"Capricious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sensibility. But sensibility to what? Not merely to those common impressions of human suffering which kindle the flame of ordinary philanthropy, always attractive, often so beneficent, but often so capricious and so laden with secret detriment. This was no part of Burke's type. For is it enough to say that Burke had what is the distinctive mark of the true statesman, a passion for good, wise, and orderly government. He had that in the strongest degree. ...
— Burke • John Morley
... aunt, an essentially just woman, blame herself for hasty judgment, had drawn her and her elder niece closer together than had yet been the case. And no doubt there was a substratum of resemblance in their natures, deeper and more real than the curious capricious likeness which had struck Marmaduke so oddly—which was indeed perhaps but a casual coming to the surface ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... depth, or to soar beyond the level of her comprehension and her knowledge. Her conversation therefore was happily described by an old and attached friend and very competent judge, when he said of it that 'her talk was so crisp.'[5] She had an even flow of animal spirits, was never capricious or uncertain, full of vivacity, with a constant but temperate enjoyment of society; never fastidious or exclusive, tasting and appreciating excellence without despising or slighting mediocrity; attentive, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... had been married for many years without having any children, and they longed for them like the countryman for rain in the month of May, and at last her hour of bliss came to the mayoress, to the great content of her husband. Now, it was whispered that the said lady had always been somewhat capricious; judge for yourselves what she would be now in the time of her pregnancy! And as she was already on the way to fifty, she was more than mediocrely bald and hairless, and on these very same days had commissioned a woman barber, who lived in the odor of witchcraft, to prepare for her some false hair, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... mine could be further tapped, for the effusive brother-in-law of the winter gone by had found disillusion in more ways than one. Garrison, busy day and night with his staff duties, had plainly to tell his capricious wife that she had come without his knowledge or consent, and that he could not think of meeting the expense of even a two weeks' stay in town. He could not account for her coming at all. He had left her with ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... infrequently momentary, causeless, colicky pains precede for a short time any other symptom. In a few weeks after their occurrence, sometimes indeed independently of them, the appetite fails, or becomes capricious; the bowels begin to act irregularly, being alternately constipated and relaxed; and the motions are unnatural in character, being, for the most part, dark, loose, and slimy. Sometimes indeed, they are solid, and then often white, as if from complete inactivity of ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... fortification; lanes innumerable, and extending from one depth of darkness and intricacy into another, a network of attack and ambush, obviously gave an extraordinary advantage to the irregular daring of men accustomed to thread those wretched and dismal dens, crowded with one of the fiercest and most capricious populations in the world. Times have strikingly changed since. The "fifteen fortresses" are but so many strong bars of the great cage, and they are neither too strong nor too many. Paris is now the only city ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... Henry VIII., a capricious tyrant, and of the imprudent and unfortunate Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth was born at Greenwich, on the banks of the Thames, September 7, 1533. Her infancy was unfortunate through the unhappy fate of her mother, but she was nevertheless educated with care and attention; in her yet infant faculties her ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... whole matter as an excellent piece of sport. Nothing so strongly excited the risibilities of these grim barbarians as the tears and cries of their victims, extorted by physical or mental agony. Capricious alike in their cruelties and their kindnesses, they treated some of their captives with forbearance and consideration and tormented others apparently without cause. One man, on his way to Canada, was killed because they ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... I salute you from my favourite bard. He that rises with the lark will sing with the lark. Strange news since I saw you, Captain!—Poor mistaken lady!—But you have too much goodness, I know, to reveal to her uncle Harlowe the error of this capricious beauty. It will all turn out for the best. You must accompany me part of the way. I know the delight you take in composing differences. But 'tis the task of the prudent to heal the breaches made by the rashness and folly ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Hazlitt's merits as a judge of pictures or of the stage. The same literary qualities mark all his writings. De Quincey, of course, condemns Hazlitt, as he does Lamb, for a want of 'continuity.' 'No man can be eloquent,' he says, 'whose thoughts are abrupt, insulated, capricious, and nonsequacious.' But then De Quincey will hardly allow that any man is eloquent except Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, and Thomas De Quincey. Hazlitt certainly does not belong to their school; nor, on the other hand, ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... natural to us in our imperfect state. But why put into the shape of speech the annoyance which, once uttered, is remembered; which may burn like a blistering wound, or rankle like a poisoned arrow? If a child be crying or a friend capricious, or a servant unreasonable, be careful what you say. Do not speak while you feel the impulse of anger, for you will be almost certain to say too much, to say more than your cooler judgment will approve, and to speak in a way that you will regret. Be silent until the ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... him as children learn to study the faces of those whom they have reason to fear, whose kindness is at best capricious, and finding nothing but sorrow and tenderness in it, he began to fear it less: thankful even for a brief season of kindness, the solitary child laid the pale cheek close against his mother's, and twined the thin arms ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... begins thus. And the pages continue. The writing on them seems at a glance part of a decoration in black and white. The letters are beautifully formed and shaded. They resemble laboring serpents, dainty pagodas, vines bearing strange fruits and capricious ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... she pleased; and as the tyranny was never very severe, and was usually followed by some generous act of contrition, she did not mind it at all, and was always ready to make up and be friends whenever it suited the capricious ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... possessing great talents, and with the disadvantage of an imperious and capricious temper, exercised for so long a period such exceptional influence over public affairs, was the second of the three daughters of Richard Jennings, a country gentleman of good family but moderate fortune, her mother being Frances Thornhurst, daughter of Sir Gifford ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... consequently, in agriculture. And this exchange of professions will be allowed, I think, by all, to be very unfavourable in respect of health, one essential ingredient of happiness, besides the greater uncertainty of manufacturing labour, arising from the capricious taste of man, the accidents of war, and ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... especially by the common people, as was our said Master. And his fame so increased that his advice was asked on every subject, and he was so incessantly in demand that he did not know what to do. If a woman had a bad, or whimsical, or capricious husband, she went to this good master for a remedy. In short, if any could give good advice it was thought that our physician was at the top of the tree in that respect, and people came to him from all parts to ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... towards light; others are repelled