for their vigorous growth a temperature which must not fall below 68 degrees Fahrenheit all the year round, and this temperature ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... first of all considered mankind; and the result of my thoughts has been, that amidst such an infinite diversity of laws and manners, they are not solely conducted by the caprice of fancy.[5] ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... an odd position, a heartless caprice of fate. I felt the full measure of its strangeness, yet the thought never occurred to me of shrinking back from duty, nor slightest dream of realizing a personal victory through any act of baseness. I was not there for his sake, or my own, but to redeem my pledged word to her ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... give of the changes of fashion in the outside world, and of the ruin of soul and body which the love of dress often works. Our own dress, for men and for women, is studied, in one ideal of use and beauty, from the antique; caprice and vagary in it would be thought an effect of vulgar vanity. Nothing is worn that is not simple and honest in texture; we do not know whether a thing is cheap or dear, except as it is easy or hard to come by, and that which ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... no caprice of the belly that could not be gratified, no want of the naked body that could not be supplied in this huge bazaar of the poor, but its cost had to be counted in pence, for those who bought in the ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... honor, robs you of the applause of all posterity. For, if you now pronounce, that, as my public conduct hath not been right, Ctesiphon must stand condemned it must be thought that you yourselves have acted wrong, not that you owe your present state to the caprice of fortune. But it cannot be! No, my countrymen! it cannot be you have acted wrong, in encountering danger bravely, for the liberty and the safety of all Greece. No! by those generous souls of ancient times, who were exposed at Marathon! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... was owing to the caprice of the bride, who would not have any one in the room with ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... his accomplishments could not fail to meet with a variety of subjects on which his gallantry would have been properly exercised; and this abundance distracted his choice, which at any time was apt to be influenced by caprice and whim. I have already observed, that he had lifted his view, through a matrimonial perspective, as high as a lady of the first quality and distinction: and now, that he was refused by Miss Gauntlet, and enjoyed ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... spring, but now Edna declares that nothing would induce her to marry him. She will have it that he is jealous and monopolizing, and that he distrusts her. Over and over again she told us both that she would be the slave of no man's caprice. Of course it is all her temper; she is just mad with him because he is always in the right, and she knows how ungenerously she has acted; but bye and bye she will repent, and break her heart, for she is certainly fond of him, and then it ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... matters. The faiths of the empire are manifold. Beside, Nero has enough on his hands, and knows better than to stir up the passions of the Ionian people for the sake of a woman who in no way interferes with his caprice. No, my dear fellow; I am afraid all will be settled by the Temple custom, and ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... the confessional, to explain the motives why I have so long persisted in disclaiming the works of which I am now writing. To this it would be difficult to give any other reply, save that of Corporal Nym—It was the humour or caprice of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... our 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 ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... must confess that your evident restraint towards me, so different from what perhaps my vanity induced me to hope, has been to me a source of wonder as well as regret. May I flatter myself that this rumour has been the occasion of an apparent caprice, which I never could have imagined that Miss Etheridge would have ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... matter of carnal impulse or of emotional caprice.... Love is a kind of exalted but unspecialised Telepathy;—the simplest and most universal expression of that mutual gravitation or kinship of spirits which is the foundation of the telepathic law. ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... was soon to appear before the examining board, had little hope of the general's intervention because of the harm done to Les Aigues by all the members of the Tonsard family. His passion, or to speak more correctly, his caprice and obstinate pursuit of La Pechina, were so aggravated by the prospect of his immediate departure, which left him no time to seduce her, that he resolved on attempting violence. The child's contempt for her prosecutor, plainly shown, excited the ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... encroachments upon their liberties, and carrying out a successful resistance, aided by the wholly fortuitous assassination of the tyrannical emperor. We see, as a single instance of these oppressions, the arrogant caprice of the bailiff Gessler in demanding homage to the Austrian hat, his jealousy of the freeman Tell expressed in imposing as a penalty for neglected obeisance the shooting of an apple from his little son's head, the successful meeting of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... sort. There was a great deal of laughter about it. It ended in Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's making provision for her when he had to come here, and I believe he arranged to pay a considerable sum, three hundred roubles a year, if not more, as a pension for her. In short it was "all a caprice, a fancy of a man prematurely weary on his side, perhaps—it may even have been, as Kirillov says, a new experiment of a blase man, with the object of finding out what you can bring a crazy cripple to." (You picked ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... do not give the names of these two Jesuits, probably owing to the fact that the enterprise failed. They simply state that two priests set out, but were compelled to remain behind owing to the caprice ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... upon any thing except his own labor, is incessantly surrounded by rivals. He is in daily danger of being out-bidden; his very bread depends upon caprice, and he lives in a state of never ceasing fear. His is not, indeed, the dog's life, 'hunger and idleness,' but it is worse; for it is 'idleness with slavery;' the latter being just ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... press me no more for the disclosure of that, which in the face of day so soon must be revealed. Call it whim, humor, caprice, in me. Suppose, I have sworn an oath, never, till the ceremony of our marriage is over, to ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... energy by any forms of public 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 mind of ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... by the passage of the so-called Change of Venue bill[74a]. This measure was introduced in the Assembly by Grove L. Johnson. Under its provisions a person charged with crime would have been permitted upon his whim or caprice to allege bias and disqualify the Judge before whom he was to be tried. The Legislature of 1907 was admittedly controlled by the machine, but even the Legislature of 1907 did not dare pass the Change of Venue bill. The reform Legislature of 1909, however, did pass it. The manner in which ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... suddenly capricious with the caprice that is the armour of her kind, she wished to be taken home. After he had left her, he walked the streets moodily for an hour before ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... tragedy, supplied anecdotes for a lifetime. Every body was on the qui vive to see the "white fighter." Every body was crazy to feel the "white skin" she had healed. Then, with a sudden, childish freak of caprice, they ran off from me as if afraid, and at once rushed back again like a flock of glib-tongued and playful monkeys. I could not comprehend a word they said; but the bevy squealed with quite as much pleasure as ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... kinds, from the absolute hereditary monarchies of the Arab khans to the free communities or simple republics of Southern Daghestan. In the former the ruler could take the life of a subject with impunity to gratify a mere caprice, while in the latter a subject who considered himself aggrieved by a decision of the ruler could appeal to the general assembly, which had power to annul the decree and even to change the chief magistrate. Since the Russian conquest the mountaineers have altered to some extent both their forms of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... may fill the shadows with almost anything which caprice or desire may suggest. Our curiously inventive minds have always loved to fill in our ignorances with their creations. We formerly had the shadowed backgrounds of the universe to populate with the ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... involved in it than have schools or churches. Business and industries alone might claim to be its rivals. In a despotism, all the events of public life are uncertain and seemingly accidental, depending as they do on the caprice of an individual. This discourages thought among the masses, paralyzes action, and breeds inertia and hopelessness. At best, it gives rise to periods of desperation and violence; at its worst, it gives us the ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... the excursion, to a desire to participate in its pleasures. She even ventured a proposition to that effect to her father, laughing at the same time at her own wish, and accusing herself of acting under a womans caprice. ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... therefore, to tell the truth, not without some lurking reluctance, or even shrinking, it may be, that Captain Delano, with apparent complaisance, acquiesced in his host's invitation. The more so, since, with an untimely caprice of punctilio, rendered distressing by his cadaverous aspect, Don Benito, with Castilian bows, solemnly insisted upon his guest's preceding him up the ladder leading to the elevation; where, one on each side of the last step, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... they writ it; but 'tis evident, by the ridiculous mistakes and gross absurdities, which have been made by those poets who have taken their fancy only for their guide, that if this fancy be not regulated, it is a mere caprice, and utterly incapable to produce a ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... deals only with the present becomes local, and in the end is influenced by the constant caprice and change of fashion instead of by the deep, heart-stirring beliefs of a ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... to my liberality. At Manon's side I was not master of myself; and it was no longer by the hour that time was measured; rather by the duration of whole days. At length, my funds being completely exhausted, I found myself exposed to the brutal caprice of these six wretches who treated me with intolerable rudeness—you yourself witnessed it at Passy. My meeting with you was a momentary relaxation accorded me by fate. Your compassion at the sight of my sufferings was my only recommendation to your generous nature. The assistance which you ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... A sudden caprice seized her. "Why, I think I'll wear it!" she answered. "Just help me on with it, Oskar. And thank you so much for helping me select it. Here comes Mr. Wentworth, now. I wonder whether he will like it. I'm crazy about it. What kind of a marten did you say it is? Everybody will be asking me, and I ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... compelled to inform the king that he had no force at his disposal sufficient to enable him to resist the demands of the mob. The king, seeing that he was entirely at the mercy of his foes, who were acting without leaders and without plan, as the caprice of each passing moment instigated, said, "You wish, my children, that I should accompany you to Paris. I can not go but on condition that I shall not be separated from my wife and family." To this proposal ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... inquiring: by what caprice the author was induced to throw the incident of the Bruce's heart entirely out of the story, save merely to say, that he found himself unable to fill up the canvass he had sketched, and indisposed to prosecute ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... by a woman's handclasp in the long line which had filed by him as he stood in the executive chamber surrounded by his glittering staff, it was the past which most absorbed him. It struck him as a wanton caprice of fate that they should have been flung together that day. Ruth, whom he had promised a share in these honors; Ruth, whom he had boasted that he would return and claim; Ruth, whom he had put away because he must, because of a loftier standard which—grimmest irony of all!