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More "Inconstancy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could never discover their retreat. Howbeit I pretend not hereby to banish Shipwrecks from Romanzes, I approve of them in the works of others, and make use of them in mine; I know likewise, that the Sea is the Scene most proper to make great changes in, and that some have named it the Theatre of inconstancy; but as all excess is vicious, I have made use of it but moderately, for to conserve true resembling: Now the same design is the cause also, that my Heros is not oppressed with such a prodigious quantity of accidents, as arrive unto ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... twa excellent similes, I vow, Mr. Egerton.— Excellent! for they illustrate the vagaries and inconstancy of my dissipated heart as exactly as if you had meant to ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... build thine hope On the false earth's inconstancy? 20 Did thine own mind afford no scope Of love, or moving thoughts to thee? That natural scenes or human smiles Could steal the power to wind thee ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... cast by the earth. Consequently, the spirits in those three lowest Heavens are represented as less perfect than those in the higher spheres, because in the moral sense the shadow of earth fell upon their lives making them imperfect through inconstancy, vain ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... coquette of the skies, Thou, who with fickle, sweet inconstancy Receives the smile from the admiring sun, And straight transmits it to the sordid earth,— How many cycles of the silent past Hast thou beheld the rise and fall of man, His proud ascendency and swift decline; His zenith and his pitiful decay; ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... visited us, and of our late solemn confession of sinnes, and engagement unto duties, sealed with the renewing of the Covenant and the Oath of God; Which some men have so far already forgotten, as to return with the dogge to the vomit, and with the sow to the puddle: And many signes of inconstancy and levity do appear among all sorts and ranks of persons, who seem to want nothing but a sutable tentation to draw them away from their stedfastnesse; Our Army is not yet sufficiently purged, but there be still in it Malignant and scandalous men, whose fidelity and constancy, as ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... patrician converts in Rome, 2; attitude of the government toward, 11; evidence of the graffiti on, 12; difficulties and inconstancy of Christian converts, 14; mixed marriages, 15; friendly relations between pagans and Christians, 16; military service under the Empire, 18; the gradual change under Constantine, 20; spread of Christianity under Gregory the Great, 228; the persecutions under ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... last was the difficulty. When first asked, Learn had refused positively—for her quite vehemently—to have hand or part in the wedding. It brought back too vividly the sin and the sorrow of the former time; and she despised her father's inconstancy of heart too much to care to assist at a service which was to her the service of folly and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Excommunicate From all the joys of Love, shalt see The full reward and glorious fate Which my strong faith shall purchase me, Then curse thine own inconstancy! ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the casuistical tendencies, which had already appeared in Bishop Blougram's Apology, Mr. Sludge the Medium, and other poems, have overwhelmed his art, and his intellect, in its pride of strength, has grown wanton. Fifine at the Fair is said to be "a defence of inconstancy, or of the right of experiment in love." Its hero, who is "a modern gentleman, a refined, cultured, musical, artistic and philosophic person, of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious will," produces arguments "wide in range, of profound significance ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich Jew, attended by a black boy,[1] and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. Her mind being now as depraved, as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. An example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant. The Hebrew is represented at breakfast with his mistress; but, having come earlier ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... Lastly, from this inconstancy in the nature of human judgment, inasmuch as a man often judges things solely by his emotions, and inasmuch as the things which he believes cause pleasure or pain, and therefore endeavours to promote or prevent, are often purely imaginary, not ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... "Oh! the inconstancy, the fancifulness of these English," he generalized, with suppressed passion, right into my face. "I don't know what's worse, their fury or their pity. The childishness of it! The childishness.... Do you imagine, Senor, that Manuel or the Juez O'Brien ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... doubt that Sterne's philandering propensities did exercise an influence upon his literary character and work in more ways than one. That his marriage was an ill-assorted and unhappy union was hardly so much the cause of his inconstancy as its effect. It may well be, of course, that the "dear L.," whose moral and mental graces her lover had celebrated in such superfine, sentimental fashion, was a commonplace person enough. That she was really a woman ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... will be felt by us both in some measure. It will be very important to missionaries to be men of calmness and evenness of temper, and rather inclined to suffer hardships than to court the favour of men, and such who will be indefatigably employed in the work set before them, an inconstancy of mind ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... brocaded slippers, and, twanging a guitar, hummed to himself plaintively. Then, when he thought he had been sufficiently admired, he sang A che la morte, Il Balen, and several other Italian airs, in which frequent allusion was made to the inconstancy of woman's and the truth of man's affection. At every pause in the music these sentiments were laughingly contested by Mrs. Barton. She appealed to Milord. He never had had anything to complain of. Was it not well known that the poor woman ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... opinions, and places the crux of philosophical controversy at a new point. We are soon made aware that exact thinking and true thinking are not synonymous, but that one exact thought, in the same mind, may be the exact opposite of the next. This inconstancy, which after all does not go very deep, is a sign of sincerity and pure love of truth; it marks the freshness, the vivacity, the self-forgetfulness, the logical ardour belonging to this delightful reformer. It may ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... joined together the details of so delicate a scrutiny by a thread of fiction. The outward body of it matters little. The essential point is to remember that such things were not caused, as they try to persuade us, by human fickleness, by the inconstancy of our fallen nature, by the chance persuasions of desire. There was needed the deadly pressure of an age of iron, of cruel needs: it was needful that Hell itself should seem a shelter, an asylum, by contrast with the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... finding her lost Lysander asleep so near her, was looking at him and wondering at his strange inconstancy. Lysander presently opening his eyes, and seeing his dear Hermia, recovered his reason which the fairy charm had before clouded, and with his reason, his love for Hermia; and they began to talk over the adventures of the night, doubting if these ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... about the City of Constantinople or Asia Minor, be as subject to Earth-quakes now, as they have been formerly? And whether the Eastern Winds do not Plague the said City with Mists, and cause that inconstancy of Weather, it is said to be ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... perhaps, been the least treated of in regard to its significance. For once that unreasonable expectations of gratitude have been reproved, ingratitude has been denounced a thousand times; and the same may be said of inconstancy, unkindness in friendship, neglected merit ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... tremble at the height, Whene'er I think Of the hot barons, of the fickle people, And the inconstancy of power, I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various
... not intended to deceive you. I did love you, and felt at the time all that I professed. Had you loved me less, I had been more constant. But why, let me ask, have you sought me here, to upbraid me for my inconstancy? What good can it do to you or to me? You call me a wretch: and I acknowledge myself to be one, a vile, ungrateful wretch. Call me a thief, if you will, if the word does not blister your tongue to utter it. I confess it all. Now leave ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... possession of the prize, he might, with great ease, deny their contract, and disavow her claim of participation. She therefore demanded security, and proposed, as a preliminary of the agreement, that he should privately take her to wife, with a view to dispel all her apprehensions of his inconstancy or deceit, as such a previous engagement would be a check upon his behaviour, and keep him strictly to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... the spot. The British troops soon quitted their post at the bridge and retreated in great disorder and confusion to the main body, who were soon upon the march to meet them. For half an hour the enemy, by their marches and countermarches, 15 discovered great fickleness and inconstancy of mind, sometimes advancing, sometimes returning to their former posts, till at length they quitted the town and retreated by the way they came. In the meantime a party of our men (one hundred ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... dreading to see her whom he was seeking. In what way should he first express his wrath? How should he show her the wreck which by her inconstancy she had made of his happiness? His first words must, if possible, be spoken to her alone; and yet alone he could hardly hope to find her. And he feared her. Though he was so resolved to speak his mind, yet he feared ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... courts, he was of that school of sparkling vices of which the Marshal de Richelieu had been the type in France. It was said that the queen herself had been enamoured of him, without being able to fix his inconstancy. Friend of the Duc d'Orleans, companion of his debaucheries, still he had never conspired with him. All treachery was abhorrent to him, all baseness of heart roused his utmost indignation. He adopted the Revolution as a noble idea, of which he was always ready ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... she showed no inclination to follow his example in this particular; but, on the contrary, took more pains in adorning her person at this time than ever she had done before; and as she would dress her hair no two mornings alike, so she would change the fashion of her dress with the same inconstancy until the sly hussy discovered which did most please Dario's taste; then a word of approval from him, nay, a glance, would suffice to fix her choice until she found that his admiration needed rekindling. And so, as if her own ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" Shelley dwells on the inconstancy and evanescence of the manifestation of beauty, which imparts to it an appearance of frailty ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... though in such early youth, had taught him the great prejudice which his father had incurred by his levity, inconstancy, and frequent breach of promise, refused for a long time to take advantage of thus absolution; and declared that the provisions of Oxford, how unreasonable soever in themselves, and how much soever abused by the barons, ought still to be adhered ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Bernardo Ruccellai. No one of his time possessed such an intimate knowledge of government and state affairs as himself; and hence amid such a variety of fortune, in a city so given to change, and among a people of such extreme inconstancy, he retained possession of the government thirty-one years; for being endowed with the utmost prudence, he foresaw evils at a distance, and therefore had an opportunity either of averting them, or preventing their injurious ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... young M'Gowan to me one afternoon on the road to practice, 'she beats her hollow.' M'Gowan, however, was a bit of a cynic, and Emma soon cast him off for Walker. He was a fine singer, and in after years, when he became a confirmed bachelor, delighted to sing songs about the inconstancy of the fair sex. He used to hum out Goethe's 'Vanatos,' and more particularly that verse with reference to the fickle ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... matter of fact, we were richer. The captain had the usual sailor's provision of quack medicines, with which, in the usual sailor fashion, he would daily drug himself, displaying an extreme inconstancy, and flitting from Kennedy's Red Discovery to Kennedy's White, and from Hood's Sarsaparilla to Mother Seigel's Syrup. And there were, besides, some mildewed and half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over which Nares would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a poet of our own days was singing? and, in the verses of Chloe weeping and reproaching him for his inconstancy, where he says— ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... specious objection to the late removals at court, was the fear of giving uneasiness to a general, who has been long successful abroad: and accordingly, the common clamour of tongues and pens for some months past, has run against the baseness, the inconstancy and ingratitude of the whole kingdom to the Duke of M[arlborough], in return of the most eminent services that ever were performed by a subject to his country; not to be equalled in history. And then to be sure some bitter ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... a vague and indefinite promise of obeying the mandates of his constituents. He knows the prejudices of faction, and the inconstancy of the multitude. He would first inquire, how the opinion of his constituents shall be taken. Popular instructions are, commonly, the work, not of the wise and steady, but the violent and rash; meetings held for directing representatives ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... to be advertised touching the proceedings here in ecclesiastical