by it. The root bends towards the centre of the earth, the shoot rises above away from it. Numerous other "tropic" movements are caused by contact, by electricity, by moisture and by invisible radiations. These effects appear so extremely diverse and capricious that some of the leading physiologists were forced to come to the conclusion that there was no law guiding such movement, but that the plant decides for itself what should be the effect of external ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... looks, she was of the rare beauties of that strange race. Her features were moulded in a delicate, definite harmony that would have marked her out in any assemblage of beauty; and the spirit of beauty was there too. There were actually pride and dignity under the arched brows—so capricious is Nature in shaping her wilder daughters—and in the deep soft eyes brooded, even when she was happiest, a heart-disquieting quality of wistfulness. She was happy now; and ever and anon she raised her eyes to the slouching back of the man riding ahead with a look of passionate abandon in ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... in all international matters which have arisen between the two countries, since I have taken any part in the government of our own. With an immense boundary line which is only marked by the changeable and capricious currents of the Rio Grande; with the constant traffic across our common frontier; with thousands of Americans residing in that country; with the countless number of enterprises in which Americans are interested on the other side of the Rio Grande, and with the resources of the ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... nature bad, although vain, selfish, and aspiring. Her footstool was the hearts of men, and upon it she set hard her beautiful feet, indifferent to the anguish caused by her capricious tyranny. She was cold and calculating under the warm passions of a voluptuous nature. Although many might believe they had won the favor, none felt sure they had gained the love ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Many have pointed out the peculiarities of this style—the use of extended and scattered chords, the innovations in fingering which facilitate legato playing, the spray of dainty little ornamental notes, the use of the capricious tempo rubato, and so on. But it has not been made sufficiently clear by any writer how it was that Chopin became the Wagner of the pianoforte, so to speak, by revealing for the first time the infinite possibilities of varied and beautiful ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... this capricious tyrant, which usurps the place of reason, doth not most cruelly torment and delude those poor men, the usurers, stockjobbers, and projectors, of content to themselves from heaping up riches, that ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... with him. Teresita was sweet and winsome and maddeningly alluring; he knew it, he felt it still. Indeed, he was made to realize it every time the whim seized her to punish Jack by smiling upon Dade. But she was as capricious as beauty usually is, and he knew that also; and after being used several times as a club with which to beat Jack into proper humility (and always seeing very clearly that he was merely the club and nothing ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... Inspiration short. Cough dry, sometimes with expectoration; frequent or capricious; always absence of complete respiratory murmur in the inferior portion of the chest. Sometimes the gurgling noise during inspiration and expiration. Strong respiratory murmur in the superior portion. In dogs these symptoms sometimes have existence only on one side of the chest. The mucous ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... take all the bearings of the River Kamboja, from the sea to Mitho, the second city of Cochin China. This was no easy task; for the Kamboja had already defeated the efforts of several hydrographic engineers by its capricious and constant changes, every pass and every turn nearly changing with the ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... when Sidney could no longer take Clara upon his knee and stroke her brown hair and joke with her about her fits of good and ill humour. Sidney knew well enough what was in his friend's mind, and, though with no sense of constraint, he felt that this handsome, keen-eyed, capricious girl was destined to be his wife. He liked Clara; she always attracted him and interested him; but her faults were too obvious to escape any eye, and the older she grew, the more was he impressed and troubled by them. The thought ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... or sad, as the case might be, over her lover's few volumes; and when she had arranged them to suit her capricious self, she kissed her hand to Tom Hood, and locked them all—poets, romancers, and historians—in the black, ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... propose had only to persuade them that it was good, and the measure passed, the bill became law. But the audience he addressed, though a popular, was by no means an ordinary one. It was fickle and capricious to a degree exceeding that of all other popular assemblies; it was critical, exacting, intellectual, in a still higher degree. No audience has been more swayed by passion; none has been less swayed by the pretence of it. Always accessible ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... was not without its vicissitudes and dangers, and one of the latter I shall ever remember—one mingled, as it was, with antics of Neptune, that capricious god of the ocean, and resignation to what seemed to promise my end with all sublime things. The stock of oil brought for lubricating cars and machinery having been exhausted, I started a beautiful morning in a canoe with three Indians for their settlement at the mouth of Skidegate River for a temporary ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... are, They cannot from good jests themselves debar. One sees his neighbor cast a longing glance Toward that berry pie; and, rare good chance! 'Tis nearest him, he chuckles with delight, And is about to whip it out of sight; But Fortune, still capricious, gives the No; His nearest neighbor does an interest show In this proceeding, and the pie has snatched, Quite in good humor, ere the scheme's well hatched! The disappointed couple sympathise, And signal to each other, with their eyes. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the afternoon, she ransacked the library for interesting and cheerful things to read to him, and she even found a game or two that he seemed to enjoy. From Madame Francesca's spotless kitchen came many a dainty dish to tempt his capricious appetite, and all the flowers from both gardens, daily, made a ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... maintained by balancing the trunk upon the support of the pelvis. The frequency and severity of the falls which these children suffer is a common complaint of the mother. The faulty posture is often associated with slight albuminuria. Its appearance is very capricious, but it is dependent to a great extent upon the assumption of the erect posture. There has been much discussion as to its explanation. It has been argued that the lordosis itself produces the albuminuria ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... somewhat capricious by nature. As to the horse, as you say, my dear Patout, he wants nothing. You need only remove his bridle; leave him saddled. Oh, wait; put this pistol back in the holsters and take care of these other two for me." And the young man removed the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... he smoked his most excellent tobacco in his best pipe, Selkirk smilingly contemplated the capricious bounds, the riotous sports of his cats and kids, their graceful postures, their fraternal combats, in which sheathed claws and the inoffensive horn were the only weapons used ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... pleasure for inscrutable reasons. Will this Being be expected to approve useful or pernicious conduct? From men's language we might suppose that he is thought to be purely benevolent. Yet from their dogmas it would seem that he is a capricious tyrant. How are we to explain the discrepancy? The discrepancy is the infallible result of the circumstances already stated.