—she ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... sanitary. If it can be the problem is solved, for entombment has ever been the best that the living could do for their dead, and, with the added advantage of promoting, or ceasing to be prejudicial to, the public health entombment will be the choice of all whom cost or caprice does not deter. ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... really operate, in the present constitution of Nature. We are subject, unquestionably, to certain "laws of thought," which we can neither repeal nor resist, and which impose upon us a logical necessity to conceive, to reason, and to infer, not according to our own whim or caprice, but according to established rules. We are equally subject to certain "conditions of existence,"—arising partly from our own constitution, partly from the constitution of external objects and the relations subsisting between the two,—which lay us under a moral necessity of using suitable means ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... they are entitled to a change in the form of Government because, in violation of the Convention entered into between this Republic and Her Majesty's Government, they will not conform themselves to the laws of the land, but claim alterations therein at their own caprice. ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... there is wealth which is not the product of labor, why is the possession of it a privilege? Where is the legitimacy of monopoly? Explain then, once for all, this theory of the right of unproductive consumption; this jurisprudence of caprice, this religion of idleness, the sacred prerogative of a caste of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... moment most certainly several of the owners of Jublains are the opposite of foolish, and the most important monument of all is placed beyond the individual caprice of any man. The great fortress is diligently taken care of under the authority of the local Archaeological Society; the theatre is the property of M. Henri Barbe, a zealous resident antiquary and the historian of the place; and the other chief remains are easily accessible, ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... to be acted. Arranging the inmates of the fort, in two rows, with a space of about ten feet between them, two Indians were selected; who taking each his station at the head of a row, with their tomahawks most cruelly murdered almost every white person in the fort; some few, whom caprice or some other cause, induced them to spare, were carried into captivity,—such articles as could be well carried away were taken off by the Indians; the remainder was consumed, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... of which the eye could not penetrate; in one place, large vaulted excavations presented a monumental aspect; in another, a crowd of columns, spires, and arches, such as no Gothic cathedral ever possessed. Every caprice of nature, still more varied than those of the imagination, appeared on this grand coast, which extended over a length of eight or ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... fool; put oneself out of court; lose control, lose control of oneself, lose one's head, lose one's cunning. begin at the wrong end; do things by halves &c. (not complete) 730; make two bites of a cherry; play at cross purposes; strain at a gnat and swallow a camel &c. (caprice) 608; put the cart before the horse; lock the stable door when the horse is stolen &c. (too late) 135. not know what one is about, not know one's own interest, not know on which side one's bread is buttered; stand in one's own light, quarrel with one's bread and butter, throw a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of his food amongst the withered leaves and marshy places of the woods and shrubberies which he frequents. Few birds possess a more varied melody. His notes are almost endless in variety, each note seemingly uttered at the caprice of the bird, without any perceptible approach ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photograph [March 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... day he called for Marianna, who had spent the morning in arranging her dress,—a simple but decent outfit, on which she had spent all her little savings. The transformation would have destroyed the illusions of a mere dangler; but Andrea's caprice had become a passion. Marianna, diverted of her picturesque poverty, and looking like any ordinary woman of modest rank, ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... the advance of this desperate garrison, dispersing this way and that for their war upon the world—silent vessels, moving in the clouds, to Rome, to London, to Paris and Versailles, each capable of obliterating a city. Or he saw, again, the submission of the world to the caprice of these desperate children who feared nothing—not even death itself—who crouched like an ape in a powder-magazine, lighted match in hand, careless as to whether or no themselves died so long as the world ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... published no edition of his whole works. We do not reflect that a poet, always accustomed to labour immediately for the stage, who has often enjoyed the triumph of overpowering assembled crowds of spectators, and drawing from them the most tumultuous applause, who the while was not dependent on the caprice of crotchety stage directors, but left to his own discretion to select and determine the mode of theatrical representation, naturally cares much less for the closet of the solitary reader. During the first ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... read but don't read; and some neither read nor meant to read, but borrow to leave you an opinion of their sagacity. I must do my money-borrowing friends the justice to say that there is nothing of this caprice or wantonness of alienation in them. When they borrow my money they never fail to make ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Mansard, wainscoted and furnished in the Watteau style, rocaille on the inside, old-fashioned on the outside, walled in with a triple hedge of flowers, had something discreet, coquettish, and solemn about it, as befits a caprice of love ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... sitting there, his eyes fixed with deep interest on her face, thrilled and exalted her. Oh! she certainly loved him! Alas! and it would be dreadfully difficult to say good-bye. But those three words in his sentence stung her pride—"for the moment." Yes, there was always this hint of caprice. Always he gave her the sensation of instability, there was no way to hold him. She must ever guard her emotions and ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... They 're an indispensable feature of 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 of man." ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... arise from great causes. A general break-down of liberties cannot be attributed to individual caprice nor to a particular ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... beautiful, 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 ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... that cliff you doubtless would see over the tree-tops into the outer and airy world. With all its natural beauties is intermingled an agreeable quaintness, that shows the owner has occasionally been working in the spirit of fancy, almost caprice; the tool-house in the garden is not without its ornaments—the barn seems habitable, and the byre has somewhat the appearance of a chapel. You see at once that the man who lives here, instead of being sick of the world, is attached to all elegant ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... declined to kowtow before the emperor, he was not admitted to the imperial presence and the mission proved abortive. Destitute of all royal qualities, a slave to his passions, and the servant of caprice, Kia-k'ing died in 1820. The event fraught with the greatest consequences to China which occurred in his reign (though at the time it attracted little attention) was the arrival of the first Protestant missionary, Dr R. Morrison (q.v.), who ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... Europe was instantaneous and electrical. The irritation which had accompanied the excommunication by Clement had died away in the difficulty of executing the censures. The papal party had endeavoured to persuade themselves that the king was acting under a passing caprice. They had believed that the body of the people remained essentially Catholic; and they had trusted to time, to discontent, to mutiny, to the consequences of what they chose to regard as the mere ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... prodigious favourite with maiden aunts and side-table cousins. This was the individual whom fate had ordained to cross and thwart Terence in his designs upon the heart of Miss Biddy O'Brannigan, and upon whom that young lady, in sport or caprice, bestowed a large dividend of those smiles which Terence imagined should be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... from Gerty to Trent and from Trent to Adams. To the younger man, full of his enthusiasm and his ignorance, the physical details of her appearance seemed suddenly of no larger significance than the pale bronze gown she wore or the old coffee-coloured lace knotted upon her bosom in some personal caprice of dress. What she gave to him as she stood there, looking from Adams to himself with her ardent friendly glance, was an impression of radiant ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... depended absolutely upon the caprice of the mysterious steersman who inhabited the ironclad, ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... neighbour might be,—which would be almost as bad. Let him be sent to Cayenne if he deserves it, but let a jury say that he has deserved it. My idea of government is this,—that we want to be governed by law and not by caprice, and that we must have a legislature to make our laws. If I thought that Parliament as at present established made the laws badly, I would desire a change; but I doubt whether we shall have them better from any change in Parliament ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... enjoyment or so few comforts. Taste and knowledge and tone were too little concentrated anywhere, too much diffused everywhere, to make head against the advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. Of society there was but little; for what it suited the caprice of certain people to call such was little more than the noisy, screeching, hoydenish romping of both sexes. The taint of provincialism was diffused over all feelings and beliefs. Of arts and letters the country possessed none or next to ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Mr. John Effingham thinks less of his own work than you seem to think of it yourself, sir, for I have frequently heard him laugh at it, as a mere enlargement of the merits of the composite order. He calls it a caprice, rather than a taste: nor do I see what concern a majority, as you term them, can have with a house that ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... deduce another spiritual judgment as to the Bible's worth. Thus if our theory of revelation-value were to affirm that any book, to possess it, must have been composed automatically or not by the free caprice of the writer, or that it must exhibit no scientific and historic errors and express no local or personal passions, the Bible would probably fare ill at our hands. But if, on the other hand, our theory should allow that a book may well ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... were wont to turn when suffering from her caprice, was on very friendly terms with the young Earl. He used to come and stand by her, and talk to her about Wrangerton, and seemed quite amused and edified by her quiet enthusiasm for it, and for Helvellyn, and her intimacy with all the pictures which he had sent home and almost forgotten. His sister ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for Pitt's recent message that his energy at the Admiralty had largely contributed to the triumph at Trafalgar. Melville's feelings further appeared in the postscript, that Nelson's death was "enviable beyond expression," as placing "his fair fame beyond the reach of caprice, envy, or malevolence."