causes, because you seem to note in them some inconstancy and variation, as if we sometimes inclined to one side, sometimes to another, as if that clemency and lenity were not used of late that was used in the beginning, all which you impute to your own superficial understanding of the affairs of this state, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... rarefaction of the air produces cold. So zeal makes revolutions; and revolutions make men zealous for nothing. The politicians of whom we speak, whatever may be their natural capacity or courage, are almost always characterised by a peculiar levity, a peculiar inconstancy, an easy, apathetic way of looking at the most solemn questions, a willingness to leave the direction of their course to fortune and popular opinion, a notion that one public cause is nearly as good as another, and a firm conviction ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "lemonade" that had amused so many. In the study of human nature, Fourier believed he discovered inherently inconstant natures, exceptional men and women, who cannot be constant to one idea, one hope or one love; and believing that this inconstancy was a normal trait of character with some persons, who are the exceptions to the general rule, simply and honestly acknowledged the fact, and speculated on the result and the position such persons would have ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... poetry, a vale of tears, and human life a bubble, raised from those tears, and inflated by sighs, which, after floating a little while, decked with a few gaudy colors, is touched by the hand of death, and dissolves. Poverty, disease, misfortune, unkindness, inconstancy, death, all assail the travellers as they journey onward to eternity through this gloomy valley; and what is ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... card must be played, to win or lose. It might be that with the low opinion he held of women he would think her reconciled to her lot; he would think this an overture, a step towards kinder treatment, one more proof of the inconstancy of the lower and the weaker sex, made to be men's playthings. And at that thought her eyes grew hot with rage. But if it were so, she must still put up with it. She must still put up with it! She had sent for him, and he was ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... the sea, pressed through the gap of Tipe, reaches in an ascending current the high valley of Caracas, and, getting cooler by dilatation, and by contact with the adjacent strata, deposits a great portion of the water it contains. This inconstancy of climate, these somewhat rapid transitions from dry and transparent to humid and misty air, are inconveniences which Caracas shares in common with the whole temperate region of the tropics—with all places situated between four and eight hundred toises of elevation, either ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Maria del Carmine. Scarcely was it ended and the prelate gone when Masaniello, with a crucifix in his hand, mounted the pulpit. His speech was a mixture of truth and madness; he complained of the inconstancy of the people, enumerated his services, described the oppressions that would fall upon them if they deserted him; he confessed his sins, and admonished the others to do the same before the Holy Virgin, that they might obtain the mercy of God, and as he raised the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... inherited all her fervency, her inconstancy of purpose, as well as her tendency to collapse under pressure. Physically he had always been of slender figure, with weak lungs, and these weaknesses he had used to free himself from ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... with what hieratic dignity, with what sacramental intentness he endows it; the eloquence of the greatest critics has here found a darling subject. But let us look a moment at certain of his symbols in the Arena at Padua, at the "Inconstancy," the "Injustice," the "Avarice," for instance. "What are the significant traits," he seems to have asked himself, "in the appearance and action of a person under the exclusive domination of one of these vices? Let me paint the person with these traits, and I shall ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... love-affairs. She knows of every courtship that is going on; every lovelorn damsel is sure to find a patient listener and a sage adviser in her ladyship. She takes great pains to reconcile all love-quarrels, and should any faithless swain persist in his inconstancy, he is sure to draw on himself the good ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... it is hardest, to obtain a person's love, or to keep it when obtained? A. It is hardest to keep it, by reason of the inconstancy of man, who is quickly angry, and soon weary of a thing; hard to be gained ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... their intercourse a certainty of power and promise of greater power. Silly people fill the world with lamentation over human inconstancy; but if we follow love, we cannot cling to the beloved. We must love onward, and only when our friends go before us can we be true both ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Officer called Amiraglio, who commands the Bucentaure on Ascension Day, when the Duke goes in state to marry the sea. And here we cannot but notice, that by a ridiculous custom this Admiral makes himself Responsible to the Senat for the inconstancy of the Sea, and engages his Life there shall be no Tempest that day. 'Tis this Admiral who has the Guard of the Palais, St. Mark, with his Arsenalotti, during the interregnum. He carries the Red Standard before the Prince when ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the same way Romeo turns from Rosaline to Juliet at first sight. This trait has been praised by Coleridge and others as showing singular knowledge of a young man's character, but I should rather say that inconstancy was a characteristic of sensuality and belonged to Shakespeare himself, for Orsino, like Romeo, has no reason to change his love; and the curious part of the matter is that Shakespeare does not seem to think that the quick change in Orsino ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... held forth upon the great event every night when he came over to hold the tails of Meg's cows. Jock Forrest still went out, saying nothing, whenever the Cuif came in, which the Cuif took to be a good sign. Only Ebie Fairrish, struck to the heart by the inconstancy of Jess, removed at the November term back again to the "laigh end" of the parish, and there plunged madly into flirtations with several of his old sweethearts. He is reported to have found in numbers the anodyne for the unfaithfulness of one. As ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... defect of "counsel" to which euboulia corresponds, "precipitation" or "temerity" is a species of imprudence; by defect of "judgment," to which synesis (judging well according to common law) and gnome (judging well according to general law) refer, there is "thoughtlessness"; while "inconstancy" and "negligence" correspond to the "command" which is the proper act of prudence. Thirdly, this may be taken by opposition to those things which are requisite for prudence, which are the quasi-integral parts of prudence. Since however all these things are intended for the direction of the aforesaid ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of all the sages upon the vicissitudes of fortune and the inconstancy of human affairs would prove unfounded if this expedition had terminated profitably and happily; but the ordering of events is inevitable, and those who tear up the roots, sometimes find sweet liquorice and sometimes bitter cockle. Woe, however, to Pariza! for he shall ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... disobeyed."—"But what is to be done? I cannot remain as I am; I have yet resources and partisans. It is said that the Allies will no longer treat with me. Well! no matter. I will march on Paris. I will be revenged on the inconstancy of the Parisians and the baseness of the Senate. Woe to the members of the Government they have patched up for the return of their Bourbons; that is what they are looking forward to. But to-morrow I shall place myself at the head of my Guards, and to-morrow we shall ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... stands out in the midst of all other women, an imperial queen! a queen of beauty, grace, and fascination! This charming, innocent, and modest young woman belongs to me; she is my wife; and I have your inconstancy to thank you for this rare gem. Oh, madame, I have indeed reason to forgive you for the past, to be grateful to you as long as I live. But for you I should never have married the Princess Wilhelmina. What no menaces, no entreaties, no commands of ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... doubted her, and why? She had given him all; it was not her fault if he wearied of her tyranny. No; he alone was to blame, his inconstancy, his weakness. He poured forth a torrent of self-reproach, and words of love, and she responded passionately. Once more they were lovers, thrilling to each other's touch. And the wan moon looked on at their transports, and perchance the pale wraith of the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... old that his birthday was lost in the mists of antiquity. Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy; now describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the stable door; now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now eliciting a shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... observations, and no one would ever think of inquiring into the truth. They thus went on day after day, muttering, complaining, and consulting together; and though the admiral was not fully aware of the extent of their cabals, he was not entirely without apprehensions of their inconstancy in the present trying situation, and of their evil intentions toward him. He therefore exerted himself to the utmost to quiet their apprehensions and to suppress their evil design, sometimes using fair words, and at other times fully resolved to expose his life rather than abandon the enterprise; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Yet this inconstancy is such, As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Lov'd I not ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... gigantic fantasies still. In spite of himself, the sight of the new moon, as representing one who, by her so-called inconstancy, acted up to his own idea of a migratory Well-Beloved, made him feel as if his wraith in a changed sex had suddenly looked over the horizon at him. In a crowd secretly, or in solitude boldly, he had often bowed the knee three times to this sisterly divinity on ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... tall like stately towers, High flying birds do harbour in their bowers; The holy storks that are the travellers, Choose for to dwell and build within the firs; The climbing goats hang on steep mountains' side; The digging conies in the rocks do bide. The moon, so constant in inconstancy, Doth rule the monthly seasons orderly; The sun, eye of the world, doth know his race, And when to show, and when to hide his face. Thou makest darkness, that it may be night, Whenas the savage beasts that fly the light, As conscious of man's ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... taking up his abode with the savages, on the first year behaved himself so among them as to draw from them their inexpressible esteem. He married a woman of the nation, and repudiating their example, did not change his wife, by which he taught his wild neighbors that God did not love inconstancy. By this woman, his first and only wife, he had one son and two daughters, the latter were afterwards married, "very handsomely, to Frenchmen, and had good dowries." Of the son there is preserved a single touching incident. In person the baron ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... that his subconscious nature feels Alcestis there and responds emotionally to her presence; his conscious nature, believing the woman to be a stranger, is horrified at his own apparent baseness and inconstancy. ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... appeared in 1731, as an episode of the first of these, is a tale of fatal and irresistible passion. The heroine is divided in heart between her mundane tastes for luxury and her love for the Chevalier des Grieux. He, knowing her inconstancy and infirmity, yet cannot escape from the tyranny of the spell which has subdued him; his whole life is absorbed and lost in his devotion to Manon, and he is with her in the American wilds at the moment of her piteous death. The ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... contact with friendly bands of Indians; occasionally they encountered boats upon the river, manned by traders, who were drifting with the current to St. Louis, bearing the plunder of a season's traffic. Upon the banks of the stream were many tokens of the inconstancy of purpose of the border life,—abandoned sites of Indian villages and deserted fortifications that had been erected by traders to serve for temporary convenience and protection. Nowhere was there a sign of the American interpretation of ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... King Muene-Motapa. He felt that this deliberate farce must end, that he must spring through the door, find the other, kill him with one blow, and then rush away from this woman who, like a fallen deity, lay weeping again, her face between her arms, somehow pathetic under this retribution for the inconstancy that she ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... upwards, downwards, or horizontally. Seven females always dwell there, with faces downwards, possessed of effulgence, and endued with the cause of generations. They take up all the different tastes from all creatures, even as inconstancy sucks up truth. In that itself dwell, and from that emerge, the seven Rishis who are crowned with ascetic success, with those seven having Vasishtha for their foremost. Glory, effulgence, greatness, enlightenment, victory, perfection, and energy, these seven ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... had ever used art in his management of Vivian's mind, he might have been suspected of using it in favour of Miss Sidney at this instant; for this prophecy of Vivian's inconstancy was the most likely means to prevent its accomplishment. Frequently, in the course of their tour, when Vivian was in any situation where his constancy was tempted, he recollected Russell's prediction, and was proud to remind him how much he had ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... good-bye, we arrived at his place on the very same day. Lycas had so arranged matters that, on the journey, he sat beside me, while Tryphaena was next to Giton, the reason for this being his knowledge of the woman's notorious inconstancy; nor