[614] The Deity has limitless power, and therefore is the natural object of our instinctive fears. The character of the Deity ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... his uncle's heir, it had become so avowed an adoption as to have him assume the name of Churchill on coming of age. It was most unlikely, therefore, that he should ever want his father's assistance. His father had no apprehension of it. The aunt was a capricious woman, and governed her husband entirely; but it was not in Mr. Weston's nature to imagine that any caprice could be strong enough to affect one so dear, and, as he believed, so deservedly dear. He saw his son every year in London, and was proud of him; and his fond report of him as a very ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... presence of his other horses, because he did not stop when he checked him. A tiger that did not immediately seize a criminal thrown to him, was ordered to be beheaded as a coward. Yet had this cruel and capricious tyrant many estimable virtues. He kept his word inviolable; was rigorous in the execution of justice; liberal in his gifts; and often merciful to those who offended him. Having at one time sent a Portuguese to Malacca with money to purchase some commodities; this man, after buying them lost ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... Corriewater, in Annandale, is regarded by the inhabitants, a pastoral and unmingled people, as the last border refuge of those beautiful and capricious beings, the fairies. Many old people yet living imagine they have had intercourse of good words and good deeds with the 'good folk'; and continue to tell that in the ancient days the fairies danced on the hill, and revelled ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Feofar-Khan reserving for these unfortunates? Would he imprison them in Tomsk, or would some bloody execution, familiar to the Tartar chiefs, remove them when they were found too inconvenient? This was the secret of the capricious Emir. ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... machine was still untouched. The War Office itself—! If she could remould that nearer to her heart's desire- -there indeed would be a victory! And until that final act was accomplished, how could she be certain that all the rest of her achievements might not, by some capricious turn of Fortune's wheel—a change of Ministry, perhaps, replacing Sidney Herbert by some puppet of the permanent official gang— be swept to limbo ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... himself at her feet. "Beautiful being," he cried, "if thou wilt but deign to accept all the devotion of my heart and soul— after Hastur be served—it is thine forever. But, alas! thou art capricious and wayward. Before to-morrow's sun I may lose thee again. Promise, I beseech thee, that however in my ignorance I may offend, thou wilt forgive and remain always ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... looks annoyed her. She told them to go to bed, and they slunk away, gaping at the open box on the stairs, and huddling together overhead, all on one bed, in the bitter cold, to whisper to each other. Isaac was a stern parent; Bessie a capricious one; and the children, though they could be riotous enough by themselves, were nervous ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... one special food, so the mind has its wants, which do not always call for what is best, but which know themselves and are as peremptory as the salt-sick sailor's call for a lemon or a raw potato, or, if you will, as those capricious "longings," which have a certain meaning, we may suppose, and which at any rate we think it reasonable to satisfy ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and truth and gentleness and loving kindness. The man who would shudder at the idea of a rough word of the description commonly called swearing, will not even have a twinge of conscience after a whole morning of ill tempered sullenness, capricious scolding, villainously unfair animadversion, or surly cross grained treatment generally of wife and children! Such a man will omit neither family worship nor a sneer at his neighbour. He will neither milk his cow on the first day of the week without a Sabbath mask on his face, nor remove it ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... lies through anonymous letters, unsigned posters, and irresponsible whisperings. The individual must be constantly on his guard against this flood; he must recognize that Public Opinion is often capricious, and that a sudden hysteria may inflict untold injury. The morality of a mob is inferior to the morality of the individuals composing the mob, because in a mob the sense of power is dominant and the sense of responsibility is suppressed. Properly ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... a suburban street; of its jumble of little shops and little terraces, each exhibiting some fresh variety of capricious ugliness; the little scraps of garden before the doors, with their dusty, stunted lilacs and balsam poplars, were my only forests; my only wild animals, the dingy, merry sparrows, who quarrelled fearlessly on my ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... gad-about Blanche"; he made her promise him a Whitsuntide visit instead, and whispered in her ear, "You shall have her room"; he paid her the most handsome and gallant attentions, natural to the man of fashion par excellence, mingled with something intimate, brusque, capricious, which marked her his own, and of the family. Seventy-five!—with that step, that carriage of the shoulders, that ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... indignity to avoid the conclusion which had come at last. There was nothing left but to meet defiance by defiance, and accept the position to which the pope had driven him. In quiet times occasionally wayward and capricious, Henry, like Elizabeth after him, reserved his noblest nature for the moments of danger, and was ever greatest when peril was most immediate. Woe to those who crossed him now, for the time was grown stern, and to trifle further was ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... to the windows, and hoarsely proposing purchase to My Lord, Your Excellency, Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your Honourable Worship—from the present minute until the Grand Race-Week is finished, at all hours of the morning, evening, day, and night, shall the town reverberate, at capricious intervals, to the brays of this frightful animal ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... our too lavish supply of the raw material; and before Firm's gap in his "sternum" was stopped, the mountains were coming down upon us, as we always used to say when the snow-line stooped. In some seasons this is a sharp time of hurry, broken with storms, and capricious, while men have to slur in the driving weather tasks that should have been matured long since. But in other years the long descent into the depth of winter is taken not with a jump like that, but gently ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... But Fortune, capricious, who sports at her leisure, [p 30] With birds, as with men, when it suits her good pleasure, Resolv'd, after teazing Sir Argus awhile, To reward, in the end, all ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... action by the hope of reward, as well as the fear of punishment: giving them out of their own labours, wages and land, sufficient to afford them the plainest necessaries:—And protecting them against the capricious violence, too often of ignorant, unthinking, or unprincipled, and perhaps drunken men and boys, invested with arbitrary powers, as their managers, and 'drivers.' His plan is founded in nature, and has nothing ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... Fortunately, however, the capricious god of love, who needlessly does so much mischief, here for once interfered beneficially, to extricate us out of all perplexity. I had much intercourse with a young Englishman who was educated in Pfeil's boarding-school. He could give ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... tea and trout; and as the minister had to attend a meeting of the Presbytery of Skye on the following Wednesday, we sailed next morning for Glenelg, whence he purposed taking the steamer for Portree. Winds were light and baffling, and the currents, like capricious friends, neutralized at one time the assistance which they lent us at another. It was dark night ere we had passed Isle Ornsay, and morning broke as we cast anchor in the Bay of Glenelg. At ten o'clock ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... regard as "a foundation as impermanent as the changeful sand" (Ib. p. 24), and not adapted "to the wants or requirements of the nineteenth century," Ib. p. 26. They reject Him, whom they style "the cruel and capricious God generally worshipped by the Bible Christians," Ib. p. 47. "The Jewish God," says Davis, "is cruel, capricious and tyrannical," whose "kingdom is more despotic, and more contracted in principle, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... much misdoubting Mr. Egremont's style of society, and dreading that Mark might be dragged into it, added her word, feeling on her side that it was desirable and just to hinder the family from sacrificing Mark's occupation and worldly interest to a capricious old roue, who might very possibly throw him over when it would be almost impossible to find anything else to do. Moreover, both she and Annaple believed that the real wish was to rescue the name of Egremont from association with umbrellas, and they held themselves ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Do, my dear boy, make Bramble, Bessy, yourself, and all of us happy, by weaning yourself from the memory of one who was undeserving of you, and fixing your affections upon her who will be as steadfast and as true to you as the other was false and capricious." ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... weary me. But the clever people who have something interesting to say seem, so far as I have observed them, to acknowledge no other stimulant than chance. For every story, excepting one, I have been indebted, in the first instance, to the capricious influence of the same chance. Something my sitter has seen about me, something I have remarked in my sitter, or in the room in which I take the likeness, or in the neighbourhood through which I pass on my way to work, has suggested the necessary association, or has started the right train ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... long time were not so. It is, for instance, a complete error to suppose that he asked the cabinet to treat the occupation of the Principalities as a casus belli. Lord Russell shook the position of Lord Aberdeen by action most capricious and unhappy. But with the general course of affairs this had no connection; and even in the complex and tortuous movements of the Eastern negotiations, the cabinet never fell into two camps. That question and the war were fatal ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... capricious in her conduct to this maid—sometimes very confidential, sometimes rather reserved; but she was a liberal mistress, and the girl had every reason to be satisfied with ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... the press is free, a nation is guaranteed against sudden and capricious folly, either from above or from below. As long as the press is free, a nation is guaranteed against the worse evil of persistent and obstinate folly, cloaking itself under the venerable shapes of tradition and authority. For under a free press, a nation ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... murmured a few feet below them. Suzel quietly drew her needle across the canvas. Frantz automatically carried his line from left to right, then permitted it to descend the current from right to left. The fish made capricious rings in the water, which crossed each other around the cork, while the hook hung useless ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... is, doing its work in perfect silence and with a motionless grace, that seems to hide a capricious and not always governable power, taking nothing away from the material stores of the earth. Not for it the unerring precision of steel moved by white steam and living by red fire and fed with black coal. The other seems to draw its strength from the very soul of the world, its ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... referred to Handel as our greatest English Composer, he refused to take it back even when a capricious ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... religious life have their difficulties: the one, the martinet superior and the routine subject; the other, the capricious subject and the lax superior. In one kind the bond of union as well as the stimulus of endeavor is mainly obedience, fraternal charity assisting; in the other it is mainly fraternal charity, obedience assisting; each has to overcome obstacles ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... Maggior Consiglio, we have the long series of registers containing the deliberations of the Council from the year 1232 down to the fall of the Republic in 1797, occupying forty-two volumes, and distinguished, at first, by such capricious names as Capricornus, Philosus, Presbiter, and Fronesis; and later on by the names of the secretaries who prepared them, Ottobonus primus, Ottobonus filius, Busenellus, and Vianolus. In the special archive of the Avogadori di Commun a contemporary series of registers is to be found; ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... And, ten minutes before starting, Maisie had declared herself too tired to go. Anne wouldn't go without her, and Jerrold, rather sulky, had set off by himself. He couldn't understand Maisie's sudden fits of fatigue when there was nothing the matter with her. He thought her capricious and hysterical. She was acquiring his mother's perverse habit of upsetting your engagements at the last moment; and lately she had been particularly tiresome about motoring. Either they were going too fast or ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... alterations in "things,"—that is to say in the Bibliomania itself—have been equally capricious and unaccountable: our countrymen being, in these days, to the full as fond of novelty and variety as in those of Henry the Eighth. Dr. Board, who wrote his Introduction of Knowledge in the year 1542, and dedicated it to the Princess Mary, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... mental trait seems to be a languid melancholy, which has its source in a rather bitter feeling of the futility of life;[129] and this is accompanied by fits of weariness which are not altogether healthy, followed by capricious moods and nervous gaiety, and a freakish liking for burlesque and mimicry. It is his eager, restless spirit that makes him rush about the world writing Breton and Auvergnian rhapsodies, Persian songs, Algerian suites, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... been preserved intact in this edition; but with respect to the employment of capitals, the entirely arbitrary manner in which they are introduced into the book as originally published, has made it necessary to reduce them, as well as the singularly capricious punctuation, to modern rules. At the same time, in those cases where capitals seemed more characteristic or appropriate, they ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... illustrious Cranmer, the man whom king Henry's capricious soul esteemed for his virtues above all other men. Cranmer's example is an endless testimony that fraud and cruelty are the leading characteristics of the catholic hierarchy. They first seduced him to live by recantation, and then doomed him to perish, using perhaps ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... did its last heroic service. And even the "Kammersymphonie," despite all the signs of transition to a more personal manner, despite the increased scholasticism of tone, despite the more acidulous coloration, despite the distinctly novel scherzo, with its capricious and fawn-like leaping, is not quite ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... widow was capricious and swayed by fluctuations of health. She was "up and down," whatever that betokened. At one moment she "saw the sun,"—her poetical way of expressing that she began to feel pretty well,—and thought she had had enough of the "frivolous ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... woman of mystery—let us once more change the scene. Now pass we to the pirate's domain at Istria, a region over which, at the period of our narrative, the control of Venice was feeble, exceedingly capricious, and subject to frequent vicissitudes. At this particular time, it was maintained by the fiercest band of pirates that ever swept the Mediterranean ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... eyes only a pis-aller. His dignity might have refused such a situation; but in the first instance he had been hardly more of a free agent than Victoria herself, and later on, as though he were determined to deprive himself of all defence, he proceeded to fall