[710] Pitt did not live on to see the vindication of his old friend. On 12th June 1806, after a trial of twelve days in Westminster Hall, the Peers acquitted Melville on all the ten counts, the prosecution failing to prove that he had benefited by Trotter's irregular ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... 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, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... however, to bend my temper to my new circumstances; but such was the agony which I internally experienced, that I have guarded against nothing more in the education of my own family, than against their acquiring habits of self-willed caprice and domination. I found much consolation during this period of mortification in the partiality of my mother. She joined to a light and happy temper of mind a strong turn to study poetry and works of imagination. She was sincerely devout, but her religion was, as became her sex, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... 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
... that was in the past—heaven be praised for it! Just now she was her own mistress, at liberty—thanks to the fortune of war—to comport herself as she pleased and obey any caprice that took her. The position was ideal in its freedom, while the intrinsic value of it was enhanced by contrast with recent disagreeable experiences. For the alarms and deprivations of the siege of Paris ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Mungo's candle. Mungo was despatched for Annapla, and speedily the silent abigail of visions was engaged upon that truly Gaelic courtesy, the bathing of the traveller's feet. The Baron considerately made no inquiries; if it was a caprice of Count Victor's to venture in dancing shoes and a borrowed jacket through dark snow-swept roads, it was his own affair. And the Count was so much interested in the new cheerfulness of his host (once so ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... particular advantages. But Horace Walpole panted with a secret desire for literary celebrity; a full sense of his distinguished rank long suppressed the desire of venturing the name he bore to the uncertain fame of an author, and the caprice of vulgar critics. At length he pretended to shun authors, and to slight the honours of authorship. The cause of this contempt has been attributed to the perpetual consideration of his rank. But was this bitter contempt of so early a date? Was Horace Walpole ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... government should be settled on principles favourable to liberty. All Protestant sects should be tolerated. The forfeited charters should be restored. Parliament should be held annually, and should no longer be prorogued or dissolved by royal caprice. The only standing force should be the militia: the militia should be commanded by the Sheriffs; and the Sheriffs should be chosen by the freeholders. Finally Monmouth declared that he could prove himself to have been born in lawful wedlock, and to be, by right of blood, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Indeed there was nothing to be said. Whatever her will or caprice there was no one with any right to gainsay it. Rivardi was inwardly seething with suppressed irritation—but his handsome face showed no sign of annoyance save in an extreme pallor ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... Then her caprice changed. "I've half a mind to drop it into the river. Would you jump after it?" she said, twirling it by the brim, and looking over the steep bank, near which she sat, into the deep, dark water almost ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... married life Alice Benden had experienced enough of her husband's constant caprice and frequent brutality; but this new development of it astonished her. She had not supposed that he would descend so far as to take the price of innocent blood. The tone of her voice, not indignant, but simply astonished, increased Mr Benden's anger. The ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... the fancies which since yesterday had been so absorbing her, she was in the right. Even apparently harmless hopes and wishes dependent on the caprice, or, if carried where they may lead to, contingent on the life or death of others, are better checked at once. Indulgence in such can do no good, ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... recollections of the evening before, if such a thing had been possible, so absolutely unaltered was Hetty's treatment of him. She had been absolutely honest in all she said: she did honestly believe that his fancied love for her was a sentimental mistake, a caprice born of idleness and lack of occupation, and she did honestly intend to forget the whole thing, and to make him forget it. And so they went back to the farm, where the summer awaited them with overflowing harvests of every thing, and ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... you may say perhaps—a relegation of style to the subjectivity, the mere caprice, of the individual, which must soon transform it into mannerism. Not so! since there is, under the conditions supposed, for those elements of the man, for every lineament of the vision within, the one word, the one acceptable word, recognisable by the sensitive, by others "who have intelligence" ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... that has his understanding blocked up on both sides, like a fore-horse's eyes, that he sees only straight-forwards and never looks about him, which makes him run on according as he is driven with his own caprice. He starts and stops (as a horse does) at a post only because he does not know what it is, and thinks to run away from the spur while he carries it with him. He is very violent, as all things that tend downward naturally are; ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... this church a blow was statistics. Away went special providence. We found by taking statistics that we could tell the average length of human life; that this human life did not depend upon infinite caprice; that it depended upon conditions, circumstances, laws and facts, and that those conditions, circumstances, and facts were ever active. And now you will see the man who depends entirely upon special providence gets his life insured. He has more confidence even in one of these companies than ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... reliable, rigidly just, free from any touch of caprice, he lacked no quality demanded by his arduous profession, and hence he whom even the youngest addressed as "Barop" never failed for an instant to receive the respect which was his due, and, moreover, had from us all the voluntary ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Mary's promises! They were as fixed and as unchangeable as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and there was a record of their fulfilment indelibly written in the memories of two hundred small personages—personages in whom adult caprice and flexibility of conduct had bred a tendency ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Aubrey, was of a very different disposition of mind and frame of body; thoughtful, gentle, susceptible, acute; with an uncertain bravery, like a woman's, and a taste for reading, that varied with the caprice of every hour. He was the beauty of the three, and my mother's favourite. Never, indeed, have I seen the countenance of man so perfect, so glowingly yet delicately handsome, as that of Aubrey Devereux. Locks, soft, glossy, and twining into ringlets, fell in dark ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... grass as lightly as a bird, and that the sole consequences of the fall or shock had been psychic. That is to say, after Krespel's heroic deed she had become completely altered; she never showed a trace of caprice, of her former freaks, or of her teasing habits; and the composer who wrote for the next carnival was the happiest fellow under the sun, since the Signora was willing to sing his music without the scores and hundreds of changes which she at other times had insisted upon. "To be ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... only you who send me away," said Colden, dismally and reproachfully. "I could have got longer leave of absence. You let me escort you here, because no gentleman of your family will lend himself to your reckless caprice. And then, having no further present use for me, you send me about ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... Why quit our own to stand on foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... 14th of July, 1789, the Harrises drove along the boulevard till they approached the Bastille, formerly the site of a castle, or stronghold, used for a long time as a state prison for the confinement of persons who fell victims to the caprice of the government. ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... towards the relief of others, while to superficial observers they seem only providing for their own convenience. The fashionable tradesman is sure not to have them in the list of his customers; but should he, through the caprice of the multitude, be left without business, and see his elated hopes blasted, in all probability he will find these ladies his friends. Those whose youth renders them disregarded, or whose old age breeds neglect, will here meet with deserved encouragement. This sort ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... around it, crying 'weeree, weeree' (bad) and immediately after mention the name of any other place to which they are attached (Rose Hill or Sydney for instance), adding to it 'budyeree, budyeree' (good). Nor was their preference in the present case the result of caprice, for they assigned very substantial reasons for such predilection: "At Rose Hill," said they, "are potatoes, cabbages, pumpkins, turnips, fish and wine; here are nothing but rocks and water." These comparisons constantly ended with the question of "Where's Rose Hill? Where?" on which ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... himself into the house of his shepherdess, in order to learn her feelings and to hear from her the fate he must expect. There he sees everything ready for what he fears; he sees the unworthy rival whom the caprice of a father opposes to the tenderness of his love; he sees that ridiculous rival triumphant near the lovely shepherdess, as if already assured of his conquest. Such a sight fills him with a wrath he can hardly ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... presence his sternness, his somber moods, his gloomy thoughts vanished. It was evident that he had much preying upon his mind; and perhaps he loved me thus fondly because—by some unaccountable whim or caprice, or strange influence—he found solace in my society. The presents which he heaped upon me, but which have been nearly all snatched from me, were of immense value; and when I remonstrated with him on account of a liberality so useless to one whom he ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... they could make it cheap, and to this plan they resorted. Under Napoleon the Cross was never granted until it had been long and truly deserved: now it became the prey of meanness. The order was prostituted and cast to favourite underlings and intriguers, to whom it was distributed by caprice or bribery. ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... also, is untrustworthy. Nintoku's reign is remembered chiefly on account of the strange circumstances in which he came to the throne, his benevolent charity, and the slights he suffered at the hands of a jealous consort. His father, Ojin, by an exercise of caprice not uncommon on the part of Japan's ancient sovereigns, had nominated a younger son, Waka-iratsuko, to be his heir. But this prince showed invincible reluctance to assume the sceptre after Ojin's death. He asserted himself stoutly ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... 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. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... pretend that the real end of science is to ascertain how and why God acts? Science, from such a standpoint, would consist in investigating the law of arbitrary action, and in a grand endeavor to ascertain the rule necessarily obeyed by infinite caprice. ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... easy. Rocks and precipices were left behind, and were displaced by a soft, slippery sort of sand, where from space to space were planted, like so many oases in a desert, clumps of giant reeds. By a strange but natural caprice these beds of rustling verdure were cut in an infinity of well-defined geometric forms. Seen from an eminence and at a distance, this arrangement gave a singular effect. In the midst of these native garden-beds were cut distinct and narrow alleys, where the drifting sands were packed like artificial ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... opposition to God, and against right, reason, and nature, a thing which he has no authority, nor power, nor right to do, and over which the Church has never exercised authority, nor should it ever do so. So by his own caprice, without need, he has caused Christendom to be filled with whores, sinners, and guilty consciences, as St. Paul says of him, I. Timothy iv: "In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... is just what the Irish Orangemen have been, and it is very desirable that nothing like them should exist elsewhere. All this proves that Durham will have no easy task. It is a curious exhibition of the caprice of men's opinions when we see the general applause with which Durham's appointment is hailed, and the admiration with which he is all at once regarded. Nobody denies that he is a man of ability, but he has not greatly ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... he was still in the floodtide of royal favour in his own country; and it seemed a curious caprice that had led him to follow those gentlemen to England, to shine in a duller society, and sparkle ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... takes a {"}Grande Passion{"}, It is a very serious thing indeed: Nine times in ten 'tis but caprice or fashion, Coquetry, or a wish to take the lead, The pride of a mere child with a new sash on. Or wish to make a rival's bosom bleed: But the {Tenth} instance will be a tornado, For there's no saying what they will or may do." ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... as necessary, I shipped in the Delaware, a vessel bound to Savannah and Liverpool. Southern fashion, I ran from this vessel in Savannah, owing her nothing, however, but was obliged to leave my protection behind, as it was in the captain's hands. I cannot give any reason but caprice for quitting this ship. The usage was excellent, and the wages high; yet run I did. As long as the Delaware remained in port, I kept stowed away; but, as soon as she sailed, I came out into the world, and walked about the wharves as big as ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... we sang our duet descriptive of the special virtues of some particular flower nominated in the cantata? And how, growing older and shyer, we still preserved our youthful fancy even to the day I struck out into the world, both believing in the endurance of the tie that would draw me back? What caprice of fate is it that dispels the illusions of youth and restores them tenfold in the reflection of after years and over the gulf of the grave? Did ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... rather than from those of a prince of the petty house of Holstein Gottorp. But then what is this principle of Czarism, which is not a submission to divine right, but which causes one man to sustain, perhaps to place, another in a position which puts his own life at the mercy of the other's mere caprice? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... than the maternal instinct, and they do not take the trouble necessary to rear their infants. They give their children away, too, to a great extent, and I have heard of instances in which children have been so passed from hand to hand, that they are quite ignorant of their real parents. It is an odd caprice in some cases, that women who have given away their own children are passionately attached to those whom they have received as presents, but I have nowhere seen such tenderness lavished upon infants as upon the pet dogs that the women carry about with them. Though they are so deficient ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... another caprice when the Lady Elaine gave orders to return to the Castle of Content, at once, and by the shortest way—all save one of them. With his heart rioting madly through his breast, he knew, but he did not dare to look at Elaine. He was as one long ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... your own mistress, (though under the protection of Sir Anthony), yet have you, for this long year, been a slave to the caprice, the whim, the jealousy of this ungrateful Faulkland, who will ever delay assuming the right of a husband, while you suffer him to be equally imperious as ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... Let us see. "What has her heart told her?" "It has told her that it is sad." "Sad! and why?" "Oh, for a very simple reason! Because it thrills in response to a new, strange feeling, never known before. It fancies—curious caprice!—that it has changed owners." "And why is that?" "The fact is, that it has learned, it knows not where, that men are ungrateful and inconstant, and this is the reason why Berta sighs." "Ah! And what does the mirror tell her to console her?" "Why, the mirror tells her that she ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... a human being, body and spirit; that it is of importance; that its value is inestimable, having reference to this world and the next. Hence they in every way neglect its interests. They eat and drink, they walk and ride; they will practise no self-restraint, but will indulge every caprice, every passion, utterly regardless of the ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... outward affection and encouragement, the other in a silent but undoubted appreciation of the son's promise. The boy, in turn, so fully understood the father's temperament, that a bond existed between the two. Whether to keep Edwin from the stage, or in caprice, the elder Booth at first rarely permitted the younger to see him act; but the son, attending the father to the theatre, would sit in the wings for hours, listening to the play, and having all its parts so indelibly impressed on him memory as to astonish his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... 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 him; ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... Powers of caprice, confusion, and dismay! It was Jessie Yelverton herself—arriving, without a word of warning, exactly ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... cursed hour is the dinner hour to be turned out of doors! Come, let us yield to fate in our affliction. Let us today follow blind caprice, and join the unfortunate Sosie to the unfortunate Amphitryon: it is a suitable union. I see he ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... but against Bothwell." Then the king's friends did what they could to break off the negotiations and give battle: it was already too late; the soldiers knew that they were defending the cause of one man, and that they were going to fight for a woman's caprice, and not for the good of the country: they cried aloud, then, that "since Bothwell alone was aimed at, it was for Bothwell to defend his cause". And he, vain and blustering as usual, gave out that he was ready to prove his innocence in person against whomsoever would dare ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... critic almost always stops, unable quite to enter their sphere. Subtile beauties puzzle him; the titles of the poems, for instance, giving by delicate allusion the key-note of each,—as "Astraea," "Mithridates," "Hamatreya," and "Etienne de la Boece,"—seem to him the work of "mere caprice"; he pronounces the poem of "Monadnoc" "poor and weak"; he condemns and satirizes the "Wood-notes," and thinks that a pine-tree which should talk like Mr. Emerson's ought to be cut down and cast ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... replied, humouring his present caprice, though grieved to withhold the solution which he had so earnestly desired an hour before. "Just as the secondary use of the bee is to make honey, and his primary one to teach us habits of industry, so the secondary use of the hen is to lay eggs, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... inclination to perform this noble act of self-effacement. On no account would {115} he have a dictator imposed upon him to shape the fortunes of Greece according to his caprice, unfettered by "military advisers of limited perceptions." If Greece was to have a dictator, the King had said long ago, he would rather be that dictator; though he had no objection to a Cabinet with a Venizelist admixture. In fact, he insisted on M. Venizelos ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... in his changes of front, they have put them down to interested motives, and then equally unable to show that he himself had anything to gain from them, have been forced to attribute them to mere caprice. The fact is that Douglas cannot be understood along those lines at all. To understand him one must remember that he was indifferent on the Slavery Question, "did not care," as he said, "whether Slavery was voted up or voted down," ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... discriminating in his praise, dismisses him in a list of Latin poets with a single couplet of vague eulogy. In the reactionary circles of the Empire, Lucretius found recognition; but the critics who, according to Tacitus, ranked him above Virgil may be reasonably suspected of doing so more from caprice than from rational conviction. Had the poem itself perished (and all the extant manuscripts are copies of a single original), no one would have thought that such a preference could be anything but a piece of antiquarian pedantry, like the revival, in the same period, of the plays of the early tragedians. ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... you now pronounce, that, as my public conduct hath not been right, Ctesiphon must stand condemned it must be thought that you yourselves have acted wrong, not that you owe your present state to the caprice of fortune. But it cannot be! No, my countrymen! it cannot be you have acted wrong, in encountering danger bravely, for the liberty and the safety of all Greece. No! by those generous souls of ancient times, who were exposed at Marathon! By those who stood arrayed at Plata! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... at this moment, on the most restless of European governments, France. But with her whole power, her revenues, and her military means completely at the disposal of a single mind, her movements, for either good or evil, are wholly dependent on the caprice, the ambition, or the absurdity of the individual on the throne. The idea that Russia would weaken her power by the possession of Constantinople, seems to us utterly incapable of proof. She has been able to maintain her power at once on the Black Sea, seven hundred miles from her capital; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... with the elements of Fate. There were conflicts that even her sister knew nothing about, the bewilderments and temptations of a nature hampered in its action by its own voluminous qualities and its caprice. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... frequently ask for dogs, sledges, axes, and other similar articles of which they can make no possible use, and thus persuade their credulous male relatives that their demands are governed only by diseased caprice and have in view no definite object. Such was the rationalistic explanation which the ispravnik gave of the curious delusion known as the "Anadyrski bol"; and although it argued more subtlety on the part of the women ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... other hand, might have done well, if she had married almost anybody else. But her nature was too like his own, with feminine vanity and caprice, French conceit, and the pride of noble birth—in the proudest age of nobility—hardening all her faults, and hammering the rivets of her strong self-will. To these little difficulties must be added the difference ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... with spring fragrances; great thickets of dogwood trees were white with flowers; mossy hillocks along the roadside were pink with the dainty bells of the Linnaea. The road was little more than a woodman's path, and curved now right, now left, in seeming caprice; now forded a stream, now came out into a cleared field, again plunged back into dense groves ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... their senseless jargon or their fulsome praise of "old master," the often unconscious note of grief and despair. He perceived, too, the debasing effects of slavery upon master and slave alike, crushing all semblance of manhood in the one, and in the other substituting passion for judgment, caprice for justice, and indolence and effeminacy for the more virile virtues of freemen. Doubtless the gentle hand of time will some time spread the veil of silence over this painful past; but, while we are still gathering its evil aftermath, it is well enough that we do not forget ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... tender affections that grow out of endearing words and actions and companionship. But afterward, when I was restored to my human heritage, Mildred and I grew into each other's hearts, so that we were content to go hand-in-hand wherever caprice led us, although she could not understand my finger language, nor I ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... of the said lands and estate." The honest writer refused to partake of a splendid entertainment with which Gilbert Glossin, Esquire, now of Ellangowan, treated the rest of the company, and returned home in huge bitterness of spirit, which he vented in complaints against the fickleness and caprice of these Indian nabobs, who never knew what they would be at for ten days together. Fortune generously determined to take the blame upon herself, and cut off even ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... strong for the petty nature of the bard, sits on his neck and writes through his hand; so that when he seems to vent a mere caprice and wild romance, the issue is an exact allegory. Hence Plato said that "poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand." All the fictions of the Middle Age explain themselves as a masked or frolic expression of that which in grave earnest ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of unhappy married life Alice Benden had experienced enough of her husband's constant caprice and frequent brutality; but this new development of it astonished her. She had not supposed that he would descend so far as to take the price of innocent blood. The tone of her voice, not indignant, but simply astonished, increased Mr Benden's anger. The more gently she spoke, ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... the Government machine, to prevent its bursting, and damaging thousands. These abuses are so shameful, that they are scarcely credible in Britain; but they are easily capable of corroboration by inquiry and a little knowledge of Spain, where very frequently caprice is the only law in existence, or at least is the only one acted upon. I might multiply instances, but ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... cultures of the other hemisphere, if we limit the latter to what we know of their history within the past two or three thousand odd years, and American civilization to the past fifteen hundred years. The matter is somewhat greater than that—just as man is somewhat greater than a fool of natural caprice. ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... rich and varied, and it was an ironic caprice which made him refuse to write in that language. I doubt, though, whether he would have composed with ease in any tongue, for he found it hard to concentrate, and his small stock of verse was the outcome of ten years ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... maliciousness, envy, murder, deceit, malignity. They were backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without natural affection, implacable and unmerciful." Their manners and habits were the results of mere whim and caprice when they were not the results of simple love of wickedness. The vice of one community was the virtue of another; and refinement in one was unpardonable rudeness in another. The public festivals ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880
... righteous God. It has fostered not only premature marriages but concubinage in the anxiety to have sons who will care for parents in age and minister to them after death. It makes the child virtually a slave to the caprice or passion of the parent. It leads to a reverence for the past that makes change a disrespect to the dead, so that all progress is made exceedingly difficult and society becomes fossilized. "Whatever is is right'' and "custom'' is sacred. Man is led so to centralize his thought on his own family ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... very generous in your Majesty, not only to compassionate the fate of a man whose political principles made him an enemy to your greatness, but to ascribe it to the caprice and inconstancy of the people, as if there had been nothing very blamable in his conduct. I feel the magnanimity of this discourse from your Majesty, and it confirms what I have heard of all your behaviour after my death. But ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... 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 Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... days he was a Whig with a strong leaning to republicanism, but the public events of his later years greatly modified his views. It has been well said of him that 'he was an aristocrat by instinct and a republican by caprice.' On the death of his nephew, George, the third Earl, in 1791, he succeeded to the earldom, but he never took his seat in the House of Lords, and seldom signed his name as Orford. He died at his house in Berkeley Square on the 2nd of March 1797, and was buried at Houghton, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... of fairy tales my immediate point is, not how near he was to hell, but how very far off he was from fairyland. That notion about the hero with a magic sword being the superman with a magic superiority is the caprice of a pedant; no child, boy, or man ever felt it in the story of Jack the Giant Killer. Obviously the moral is all the other way. Jack's fairy sword and invisible coat are clumsy expedients for enabling him to fight at all with something which is by nature stronger. They are a rough, ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... circumstances. My sister reminded me that this gentleman had expressly placed his services at my disposal, during the present season, in case I wished to leave town; my mother seriously appealed to me not to let an idle caprice stand in the way of my own interests and my own health; and Pesca piteously entreated that I would not wound him to the heart by rejecting the first grateful offer of service that he had been able to make to the friend who had ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... not the caprice of this or that individual, it is a solemn page either of history or prophecy; and when, as always in Dante and occasionally in Byron, it combines and harmonizes this double mission, it reaches the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... 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 about such ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Athens, lodged at the Capuchin Convent. The Reverend Father Paul had found favour in the sight of this surprising genius;—his age, his profession, his gentleness, had gained him the affection of that nobleman in such a manner, that he devoted himself to him with all the caprice of his character. Wearied with everything, oppressed by his familiar demon, Byron came one day to find Father Paul, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... unfortunately, there is another law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law of radiation, which this and all other conventional modes of execution wholly lose sight of. This second law is, that the radiating tendency shall be carried out only as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual individual caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the moment a touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of the leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its unity of growth with its companions in the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... What mad caprice could have induced him so to transgress the etiquette of nations? For lesser things great powers ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 seek new ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... days' detention, whence quarantines derive their name, was not dictated by caprice, but probably had a medical origin, which is derivable in part from the doctrine of critical days; for the fortieth day, according to the most ancient notions, has been always regarded as the last of ardent diseases, and ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... all its objects came to appear in his eyes as nothing but a playground, and all its men and women merely his own animated toys. And from being utterly indifferent to everything but his own momentary pleasure and caprice, he became, little by little, first callous to the sufferings of others, and finally positively cruel, finding his amusement in making others victims to his own peremptory desires. And his appetite, like a fire, grew with the fuel that it fed ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... which Lady Theobald found herself placed, after these occurrences, was certainly a difficult and unpleasant one. It was Mr. Francis Barold's caprice, for the time being, to develop an intimacy with Mr. Burmistone. He had, it seemed, chosen to become interested in him during their sojourn at Broadoaks. He had discovered him to be a desirable companion, and a clever, amiable fellow. This much ...