was he deceived, for she immediately fell in love with the boy, and I easily perceived it. In addition, Lycas took the trouble of calling my attention to the situation, and laid stress upon the truth of what we saw. On this account, I received ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... attractive of all Browning's poems—had mystified most of its readers and been little relished by the rest. And now that plea for a discredited politician was followed up by what, on the face of it, was, as Mrs Orr puts it, "a defence of inconstancy in marriage." The apologist for Napoleon III. came forward as the advocate of Don Juan. The prefixed bit of dialogue from Moliere's play explains the situation. Juan, detected by his wife in an intrigue, is completely nonplussed. "Fie!" cries ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... longing for his enchanted queen. The stone is moved by the magic of his love: the beloved one is released. Fairyland with all its marvels opens its portals, and the mortal learns that, owing to his former inconstancy, Ada has lost the right to become his wife on earth, but that her beloved, through his great and magic power, has earned the right to live for ever by her ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Is there any inconstancy in ceasing to love when one is not loved? Is there inconstancy in changing one's love, and in ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... again he played the coquette with his subject, and after a year's absence from the laboratory he joined the Oriental Society, and delivered a paper on the Hieroglyphic and Demotic inscriptions of El Kab, thus giving a crowning example both of the versatility and of the inconstancy of ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... governed her after-life. She arrived in her new kingdom young, hopeful, and happy—young, and her youth was blighted by neglect; hopeful, and her hopes were crushed by unkindness; happy, and her happiness was marred by inconstancy and insult. Her woman-nature, plastic as it might have been under more fortunate circumstances, became indurated to harshness; and it is not they who strive to work upon the most solid marble who should complain if the chisel with which they pursue their purpose ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... saw nothing but a rather weak-minded restlessness in woman's inconstancy, recognizes in "Intermezzo" woman's right to as complete a knowledge of life and its possibilities as any man may acquire. The same note is struck by Johanna in "The Lonely Way." "I want a time to come when I must shudder at myself—shudder as deeply as you can only when nothing has ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... Paul says, they run uncertainly, beating the air. Their hearts are unstable and wavering before God, and they are changeable and fickle in all their ways, James 1, 8. Since they are aimless and inconstant at heart, this will appear likewise as inconstancy in regard to works and doctrines. They undertake now this and now that; they cannot be quiet nor refrain from factional strife. Thus they miss their aim or else remove the goal, and cannot but deviate from the true ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... degrades them before he can feel them to be demoniacal; so also John Bunyan: both of them, I think, having firmer faith than Milton's in their own creations, and deeper insight into the nature of sin. Milton makes his fiends too noble, and misses the foulness, inconstancy, and fury of wickedness. His Satan possesses some virtues, not the less virtues for being applied to evil purpose. Courage, resolution, patience, deliberation in council, this latter being eminently a wise and holy character, as opposed to the "Insania" of excessive sin: and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... entwinement of clinging plants, the trembling of the grass, the slenderness of the rose-vine and the velvet of the flower, the lightness of the leaf and the glance of the fawn, the gaiety of the sun's rays and tears of the mist, the inconstancy of the wind and the timidity of the hare, the vanity of the peacock and the softness of the down on the throat of the swallow, the hardness of the diamond, the sweet flavor of honey and the cruelty of the tiger, the warmth of fire, the chill of snow, ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... amongst us than our own. Examples hereof I could set down many and in many things; but, sith my purpose is to deal at this time with gardens and orchards, it shall suffice that I touch them only, and show our inconstancy in the same, so far as shall seem and be convenient for my turn. I comprehend therefore under the word "garden" all such grounds as are wrought with the spade by man's hand, for ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... and hardihood. He was, besides, the favorite of the ladies, who called him the best-looking and most amiable man in the whole monarchy; and, with amiable indulgence, attributed his many adventures and acts of inconstancy, his wild and dissipated life, his extravagance and numerous debts, to the genius of the prince. He was, indeed, an extraordinary man, one of those on whose brow Providence has imprinted the stamp of genius,—not to their own good, but to their misfortune, and who ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... conjunction with Sir John Hawkins, he procured the establishment of the Chest at Chatham for the relief of aged or sick seamen, out of their own voluntary contributions. The faults ascribed to him are ambition, inconstancy in friendship, and too much desire ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... Otterbourne Park, and a large bunch on the Romsey Road. An old woman described having tried the augury, having laid the plants in pairs on Midsummer Eve, naming them after pairs of sweethearts. Those that twisted away from each other showed inconstancy! ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... remarkable Cornish tale of a nymph or mermaiden, who thus vanished, leaving a daughter who loved to linger on the beach rather than sport with other children. By and by she had a lover, but no sooner did he show tokens of inconstancy, than the mother came up from the sea and put him to death, when the daughter pined away and died. Her name was Selina, which gives the tale a modern aspect, and makes us wonder if the old tradition can have been modified by some ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... power of the wind, whiffling and pressing different ways, in sudden and passing gusts, they have only to imagine this power increased many, many fold, and the baffling currents made furious, as it might be, by meeting with resistance, to form some notion of the appalling strength and frightful inconstancy with which it blew ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... rolling seasons cease to change, Inconstancy forgets to range; When lavish May no more shall bloom, Nor gardens yield a rich perfume; When Nature from her sphere shall start, I'll tear ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... 10: The practice of making "maxims," axiomata, encouraged the enlivenment of conversation by the introduction of topsy-turvy statements, such as "Constancy is merely inconstancy arrested," in the manner of Oscar Wilde and ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... what comfort he gave her, I do not fully know, for when he confided to me what grief it was that lay so heavily on his heart and spirits, he dwelt more on her sad situation than on anything else. The belief in her weakness and inconstancy had evoked in him a spirit of defiance and resistance; but when she was proved guiltless and unhappy, the burden, though less bitter, was far heavier. I only gathered that he, as the only like-minded adviser she had seen for so long, had felt it his duty to force himself to seem almost ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had negotiations of such importance passed through his hands, to be followed by so few results. One day the King would have recourse to an expedient, and the next would stultify it, with the greatest inconstancy imaginable. Nevertheless, he assured me that he would not fail to repeat all I had said, to his Majesty at the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... or inconstancy was of the most dangerous kind. With the exception of some of her old friends, to whom she had good reasons for remaining faithful, she favoured people one moment only to cast them off the next. You were admitted to an audience with her for instance, you pleased her in some manner, and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... deep, sincere, and tender. Her entire and unbounded confidence, her extreme beauty, her simplicity and timid deference made a soothing compensation to his heart for the coldness of the haughty, though superior beauty, whose inconstancy had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and you may possibly be tormenting yourself with a whole train of imaginary evils. As you value your peace, then, keep from you, if possible, all such vexatious apprehensions, and remember, a man can very ill bear the idea of being suspected of inconstancy even when guilty; but when innocent, it is intolerable ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... always neat, and still as simply arranged as possible, had an indescribable air of care and taste that added to the effect of grace and pleasantness, and made Rachel feel convinced in a moment that the wonder would have been not in constancy to such a creature but in inconstancy. The notion that any one could turn from that brilliant, beaming, refined face to her own, struck her with a sudden humiliation. There was plenty of conversation, and her voice was not immediately wanted; indeed, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the levity and instability of the Negro character; light- minded as the Abyssinians,—described by Gobat as constant in nothing but inconstancy,—soft, merry, and affectionate souls, they pass without any apparent transition into a state of fury, when they are capable of terrible atrocities. At Aden they appear happier than in their native country. There I have often seen a man clapping his hands ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... than at another; when young than when old—when hungry than when our appetite is satisfied—in the night than in the day—when peevish than when cheerful. Thus, varying every hour, by a thousand other circumstances, which keep us in a state of perpetual inconstancy and instability." Every day may be seen children, who, to a certain age—display a great deal of ingenuity, a strong aptitude for the sciences, who finish by falling into stupidity. Others may be observed, who, during their infancy, have shown dispositions but little favourable ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... Sheldon's small household was at rest; as she had gone on Christmas Eve to renounce her lover and to bless her rival. This time it was a new confession she went to make, and a confession that involved some shame. There is nothing so hard to confess as inconstancy; and every woman is not so philosophic as Rahel Varnhagen, who declared that to be constant was not always to love the same person, but always to ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... was as sure of Ellinor's love for him as if she had uttered all the vows that women ever spoke; he knew even better than she did how fully and entirely that innocent girlish heart was his own. He was too proud to dread her inconstancy for an instant; "besides," as he went on to himself, as if to make assurance doubly sure, "whom does she see? Those stupid Holsters, who ought to be only too proud of having such a girl for their cousin, ignore her existence, and spoke slightingly of ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... villages, stupend structures; as those Egyptian Pyramids, Labyrinths and Sphinxes, which a company of crowned asses, ad ostentationem opum, vainly built, when neither the architect nor king that made them, or to what use and purpose, are yet known: to insist in their hypocrisy, inconstancy, blindness, rashness, dementem temeritatem, fraud, cozenage, malice, anger, impudence, ingratitude, ambition, gross superstition, [768]tempora infecta et adulatione sordida, as in Tiberius' times, such base flattery, stupend, parasitical fawning and colloguing, &c. brawls, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Janet is pitying me a little, because of the minister's inconstancy," she said to herself. "Why am I laughing at it, Rosie? You ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... intolerable burdens; always dresses becoming to her rank and age; is modest without prudery, religious without an alloy of superstition; can hear the one sex praised without envy, and converse with the other without permitting the torch of inconstancy to kindle the unhallowed fire in her breast; considers her husband as the most accomplished of mortals, and thinks all the sons of Adam besides unworthy of a transient glance from the corner of her ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... every man as a rival in every pretension; with him whose airy negligence puts his friend's affairs or secrets in continual hazard, and who thinks his forgetfulness of others excused by his inattention to himself; and with him whose inconstancy ranges without any settled rule of choice through varieties of friendship, and who adopts and dismisses favourites by the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... earthly nature a spark of good survived, and fired him with so pure an ardour that at the least hint of disrespect to his mistress, at a thought of injury to her, the whole man rose in arms. It was a strange, yet a common inconsistency; an inconstancy to evil odd enough to set The McMurrough marvelling, while common enough to commend itself to ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... seemed to spread a gloom over the village; those who would not venture to go were sullen and melancholy, and the woman were crying and imploring the Great Spirit to protect their warriors as if they were going to certain destruction: yet such is the wavering inconstancy of these savages, that captain Lewis's party had not gone far when they were joined by ten or twelve more warriors, and before reaching the creek which they had passed on the morning of the 13th, all the men of the nation and ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... their author, and to the happy moment of their production, has evanesced. Here, however, is one which seems still to bear the impress of Alberti's genius: 'Gold is the soul of labour, and labour the slave of pleasure.' Of women he used to say that their inconstancy was an antidote to their falseness; for if a woman could but persevere in what she undertook, all the fair works of men would be ruined. One of his strongest moral sentences is aimed at envy, from which he suffered much in his own life, and against which he guarded with a curious ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was never young; he is like a dull Italian year, where the trees are always in leaf, and when the only way of knowing the difference of the seasons is by referring to an almanack. The inconstancy of the spring may surely be excused for the steady warmth of summer and the rich plenty of autumn; then comes the hoar of winter old gentleman, and closes the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... when the engagement was first announced between Jeffrey and the young heiress. This and his previous attentions to Cora had made much talk, both in Washington and elsewhere, and there were not lacking those who had openly twitted him for his seeming inconstancy. This had been over the cups of course, and Jeffrey had borne it well enough from his so-called friends and intimates. But when, on a certain evening in the parlor of one of the large hotels in Atlantic City, a fellow whom nobody knew and nobody liked accused ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... appearance, but a tempest was in his brain and freezing cold in his heart. What he had just seen and comprehended seemed to him incomprehensible. Was it doubt, inconstancy, betrayal? ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... ripened sooner, and did longer last: Already this hot cock in bush and tree, In field and tent, o'erflutters his next hen: He asks her not who did so taste, nor when; Nor if his sister or his niece she be, Nor doth she pule for his inconstancy If in her sight he change; nor doth refuse The next that calls; both liberty do use. Where store is of both kinds, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... such contradiction will be found. Farther, if, as I have advanced in years, conversation with able men, and a more perfect examination, have made me change my sentiments, I ought not on that account to be accused of inconstancy, no more than St. Augustin, who retracted many things." He again touches on this point in his Votum pro pace[633]. "If in my youth, says he, having less knowledge than now, the prejudices of education, or a blind attachment to authors of same, carried me too great lengths, shall I ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... disciples, and regrets, too late, the precipitancy by which he renounced, then and for ever, Christianity. "But, as he had no new religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown more prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself unnecessarily, once more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still maintained all the exterior forms of the worship which inwardly he had abjured. But it was not enough for him to have quitted error, it was necessary to discover truth. But Hebronius had well looked round to discover it; he could not find anything that ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... humanity and its strange freedom from merely national limitations. To very few French novelists—to few even of those who are generally credited with a much softer mould and a much purer morality than Balzac is popularly supposed to have been able to boast—would inconstancy to a mistress have seemed a fault which could be reasonably punished, which could be even reasonably represented as having been punished in fact, by the refusal of an honest girl's love in the first place. Nor would many have conceived as possible, or have been able to represent ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... these violent passions which you pretend I have inspired, but which are by no means serious, I examine them calmly and find in the analysis an explanation of many of the misfortunes, many of the mistakes of poor women, who are accused of inconstancy and perfidy, and who are, on the contrary, only culpable through innocence and honest faith. They believe they love, and engage themselves, and then, once engaged, they discover that they are not in love. Genuine love is composed ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... resist the temptation to rush into the passage. She too had barely seen Major Grantly; and now the only bright gleam which appeared on her horizon depended on his constancy under circumstances which would have justified his inconstancy. But had he meant to be inconstant, surely he would never have come ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... other—brothers doloroso, sent into this rough world unprepared for its buffets, passing away in manhood's morning. Yet all heard the song of the skylark. Giorgione died broken-hearted, through his ladylove's inconstancy. He was exactly the same age as Titian, and while he lived surpassed that giant far, as the giant himself admitted. He died aged thirty-three, the age at which a full dozen of the greatest men of the world have died, and the age at which several other very great men have been born again—which ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... labor in different employments vary with the constancy and inconstancy of employment. Employment is much more constant in some trades than in others. Many trades can be carried on only in particular states of weather, and seasons of the year; and if the workmen who are ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... blindness, and wings are Cupid's attributes. The latter signify inconstancy, which as a rule comes with ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... one of the widower's bridal gifts to a second wife; and, of course, it should have wondrous and terrible qualities, symbolizing all that disturbs the quiet of a second marriage,—on the husband's part, remorse for his inconstancy, and the constant comparison between the dead wife of his youth, now idealized, and the grosser reality which he had now adopted into her place; while on the new wife's finger it should give pressures, shooting pangs into her heart, jealousies of the past, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... boast"—returned the queen—"and possessed of those accomplishments which insure the favor of our sex. But I hear he has a failing, which, as a woman, I ought rather to call a grievous fault. I am told he is of a very fickle character. Is not your Leonor alarmed at the reported inconstancy of her future husband?" ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... their liberties in the moment when the nation was intoxicated and dazzled with their genius, their prowess, and success; but a sudden revulsion of popular feeling, and an explosion of popular indignation, would overturn the one, and ostracism expel the other. Thus while inconstancy, and turbulence, and faction seem to have been inseparable from the democratic spirit, the Athenians were certainly constant in their love of liberty, faithful in their affection for their country,[33] ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... I think myself oblidg'd to vindicat myself from the imputation of inconstancy for acting in this voyage against the English Intrest, and in the yeare 1683 against the French Intrest, for which, if I could not give a very good account, I might justly lye under the sentenc of capritiousness & inconstancy. But severall Persons of ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... not of inconstancy, False hearts, and broken vows If I by miracle can be This live-long minute true to thee, 'Tis all ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... Euclid have been repelled by the Pons Asinorum, as by a lofty and precipitous rock, which no help of ladders could enable them to scale! THIS IS A HARD SAYING, they exclaim, AND WHO CAN RECEIVE IT. The child of inconstancy, who ended by wishing to be transformed into an ass, would perhaps never have given up the study of philosophy, if he had met him in friendly guise veiled under the cloak of pleasure; but anon, astonished by Crato's chair and struck dumb by his endless questions, as by a ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution; that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... thenceforth divided, till Panurgus, the eighteenth king from the Conquest, was more by their favor than his right advanced to the crown. This King, through his natural subtlety, reflecting at once upon the greatness of their power, and the inconstancy of their favor, began to find another flaw in this kind of government, which is also noted by Machiavel namely, that a throne supported by a nobility is not so hard to be ascended as kept warm. Wherefore his secret jealousy, lest the dissension of ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... obtained an interview. Bianca released and enriched her lover, but became the mistress of the young duke. Pietro was quite content with this arrangement; he had himself given the first example of inconstancy. He entered upon a career of riotous pleasure, which ended in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... have to do that," I replied. "She will go, never fear. Leave her to herself, her mood will have changed by morning. There is only one thing to be relied upon in women, and that is their inconstancy, not alone to men ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... domestic difficulties long before the suppression of monasteries—the great political act of Thomas Cromwell. His new wife, Anne Boleyn, was suspected of the crime of inconstancy, and at the very time when she had reached the summit of power, and the gratification of all worldly wishes. She had been very vain, and fond of display and of ornaments; but the latter years of her life were marked by ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... pinions fleet, And youth in beauty effloresces, The joy that finds itself complete In honeyed words and soft caresses, Alas! an index seems to be Of perilous inconstancy. ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... soon quarrels with his wife and consoles himself by falling in love with his ward, the matchless Melliora, but the progress of his amour is interrupted by numerous unforeseen accidents. The mere suspicion of his inconstancy raises his wife's jealousy to a fever heat. To expose her rival she pretends to yield to the persuasions of her wooer, the Baron D'Espernay, but as a result of a very intricate intrigue both Alovisa and the Baron perish accidentally on the swords ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... and the single gentleman—upon whose track it is expedient to follow with hurried steps, lest this history should be chargeable with inconstancy, and the offence of leaving its characters in situations of uncertainty and doubt—Kit's mother and the single gentleman, speeding onward in the post-chaise-and-four whose departure from the Notary's door we have already witnessed, soon left the town ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... as various as light change, Now speaking courtlike, friendly, straight as strange, She's any humour's perfect parasite, Displeas'd with her, and pleas'd with her delight. She is the echo of inconstancy, Soothing her no with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... rather question-begging, but he was so thrilled by the implicit revelation that she could not even imagine feminine inconstancy, that he forebore to draw her attention ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... as well say, Count Robert, that it is the first time," answered Brenhilda, "that you have shown to me the inconstancy of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... character explains the inconstancy and fickleness exhibited by the Christianized Manbos at the beginning of their conversion. These were due to the call of the forest hailing them back to their old haunts. These characteristics will explain also a host of anomalies ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... life which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... tolerated,—that the public tribunal (never too indulgent to a long and unsuccessful opposition) would now scrutinize our conduct with unusual severity,—that the very vicissitudes and shiftings of ministerial measures, instead of convicting their authors of inconstancy and want of system, would be taken as an occasion of charging us with a predetermined discontent which nothing could satisfy, whilst we accused every measure of vigor as cruel and every proposal ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the attack thus made on him by Boswell and Johnson. 'Many years afterwards, when the name of Gibbon was become as notorious as that of Middleton, it was industriously whispered at Oxford that the historian had formerly "turned Papist;" my character stood exposed to the reproach of inconstancy.' Gibbon's Misc. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... measure. It will be very important to missionaries to be men of calmness and evenness of temper, and rather inclined to suffer hardships than to court the favour of men, and such who will be indefatigably employed in the work set before them, an inconstancy of mind being quite ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... gained from their intercourse a certainty of power and promise of greater power. Silly people fill the world with lamentation over human inconstancy; but if we follow love, we cannot cling to the beloved. We must love onward, and only when our friends go before us can we be true both to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... mortification of the flesh from the beginning, O Lord. From the beginning, the desires of the flesh have been the bane of a good life. When shall Thy grace, O Lord, inspire me with some degree of that firmness and faithful adherence to Thee. Suffer not my heart to be overcome by that inconstancy which is so natural to it, nor allow my life to be a perpetual succession of evil practices and infidelities. Grant that my heart may be all Thine, at all times and forever. And that by mortification ...
— The Life of Blessed John B. Marie Vianney, Cur of Ars • Anonymous