genuinely in love with my capricious but very attractive sister. I was sorry for him, but I am not aware that sympathy with people excludes amusement at them. I hope not, for wide sympathies are a very desirable thing. William Adolphus, looking round for a friend, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... coils and heaves in vain, Bound in the subtle moonbeam's chain; And love and hope do but obey Some cold, capricious planet's ray, Which lights and leads the tide it charms To Death's dark caves ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and as vivid, but also as purposeless and unsystematized as the visual images in a kaleidoscope; such fantasy (often loosely called imagination) appears in dreaming, reverie, somnambulism, and intoxication. Fantasy in ordinary usage simply denotes capricious or erratic fancy, as appears in the adjective fantastic. Imagination and fancy differ from fantasy in bringing the images and their combinations under the control of the will; imagination is the broader and higher term, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... practicable plan, reconciliation or independence? I answer generally, That independence being a single, simple line, contained within ourselves, and reconciliation a matter exceedingly perplexed and complicated, and in which a treacherous, capricious court is to interfere, gives the answer without a doubt.... Instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us hold out to his neighbor the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... flashing broke her heart; for it was the flashing of freedom. She thought of the yachtsman; he was very courteous and deferential; a mild creature; he had behaved to her as to a woman.... Oh! To be the petted and capricious wife of such a man, to nod commands, to enslave with a smile, to want a thing and instantly to have it, to be consulted and to decide, to spend with large gestures, to be charitable, to be adored by those whom you had saved from ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... wedded the pretty princess for her own sweet sake alone, to say nothing of the prospect of being king some day, but she wouldn't have one of them. There was not a man in the kingdom nor in any of the surrounding kingdoms who suited her capricious fancy. Princes of haughty mien, princes of gentle manner, handsome princes, ugly princes, tall princes, short princes, fat princes, lean princes, had been introduced at the court, had been encouraged by the king and queen, and had sought ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... splendid Auroras lately. They are not rosy here, but very beautiful otherwise, and very capricious in shape, long grand tongues of light shooting ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... beautiful and desirable in itself. One element in all this is undoubtedly due to the desire of the will to assert its freedom and the integrity of its being; in other words to the desire of the will towards the irrational, the capricious, the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... Magdalen, and finally landed them in triumph to the minute at the great gate of Christchurch. Then they strolled into the quiet cathedral, delighted themselves with its irregular bizarre beauty, its unexpected turns and corners, which gave it a capricious fanciful air for all the solidity and business-like strength of its Norman framework, and as they rambled out again, Forbes made them pause over a window in the northern aisle—a window by some Flemish artist of the fifteenth century, who seems to have embodied in it at once all his ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and policy. Distracted by the news of the warlike preparations of Servia and Greece, Abdul Hamid looked on Russia's advice in a contrary sense as a piece of Muscovite treachery. About the same time, too, there were rumours of palace plots at Constantinople; and the capricious recluse of Yildiz finally decided to keep his best troops near at hand. It appears, then, that Nihilism in Russia and the spectre of conspiracy always haunting the brain of Abdul Hamid played their part in assuring the liberties ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... wills and associative deliberations have some influence; and he says to himself that the Great Spirit does not act upon the world directly and by himself, or arbitrarily and at the dictation of a capricious will, but mediately, by perceptible means or organs, and by virtue of laws. And, retracing in his mind the chain of effects and causes, he places clear at the extremity, as ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... her toilet arrived, her jaded cousin was literally made to perform all the offices of a waiting-maid. Three times was the tired little girl sent down to the village in quest of something which the capricious Eugenia must have, and which, when brought, was not "the thing at all," and must be exchanged. Up the stairs and down the stairs she went, bringing pins to Alice and powder to Eugenia, enacting, in short, the part of a second Cinderella, except that in her ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... and verandas; then two well-marked zones, the lower zone remaining Georgian, the higher zone, more modern, traversed by a long boulevard planted with fine trees, among which is seen the palace of Prince Bariatinsky, a capricious, unexpected marvel of irregularity, which the horizon borders with its ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... of the removal of lodges is the last thing that shall engage our attention. Here the ancient regulations of the craft have adopted many guards to prevent the capricious or improper removal of a lodge from its regular place of meeting. In the first place, no lodge can be removed from the town in which it is situated, to any other place, without the consent of the Grand Lodge. ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... lacked physical graces, this and many another story prove that she had a rare gift of diplomacy. She had, moreover, an unfailing cheerfulness and goodness of heart which quickly endeared her to the moody and capricious Peter. In his frequent fits of nervous irritability which verged on madness, she alone had the power to soothe him and restore him to sanity. Her very voice had a magic to arrest him in his worst rages, and when the fit of madness (for such it undoubtedly was) was passing away she ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... be so unreliable, monstrous to be so saltatory, so capricious, as to upset other people's ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... he had contrived to put all the house property, except the house at Bycars, into Julian's share; which was extremely advantageous for Louis because the federation of the Five Towns into one borough had rendered property values the most capricious and least calculable of all worldly possessions.... And Louis tried to smile knowingly at the knowing trustee and executor with his amiable partiality for one legatee as against the other. Louis' share, beyond the Bycars house, ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman, and gives to those ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... most complete felicity to everybody concerned in the fulfilment of the desire. She bore the blow from Musa admirably, keeping both her smile and her dignity, and with one gesture excusing Musa to all beholders as a capricious and a sensitive artist in whom moodiness was lawful. It was exquisitely done. It could not have been better done. But not even Madame Piriac's extreme skill could save the episode from having the air of a social disaster. The gaiety which had been ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... to Green Gables—the beautiful capricious, reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red budded and little curly ferns pushed up around ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Mirza Taḳi Khan in his place. It was Mirza Taḳi Khan to whom the Great Catastrophe is owing. When the Bāb returned to his confinement, now really rigorous, at Chihriḳ, he was still under the control of the old, capricious, and now doubly anxious grand vizier, but it was not the will of Providence that this should continue much longer. A release was ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... the Constantine of the heavenly vision, the Constantine of the Council of Nicea, noble, wise and humble, disappears from the pages of history, and a man changeable, capricious ...