— A Fair Barbarian • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... founded, must prove, inevitably prove, a shadowy super-structure. A deviation from the order and appointments of Heaven is a proportionate departure from happiness; for this order and these appointments do not result from caprice, but a perfect combination of goodness and wisdom. The divine system of legislation is formed with a merciful regard to our best interests, and an entire knowledge of our nature. Its arrangements are not arbitrary, but kind; and obedience ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... intimates he, to govern a Town, if, as some have perhaps done, you follow simply your own will, regardless of the sighs and complaints your subjects utter for injustice undergone,—indifferent to the thought that the caprice of one Town Sovereign is to be glorified by so many thousand tears (dim glance into the past history of Landshut!). Such Town Sovereign persecutes innocence, stops his ears to its cry; flourishes his sharp scourge;—no one shall complain: for is it not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... really disaffected, and a Southern sympathizer?" said Brant, "or is it only caprice ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... and reason. The insignia of fashion, therefore, may be considered in relation to the human head, as the notification on the door of an empty house, signifying that the family has removed to another tenement. Hence no one of common sense expects any caprice of that lady to be accounted for on rational grounds. There is one of her freaks, however, which we have endeavoured to trace to its source in the wilds of luxuriant absurdity, and have never been able to succeed. Nay, we venture to affirm ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... occupation have been light, for flocks and herds require a good deal of attendance, and in those early days they needed vigilant protection against the ravages of wild beasts. Abel's task must have been quite as heavy as Cain's. Our opinion is that the Lord showed his usual caprice, hating whom he would and loving whom he would. Jehovah acted like the savage hero of Mr. Browning's "Caliban on Setebos," who sprawls on the shore watching a line of crabs make for the sea, and squashes the twentieth for mere variety and sport. If Jehovah is requested to ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... 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 reins of truth; and he could do this unbrokenly ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... and blind to its own interest, as to permit the empress of Russia to make and retain conquests in the empire; but even if these powers should be weak enough to sacrifice all the maxims of sound policy to caprice or resentment, he did not think himself so deeply concerned in the event, as for the distant, prospect of what might possibly happen, to plunge headlong into a war that must be attended with certain and immediate disadvantages. True it is, he had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... day was the first time. Whenever my cock grew stiff I rang for Molly, and showed it to her. She grew demoralized at the constant sight of the cock, but there was no time for a fuck; I promised her a new bonnet to get me another opportunity. In a couple of hours she came, I had a voluptuous caprice, turned her belly on the bed, her rump towards me, for a fuck from behind. She objected, "What are you going to do? You can't do anything like that." "Yes my love, easily." "I don't like my clothes up like that." Two or three times I had to turn ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... comfort of this well-ordered house—its brightness, its ample rooms, the charm of space within and without, the health of regular and wholesome meals, the presence of these two women, whose first desire was to minister to his least wish or caprice. These, the first spoilings he had received, combined to render him singularly happy. Bohemianism, he often thought, had been forced upon him—it was not natural to him, and though spiritual belief ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... his answer, but it had to suffice. While he never discouraged her, she felt that he shared the opinion of the family that her ambition was a caprice to be indulged and got rid of, the sooner ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... beyond their walls. But it is possible that here, too, language may have played some tricks. The number of people who used these names and kept them alive can never have been large, and hence they were exposed much more to accidents arising from ignorance and individual caprice than names of villages or towns which are in the keeping of hundreds and thousands of people. The monks of St. Michael's Mount may in time have forgotten the exact purport of "Cara cowz in clowze," "the old rock of the tomb," really the "Mons in tumba;" and their minds being full of the old ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... had so passionately defended the liberties of America and the constitutional tradition of the English Parliament against the aggression of George III., attacked the Revolution as a system of violence and caprice more formidable to freedom than the tyranny of any Crown. He proved that the politicians and societies of England who had given it their sympathy had given their sympathy to measures and to theories opposed to every principle of 1688. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... the most acceptable, particularly that which is indented at the edge, or stamped with the impression of a chariot and two horses, called the Serrati and Bigati. Silver is preferred to gold, not from caprice or fancy, but because the inferior metal is of more expeditious use in the purchase of ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... is, and not a partnership. A nation, one and inseparable, we propose that it shall continue. We deny that the founders and fathers ever contemplated a mere temporary alliance dissoluble at the caprice of any member. To the Union, established under the Constitution, just as earnestly as to the cause of independence, they virtually pledged 'their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.' With every year the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... already by pimples due to liver complaint, on which grounds she was said to be exacting. With a slender figure and delicate proportions, she could afford to indulge in languid manners, savoring somewhat of affectation, but revealing passion and the consciousness that every least caprice will be gratified ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... antique as their parent. They expressed much appreciation of the Romantic school, but their hearts were with Aeschylus and Pindar. They contended for national character, but only took pleasure in planting it on classic soil. Byron's enthusiasm for Pope was not only caprice; nor was it mere chance that Byron should have died in Greece, and Shelley and Keats in Italy. Compared with what we may call these classical members of the Romantic school, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott . . . may be said to have taken nothing, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... idealist, just so,' returned Harry. 'Well, the way I've been a martyr to that man's caprice is perfectly heart-rending. He came of some gorgeous family in the middle of Pennsylvania, where all the tribes, like leaning towers, incline toward Germany. To be sure, you'd never dream it from his looks, for he is a perfect Mark Antony ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... change in my situation, she proposed to me to become a member of her own family. No proposal could be more acceptable. I was fully acquainted with the character of this lady, and had nothing to fear from injustice and caprice. I did not regard her with filial familiarity, but my attachment and reverence would have done honour to that relation. I performed for her the functions of a steward. Her estates in the city were put under my direction. She placed boundless confidence in my discretion and integrity, and consigned ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... oh! was Helen's kiss To be compared with those I tasted? Which but for me had all been wasted On a bald man, a fat man, a gross man, a beast To scare the best guest from the very best feast!' Cydilla need not hear half that he said, For he was mad awhile. But having given rein to hot caprice, And satyr jest, and the distempered male, At length, I heard his story. At sun-down certain miles without the town. He'd chanced upon a light-wheeled litter-car, And in it there stood one Yet more a woman than her garb was rich, With more of youth and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... raise their heads higher and higher in foolish rivalry, were swept away, no harm would be done. They are there by accident, and they will last only so long as a wayward fashion tolerates their presence. Battery, on the other hand, cannot be abolished by a caprice of taste. It is a village which has its roots in the past, and whose growth neither wealth nor progress has obscured. Above all, it possesses the virtue, great in towns as in men, of sincerity. It has not cut itself loose from its beginnings; its houses belong harmoniously to itself; ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... the eyes of some people, bear a philosophic value, as though it indicated some changes going on beneath the surface of society in the relations of our English aristocracy to our English laboring body. On the other hand, it will be regarded by multitudes as the casual caprice of an individual—a caprice of vanity by those who do not know Lord Carlisle's personal qualities, a caprice of patriotic benevolence by those who do. According to the construction of the case as thus indicated, oscillating between a question of profound revolution moving subterraneously ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... another minute, by a strange caprice of fate, those Edouard had come to intercept, quickened their pace to intercept him. As soon as he saw their intention he thrilled all over, but did not slacken his pace. He told Dard to take his coat and throw it over his foot, for here were the ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... recoiling from no means in their struggles for ascendancy engaged in the direst excesses; in their acts of vengeance they went to even greater lengths, not stopping at what justice or the good of the state demanded, but making the party caprice of the moment their only standard, and invoking with equal readiness the condemnation of an unjust verdict or the authority of the strong arm to glut the animosities of the hour. Thus religion was in honour with neither party; ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... apparently, for a wonder, sitting idle. Sometimes he smiled to himself, and once or twice he laughed a little, but for the most part his pleasant, impassive face reflected no emotion and he sat with his useless eyes tranquilly fixed on an unseen distance. It was a fantastic caprice of the man to mock his sightlessness by a parade of light, and under the soft brilliance of a dozen electric brackets the room was as bright as day. At length he stood up and rang ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... him the most. Still his especial favourite was Mr. Spencer: for Spencer never went out without bringing back cakes and toys; and Spencer gave him his pony; and Spencer rode a little crop-eared nag by his side; and Spencer, in short, was associated with his every comfort and caprice. He told them his little history; and when he said how Philip had left him alone for long hours together, and how Philip had forced him to his last and nearly fatal journey, the old maids groaned, and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... once, there are comparatively 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