... great esteem for Miss Mancel's merit, could conquer her aversion to their union. She saw them both unhappy, but was convinced the pangs they felt would not be of very long continuance, trusting to the usual inconstancy of young persons, while the inconveniencies attending an incumbered fortune, and the disgrace which she imagined must be the consequence of Sir Edward's marrying a woman of obscure birth, would be permanent and influence the ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy. ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... structure which wounds alone had slightly altered,—all were signs of intrepidity without calculation, faith without reserve, obedience without discussion, fidelity without compromise, love without inconstancy. In him, the Breton granite ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... gain in some, and counterbalance a great one in others." These circumstances he considers to be: "First, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... superiority and natural antagonism which forbid their commingling; but also, and with a more hearty potency, from the experience which they, alternately the adored or the scorned, have had of the inconstancy of the giddy people. In this light estimation, indeed, of the judgment of their less worthy fellows, lies the secret of their greatness and their strength. They ride towards their goal while the ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... the deviated from the right path, what will he do to the darkness of this our age, in which, besides all the huge and heinous sins, which it has common with all the wicked of the world committed, is found an innate, indelible, and irremediable load of folly and inconstancy?" "What, wretched man (I say to myself) is it given to you, as if you were an illustrious and learned teacher, to oppose the force of so violent a torrent, and keep the charge committed to you against such a series of inveterate ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... the number of the few friends whom time has left me, by obstructing that happiness which I cannot partake, and venting my vexation in censures of the forwardness and indiscretion of girls, or the inconstancy, tastelessness, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... him as "by turns imprudent through excess of confidence, and lukewarm from distrust;" and this estimate of the great demagogue, which was not very incorrect, shows, too, how high an opinion La Marck had formed of the queen's ability and force of character, for he looks to her "to put a curb on his inconstancy,[2]" trusting for that result not so much to her power of fascination as to her ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... his judicious benevolence, that in conjunction with Sir John Hawkins, he procured the establishment of the Chest at Chatham for the relief of aged or sick seamen, out of their own voluntary contributions. The faults ascribed to him are ambition, inconstancy in friendship, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... and dazzled with their genius, their prowess, and success; but a sudden revulsion of popular feeling, and an explosion of popular indignation, would overturn the one, and ostracism expel the other. Thus while inconstancy, and turbulence, and faction seem to have been inseparable from the democratic spirit, the Athenians were certainly constant in their love of liberty, faithful in their affection for their country,[33] and invariable in their sympathy and admiration for that genius which shed glory upon ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... primary influences which governed her after-life. She arrived in her new kingdom young, hopeful, and happy—young, and her youth was blighted by neglect; hopeful, and her hopes were crushed by unkindness; happy, and her happiness was marred by inconstancy and insult. Her woman-nature, plastic as it might have been under more fortunate circumstances, became indurated to harshness; and it is not they who strive to work upon the most solid marble who should complain if the chisel with which they pursue ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... household, apparently causeless, full of sudden, inexplicable turns of thought and act which turn the peaceful into a tempestuous home. It is not that the husband or the wife are inconstant by nature—to call Fifine at the Fair a defence of inconstancy is to lose the truth of the matter—but it is the desire of momentary change, of a life set free from conventional barriers, of an outburst into the unknown, of the desire for new experiences, for something which ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... inadequate it looks for the work ascribed to it. Viewed from where we sat, I judged it to be forty or fifty feet broad, but I was assured that it was between two and three hundred feet. Water and sand are ever symbols of instability and inconstancy, but let them work together, and they saw through mountains, and undermine the foundations ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... variability, inconstancy, instability, vacillation, convertibility, transmutability, mobility, impermanence; volatility, irresolution, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... to gigantic fantasies still. In spite of himself, the sight of the new moon, as representing one who, by her so-called inconstancy, acted up to his own idea of a migratory Well-Beloved, made him feel as if his wraith in a changed sex had suddenly looked over the horizon at him. In a crowd secretly, or in solitude boldly, he had often bowed the knee three times to this sisterly divinity on her first appearance monthly, ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... formed to gain possession of his person. Several times Haida fled from Toolun to Chinese territory, where he hoped to enjoy greater safety, until at last the Chinese became tired of giving him shelter and protecting one who could not support his own pretensions. Then, with strange inconstancy, they delivered him over into the hands of Noorhachu, who straightway killed him, thus carrying out the first portion of his vow to ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... marry?—should it be A dashing damsel, gay and pert, A pattern of inconstancy; Or selfish, mercenary flirt? ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Apostle of the Gentiles felt himself under a painful necessity faithfully to rebuke Peter in presence of the whole Church. He had recorded that rebuke, too, in one of his epistles. It was thus to be handed down to every age as a permanent and humiliating evidence of the wavering inconstancy of his fellow-laborer. Peter, doubtless, must have felt acutely the severity of the chastisement. Does he resent it? He, too, puts on record, long after, in one of his own epistles a sentence regarding his Rebuker, but it is ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... dynamic law governing the developmental stages of his microscopic pellicle? This, he will agree, lies far below the point, in primary organism, where specific identity, or the law of heredity, asserts its full recognition. All below this developmental point is inconstancy of specific forms, with no line of ancestry ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... was at rest; as she had gone on Christmas Eve to renounce her lover and to bless her rival. This time it was a new confession she went to make, and a confession that involved some shame. There is nothing so hard to confess as inconstancy; and every woman is not so philosophic as Rahel Varnhagen, who declared that to be constant was not always to love the same person, but always to love ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... inconstancy; but one would scarcely expect to find the thistle regarded as lucky; for, according to an old piece of folk-lore, to dream of being surrounded by this plant is a propitious sign, foretelling that the person will before long have some pleasing intelligence. ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... gentleman—upon whose track it is expedient to follow with hurried steps, lest this history should be chargeable with inconstancy, and the offence of leaving its characters in situations of uncertainty and doubt—Kit's mother and the single gentleman, speeding onward in the post-chaise-and-four whose departure from the Notary's door we have already witnessed, soon left ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... of the following year, that unfortunate lady embarked for Flanders, where, soon after her arrival, the inconstancy of her husband, and her own ungovernable sensibilities, occasioned the most scandalous scenes. Philip became openly enamoured of one of the ladies of her suite, and his injured wife, in a paroxysm of jealousy, personally assaulted her fair rival in the palace, and caused ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... treated with distinction. In the event of a rupture between their country and Rome, they had little to fear. Rome found her advantage in employing them as rivals to a monarch with whom she had quarrelled, and did not think it necessary to punish them for his treachery or inconstancy. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... (since the use of perukes) accustom to wash their heads, instead of powdering, would doubtless find the benefit of it; both as to the preventing of aches in their head, teeth, and ears, if the vicissitude and inconstancy of the weather, and consequently the use of their monstrous perukes, did not expose them to the danger of catching colds. When I travelled in Italy, and the Southern parts, I did sometimes frequent the public baths (as the manner is), but seldom without peril of my life, till I used ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... though she was but a baby tugging with a sweet angle of opposition at her black nurse's hand and I near a man grown, and though I had naught to hope for save a fleeting grasp of her rosy fingers and a wavering smile from her sweet lips and eyes, ere she flung the offering away with innocent inconstancy. ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... woman! O feminine inconstancy! That is the only allusion I shall permit to escape me on the subject of Eva Eversleigh's engagement to ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... Uses, there are also foure correspondent Abuses. First, when men register their thoughts wrong, by the inconstancy of the signification of their words; by which they register for their conceptions, that which they never conceived; and so deceive themselves. Secondly, when they use words metaphorically; that is, in other sense than that they are ordained for; and thereby deceive ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... have in it divers motions to give it agitation, yet must there of necessity be one to overrule all the rest, though not with so necessary and absolute a dominion but that through the flexibility and inconstancy of the soul, those of less authority may upon occasion reassume their place and make a little sally in turn. Thence it is, that we see not only children, who innocently obey and follow nature, often laugh and cry at the same thing, but not one of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Tenorio, for he is an abstract, with the lines somewhat subdued by the advance of civilisation, of the national character. For them his vices, his treachery, his heartlessness, have nothing repellent; nor does his inconstancy rob him of feminine sympathy. He is, indeed, a far greater favourite with the ladies than John Bull. The Englishman they respect, they know he will make a good husband and a model father; but he is ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... spirits of all [99] true Turkish hearts, In grievous memory of his father's shame, We shall not need to nourish any doubt, But that proud Fortune, who hath follow'd long The martial sword of mighty Tamburlaine, Will now retain her old inconstancy, And raise our honours [100] to as high a pitch, In this our strong and fortunate encounter; For so hath heaven provided my escape ]From all the cruelty my soul sustain'd, By this my friendly keeper's happy means, That Jove, surcharg'd with pity of our wrongs, Will pour ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... what a wretch! To speak ill of him is no sin. A mangled likeness of his father, he had all his faults with not one of his merits. He was perpetually changing his mistresses, but it cannot be said whether it was inconstancy on his part, or disgust on theirs, but the latter appears to me most probable. Though young, he was devoured by gout or some other infirmity, but it was called gout out of deference to the house of Richelieu. They ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... type. On the other hand, the Magyar and the Basque do not depart in any essential physical peculiarity from the Indo-Germans, whilst the Magyar, Basque, and Indo-Germanic tongues are widely different. Apart from their inconstancy, again, the so-called race characters can hardly yield a scientifically natural system. Languages, on the other hand, readily fall into a natural arrangement, like that of which other vital products are susceptible, especially when viewed from their morphological side.... The externally visible ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... which appeared in 1731, as an episode of the first of these, is a tale of fatal and irresistible passion. The heroine is divided in heart between her mundane tastes for luxury and her love for the Chevalier des Grieux. He, knowing her inconstancy and infirmity, yet cannot escape from the tyranny of the spell which has subdued him; his whole life is absorbed and lost in his devotion to Manon, and he is with her in the American wilds at the moment of her piteous death. The admirable ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... have you, sir, to my speaking to her, I mean?' said Mr. Coxe, a little anxious at the expression on Mr. Gibson's face. 'I do assure you I have not a chance with Miss Gibson,' he continued, not knowing what to say, and fancying that his inconstancy was rankling in Mr. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... most sweet voices, Your worthy voices, your love, your hate, Your choice, who know not whereof your choice is, What stays are these for a stable state? Inconstancy, blind and deaf with its own fierce babble, Swells ever your throats with storm of uncertain cheers: He leans on straws who leans on a light-souled rabble; His trust is frail who puts not his trust in peers.' So shrills the message whose word convinces Of righteousness ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... but he was so thrilled by the implicit revelation that she could not even imagine feminine inconstancy, that he forebore to draw her attention ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... office. Before the old lady returned home, it was agreed that Gertrude should come to her mother's to tea that evening, and Henry with her, and that Mrs. Miller should there charge the young husband with inconstancy to her daughter, and demand the removal ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... helpmates long before the wedding. As Mrs. Grant observes: "Love, undiminished by any rival passion, and cherished by innocence and candor, was here fixed by the power of early habit, and strengthened by similarity of education, tastes, and attachments. Inconstancy, or even indifference among married couples, was unheard of, even where there happened to be a considerable disparity in point of intellect. The extreme affection they bore to their mutual offspring was a bond that forever endeared them to each other. Marriage in this colony ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... water-course. The conversion of Java to the materialistic creed for which she forsook the subtleties of an impersonal Buddhism, though shallow was complete, and the doctrine of impermanence, inculcated by the discarded faith, continued an essential factor in spiritual development, for the inconstancy of the national mind only found a temporary halting-place in each successive creed which arrested it. The seed was sown, the bud opened, and the flower faded, with incredible rapidity, but the growth while it lasted, showed phenomenal luxuriance. The erection of these Hindu sanctuaries ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... of society. Sir John Harrington expressed his opinions very freely in letters which are still preserved. "I have lived," he wrote, "to see that damnable rebel Tyrone brought to England, honored, and well liked. Oh! what is there that does not prove the inconstancy of worldly matters? I adventured perils by sea and land, was near starving, ate horseflesh in Munster, and all to quell that man, who now smileth in peace at those who did harass their lives to destroy him; and now doth Tyrone dare us, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... indescribable air of care and taste that added to the effect of grace and pleasantness, and made Rachel feel convinced in a moment that the wonder would have been not in constancy to such a creature but in inconstancy. The notion that any one could turn from that brilliant, beaming, refined face to her own, struck her with a sudden humiliation. There was plenty of conversation, and her voice was not immediately wanted; indeed, she hardly attended to what was passing, and really dreaded outstaying ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... particular to the accident of the father. We saw also a knight, named Earthbald, born in Devonshire, whose father, denying the child with which his mother was pregnant, and from motives of jealousy accusing her of inconstancy, nature alone decided the controversy by the birth of the child, who, by a miracle, exhibited on his upper lip a scar, similar to one his father bore in consequence of a wound he had received from a lance in ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... voice from the seaward side of Meteor? True, the sea had yielded this wild being up, but did she speak with the sea's voice? She had at least the sea's inconstancy, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in Europe. I come not to this Realm without their resolution; and for my assurance I have the handwritings of many; and therefore if I should move the same question again, what else should I do but either show my own ignorance and forgetfulness, or else inconstancy?" {241c} He therefore said that his opponents might themselves "write and complain upon him," and so learn "the plain minds" of the learned—but nobody took the trouble. Knox's defence was worded with the skill of a notary. He said that he had "heard the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... in all its love affairs. She knows of every courtship that is going on; every love-lorn damsel is sure to find a patient listener and sage adviser in her ladyship. She takes great pains to reconcile all love quarrels, and should any faithless swain persist in his inconstancy, he is sure to draw on himself the ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... to the happy moment of their production, has evanesced. Here, however, is one which seems still to bear the impress of Alberti's genius: 'Gold is the soul of labour, and labour the slave of pleasure.' Of women he used to say that their inconstancy was an antidote to their falseness; for if a woman could but persevere in what she undertook, all the fair works of men would be ruined. One of his strongest moral sentences is aimed at envy, from which he suffered much ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... tar would scarcely be the "soaring soul" that he is were it not for the influence—not always a beneficial influence, by the way, of the softer sex. And here, a word for him with special respect to what people are pleased to call his inconstancy. With all his vagaries, and from the very nature of his calling he has many, I think there are few other professions which would bear weighing in the balance with his and not be found as wanting in this quality. True, none is so easily swayed, so easily led; but the fault is not his, that ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... signet of silence; never converts trifling ceremonies into intolerable burdens; always dresses becoming to her rank and age; is modest without prudery, religious without an alloy of superstition; can hear the one sex praised without envy, and converse with the other without permitting the torch of inconstancy to kindle the unhallowed fire in her breast; considers her husband as the most accomplished of mortals, and thinks all the sons of Adam besides unworthy of a transient glance from the corner of her ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... distinguished by a levity and inconstancy ill suited to the gravity of the Roman Censor. In the first part of his reign, he surpassed in clemency those princes who had been suspected of an attachment to the Christian faith. In the last three years and a ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... he had affirmed the light to be an eye if he judged the light to be the most beautiful how could he omit the sun; as to his solutions concerning the gods and evil genuises, they are full of presumption and peril. What he saith of Fortune is void of sense, for her inconstancy and fickleness proceed from want of strength and power. Nor is death the most common thing; the living are still at liberty, it hath not arrested them. But lest we be blamed as having a faculty to find fault only, we will lay down our opinions ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... demand this of me? Marry without love! Alas, alas! The prince will charge me with inconstancy and treachery to him, and I must ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and why? She had given him all; it was not her fault if he wearied of her tyranny. No; he alone was to blame, his inconstancy, his weakness. He poured forth a torrent of self-reproach, and words of love, and she responded passionately. Once more they were lovers, thrilling to each other's touch. And the wan moon looked on at their transports, and perchance the pale wraith of the Countess of Orlamuende, the White Lady, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... greatly admire. A man who is in love is like a man who has got the tooth-ache, he feels most acute pain while nobody pities him. In that situation am I at present: but well do I know that I will not be long so. So much for inconstancy. As this is my first epistle to you, it cannot in decency be a long one. Pray write to me soon. Your letters, I prophecy, will entertain me not a little; and will besides be extremely serviceable in many important respects. They will ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... fear of lust or license. Men will, on the whole, continue to prefer one partner, and friendship will refine the grossness of sense. There are worse evils than open and avowed inconstancy—the loathsome combination of deceitful intrigue with the selfish monopoly of property. That a child should know its father is no great matter, for I ought not in reason to prefer one human being to another because he is "mine." The mother will care for the child with the ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... respect thou bearest to the dogly character, and can attribute to nothing else the complacency with which thou hast listened to me since I released thy cloak. If ever the Athenians, in their inconstancy, should issue a decree to deprive me of the appellation they have conferred on me, rise up, I pray thee, in my defence, and protest that I have not merited so severe a mulct. Something I do deserve at thy hands; having supplied ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... observed in Hungary." Ye poor malicious blood-suckers of the virtuous! Ye shall not be able to hurt a hair of my head. Ye cannot injure the man who has sixty years lived in honour. I will not, in my old age, bring upon myself the reproach of inconstancy, treachery, or desire of revenge. I will betray no political secrets: I wish not to injure those by whom I have been injured.—Such acts I will never commit. I never yet descended to the office of spy, nor will I ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 2 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... he can feel them to be demoniacal; so also John Bunyan: both of them, I think, having firmer faith than Milton's in their own creations, and deeper insight into the nature of sin. Milton makes his fiends too noble, and misses the foulness, inconstancy, and fury of wickedness. His Satan possesses some virtues, not the less virtues for being applied to evil purpose. Courage, resolution, patience, deliberation in council, this latter being eminently a wise and holy character, as opposed to the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... of his invitation and hastened our departure, so, bidding our friends good-bye, we arrived at his place on the very same day. Lycas had so arranged matters that, on the journey, he sat beside me, while Tryphaena was next to Giton, the reason for this being his knowledge of the woman's notorious inconstancy; nor was he deceived, for she immediately fell in love with the boy, and I easily perceived it. In addition, Lycas took the trouble of calling my attention to the situation, and laid stress upon ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... berth; for although my connection with Eugenia was not sanctioned by religion or morality, it was in other respects pure, disinterested, and, if I may use the expression, patriarchal, since it was unsullied by inconstancy, gross language, or drunkenness. Vicious I was, and I own it to my shame; but at least my vice was refined by Eugenia, who had no fault ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... and finding her lost Lysander asleep so near her, was looking at him and wondering at his strange inconstancy. Lysander presently opening his eyes, and seeing his dear Hermia, recovered his reason which the fairy charm had before clouded, and with his reason, his love for Hermia; and they began to talk over the adventures ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Her tenacity and reserve were ill matched with Fina's native inconstancy of purpose and childish incontinence of speech; her pride of race resented her father's adoption of a stranger into the penetralia of the family; and to share the name she had inherited from her mother with the daughter of that mother's rival seemed to her a wrong done to both the living ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... presumptuous confidence and ungrounded assurance of the stability of these things for the time to come, which the wise man finding much folly in, he leaves us this counsel, "Boast not thyself of to-morrow,"—with a most pungent reason, taken partly from the instability and inconstancy of all these outward things in which men fancy an eternity of joy, and partly from the ignorance we have of the future events,—"for thou knowest not what ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... conscious of inconstancy, and anon with feminine frivolity she would coyly swing round to flirt with the islets close at hand. She would have her own way until the free breezes came, and somehow the wind still blows whereso'er it listeth, and will not be untimely wooed, though the sailor whistles ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... which, being prolonged, fell off into a dismal wail. Checking himself, with fierce inconstancy he began ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... condition of his disciples, and regrets, too late, the precipitancy by which he renounced, then and for ever, Christianity. "But, as he had no new religion to adopt in its place, and as, grown more prudent and calm, he did not wish to accuse himself unnecessarily, once more, of inconstancy and apostasy, he still maintained all the exterior forms of the worship which inwardly he had abjured. But it was not enough for him to have quitted error, it was necessary to discover truth. But Hebronius had well looked round to discover it; he could not find anything ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Julian, surnamed the Apostate, rebelled against Constantius, his cousin-german, in the spring, in 360, and by his death, in November, 361, obtained the empire. He was one of the most infamous dissemblers that ever lived. Craft, levity, inconstancy, falsehood, want of judgment, and an excessive vanity, discovered themselves in all his actions, and appear in his writings, namely, his epistles, his satire called Misopogon, and his lives of the Caesars. He wrote the last ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... object in seeking an encounter with me; that I gratified him because willing to undertake every hazard for her sake. Finally, I avowed my knowledge of all the disappointment her heart had experienced by Frank's inconstancy.' know you feel, to-night,' I said, 'that existence is an imposture—worse than the meanest jiggle. So do I. The only thing that can render it a reality is love. I intended to say to you, let us end it. For two years, I have borne the mask of a hypocrite that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... abandoned her, for whom you had forsaken me; I had ground too to be satisfied you had never spoken to her concerning me; but neither your discretion in that particular, nor the return of your affection can make amends for your inconstancy; your heart has been divided between me and another, and you have deceived me; this is sufficient wholly to take from me the pleasure I found in being loved by you, as I thought I deserved to be, and to confirm me in the resolution I have taken never to see you more, ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... there lived a young king whose name was Souci, and he had been brought up, ever since he was a baby, by the fairy Inconstancy. Now the fairy Girouette had a kind heart, but she was a very trying person to live with, for she never knew her own mind for two minutes together, and as she was the sole ruler at Court till the prince grew up everything was always at sixes and sevens. At first she determined ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... been gentle, tender, most considerate, and most charitable to her weakness, never speaking of his own wrongs, never reproaching her for inconstancy. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... converts in Rome, 2; attitude of the government toward, 11; evidence of the graffiti on, 12; difficulties and inconstancy of Christian converts, 14; mixed marriages, 15; friendly relations between pagans and Christians, 16; military service under the Empire, 18; the gradual change under Constantine, 20; spread of Christianity under Gregory the Great, 228; the persecutions under Nero and later ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... been subject to their influence know that there is nothing more uncertain than the winds. Their fickleness has passed into a proverb; but their inconstancy, as well as their power, from the fanning air to the destructive tornado, are to be traced to causes that are sufficiently clear, though hid in their nature from the calculations of our forethought. The tempest of ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... stand like the Turk, with his Doxies around; From all Sides their Glances his Passion confound; For Black, Brown, and Fair, his Inconstancy burns, And the different Beauties subdue him by turns: Each calls forth her Charms to provoke his Desires: Though willing to all, with but one he retires. But think of this Maxim, and put off your Sorrow, The Wretch of To-day, ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... this letter to her heart, she felt nothing in common with the spirit which it breathed. With that quick transition and inconstancy of feeling common in women, and which is as frequently their safety as their peril, her mind had already repented of the weakness of the last evening, and relapsed into the irresolution and bitterness of her former remorse. Never had there been in the human breast a stronger ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Francesco was enamoured: he obtained an interview. Bianca released and enriched her lover, but became the mistress of the young duke. Pietro was quite content with this arrangement; he had himself given the first example of inconstancy. He entered upon a career of riotous pleasure, which ended in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Superior Officer called Amiraglio, who commands the Bucentaure on Ascension Day, when the Duke goes in state to marry the sea. And here we cannot but notice, that by a ridiculous custom this Admiral makes himself Responsible to the Senat for the inconstancy of the Sea, and engages his Life there shall be no Tempest that day. 'Tis this Admiral who has the Guard of the Palais, St. Mark, with his Arsenalotti, during the interregnum. He carries the Red Standard before the Prince ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... colors are ripe, the whole circular grove, at a little distance, looks like a big handful of flowers set in a cup to be kept fresh—a tuft of goldenrods. Its feeding-streams are exceedingly beautiful, notwithstanding their inconstancy and extreme shallowness. They have no channel whatever, and consequently are left free to spread in thin sheets upon the shining granite and wander at will. In many places the current is less than a fourth of an inch deep, and flows with so little friction it is scarcely visible. Sometimes ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... his own humour, we find it to be, by his Book, more fickle than even the Wind, or Feminine frailty in its highest Inconstancy. One while he's for Instructing our Stage, Modelling our Plays, Correcting the Drama, the Unity, Time and Place, and acts as very a Poet as ever writ an ill Play, or slept at an ill Sermon; and then, presently after, wheiw, in the twinkling of an Ejaculution, as Parson Say-grace ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... was to be wrought, or, putting it the other way, how Marcian was to be helped, she saw as yet only in glimpses of ruthless purpose. Of Bessas she did not think as of a man easy to subdue or to cajole; his soldierly rudeness, the common gossip of his inconstancy in love, and his well-known avarice, were not things likely to touch her imagination, nor had she ever desired to number him in the circle of her admirers. That it might be in her power to do what Marcian besought, she was very ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... political importance the wisdom of Constance had quadrupled; at the least; his house she had rendered the most brilliant in London, and his name the most courted in the lists of the peerage. Though munificent, she was not extravagant; though a beauty, she did not intrigue; neither, though his inconstancy was open, did she appear jealous; nor, whatever the errors of his conduct, did she ever disregard his interest, disobey his wishes, or waver from the smooth and continuous sweetness of her temper. Of such a wife Lord Erpingham could not complain: he esteemed her, praised her, asked her advice, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by another novelty; for a French woman of bon ton, instead of wearing what is commonly worn by others, always aims at appearing in something new. It is unfortunately too true, that the changeableness of taste and inconstancy of fashion in France furnish an aliment to the luxury of other countries; but the principle of this communication is in the luxury of ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... be thankful that the fault has not been on our side." Miss Altifiorla had almost brought herself to believe that the man had made love to her, and proposed to her, that she in a moment of weakness had accepted him, and that she now had been luckily saved by his inconstancy. ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... ever known. But when she played this role of a feminine providence, who was apparently free from the ordinary weaknesses of her sex, when she carefully repressed every emotion of jealousy at the sight of his inconstancy, she was not free from a selfish motive. She still hoped that some day he would grow weary of pursuing the blue will-o'-the-wisps of fleeting sham loves; he would at last long to escape from the marsh into which for decades these capricious, alluring, fleeting flames had deluded him, and would ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... will of others. If they were always eager to be at work, they should sometimes be compelled to do nothing. Their childish faults, unchecked and unheeded, may easily lead to dissipation, frivolity, and inconstancy. To guard against this, teach them above all things self-control. Under our senseless conditions, the life of a good woman is a perpetual struggle against self; it is only fair that woman should bear her share of the ills ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... left every thing to see you, to press you in my arms; .... you are not there! You are pursuing a circle of festivities through the cities. You go away from me at my approach; you trouble yourself no more about your dear Napoleon. A spleen has made you love him; inconstancy ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... stanza shows very pleasingly the faithfulness of father and children, in contrast to the inconstancy ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... swat) and nearly smothered me. There is another little trick of thine, most lovely snow— It is but a proof of thine affection to cling around our necks, But still we swear—we cannot help it, Snow. Now it is "Skidoo," or "23 for you." Oh, cursed inconstancy of man! ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... venture to go were sullen and melancholy, and the woman were crying and imploring the Great Spirit to protect their warriors as if they were going to certain destruction: yet such is the wavering inconstancy of these savages, that captain Lewis's party had not gone far when they were joined by ten or twelve more warriors, and before reaching the creek which they had passed on the morning of the 13th, all the men of the nation and a number of women had overtaken them, and had changed from the ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... natural affection, she resolved to grant him the permission which she knew he so ardently desired. One day she said to him, "Prince, the request you made to be allowed to go and see the sultan your father gave me apprehension that it was only a pretext to conceal inconstancy, and that was the sole motive of my refusal; but now, as I am fully convinced by your actions and words that I can depend on your honour and the fidelity of your love, I change my resolution, and grant you the permission you seek, on condition that you will first ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... easily believe constancy in men than any thing else," says Montaigne, "and nothing more easily than inconstancy." ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... He of course became the prey of intriguers and sycophants,—of persons who understand the art of managing minds which are at once arbitrary and weak, by allowing them to retain unity of will amid the most palpable inconsistencies of opinion, so that inconstancy to principle shall not weaken force of purpose, nor the emphasis be at all abated with which they may bless to-day what yesterday they cursed. Thus the abhorrer of traitors has now become their tool. Thus the denouncer of Copperheads ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... denied, wretch. However, I know you would not injure me with a husband so odious and tyrannical that I stood excused in advance for inconstancy when I stooped to wed country manners and stubborn ignorance. Indeed, mon ami, if you will but take pains to recover, I will never breathe a word about the duel; but if—if—" a sob indicated the tragic possibility which Lady Lucretia dared not put into words—"I will ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... is a slight consciousness of mental processes, but the mind rarely watches itself work; the neurasthenic is unable to concentrate, and gets charged with inconstancy and shiftlessness. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... an exclusive, matter-of-fact, joyless death, even as she had lived. Ben came to the funeral. He called on Hattie the next day. Inconstancy was not one of his weaknesses, and the veil of her Commencement beauty had clung to her through these many years, in her old lover's eyes. He was again impetuous and offended every conservative propriety of Hattie's dutiful ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... looks, for which you ought not to quarrel with Heaven. If the feeble charms which my countenance displays have exposed me to the misfortune of my lover abandoning me, Heaven could not better soften such a blow than by making use of you to captivate that heart. I ought not to blush for an inconstancy which indicates the difference between your attractions and mine. If this change makes me sigh, it is from foreseeing that it will be fatal to your love; amidst the sorrow caused by friendship, I am angry for your sake that my few attractions have failed to retain a heart whose devotion interferes ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... multiplied transfers of affection occasionally caused some disappointment among the victims of Mr. Maltboy's inconstancy, it was wisely ordained that he should be the principal sufferer—that every new passion should involve him in new difficulties, and subject him to a degree of mental distress which would have reduced the flesh of any man not hopelessly predisposed to fatness. As Mr. Matthew Maltboy stood by the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... there be another world i' th' moon, As some fantastics dream, I could wish all men, The whole race of them, for their inconstancy, Sent thither ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Spain can boast"—returned the queen—"and possessed of those accomplishments which insure the favor of our sex. But I hear he has a failing, which, as a woman, I ought rather to call a grievous fault. I am told he is of a very fickle character. Is not your Leonor alarmed at the reported inconstancy of her future husband?" ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... his journey in the sky, and twilight was gathering around them, when, with arms entwined round each other, they pursued their way back, conversing upon the disappointments of life, and the misery that is produced by inconstancy ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... advances, refused every attention, and when I rashly uttered words, which, I admit, were treasonable to Muriel, she almost overwhelmed me with her fiery contempt and indignation,—threatening to acquaint Muriel with my inconstancy, and appealing to my honor as a gentleman to keep inviolate my betrothal vows. Dr. Grey, if my heart temporarily wandered from its allegiance to your ward, it was not Salome's fault, for in every ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... Being ruined by the inconstancy and unkindness of a lover, I hope, a true and plain relation of my misfortunes may be of use and warning to credulous maids, never to put too much ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... When rolling seasons cease to change, Inconstancy forgets to range; When lavish May no more shall bloom, Nor gardens yield a rich perfume; When Nature from her sphere shall start, I'll tear my Nanny ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the Evening I visited Madam Winthrop, who Treated me Courteously, but not in Clean Linen as somtimes. She said, she did not know whether I would come again, or no. I ask'd her how she could so impute inconstancy to me. (I had not visited her since Wednesday night being unable to get over the Indisposition received by the Treatment received that night, and I must in it seem'd to sound like a made piece of Formality.) Gave her this day's Gazett. Heard David Jeffries say ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... that evening. Even now, when Cleora has been wedded some years to that same officious relation, as I may call him, I can hardly be persuaded that such a trifle could have been the motive to her inconstancy; for could she suppose that I would sacrifice my dearest hopes in her to the paltry sum of two shillings, when I was going to treat her to the play, and her mother too, (an expense of more than four times that amount,) if the young ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... think quite otherwise of things at one time than at another; when young than when old—when hungry than when our appetite is satisfied—in the night than in the day—when peevish than when cheerful. Thus, varying every hour, by a thousand other circumstances, which keep us in a state of perpetual inconstancy and instability." Every day may be seen children, who, to a certain age—display a great deal of ingenuity, a strong aptitude for the sciences, who finish by falling into stupidity. Others may be observed, who, during their infancy, have shown dispositions but little favourable ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... new domestic difficulties long before the suppression of monasteries—the great political act of Thomas Cromwell. His new wife, Anne Boleyn, was suspected of the crime of inconstancy, and at the very time when she had reached the summit of power, and the gratification of all worldly wishes. She had been very vain, and fond of display and of ornaments; but the latter years of her life were marked by her munificence, and attachment to the reform doctrines. But ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... complain of, he only complains of separation, and to the accompaniment of a rebeck, which he plays admirably, he sings his complaints in verses that show his ingenuity. I follow another, easier, and to my mind wiser course, and that is to rail at the frivolity of women, at their inconstancy, their double dealing, their broken promises, their unkept pledges, and in short the want of reflection they show in fixing their affections and inclinations. This, sirs, was the reason of words and expressions I made use of to this goat when I came up just now; for as she is a female ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... misfortune is not made to win respect from ordinary minds. I know that there is a leaning to prosperity, however obtained, and a prejudice in its favor. I know there is a disposition to hope something from the variety and inconstancy of villany, rather than from the tiresome uniformity of fixed principle. There have been, I admit, situations in which a guiding person or party might be gained over, and through him or them the whole body of a nation. For the hope of such a conversion, and of deriving ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... cannot say. On the chances he did. Most confirmed gamblers, however, remain gamblers. The lure of excitement is more potent to such men than a wife whose charm has gone, through familiarity, through time itself, through the inconstancy of passion and love. The gambler usually knows no duty; he is kind and generous but only to please himself. He is easily bored and his sympathies rarely stand the disagreeable long; he knows ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... really thought that, after all, there was something about him which it was quite impossible to describe. As to the curate, he was all very well; but certainly, after all, there was no denying that—that—in short, the curate wasn't a novelty, and the other clergyman was. The inconstancy of public opinion is proverbial: the congregation migrated one by one. The curate coughed till he was black in the face—it was in vain. He respired with difficulty—it was equally ineffectual in awakening sympathy. Seats are once again to be had in any part of our parish church, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... that departed souls dwell among the caves and rocks of the cliffs, and that the echoes often heard there are their voices. Ruskin suggests that the cause of the Greeks surrounding the lower world residence of Persephone with poplar groves was that "the frailness, fragility, and inconstancy of the leafage of the poplar tree resembled the fancied ghost people." We can very easily imagine how, in the breeze at the entrance to some ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the advancement of the science, rather than as the follower of that great man, I see no good reason why colour should not in many instances, especially where expressive characters are wanting, form a part of the specific character in plants, as well as in animals: we are told indeed of its inconstancy. I would ask—who ever saw the colour of the leaves or blossoms of the present plant to vary? and, on the contrary, who ever saw its leaves constant ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 6 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... other test; and mention has already been made, on account of the mythological or superstitious features they possess, of a number of the choicest of these old lays that turn essentially upon the strength or the weakness, the constancy or the inconstancy, the rapture or the sorrow of earthly love. Love in the ballads is nearly always masterful, imperious, exacting; nearly always its reward is death and dule, and not life and happiness. But as it spurns all obstacles, it meets its fate unflinchingly. No sacrifices are too ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... higher and lower, and lifts them up out of all multiplicity and all over-occupation, and makes a simplicity in a man, and gives and shows him an internal bond in the unity of his spirit. A man is thus lifted up according to his memory, and delivered from strange and irrelevant thoughts, and from inconstancy. Now Christ in this light demands a going forth, according to the mode of this light and this coming. Then the man goes forth, and observes himself that by virtue of the simple light that is spread abroad in him he is united, established, penetrated ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... present value of a distant advantage is always small; but when there is great room to doubt whether a distant advantage will be any advantage at all, the present value sink to almost nothing. Such is the inconstancy of the public taste that no sensible man will venture to pronounce, with confidence, what the sale of any book published in our days will be in the years between 1890 and 1900. The whole fashion of thinking ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... art in his management of Vivian's mind, he might have been suspected of using it in favour of Miss Sidney at this instant; for this prophecy of Vivian's inconstancy was the most likely means to prevent its accomplishment. Frequently, in the course of their tour, when Vivian was in any situation where his constancy was tempted, he recollected Russell's prediction, and was proud to remind him how much he had been ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... receiv'd it, And so I wish'd thy body might my heart. And even with this I lost fair England's view, And bid mine eyes be packing with my heart, And call'd them blind and dusky spectacles, For losing ken of Albion's wished coast. How often have I tempted Suffolk's tongue, The agent of thy foul inconstancy, To sit and witch me, as Ascanius did When he to madding Dido would unfold His father's acts commenc'd in burning Troy! Am I not witch'd like her? or thou not false like him? Ay me, I can no more! die, Margaret! For Henry weeps that thou ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... not a real crime makes a man appear so contemptible and little in the eyes of the world as inconstancy.—Addison. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... Hurdlestone, either personally or by letter. He supposed that her present position was one of her own choosing, and he was too proud to utter a complaint. The hey-day of youth was past, and he had seen too much of the world to be surprised at the inconstancy of a poor girl, who had been offered, during her lover's absence, a splendid alliance. He considered that Elinor was sufficiently punished for her broken vows in being forced to spend her life in the society of such a sordid ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... betrayers, he had yet too good a heart to approve the treachery.—But to return to the marquis, we shall mention another of his juvenile fights, as an instance to what extravagant and unaccountable excesses, the inconstancy of his temper ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... than I have to bear now. But I weakly permitted myself to be forced, with this secret on my conscience, into a marriage with the Duke of Hereward. And now I dare not tell him the truth! And now my first husband has come back and hates me for my inconstancy, and my second husband knows nothing about it! Now to whom do I rightly belong! To whom do I owe duty? To Waldemar? To the duke? Who knows? Not I! One thing only is clear to me, that I must not live with either of them as a wife, henceforth! Heaven forgive those who ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... we are agreed, Sir George Templemore," resumed Eve, "though we might differ as to the cause. The inconstancy of which you speak, is more connected with moral than physical causes, perhaps, and we, of this region, might claim an exemption from some of them. But, Mrs. Bloomfield is to be distinguished from her European rivals, by a frame so singularly feminine as to appear ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... John, he was the Inconstancy," observed the eldest Miss Simper, "marrying for money!—the creature!—such baseness 1 but how delightfully that dear, clever Mr. Lawless acted; he made love with such naive simplicity, too; he is ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... in me to thank them here, in the name of science and literature, in the name of humanity, for the few moments of sweet peace and happiness that they afforded to our learned colleague, at a time when the inconstancy and ingratitude of men were ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... concluding, I cannot help remarking that this circuit of the wind from SW. by W. to NW. or N., from our insular position, imparts to our climate its fickleness and inconstancy. How often will our brightest sky become suffused by the blackest vapours on the slightest breach of SW. wind, and the clouds will then disappear as speedily as they formed, when the NW. upper current ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... not, sweet, I am unkind That from the nursery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind To war and arms I fly. True! a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field, And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore, I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... examining here the motives for this change, because we believe it is very difficult to lift the veil which covers the mysteries of the political inconstancy of the Cabinet of St. James's; and leaving the solution of this enigma to time, that great OEdipus of history, we will here make only this remark, that English diplomacy has allowed a favourable opportunity to escape for taking ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... was first announced between Jeffrey and the young heiress. This and his previous attentions to Cora had made much talk, both in Washington and elsewhere, and there were not lacking those who had openly twitted him for his seeming inconstancy. This had been over the cups of course, and Jeffrey had borne it well enough from his so-called friends and intimates. But when, on a certain evening in the parlor of one of the large hotels in Atlantic City, a fellow whom nobody knew and nobody liked accused him of knowing on which side his ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... now we've told you all our loves, And likewise all our fears, In hopes this declaration moves Some pity from your tears; Let's hear of no inconstancy, We have too much of that at sea. With a ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... hath visited us, and of our late solemn confession of sinnes, and engagement unto duties, sealed with the renewing of the Covenant and the Oath of God; Which some men have so far already forgotten, as to return with the dogge to the vomit, and with the sow to the puddle: And many signes of inconstancy and levity do appear among all sorts and ranks of persons, who seem to want nothing but a sutable tentation to draw them away from their stedfastnesse; Our Army is not yet sufficiently purged, but there be still in it Malignant and scandalous men, whose fidelity and ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... hostilities. This is exactly the excuse which the savages of America, who have no regular government, make at this day upon the like occasions; but it would be a strange apology from one of the modern states of Europe that had employed armies against another. Caesar reprimanded them for the inconstancy of their behavior, and ordered them to bring hostages to secure their fidelity, together with provisions for his army. But whilst the Britons were engaged in the treaty, and on that account had free access to the Roman camp, they easily observed that the army ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... surprised yesterday morning by a visit from Margaret Wilmot. I was very cool to her at first; for though you never told me why your engagement to her was so abruptly broken off, I could not but think she was in some manner to blame, since I knew you too well, my darling boy, to believe you capable of inconstancy or unkindness. I thought, therefore, that her visit was very ill-timed, and I let her see that my feelings towards ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... contrast of his fresh and rugged character with the delicate or morbid traits of his fellow beings, lend a graceful symmetry to the whole. The sentence Sam had just delivered with so much emphasis ought to have been addressed to the traitor lover, when discovered in the act of inconstancy, and, so given, would have been effective and dramatic. But at a juncture like the present, the author felt it to be simply ludicrous, and had he not been so mortified, would have ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... scrutiny by a thread of fiction. The outward body of it matters little. The essential point is to remember that such things were not caused, as they try to persuade us, by human fickleness, by the inconstancy of our fallen nature, by the chance persuasions of desire. There was needed the deadly pressure of an age of iron, of cruel needs: it was needful that Hell itself should seem a shelter, an asylum, by contrast with the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... appeared to have been secured, when young Pietro Strozzo—the son of Messer Camillo di Matteo negli Strozzi—one of Pellegrina's sponsors at her baptism—was judged worthy of the matrimonial prize. They were accordingly betrothed, but the inconstancy of Love was once more proved, for the young fellow was a wayward youth, and, although only seventeen, ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... use of them. For if we allowed the relapsed heretic to live, we would undoubtedly endanger the salvation of others, either because he would corrupt the faithful whom he met, or because his escape from punishment would lead others to believe they could deny the faith with impunity. The inconstancy of the relapsed is, therefore, a sufficient reason why the Church, although she receives him to penance for his soul's salvation, refuses to free him from the ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... all the sages upon the vicissitudes of fortune and the inconstancy of human affairs would prove unfounded if this expedition had terminated profitably and happily; but the ordering of events is inevitable, and those who tear up the roots, sometimes find sweet liquorice and sometimes bitter cockle. Woe, however, to Pariza! for he shall not long rest ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... groaned Mr. Winch, in despair at this inconstancy, "when will you learn to be a little more steady-minded? Here I have come expressly to plead your cause, and get you off; but before I have a chance, you change your mind again, and now nothing can persuade you to ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
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