— Saint Athanasius - The Father of Orthodoxy • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... thought—see! towards Ulrica's residence! to sigh and moan under his true-love's window!—Now for it. I'll just step in, and give further orders for pursuing this sham nephew, Christopher; and then, if I don't match old baron Ravensburg, and his capricious son, say I'm ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... plants do, this loves a pure air, an elevated situation, and a loamy soil, moderately moist; it is however somewhat capricious, thriving without the least care in some gardens, and not succeeding in others; at any rate it will ...
— The Botanical Magazine v 2 - or Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... of Edwin was to her the feast of the soul, and with visible satisfaction she dwelt upon his praise. Even in sleep her dreams were of the deserving shepherd. The delusive pleasures that follow in the train of dark-browed night, all told of Edwin. The unreal mockery of that capricious being, who cheats us with scenes of fictitious wretchedness, was full of the unmerited calamities, the heartbreaking woe, or the untimely death of Edwin. From Edwin therefore the language of love would have created no disgust. Imogen was not heedless and indiscreet; she ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... importation of foreign goods. Such manufactures must be sold as cheap abroad as any other foreign goods of the same quality and kind, and consequently must be sold cheaper at home. They would still, therefore, keep possession of the home market; and though a capricious man of fashion might sometimes prefer foreign wares, merely because they were foreign, to cheaper and better goods of the same kind that were made at home, this folly could, from the nature of things, extend ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... illustrating, more pointedly, the arbitrary powers committed to these Chiefs, they may import into the debate a fresh and hitherto unbroached line of discussion, and, following it, may argue from a quite novel standpoint, and formulate a decision based upon some utterly capricious leaning of their own. I have not been able to learn whether the decision of these Chiefs, to be valid, requires to be established by their unanimous voice, or simply by a majority ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... healthy and natural taste, was not perverted by philosophical theory; when the simple was necessarily connected with the beautiful, and the epicurean intellect, sated by repetition, had not begun to seek for stimulants in the fantastic and capricious. The realms of fancy were all untravelled, and its fairest flowers had not been gathered, nor its beauties despoiled, by the rude touch of those who affected to cultivate them. The wing of genius was not bound to the earth by the cold and conventional rules of criticism, but was permitted to take ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... is capricious and varied'; that of Pope is cautious and uniform'. Dryden obeys the emotions of his own mind'; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition.' Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid'; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle'. Dryden's page is a natural ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... just inside the open press which held her wardrobe, were some soft white folds of stuff. Her eye gleamed: she ran to the cupboard and took out the Maenad's dress. During the last few days she had somewhat tired of the sittings—she had at any rate been capricious and tiresome about them; and Montjoie, who was more in earnest about this statue than he had been about any work for years, was at his wit's end, first to control his own temper, and next so to lure or drive his strange sitter as to ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... stretched away into the light haze of the horizon, with such lovely violet spots in its caves and hollows, and such soft white gleams on its short headlands—such exquisite gradations of distance and such capricious interruptions of perspective—that one could only say that the land was really trying to smile as hard as the sea. The smile of the sea was a positive simper. Such a glittering and twinkling, such a softness and blueness, such tiny little pin-points ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... with that rare poetic discrimination which neither exhausts it of its simple wonders by pushing symbolism too far, nor keeps those wonders in the merely fabulous and capricious stage. In fact she has produced a true children's poem, which is far more delightful to the mature than to children, though it would be delightful ...