... generations. To effect objects so dear to every patriot I shall devote myself with anxious solicitude. It will be my desire to guard against that most fruitful source of danger to the harmonious action of our system which consists in substituting the mere discretion and caprice of the Executive or of majorities in the legislative department of the Government for powers which have been withheld from the Federal Government by the Constitution. By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one. ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... this. This is womanly! Nay, perhaps there is no caprice about it. I may have misinterpreted that letter in my haste last night. Very likely. Well,—better this, than that Helen Grey should come to evil through fault of mine,—better this, than the anguish of the horrible misgivings that haunted me ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... with a padlocked chain running through a loop on it. Thus we were still ironed, six together, but had a greater freedom and more scope to move. And more than this, the man who shifted the chains, whether through caprice, or perhaps because he really wished to show us what pity he might, padlocked me on to the same chain with Elzevir, saying, we were English swine and might sink or swim together. Then the hatches were put on, and there they left us in the dark ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... might yet cause to vibrate within her. He recognized the true daughter of Paris, wayward and nervous, who in the midst of her disorders preserves an instinctive pride; who places her independence far above all the money in the world; who gives, rather than sells, herself; who knows no law but her caprice, no morality but the ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... a whole year, as he has told me, without drinking. He is sometimes thirsty, but he lets it pass over, and he holds that it is an appetite which easily goes off of itself; and he drinks more out of caprice than either for ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Science contends that Nature is a "closed circle." Mechanical causation holds supreme sway. Everything happens according to law and order. If Free Will were allowed a place in the scheme of things, chance and caprice would immediately be introduced into our world—which could never ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... interest, he could have chosen no surer way than this. But although he admired her beauty and vivacity, and now and then took a real pleasure in her conversation, his mind was too full of other matters to receive any lasting impression of such a kind. Besides, she was capricious, and he hated mere caprice. ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... of Hara is neither extreme nor unusual. I have been face to face in this flowery kingdom with tragedies of this kind when a woman was the blameless victim of a man's caprice, and he was upheld by a law that would shame any country the sun shines on. By a single stroke of a pen through her name, on the records at the courthouse, the woman is divorced—sometimes before she knows it. Then she goes away to hide her disgrace and her broken heart—not broken because ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... material bulk and moral character? The question between great and small is totally distinct from the question between good and evil. Number and extension cannot exercise or illustrate the moral character either of God or of man. We should ourselves despise the mischievous caprice which should give to the biggest man in the city the honours that are due to the best. Right and wrong are matters that move on other lines and at higher levels than great and small, before both ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... warn you," said Lucian to Alice, "that my cousin's pet caprice is to affect a distaste for art, to which she is passionately devoted; and for literature, in which she is ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... and Caprice Build this golden portal; Graceful women, chosen men, Dazzle every mortal. Their sweet and lofty countenance His enchanted food; He need not go to them, their forms Beset his solitude. He looketh seldom in their ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... aristocratic institutions." The popular notion that an aristocracy is necessary to a monarchy, I take it, is a gross error. A titular aristocracy, in some shape or other, is always the consequence of monarchy, merely because it is the reflection of the sovereign's favour, policy, or caprice; but political aristocracies like the peerage, have, nine times in ten, proved too strong for the monarch. France would form no exception to the rule; but, as men are apt to run into the delusion of believing it liberty to strip one of power, although his mantle ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... could your mind The strange distinction frame? The whimsical, unjust caprice, Which robs ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... soldiers. Accordingly, the line itself was formed with the same want of caution with which they entered the field, agreeably to the whim of the soldiers, who came up as chance directed, and took their stations just where they pleased; which they afterwards abandoned, as fear or caprice suggested. The first legion and the left wing of the allied troops were drawn up in front. The line was extended to a great length, the tribunes remonstrating, that there was no strength in it, and that wherever the enemy made the charge they would ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... by an overmastering moral fervor which gave great weight to his utterances, but which exercised itself in a narrow field and which often distorted and misinterpreted the facts. Ruskin was governed by his affections, and though an ardent lover of truth and beauty, was often the victim of caprice and extravagance. Emerson and Arnold, on the other hand, were governed primarily by the intellect, but with quite different results. Emerson presents life in its ideality; he comparatively neglects life in its phenomenal aspect, that is, as it appears to the ordinary ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Chapelain, to guide the perfect lover.[193] After having been first an accessory, then an irresistible passion, love, that the poets think to magnify, will soon be nothing but a ceremonial. From the time of Lancelot we border on folly; military honour no longer counts for the hero; Guinevere out of caprice orders Lancelot to behave "his worst"; without hesitating or comprehending he obeys, and covers himself with shame. Each successive romance writer goes a step farther, and makes new additions; we come to immense compositions, to strings of adventures without any visible link; to heroes so uniformly ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... insuring rich reward to lie and deceive if thereby her own interests might be subserved; and she so thoroughly departed from the original plan of Church organization as to make of herself a spectacle of ornate display, fabricated by the caprice of man.[1513] ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... companion. At a period when such vagaries of thought most fully possessed me, and when we had been at work perhaps an hour and a half, we were again interrupted by the violent howlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him, he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... power;[683] and by its presence or absence, by its fulness or paucity, even the Lord was and is influenced, and in great measure controlled, in the bestowal or withholding of blessings; for He ministers according to law, and not with caprice or uncertainty. We read that at a certain time and place Jesus "could there do no mighty work" because of the people's unbelief.[684] Modern revelation specifies that faith to be healed is one of the gifts of the Spirit, analogous to the manifestations of faith in the work of healing ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... argue, that what they write is true, because they writ it; but 'tis evident, by the ridiculous mistakes and gross absurdities, which have been made by those poets who have taken their fancy only for their guide, that if this fancy be not regulated, it is a mere caprice, and utterly incapable to produce ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... turned to ring the bell. With the sudden caprice which her money had enabled her to cultivate, she had taken a liking ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... it came a little hard to the descendant of such a stock to have to choose his wife from among women who had done time or else to lose that legacy by the help of which alone he could hope to keep up the ancestral castle as a going concern. But so it was, by reason of the testamentary caprice of a spiteful uncle; and the position was not eased by the special condition for publicity, designed to bring it about that the family records, which began proudly in Doomsday Book, should conclude ignominiously ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 3, 1914 • Various
... distinction, upon the following day he would unite his joy with their joy, and would chant hymns of victory (epinicia)—"which by the way," said he, suddenly, breaking off to his favorite pursuits, "it is necessary that I should immediately compose." This caprice vanished like the rest; and he made an effort to enlist the slaves and citizens into his service, and to raise by extortion a large military chest. But in the midst of these vascillating purposes fresh tidings surprised him—other armies had revolted, and the rebellion was ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... the impetuosity and caprice of his wife (at the same time that he acknowledged her many redeeming good qualities), did not further attempt to thwart her inclinations. His great objection to her plan was the impropriety of retaining a prisoner whom he was bound to give up to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... amid the laughter of artists of every description, the queen of the revels had ten fingers on which she knew better how to count than any of her guests. In that house secret saturnalias of literature and art, politics and finance were carried on; there, desire reigned a sovereign; there, caprice and fancy were as sacred as honor and virtue to a bourgeoise; thither came Blondet, Finot, Etienne Lousteau, Vernou the feuilletonist, Couture, Bixiou, Rastignac in his earlier days, Claude Vignon the critic, Nucingen the banker, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... the Fountains were aiding her to cure this folly. She had read them right, had described them to David aright. A wind of caprice had carried him and her into Font Abbey; another such wind was carrying them out. No event had happened. Mr. and Miss Fountain had been seen more than once in the village of late. "They have dropped us, and thank Heaven!" said Eve, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... make one forswear the whole sex," the commissary angrily replied. "Nor am I the man to put up with such womanish humoursomeness. "I've stood your caprice till my patience is exhausted; now I'll ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... somewhat wilful, yet most brilliant spirit, with a small fortune of her own. Miss Grenfell had joined the Church of Rome two years before, and at that time thought of entering a convent. This idea was extremely distasteful to her sister and her sister's husband. Their favourite remedy for feminine caprice was marriage, and they soon had the satisfaction of seeing Miss Grenfell become Mrs. Froude. There were some difficulties in the way, for Froude's prospects were by no means assured, and Mrs. Kingsley ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... and women turn to find relief from these bewildering fears by plunging deeply into the waters of life's amusements and ambitions. It is the uncertainty of things, wearing to some the aspect of caprice, which leads to recklessness, ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... caprice,' he thought, already accusing his mistress of too great ardor, 'she does not know the sort of domination to which she is about to become subject. Her caprice will last, I trust, as ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... the same offence, to go free. But had God cast fallen angels into hell, and, without any regard to His word, admitted fallen men to heaven, what had angels, what had devils, what had men themselves thought of a God who conducted his government with such caprice—playing fast and loose with His most solemn words? "The way of the Lord," said ancient Israel, "is not equal;" and in such a case there had been ground for the charge, and none for the indignation with which He repels it, saying, "Hear ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... Canadian granite now stands on this historic ground. Madame de la Peltrie did not remain more than two years in Ville-Marie, but returned to the convent at Quebec which she had left in a moment of caprice. Mdlle. Mance, who was Madame de Bullion's friend, remained at the head of the Hotel Dieu. The Sulpicians eventually obtained control of the spiritual welfare, and in fact of the whole island, though from necessity and policy the Jesuits were at first in charge. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... me. There was no definite understanding between us—nothing of the sort or kind. In fact, it was merely a passing caprice. Since I have had the privilege of knowing Miss ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... Yet when I dwell on the brilliant efforts accomplished by thy mighty genius in our behalf, the pen falls powerless from my despairing hand, and I can merely point to thee as the potent champion of our down-trodden rights! Instead of dwelling in dull obscurity, victims to the caprice of men; mending their thread-bare clothing and scolding servants—base, unwomanly pursuits!—instead of listening in silence to the storms of political debate; instead of remaining within the shadow of our own roofs, and gathering around the domestic hearth the thornless roses ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me; and, when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and complained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it; and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she did, I ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... wed, and run away from us. This marriage will cost her anxiety and sorrow; she must not only place her little feet in the land of reindeers, bears, and eternal snows, but she must also be baptized and adopt a new religion. Let us thank God, then, that the prince has had the caprice to pass you by and choose Amelia, who, I can see, is resolved to be married. We will, therefore, leave the foolish child to ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... weather-prophet I know, and if I had the good-will and were bored I could make an almanac," is one of his expressions; and another runs, "You know that my capricious humour is often Maitre de Flaisir." Besides being thus the creature of caprice, he was also impulsive, impetuous, and wont to act with impassioned haste. These qualities were revealed in his restless vivacious eyes, in his movements and gestures, and even broke out in extraordinary grimaces, as already remarked. And just in the same fervid eager way he often ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Not the worst part of the service the wearisome steps to be taken, Neither the bitter sweat of a labor that presses unceasing; Since the industrious freeman must toil as well as the servant. But 'tis to bear with the master's caprice when he censures unjustly, Or when, at variance with self, he orders now this, now the other; Bear with the petulance, too, of the mistress, easily angered, And with the rude, overbearing ways of unmannerly children. All this is hard to endure, and yet to go on with thy duties ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... no one, however harmless, is allowed to continue happy. Fate—or caprice—cannot endure to see us monotonously at rest. Something perfectly trivial—a look, a word, a touch, and lo! a long chain of old associations is broken asunder, and the peace we deemed so deep and lasting in finally interrupted. This change came to me, as surely as it comes to ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... 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 Case of Mrs. Clive • Catherine Clive
... of the soil was covered with small farms, which at the death of every proprietor were subdivided among his children. By a curious custom (arising in I know not what form of jealousy or caprice), the subdivision was wantonly made more disastrous. It was usual to divide not only the whole estate, but every part of it among the heirs. Thus, if a peasant died possessed of six fields and left three children, it was not the custom that each ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... relative length of the hind {223} toe, or in habits of life, as in roosting and building in trees. But the above objection shows how completely the principle of selection has been misunderstood. It is not likely that characters selected by the caprice of man should resemble differences preserved under natural conditions, either from being of direct service to each species, or from standing in correlation with other modified and serviceable structures. Until man selects birds differing in the relative length of the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... [Sidenote: RAPACITY OF THE SULTAN.] This truly royal dwelling once belonged to an iman, whom the Sultan thought proper to bowstring[16], and forfeit his lands. Of the precise nature of his crime I am ignorant; but in a country like Turkey, where the caprice of the Sultan is the law, a very slight pretext is sufficient to ensure the destruction of such as have excited his rapacity by an imprudent display of wealth, or his jealousy by attempts to acquire popularity: ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the King to return to Dublin; but these expostulations had hitherto produced no effect. The obstinacy of James, however, was an obstinacy which had nothing in common with manly resolution, and which, though proof to argument, was easily shaken by caprice. He received at Omagh, early on the sixteenth of April, letters which alarmed him. He learned that a strong body of Protestants was in arms at Strabane, and that English ships of war had been seen near the mouth of Lough Foyle. In one minute three messages were sent to ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the point of yielding, as you say, but you make me blush for my weakness," said Ferrand; then turning to the viscount, with an expression of which he comprehended all the signification, he continued, "There, seriously, it is impossible; I will not suffer that, through caprice, you should commit such an absurdity. M. le Vicomte, I regard myself as the mentor of my clients; I have no other family, and I should regard myself as an accomplice of any errors I should allow them ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... 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 ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the point of execution, used to protest their love and devotion to the sovereign by whose unjust mandate they suffered. Grlselda, himself, might be matched from the speeches put by Shakespeare into the mouths of male victims of kingly caprice and tyranny; the Duke of Buckingham, for example, in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... twilight, all the operations of opinion, fancy, inclination, and will, in the affairs of government, where only a sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of legislation and administration, should dictate. Government is made for the very purpose of opposing that reason to will and to caprice, in the reformers or in the reformed, in the governors or in the governed, in kings, in senates, or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ran in long irregular lines from East to West, the narrow strips of pathway between being broken here and there by detached experimental efforts. The excavations were of all shapes and sizes. They varied in depth from two to about six feet according to the caprice of the designers and the energy of the most recent occupants. One could not walk five yards in the dark without stepping or falling into some sort of hole and drawing lurid language from an abruptly wakened sleeper. The parapets were ragged, irregular, and rarely bullet-proof. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... the brown rat of civilization, and on the whole it seems that the destruction of valuable property is not by any means a part of their plan. They have a passion for moving things. Their vagaries seem to be due chiefly to caprice, and an overwhelming desire to keep exceedingly busy. I think that the animal psychologists have lost much by so completely ignoring these brain-busy animals, and I hope that in the future they will receive the attention they deserve. Why experiment ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... constituted a sort of board of navigation, constructing charts, and tracing out new routes for projected voyages. [105] The conduct of this department was intrusted to the last-mentioned navigator, who had the glory, the greatest which accident and caprice ever granted to man, of giving his ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... foreign extraction. For perhaps it may appear, that the excellence we find in these Horses depends totally on the mechanism of their parts, and not in their blood; and that all the particular distinctions and fashions thereof, depend also on the whim and caprice of mankind. ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... impossible possible, if you find it necessary. Call me capricious if you will, for desiring to hear this music to-morrow. I have so long been controlled by stern realities, that I will allow myself now to yield to a caprice." ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... expected tender adulation from most, and from most they received it. At the outset a certain impassivity on the part of this wild mountaineer excited their astonishment, then, quickly, their dissatisfaction. They were moved to a caprice against his calm, against this indifference that was an affront. They had no wish to work him serious harm, but his disregard was intolerable. Since the heart of neither was engaged, there was no jealousy between them in the affair. Since each was secretly ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... small, obscure, isolated societies, consisting of the chief, his family, his retainers, and the wretched serfs over whom he ruled without restraint, and who had no appeal against his whim. The power he exercised was the power of individual over individual, the domination of personal will and caprice; and this is perhaps the only kind of tyranny that man, to his eternal honour, is never willing to endure. Hence the prodigious and invincible hatred that the people have at all times entertained for feudal rule, for the memories of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... fallen upon each other, had there been no Turks in Palestine upon whom they might vent their impetuosity. Godfrey proceeded to Edessa, to aid his brother Baldwin in expelling the Saracens from his principality, and the other leaders carried on separate hostilities against them as caprice or ambition dictated. At length the impatience of the army to be led against Jerusalem became so great that the chiefs could no longer delay, and Raymond, Tancred, and Robert of Normandy marched forward with their divisions, and laid siege to the small but strong town of Marah. ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Chaikovsky's "Italian Caprice" for orchestra, played by the Philharmonic Society in New ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... 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 upon a right estimate of pleasures ...
— Philebus • Plato
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