— MacMillan & Co.'s General Catalogue of Works in the Departments of History, Biography, Travels, and Belles Lettres, December, 1869 • Unknown
... boldness of an ancient prophet, entered the presence of the emperor. He was venerable in years, and his gray locks fell in clusters upon his shoulders. The boy king was overawed by his appearance. One word from that capricious king would cause the head of Sylvestre to fall from the block. But the intrepid Christian, with the solemnity of an embassador from God, with pointed finger and eye sparkling with indignation, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... This capricious arbitrary aspect of law was a thing which much impressed the Greeks. They contrasted the varying, artificial arrangements made by mankind with the constancy and simplicity of nature. We speak of nature and convention; ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... most critical people in the world? But Montrond always declared that no man in France would ever take the trouble to read a book if once he had taken the trouble to read the preface. Even by the capricious and pedantic yet ignorant society of fashionable London his fantastical dominion was acknowledged; and the reason of this will be understood at once in the fearlessness with which he uttered his rule of conduct: "Every man of distinction ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... first loosened them with his tusks, used as crowbars. At times he fails to effect his purpose; and it is only when the ground is loose or wet, as after great rains, that he can uproot the larger kinds of mimosas. Sometimes he is capricious; and, after drawing a tree from the ground, he carries it many yards along with him, flings it to the ground, root upwards, and then leaves it, after taking a single mouthful. Destructive to the forest is the passage of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... into my childish heart, turned laughingly upon another child of Minnie's who was playing near her; with enough of wilfulness in her bright face to justify what I had heard; with much of the old capricious coyness lurking in it; but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure, but what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what was on a good ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... shells falling at this corner as a concrete instance of what was happening at a dozen other points along the road. The fire of the German batteries was as capricious as the play of a search-light; one week, the corner and three or four other points would catch it, the next week the corner and another set of localities. And there were periods, sometimes ten days to two weeks long, when hardly a shell was fired at any road. Then, after a certain sense of security ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... the fire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny features, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards, and the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were strangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they .. narrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror told in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards out of them, like the flames ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... "the blade of the sword probably swept off one side. Nothing is so capricious as sword wounds, ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... if I were approaching a great magical city—like some of those in the "Arabian Nights"—that was even more intensely poetical than Nature itself. I did somewhat chide the tantalizing mist, that, like a capricious showman, now raised one corner of its curtain, and anon another, and showed me the place at once very indistinctly, and only by bits at a time; and yet I know not that I could in reality have seen it to greater advantage, or after a ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Gravina de Imperio Romano, p. 479—544 of his Opuscula. Maffei, Verona Illustrata, p. i. p. 245, &c.] The face of the court corresponded with the forms of the administration. The emperors, if we except those tyrants whose capricious folly violated every law of nature and decency, disdained that pomp and ceremony which might offend their countrymen, but could add nothing to their real power. In all the offices of life, they affected ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... has forgot To call the solemn hour; Lull'd by the winds, he slumbers deep, While I in vain, capricious sleep, Invoke thy tardy power; And restless lie, With unclosed eye, And count the tedious hours as ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... were not a force of nature, blind in its strength and capricious in its power, they would not be mistrusted. As it is one can't help it. You will say that this force having been in the person of Flora de Barral captured by Anthony ... Why yes. He had dealt with her masterfully. But man has captured electricity ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself, I had sustained, from my babyhood, a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand gave her no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts, and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... that whether God be construed as favorable or hostile will depend upon the worshipper's conception of these interests. Thus, for example, if worldly success or long life be regarded as the values most eagerly to be conserved, God must be feared as cruel or capricious; whereas, if the lesson of discipline and humility be conceived as the highest good, it may be reasonable to trust the providence of God without any ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... not born to be of the regimental band! thinks Friedrich Wilhelm. Fritz is celebrated, too, for his fine foot; a dapper little fellow, altogether pretty in the eyes of simple female courtiers, with his blond locks combed out at the temples, with his bright eyes, sharp wit, and sparkling capricious ways. The cockatoo locks, these at least we will abate! ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... that having said something absolutely impossible and without proof, he kept on repeating it, beginning in a childish, capricious tone, and gradually raising his voice to ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... there had been a carriage, sometimes there had been none. And then there came a time in which she was grown woman enough to understand that her father was being much talked about. Her father to her had always been alternately capricious and indifferent rather than cross or cruel, but, just at this period he was cruel both to her and to his wife. And Madame Melmotte would weep at times and declare that they were all ruined. Then, at a moment, they burst out into sudden splendour at Paris. There was an hotel, with carriages and ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... than ventosity beneath the sky. This will help to spread the philosophic reputation of this eccentric book. Oh yes; go on. He who cries "vermin powder," is more advanced than those who occupy themselves with Nature, seeing that she is a proud jade and a capricious one, and only allows herself to be seen at certain times. Do you understand? So in all languages does she belong to the feminine gender, being a thing essentially changeable and fruitful and ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... found some one whom you can talk to, my dear John," his hostess declared. "I shall consider you off my hands for the afternoon. Come and dine with me next Sunday night, and don't lose your heart to Sarah Baldwin. She's a capricious little minx, and, besides, she's engaged to Jimmy there, though heaven knows whether they'll ever get married.—There! I knew it! My own particular Bishop being lured into conversation with Hilda Sutton, who's just become a freethinker and can't ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... demeanor; but she knew—I should rather have said she was aware; for it was a matter more of sensation than thought—a conviction that had grown up in her mind without reflection—she was aware that her mother was somewhat capricious in her friendships. She had seen it in the case of servants and of some of the governesses she had had when she was quite young. One day they would be all that was estimable and charming in Lady Hastings' ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... came home to Castlewood for his last vacation he found his old pupil shot up into this capricious beauty; her brother, a handsome, high-spirited, brave lad, generous and frank and kind to everybody, save perhaps Beatrix, with whom he was perpetually at war, and not from his, but her, fault; adoring his mother, whose joy he was. And Lady Castlewood was no ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of the British Minister on account of his pro-Serbian sympathies, but he says no word about M. Savinsky, the Russian Minister, who was left by his Entente colleagues to play the first violin. This capricious gentleman was no diplomat, but a courtier. He did not even protest when German munitions for Turkey passed through Roumania, and far too much of his time was spent in motoring with pretty girls in the neighbourhood of Sofia. Many good observers were of opinion that with a more ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... certain young lady, Who's just in her hey-day, And full of all mischief, I ween; So teasing! so pleasing! Capricious! delicious! And you know very ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... have a capricious and variable appetite as regards their ordinary feed but evince a strong desire to lick and eat substances for which healthy cattle show no inclination. Alkaline and saline-tasting substances are especially attractive to cattle having a depraved appetite and they ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... Frank," she said softly. "I am a capricious, foolish girl, I know, and I am really ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... terminal branches became slightly curved in 10 m. after they had touched a stick; and in 30 m. the tips were curled quite round it. The basal part is less sensitive. The tendrils revolved in an apparently capricious manner, sometimes very slightly or not at all; at other times they described large regular ellipses. I could detect no spontaneous movement in the petioles ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... bending forwards, and decorated with several antlers, the ends of which are formed somewhat like a rose; that his flesh is dry like that of ours, and when he is fat tastes like mutton. They feed in herds, and are not in the least of a fierce nature. They are excessively capricious, hardly remain a moment in one place, but are coming and going continually. The natives dress the skin extremely well, like buff, and afterwards paint it. Those skins that are brought to France are ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... too much time to his Tennis, Neglectful of dear L. S. D., If he chatters of WHISTLER and Venice, If he cares about Five o'clock Tea; If he's not sometimes rude or capricious (All swells who have money are so), Such signs are extremely suspicious; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 8, 1893 • Various
... happily intent, the three, going out to their breaking ground. Lydia felt the tempest in her going down, and she wished she were with them. But her temper shut her out. She felt like a little cloud driven by some capricious wind to darken the face of earth, and not by ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... wrote about than who the writers were, and what they felt and thought than by what names they were baptised. The mass of their literature, as it is at present known to us, divides into two broad classes. The one division includes poems on the themes of vagabond existence, the truant life of these capricious students; on spring-time and its rural pleasure; on love in many phases and for divers kinds of women; lastly, on wine and on the dice-box. The other division is devoted to graver topics; to satires on society, touching especially the Roman ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... to laugh at his friend. He was funny, he was pathetic, so prone to be cast down one moment and the next raised aloft to the skies, according to the whim of the capricious young lady. Many times Pan had ridden and worked with a boy afflicted with ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... indeed, at that time, a great favorite in the house. All the old people cared for me especially, and I was kept often in the parlor, and, when I was cold, the children were allowed to sit upon me, but never to abuse me. But this is a capricious, changing, cheating, vain world, and foot stoves are not thought much of nowadays. The churches are warmed all over, so that foot stoves are not needed, and so I never go to church; indeed, in my broken-down state of health, it would hardly ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... heart, and furious at being deprived of such a fine show. Thereupon, through the silent deserted streets, all the life of Paris having betaken itself to the great artery of the boulevard, began a capricious, aimless journey, the senseless loitering of a cab hired by the hour, reaching the extreme limits of Faubourg Saint-Martin, Faubourg Saint-Denis, returning toward the centre, and always finding at the end ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... bad reputation with the menagerie men. At times placid and even good-natured, on other occasions he was capricious, savage and dangerous. Even his trainer had narrowly escaped a death blow from one of the animal's enormous paws when the brute was in one ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... the capricious wanderings of the current occasioned not a little marvel and perplexity to these illustrious mariners. Now would they be caught by the wanton eddies, and, sweeping round a jutting point, would wind deep into some romantic little cove, that indented ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... estates. His letters give us the most vivid picture of his work and of his character. In them he is constantly giving directions and making arrangements that no injustice should be done to even the meanest peasant or serf on these estates; that their rents should be fixed, and no capricious exactions demanded of them, nor surcharges added to the payments legally due from them. He showed to the Jews a toleration and consideration which he did not always extend to schismatics, heretics, and heathen. He seems to have reserved his most violent language for Lombards and Patriarchs of ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... Sir Richard, as he took the seat beside the glowing hearth, near to his wife's chair, which was his regular place when he was within doors. "I scarce know the child again in some of her moods. She was always wayward and capricious, but as gay and happy as the day was long—as full of sunshine as a May morning. Whence come, then, all these vapours and reveries and bursts of causeless weeping? I have found her in tears more oft these last three months than ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... my light pinions I soar off to Olympus; in its capricious flight my Muse flutters along the thousand paths ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... To win no confidence, and wake no love; The sweeping fierceness which his soul betrayed, The skill with which he wielded his keen blade; Where had his arm unwarlike caught that art? Where had that fierceness grown upon his heart? For it was not the blind capricious rage[kl] 790 A word can kindle and a word assuage; But the deep working of a soul unmixed With aught of pity where its wrath had fixed; Such as long power and overgorged success Concentrates into all that's merciless: These, linked with that ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... great artists, lived for his art's sake, and, save in the case of the Duke of Holdernesse, I have seldom known him claim any large reward for his inestimable services. So unworldly was he—or so capricious—that he frequently refused his help to the powerful and wealthy where the problem made no appeal to his sympathies, while he would devote weeks of most intense application to the affairs of some humble client whose case presented those ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that he had learnt Hebrew and could speak Greek, so there was no use in his returning to Azariah any more. At first his parents could only think that he had; quarrelled with Azariah, but it was not so, they soon discovered that he had merely become tired of him—a change that betokened a capricious mind. A growing boy is full of fancies, Rachel said: an explanation that Dan deemed sufficient, and he was careful not to speak against Azariah lest he should turn his son's thoughts back on Greek literature, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... found only in rivers, principally in the Thames and Trent. The carp grows to a great size, 20 lb being not unknown; tench are big at 5 lb; barbel have been caught up to 14 lb or rather more; and bream occasionally reach 8 lb, while a fish of over 11 lb is on record. All these fish are capricious feeders, carp and barbel being particularly undependable. In some waters it seems to be impossible to catch the large specimens, and the angler who seeks to gain trophies in either branch of the sport needs both patience and perseverance. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... deficiency of light, render it impossible for the people to continue their usual out-of-door employments." The result of this he finds to be desultory habits of work, which help to make the national character fitful and capricious. He cites in illustration of his principle the people of the Scandinavian and Iberian peninsulas, whom he finds marked "by a certain instability and fickleness of character," owing to the fact that in Norway and Sweden agricultural labor experiences long interruptions, due to the severity ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... strips of painted wood, the air cooled by a fantastic fountain playing into a pool lined with black and white marbles and red tiling. Lattice-work windows gave on the central courtyard, and were supplemented by decorative windows of stained glass, wrought into capricious patterns. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill |
