"Fickle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by a variety of indications, it was manifest that the winter of the tropical year was at hand. The steady easterly breezes, which, with occasional variations of south-easterly, had hitherto prevailed, were succeeded by violent and fickle winds, blowing sometimes from a dozen different and opposite points of the compass in the course of twenty-four hours. The brief and sudden showers which we had had at intervals for some time past gradually became more heavy and frequent. At length, one calm, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... stationed herself at his shoulder, at last; and the young man did well docilely to obey her whispered directions. In a month, there were a thousand young men about town, far above the station of a Gregoriev, who would have given half their prospects for Ivan's present position. But the fickle goddess loves well to show her face to him who has never sought to lift her veil; and to Ivan, whom she had hitherto served so ill, she chose suddenly to shower with all the things that youth desires. The young man found that, many and varied as had been his dreams ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... father's friend and my own, has been with me on the spot: he thinks the bargain practicable. I am myself, on a more serious review of the lands, much better pleased with them. I won't mention this in writing to any body but you and Ainslie. Don't accuse me of being fickle: I have the two plans of life before me, and I wish to adopt the one most likely to procure me independence. I shall be in Edinburgh next week. I long to see you: your image is omnipresent to me; nay, I am convinced I would soon idolatrise it most seriously; so much do absence and memory ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... mattered. The intermediary phases were of no account. It had been a period of struggle, hardship and, as far as the stage itself was concerned, disillusion. After the first year or so, the goddess Fortune, more fickle in Theatreland, perhaps, than anywhere else, passed him by. London had no use for his services, especially when it learned that he aspired to play parts. It even refused him the privilege of walking on and understudying. He drifted into the provinces, where, when he obtained an engagement, ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... of fruit and leaves together so closely that mildew and rot will follow almost as a natural consequence, and those who follow it are almost ready to give up grape-culture in despair. Nor is this surprising. With their tenacious adherence to so fickle a variety as the Catawba, and to practices and methods of which experience ought to have taught them the utter impracticability long ago, we need not be surprised that grape-culture is with them a failure. We have a class of grape-growers who never ...
— The Cultivation of The Native Grape, and Manufacture of American Wines • George Husmann
... to the governor himself, who appeared determined to release him if he could do it without risk of personal popularity, and who yet, in order to avoid accusation at Rome, gave sentence according to the people's will. The fickle populace crying "crucify him," the disciples who forsook him, the rock-apostle who denied even so much as knowledge of the man, show how all the currents of life about him were stirred and full of tumult. ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... unpalatable advice and which prevented him from exacting vengeance on some occasions, he had scarcely a trait whereon the mind can rest with any satisfaction. Weak and easily led, puerile in his gusts of passion and his complete abandonment of himself to them—selfish, fickle, boastful, cruel, superstitious, licentious—he exhibits to us the Oriental despot in the most contemptible of all his aspects—that wherein the moral and the intellectual qualities are equally in defect, and the career is ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... if she would refuse me if you only acted a sister's part! But you are impenetrable as a rock, and the whole of your fickle sex could not match your ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... was transpiring around him, David seemed to be entirely unconscious and at last the fickle crowd ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... not bring this about," exclaimed Scharnhorst, "but it was our great friend Stein who did it. God Himself sent Minister von Stein to Russia, that he might stand as an immovable rock by the side of the mild and fickle Alexander, and that his fiery soul might strengthen the fluctuating resolutions of the czar, and inspire him with true faith in, and reliance on, the great cause of the freedom of the European nations, which was now to ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... its mastery of the kosmos. So with the emotions or passions: they are drawn this way or that by the objects of the senses, and the "senses move after their appropriate objects"; it is not the "I," the Self, which moves. And so also with the mind. "The mind is fickle and restless, O Krishna, it seems as hard to curb as the wind," and the mind lets the senses run after objects as a horse that has broken its reins flies away with the unskilled driver. All these forces are set up; and there is one more thing to remember. These ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... achievement and record fell to my brother R. C. It was too much good luck ever to come my way. Fame is a fickle goddess. R. C. had no ambition to make a great catch of swordfish. He angles for these big game of the sea more to furnish company for me than for any other reason. He likes best the golden, rocky streams where the bronze-back ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... for us, and a kind hearty pit; For he, who pleases, never fails of wit: Honour is yours; And you, like kings at city-treats, bestow it; The writer kneels, and is bid rise a poet; But you are fickle sovereigns, to our sorrow; You dub to-day, and hang a man to-morrow: You cry the same sense up, and down again, Just like brass-money once a year in Spain: Take you in the mood, whate'er base metal come, You coin as fast as groats at Birmingham: Though 'tis no more like sense, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... is strange that he was to have almost no influence on the development of the novel in England. When we read of Harry Bailly and the Wife of Bath, of the modest Oxford clerk and the good parson; when we turn the pages of the inimitable story of Troilus and the fickle, tender, charming Cressida, it seems as if nothing was lacking to the production of perfect novels. All the elements of the art are there complete: the delicate analysis of passions, the stirring plot, the natural play of various characters, the very human ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... De Wilton, "yet a strange companionship—one rather of accident than design, I fancy. There is little in either to attract the other, nor is it any secret that the Lord Chamberlain does not love the fickle Stanley." ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... Dickens can write the history of "Boy Slavery," of boys whose aspirations and longings have been silenced forever by ignorant parents; of boys persecuted as lazy, stupid, or fickle, simply because they were out of their places; of square boys forced into round holes, and oppressed because they did not fit; of boys compelled to pore over dry theological books when the voice within continually ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... and manner, however, much of that old grace which had first endeared him to Elizabeth, and even now served to fix her fickle favor. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... Kate, and piquant; she presumed upon her youth, upon her age. She was a child when you expected her to be a woman, and a woman where you looked for the child. No dream of romance was romantic enough to hold her fickle soul constant to it—to satisfy the hopes of her heart. Every man she met was a prince; yet was he, too, bare and poor and mean compared with The Man to come. The child in her was gauche and crude, sitting in judgment—as ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... the historian De Thou has drawn of this fickle prince much too charitable a portrait (iii. 337). It seems to be saying too much to affirm that "his merit equalled that of the greatest captains of his age;" and if "he loved justice, and was possessed of uprightness," ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... lean man persisted obstinately; and he cast a suspicious glance at Tignonville's clothes. It was evident that the two had discussed him, and the motives of his presence there. "Have the dice proved fickle, my lord, and are you for the jewellers' shops on the bridge to fill your purse again? If so, take my word, it were better to go three than one, and ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... in whose vast hold lay stored The priceless riches of all climes and lands, Say, wouldst thou let it float upon the seas Unpiloted, of fickle winds the sport, And of wild waves and ...
— Poems of Power • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... when in comrade's ear Some yeoman, wondering in his fear, Thus whispered forth his mind:- "Saint Mary! saw'st thou e'er such sight? How pale his cheek, his eye how bright, Whene'er the firebrand's fickle light Glances beneath his cowl! Full on our lord he sets his eye; For his best palfrey, would not I ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... rippling by, and glides Into the silent hollow of the past; What is there that abides To make the next age better for the last? Is earth too poor to give us 70 Something to live for here that shall outlive us? Some more substantial boon Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's fickle moon? The little that we see From doubt is never free; 75 The little that we do Is but half-nobly true; With our laborious hiving What men call treasure, and the gods call dross, Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 80 Only secure in every one's conniving, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... our enemies will give credit to, a good deal depends on their own natural disposition. A fickle and arbitrary people, who are continually breaking their faith, can have little belief in the constancy of a sinking fund, but they will be perfectly well inclined to believe, that men of property may be compelled, and will even be glad to pay one per cent. a year, for ten years, to ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... bantered by imitating his way of talking. Nor did he spare Tiberius, who was fond of obsolete and far-fetched expressions. He charges Mark Antony with insanity, writing rather to make men stare, than to be understood; and by way of sarcasm upon his depraved and fickle taste in the choice of words, he writes to him thus: "And are you yet in doubt, whether Cimber Annius or Veranius Flaccus be more proper for your imitation? Whether you will adopt words which Sallustius Crispus has borrowed from the 'Origines' ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... for the swallow, sir?" touching an imaginary cap. "Shall I say that 'Dark and true and tender is the North,' and 'Fierce and false and fickle is the South,' or any ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... thing like this. How fickle public opinion is, after all! Day before yesterday M. de Boiscoran could not have passed through the town without being mobbed. If he should show himself to-day, they would carry him in triumph. He has been condemned, and now he is a martyr. It is known already that the ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... flint! hard heart in haughty breast! By a softer, warmer bosom the tiger's couch is prest. Thou art fickle as the sea, thou art wandering as the wind, And the restless ever-mounting flame is not more hard to bind. If the tears I shed were tongues, yet all too few would be To tell of all the treachery that thou hast shown to me. Oh! I could chide thee sharply—but every maiden knows That she ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... in the valet. "In the first place he is as fickle as the wind, and awfully suspicious. He never leaves anything about,—no letters, no cigars, and no money. He spends half his time in locking things up, and goes to bed with his keys under ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... greatest advantage with his subjects, giving tilts and tournaments and other public festivities in which the Moors delighted. The loss of the castles of Cambil and Albahar and of the fortress of Zalea, however, checked this sudden tide of popularity, and some of the fickle populace began to doubt whether they had not been rather precipitate in deposing his brother, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... practical bill-poster himself. To get the most conspicuous sites for bills and to keep those bills up until the attraction played became the chief task of the advance-agent. The provincial bill-posters were fickle and easily swayed. The agent with the most persuasive personality, sometimes with the greatest drinking capacity, ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... he knows also how to feel at home, when he cares to, in the mimic universe of Lichfield and Fairhaven, where gay ribbons perpetually flutter, and where eyes and hands perpetually invite, and where love runs a deft, dainty, fickle ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... bow to what they will call destiny. "Heaven has declared against us," is an expression that I already hear frequently uttered. It is indeed as impossible to predicate here, as it is in London, what may be the mood of this fickle and impulsive population a week hence. All I can positively say is, that at the present moment they are in "King Cambyses' vein." We ought not to judge a foreign nation by our own standard, but it is impossible not to re-echo Lord Bolingbroke's ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... obtenir aucun bien en droit d'amour," from the object of his passion, and, in disgust, he turned to make love to Laura de S. Jorlan, sister of Berald des Baux. But the other account is that he made love to both ladies at once, and that Adelasia cast him off because she found that his fickle heart was turning to the fresher charms of Laura. Anyhow, he made his rejection by Adelasia the subject of poetical laments, and prosecuted with vigour his siege of the heart and virtue of his patron's sister. And then ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... and La Fontaine will also be guests. If it please you to be one of us, La Fontaine will regale you with two new stories, which, I am told, do not disparage his former ones. Come Marquis—But, again a scruple. Have I nothing to fear in the undertaking we contemplate? Love is so malicious and fickle! Still, when I examine my heart, I do not feel any apprehension for myself, it being occupied elsewhere, and the sentiments I possess toward you resemble love less than friendship. If the worst should happen and I lose my ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... my asseveration, my father knew not whose veracity to impeach; but, charitably concluding there was some mistake, or that I was, as heretofore, a fickle, thoughtless being, considered himself bound in honour to communicate the substance of our conversation to Mr Somerville; and the latter no sooner received it, than he placed the letter in Emily's hands—a very comfortable kind of avant-courier for a lover, after an absence ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... philosophical air and demeanour, though with real kindness and desire to show sympathy, "thou art either entangled by worldly scruples, leading thee to disdain the wholesome art of healing, or thou art, like thy brother, the victim of the fickle sex." ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'False and fickle one!' said he. 'One indeed came who set thee free, and he is now near thee again; but how have you used him? Ought he to have had such treatment from thee?' Then he went out and sent away the company, and said the wedding was at an ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... heavy eyebrows twinkle with star-dust. Dodging occasional flying meteors, which harass him as flies harass a landscapist out of doors on a hot day, he is ever active, this mighty artist of the changing desert sky. So fickle his moods, so versatile his genius, so quick to creation his fancy, that he never knows what his next composition will be till the second ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... bewilder; I build because I am a builder. Crescent and street and square I build, Plaster and paint and carve and gild. Around the city see them stand, These triumphs of my shaping hand, With bulging walls, with sinking floors, With shut, impracticable doors, Fickle and frail in every part, And rotten to their inmost heart. There shall the simple tenant find Death in the falling window-blind, Death in the pipe, death in the faucet, Death in the deadly water-closet! A day is set for all to die: Caveat ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... always fickle, and easily swerved by success or failure. In this instance we had no reason to complain of want of applause, for cheer after cheer was raised in honor of our perseverance, and Colonel Hensen was despatched by the governor to thank us on the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... comment. There may be reasons for breaking one engagement, but when it comes to the second, Mrs. Grundy makes remarks, and is inclined to blame the girl, either for too great haste to wed, or for being fickle and capricious, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... sheen of glorious splendor; when, conscious of her immense wealth in coal, minerals, and fisheries, her delightful climate and geographical position, she bid for commercial supremacy. It is said of States, as of women, they are "fickle, coy and hard to please." For, changed and governed from England's Downing Street, "with all its red tape circumlocution," "Tile Barncal," incapacity, and "how-not-to-do-it" ability that attached to that venerable institution, its people were ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... Behold how fickle Fortune the great ULYSSES treats, Gives him victories in war-time, in peace heaps up defeats. His Southern laurels linger a coronet of praise; But a friendly Senate withers ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... of her vulgarity and repulsiveness have been circulated; but in making up our estimate of her, the fact that she held Goethe in loyal bonds for eight and twenty years must not be passed over lightly. Fickle as he was in youth, and admiring as he did brilliant women in his manhood, Christine Vulpius must have had charms, and not of a light order, to have held him thus her willing slave. No mere fat and vulgar Frau without ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... "Alas! the fickle orb!" murmured Oriana; "it rises but to mock us, and hides itself already in the bosom of that sable cloud. Is there not a threat of rain there, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... between the leading society and the second-class society of Soulanges, brought about by the despotism of the queen, who could not tolerate the empire founded and established over the heart of the brilliant Lupin by the beautiful Euphemie Plissoud, for she herself laid permanent claim to his fickle fervors. ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... 5. The fickle, frivolous, volatile character of so many divinity students is excellently hit off by Bunyan in our pilgrim's impatience to be out of the Interpreter's House. No sooner had he seen one or two of the significant rooms than this easily satisfied student was as eager to get out of that ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... then. Put your hair round your mamma's neck, and give me one good long kiss, and I won't talk any more in that way about your lover. After all, some young men are not so fickle as others; but even if he's the ficklest, there is consolation. The love of an inconstant man is ten times more ardent than that of a faithful man—that is, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... is a young girl's nonsense," observed the old lady. "I was like that once myself. But when one grows a little older and fatter, and there is less about one to take a man's eye,—a fickle thing, Katje, a fickle thing,— one looks for more in a husband than a light foot and ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Light and fickle as is the public taste for literature, we are disposed to think that, (barring the influence of great names) the chances of success are as frequent in this as in any other field of human ingenuity; and we can assure the public that our repose has not always been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... righteousness of Christ, when, and unto whom, God shall impute it for justice; Psalm xxxvi. In the margin it is said to be like the mountain of God; to wit, called Mount Zion, or that Moriah on which the temple was built, and upon which it stood; all other bottoms are fickle, all other righteousnesses are so feeble, short, narrow, yea, so full of imperfections; for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, Christ did for us in the similitude of sinful- flesh. But what could not the law do? Why, it could not ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... out the orders they receive, is most clearly taught both by reason and experience; how subjects ought to be guided so as best to preserve their fidelity and virtue is not so obvious. (18) All, both rulers and ruled, are men, and prone to follow after their lusts. (19) The fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair, for it is governed solely by emotions, not by reason: it rushes headlong into every enterprise, and is easily corrupted either by avarice ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... three are daily reported to headquarters at Washington. In these telegrams a cipher is used—as much, we presume, to ensure accuracy in the figures as for purposes of secresy. In this cipher the fickle winds are given the names of women with a covert sarcasm quite out of place in the respectable old weather-prophet whom every housewife consults before the day's work begins. Thus, when the telegraph operator receives the mysterious message, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... against them—and Maluco affairs were not failing to give Joan de Esquivel, the master-of-camp, sufficient to do. He was acting as governor there and had but little security from the natives, who, being a Mahometan people, and by nature easily persuaded and fickle, are restless, and ready for disturbances and wars. Daily and in different parts the natives were being incited and aroused to rebellion; and although the master-of-camp and his captains were endeavoring to punish ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... position next to mine in the Life School—when I saw Ewing hugging Fanchette on the stairs, on the very landing sacred to my embraces, I knew that Paragot was right, and that Fanchette was just a fickle, naughty little model like the others. But if Paragot had not taken her measure before my eyes at Fontainebleau and made a figured drawing so to speak of her heart and soul, shewing their exiguous dimensions, I might have cast myself beneath the wheels of an omnibus like the pig ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... he started afresh with new hopes. Medicine had been his last fancy, and he had set to work with so much ardor that he had just qualified after an unusually short course of study, by a special remission of time from the minister. He was enthusiastic, intelligent, fickle, but obstinate, full ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... matters. We are not prudent. Unlike the calm blood of Englishmen, ours rushes swiftly through our veins—it is warm as wine and sunlight, and needs no fictitious stimulant. We love, we desire, we possess; and then? We tire, you say? These southern races are so fickle! All wrong—we are less tired than you deem. And do not Englishmen tire? Have they no secret ennui at times when sitting in the chimney nook of "home, sweet home," with their fat wives and ever-spreading families? Truly, yes! But they are ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... more delusive hopes; they actually built a nest in a neighbor's yard, the family in the house maintaining an appearance of the utmost indifference, so as not to alarm the birds till they were committed to that nest. For so little does madam regard the labor of building, and so fickle is she in her fancies, that she thinks nothing of preparing at least two nests before she settles on one. The nest was made on a big branch of cedar, perhaps seven feet from the ground,—a rough affair, as this bird always makes. In it she even placed an egg, and ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... on the other; low hills far away before her; out of them all, the dark torrent of the river showing the swift way to freedom and the great sea? She drew in a full breath, as if close air oppressed her.—A bird flew over her then, high above her head, careering in fickle circles, and at length sailing down out of sight far into other heavens. Flor watched him bitterly; she comprehended Zoe's scorn of her past content;—if only she had wings to spread! But Sarp had told her, that, if she went ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... none but herself to rely on for preserving the fickle smiles of the Court and the public. The King, too indifferent to serve her as a guide, as yet had conceived no love for her, notwithstanding the intimacy that grew between them at Choisy. In his ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... was not pleasant. He put it away impatiently. It cut him. Why had she talked so much about the lady? The lady! Ah! How was it the lady came no more into his thoughts? The memory of her haughty face no more quickened his heart-beats. Was he fickle that he could lose what he had supposed was a lifelong passion in ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... and, straightway arising, she despatched her servants and all who were with her in quest of her spouse; but they happened not on any trace of him nor could they hear aught of his news. So she bethought herself concerning the case and plained and wept and groaned and sighed and blamed Fortune the fickle, bewailing the changes of Time and reciting ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... balanced thought the silent grief That sinks the bosom of the fallen chief. With all the joy that laurel crowns bestow, A world reconquer'd and a vanquished foe. Thus thro extremes of life, in every state, Shines the clear soul, beyond all fortune great; While smaller minds, the dupes of fickle chance, Slight woes o'erwhelm and sudden joys entrance. So the full sun, thro all the changing sky, Nor blasts nor overpowers the naked eye; Tho transient splendors, borrowed from his light, Glance on the mirror ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... was hard, because it was unequal, humiliating, and sometimes degrading, making her to be either timorous, frivolous, or artful. Her amusements were trivial, her taste vitiated, her education neglected, her rights violated, her aspirations scorned. The poets represented her as capricious, fickle, and false. She rose only to fall; she lived only to die. She was a victim, a toy, or a slave. Bedizened or burdened, she was either an object of degrading admiration ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... fancy of Ovid metamorphosed from a restless man to a fickle sea-god; the other assumed so many deceptive shapes to those who visited his cave, that his memory has been preserved in the word Protean. Such fancies well apply to a part of Nature which shifts like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Song is my mistress, fickle she, Yet dear beyond all dearth of speech; Child of the winds of land and sea She charms me with the charm of each— Full soft and sweet she sings and then She sings ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the female heart is so capricious and fickle! You pressed it upon me, I assure you. I own that I was not loath ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dream-life here is past, and, face to face with truth, "rapt from the fickle and the frail," for thee the illusion has vanished! Mayest thou also know the fulness of joy in the unbroken and serene activities of ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... and with it I close the imperfect story of my somewhat romantic life. I have experienced many ups and downs, but still am stout of heart. The labor of a lifetime has brought me nothing in a pecuniary way. I have worked hard, but fortune, fickle dame, has not smiled upon me. If poverty did not weigh me down as it does, I would not now be toiling by day with my needle, and writing by night, in the plain little room on the fourth floor of No. 14 Carroll Place. And yet I have learned to love the garret-like room. ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... you will speedily pronounce the fairies fickle," said she, "for our drive will soon be over, and you will find ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... dearest friend and her authority for the knowledge that while all men will bear watching, married men will bear a most minute scrutiny. Mrs. Pennycook knew that as a wife she was approaching the unlovely age when fickle husbands tire and cast about for younger and prettier women. Hence she decided to trim her mental lamps and light the dastard Daniel ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... heaped upon Montfort by the weak and fickle King, who would far better have understood him, if, like the selfish kinsmen who encircled the throne, he had struggled for his own advantage, and not for the maintenance of the Great Charter. Richard was too young to remember the early days when his elder brothers had been companions, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Gods Love to Mankind did dispence, The sacred Wedlock, which did then commence: Not founded as some Criticks say, by chance; But Heaven it self, did this blest State advance. Not subject to the various Revolutions, Of fickle fading human Institutions. A Married Life was first contriv'd above, To be an Emblem of Eternal Love; And after by Divine indulgence sent, To be the Crown of Man, and Wife's content; Yet black Mouthed Envy Strives with all its might; ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... who was raising him to his feet. Marahna was beside him, robed in the golden garment of the priest. She placed her hands beside his face to turn him toward the further wall. The light was fickle, but it showed him, as it rose and fell, the blackened, swollen body of the monster, still writhing in its death struggle. And beside it, blasted and charred, the head of the obscene sun god, severed by ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Lorenzo the Magnificent. To this palace came the Pazzi conspirators to lure Giuliano to the Duomo and his doom. Here did Charles VIII—Savonarola's "Flagellum Dei"—lodge and loot, and it was here that Capponi frightened him with the threat of the Florentine bells; hither came in 1494 the fickle and terrible Florentine mob, always passionate in its pursuit of change and excitement, and now inflamed by the sermons of Savonarola, to destroy the priceless manuscripts and works of art; here was brought up for a year or so the little Catherine de' ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... Other Fellow The Marionettes The Marquis and Miss Sally A Fog in Santone The Friendly Call A Dinner at ——* Sound and Fury Tictocq Tracked to Doom A Snapshot at the President An Unfinished Christmas Story The Unprofitable Servant Aristocracy Versus Hash The Prisoner of Zembla A Strange Story Fickle Fortune, or How Gladys Hustled An Apology Lord Oakhurst's Curse Bexar Scrip No. 2692 Queries and Answers Poems The Pewee Nothing to Say The Murderer Some Postscripts Two Portraits A Contribution The Old Farm Vanity The Lullaby Boy Chanson de ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... nations, it is true, were superstitious, because all nations, in those ages were intensely superstitious; and each, after a fashion of its own, intensely credulous. But the Roman superstition was coloured by something of a noble pride; the Grecian by vanity. The Greek superstition was fickle and self-contradicting, and liable to sudden changes; the Roman, together with the gloom, had the unity and the perseverance of bigotry. No Christian, even, purified and enlightened by his sublime faith, could ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... came lately to Bath, where he has been exhibiting himself among the bucks and gamesters of the place. Eastgate followed him hither; but he should not have quitted him for a moment, at his first emerging into life. He ought to have known he was a fantastic, foolish, fickle fellow, who would forget his college-attachments the moment they ceased appealing to his senses. Tom met with a cold reception from his old friend; and was, moreover, informed, that he had promised the living to another ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... given a blithesome promise, and anchored it with oaths; but oaths and anchors equally will drag; naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy. Contrary winds from out unstable skies, or contrary moods of his more varying mind, or shipwreck and sudden death in solitary waves; whatever was the cause, the blithe stranger never ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... determined to do my duty," and he dismissed the envoy with the assurance that if the post fell into Proctor's hands it would be in a manner to do him more honor than any surrender could do. The fight then continued until the British general found his fickle savage friends deserting him, and on the 12th day raised ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... put them forth at the beginning of an epoch, a season, and they dropped from him at the close. In as great bitterness as is consonant with his temperament he has asked us why youth should ever have been deemed fickle and age constant when so precisely the contrary is true. Youth, he owns, is indeed full of vain endeavors and of enterprises that come to nothing, but it is far more fixed than age in its aspirations. His aspirations change ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... bowed to Mrs. Carew, and answered: "I met the artist, while upon his sketching tour, and was deeply interested in his success. At one time, I hoped he would cast matrimonial anchor in San Francisco, and remain among us; but his fickle fair one deserted him for a young naval officer, and after her marriage, California possessed few charms for him. I pitied ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... ask our country for the largest possible armies that can be raised, as so important a thing as the self-existence of a great nation should not be left to the fickle chances of war. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... possible for any one to remain faithful here, to be completely steadfast? This doubt often depressed him, and he expresses it, as an artist expressed his doubt, in artistic forms. Elizabeth, for instance, can only suffer, pray, and die; she saves the fickle and intemperate man by her loyalty, though not for this life. In the path of every true artist, whose lot is cast in these modern days, despair and danger are strewn. He has many means whereby he can attain to honour and might; peace and plenty persistently ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... could be fair, and yet not fond, Or that their love were firm, not fickle still, I would not marvel that they make men bond By service long to purchase their good will; But when I see how frail those creatures are, I muse that men ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... eating; Belching of wind; Nausea; Vomiting of food; Water brash; Pain in the stomach; Heartburn; Bad taste in the mouth in the morning; Palpitation of the heart; Cankered mouth; loss of flesh; Fickle appetite; depression of spirits; Lack of ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... us hasten: for this generosity in the heathen is unwonted; and fickle-mindedness has ever been an attribute ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... quite right, lad," the admiral said. "All governments are ungrateful, and republics most of all. Where all are supposed to be equal, there is ever envy and jealousy against one who rises above the rest. The multitude is fickle and easily led; and the first change of fortune, however slight, is seized upon by enemies as a cause of complaint, and the popular hero of today may be an exile tomorrow. Like enough I shall see the inside of a Venetian ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... next day was the Sabbath, thirty-six hours of suspense must elapse before we could know whether this was but a passing kindness from the fickle goddess, or the herald ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... usage forms an exception to the rule; in the other two the noun is understood, and should be supplied by the parser. Such terms, if elliptical, are most commonly of the plural number, and refer to the word persons or things understood; as, "The careless and the imprudent, the giddy and the fickle, the ungrateful and the interested, everywhere meet us."—Blair. Here the noun persons is to be six times supplied. "Wherever there is taste, the witty and the humorous make themselves perceived."—Campbell's Rhet., p. 21. Here the author meant, simply, the qualities wit ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... deluding joyes, The brood of folly without father bred, How little you bested, Or fill the fixed mind with all your toyes; Dwell in som idle brain And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess, As thick and numberless As the gay motes that people the Sun Beams, Or likest hovering dreams The fickle Pensioners of Morpheus train. 10 But hail thou Goddess, sage and holy, Hail divinest Melancholy Whose Saintly visage is too bright To hit the Sense of human sight; And therefore to our weaker view, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... year after year subject-pictures continued to be painted on an ambitious scale, which after a few months' exhibition on the walls of Burlington House passed to their tomb in provincial museums, or reappeared as ghosts in the sale-room only to fetch a derisory price and to illustrate the fickle ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... should my love now wax Unconstant, wavering, fickle, unstaid? With nought can she me tax: I ne'er recanted what I once said. I now do see, as nature fades, And all her works decay, So women all, wives, widows, maids, From ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... himself. Scipio represented, that in case time should be allowed for disciplining the new levies during the winter, they would be much fitter for service in the ensuing campaign; that the Gauls, who were naturally fickle and inconstant, would disengage themselves insensibly from Hannibal; that as soon as his wounds should be healed, his presence might be of some use in an affair of such general concern: in a word, he besought him earnestly not to proceed ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Barbee's natural way to swing along with his hat far back, so that he might see the stars. Now his hat brim was dragged low, and for Barbee the stars were only less remote and frigid than a certain fickle woman. ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... ye steer through the perilous midnight, Let your faithful glances go To the steadfast stars above her, From their fickle gleams below. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... without any three miles of dalliance. The time-serving water made the best of this, forsook its ancient bed (as classic nymphs and fountains used to do), and left poor Bruntsea with a dry bank, and no haven for a cockle-shell. A new port, such as it is, incrusted the fickle jaw of the river; piles were driven and earth-works formed, lest the water should return to its old love; and Bruntsea, as concerned her traffic, became but a mark of memory. Her noble corporation never demanded ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... two wounds, {138} one in the knee and one in the leg, which hindered him from walking. Still he urged the Hurons to renew the attack. But in vain. From overweening confidence the fickle savages had passed to the other extreme. Nothing could inspire them to another assault. Moreover, Champlain had lost much of his peculiar influence over them. They had fancied that, with him in front, success was sure. ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... novelties of this small volume, not the least remarkable is the dedication of this fairy romance to the public, which excited great attention, and charmed and provoked our author's fickle patron. Du Clos here openly ridicules, and dares his protector and his judge. This hazardous attack was successful, and the author soon acquired the reputation which he afterwards maintained, of being ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... filled with the life-blood Of men doomed to die; The seats of the gods He stains with red gore; Sunshine grows black The summer thereafter, All weather gets fickle. Know you ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... endeavouring to stop my ears against popular platitude, but rather, in a spirit of real earnestness, to point out to the mob how it has been cruel to George. I do not despair of success. I think I shall make converts. The mob is really very fickle and ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Swallow, thou that knowest each, That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, And dark and true and ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... PERSON, "There lies the ruins of the noblest nephew of his uncle that ever lived in France or elsewhere. He was unscrupulous, I admit, but he knew how to rule. Shall we stay and hear MARK ANTONY praise him, and set the fickle rabble at the throats of ROCHEFORT and BRUTUS, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... landmarks likely to attract hostile fire, and thus occasion them the unpleasant sensation of living on top of a volcano, while we were slap-bang in the middle of a conspicuous cross road, with a constant stream of traffic coming and going through: yet, so strange and fickle are the fortunes of war that, while we escaped unharmed, our comrades next ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... that without this preliminary training nothing else can be learned well; and that whatever otherwise seem to be accomplishments, turn out, at length, to be fantasies that vanish in the turmoil and struggle of life, or mislead men into a false and fickle management of affairs. Wherefore he felt the peculiar responsibility of his position with all the intenseness of his earnest and far-reaching mind. He knew that his department, though most difficult to be commended to young men in ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... is often made by railroad managers that excesses in railroad competition are the result of the peculiar conditions of their business, which has heavy fixed charges on one hand and a fickle patronage on the other; that the uncertainty of through business compels them to rely upon the local business for such revenue as is necessary to meet these fixed charges; and that, inasmuch as their trains must run, and any through freight ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... call me fickle, Keen to pursue and loth to keep. Ah, could they see these tears that trickle From eyes erstwhile too proud to weep. Could see me, prone, beneath the sickle, While pain and sorrow stand ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... Carthage had overcome Rome. For Carthage was possessed of almost every bad quality which could work ill to the human race. Greed for money was her passion, and in order to obtain wealth she proved herself fickle, short-sighted, lawless, and boundlessly cruel. The government of Rome, which the Eternal City handed on to the countries she conquered, was founded not only on law, but on common-sense. Considering the customs of the world during the thousand years of her greatest glory, ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... over the head of France, so to speak—boilings on the surface, with which the great personality of the nation if such a word may be used, has little to do, and cares but little for; while she herself, the great race, neither giddy nor fickle, but unusually obstinate, tenacious, and sober, narrow even in the unwavering pursuit of a certain kind of well-being congenial to her—goes steadily on, less susceptible to temporary humiliation than many peoples much less excitable ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... husband and kinsman his character assumes a most revolting aspect. Envious, revengeful, subtle, he was as fickle and petulant as he was suspicious and cruel. His brother, even the offspring of his brother, became to him objects of jealousy, if not of hatred. Their friends must, he thought, be his enemies, and applause bestowed upon them was odious to his soul. There were ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... peerage given to the "man," and the vendetta of the Polish Countess, both introduced rather late in Vol. II., must have been after-thoughts. However, the end of the story is both novel and entertaining. The feeble, fickle heroine is made to marry, as her second husband, the man who (as an accessory after the fact) has been the murderer of her first! And the best of the joke is—she does not know it! My "Co." has also been much amused by a brightly-written Novel, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... honorable nature could or ought to place confidence, and who was unworthy even of an explanation. Mary M'Loughlin could have borne everything but this. Yes; the abandonment of friends—of acquaintances—of a fickle world itself; but here it was where her moral courage foiled her. The very hope to which her heart had clung from its first early and innocent impulses—the man to whom she looked up as the future guide, friend, and partner of her life, ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... for men to resolve at the first approaches of the amorous but fickle pair upon interdicting even an accidental temporary junction: for the astonishing sweetness of the couple when no more than the ghosts of them have come together in a projecting mind is an intoxication beyond fermented grapejuice or a witch's brewage; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Rebel regiment from the whole line of eleven guns, at point-blank range, which must inevitably have cut it all to pieces. The fate of the day hung balanced right there and then—with all the chances in favor of McDowell. But those chances are now reversed. Such are the fickle changes ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... good-for-nothing beggar,' he answered, with a sudden air of weary self-loathing and disdain. 'I know. I've got a way of taking everything in deadly earnest for an hour or two. But,' with a sudden swerve into the track of self-justification, 'if that makes you think I'm fickle and weak-willed, you're all wrong, darling. There are some fellows—I know plenty—who go through life like a lot of oysters. They don't feel anything—they don't care about anything, or anybody. But, bless your heart, my dear, they ...
— Bulldog And Butterfly - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... I had convinced my friend that a letter from me ought not to be expected earlier than Monday. I left her to gratify no fickle humour, nor because my chief pleasure lay anywhere but in her company. She knew of my design to make some stay at this place, and that the business that occasioned my stay would leave me ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... injudicious things are said even by some who ought to have more discretion. People talk without thinking, or make such statements to cover their own shortcomings and faults. Why shall they not stand? are they in the keeping of a feeble or fickle Saviour? isn't His grace as strong as sin? is not Jesus always mightier than the devil? and have not millions of the greatest sinners who have found the Lord, stood firm against the snares of the world, and all the devices ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... that from the stronger he had most to fear. Therefore in colonial days France, in later days Great Britain, in both cases Canada, derived more apparent profit from their employment than did their opponent, whose more numerous white men enabled him to dispense with the fickle and feebler aid ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... an hour until a bridge was reached a little below the town that did not admit of the stack going under, and as this was built of bricks, there was a great crash and instant stoppage. Trevithick and Jones were of the old-fashioned school of men who did not believe in impossibilities. The fickle crowd, too, who had hurrahed like mad, hung back and said 'It won't do'; but these heroes, the advance-guard of a race who had done more to make England famous than battles by land or sea, sprang to the ground and worked like Britons, never ceasing until they had repaired the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... she came up to me laughing once, at a time when I stood alone and was, indeed, thinking of Marjorie who was busy in her hut at some task that Lancelot had set her. Barbara began to banter with me in a way that seemed strange with her, saying that I was fickle like all my sex, that I was sighing for fair hair now, who had doted on black locks a few years ago, and much more idle talk to the same want of purpose. At last she asked me bluntly if I had loved her once, and when I answered yes, she asked me if I loved her ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... on the borrower's land or house, or goods, for, we will say, one-half or one-third their value; the borrower then assumes all the chances of life in his efforts to repay the loan. If he is a farmer, he has to run the risk of the fickle elements. Rains may drown, droughts may burn up his crops. If a merchant, he encounters all the hazards of trade; the bankruptcy of other tradesmen; the hostility of the elements sweeping away agriculture, and so affecting commerce; the tempests that smite his ships, etc. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... unseen the while, Stanley broke Lennox and Argyle; Though there the western mountaineer Rushed with bare bosom on the spear, And flung the feeble targe aside, And with both hands the broadsword plied. 'Twas vain: but Fortune, on the right, With fickle smile cheered Scotland's fight. Then fell that spotless banner white, The Howard's lion fell; Yet still Lord Marmion's falcon flew With wavering flight, while fiercer grew Around the battle-yell. The Border slogan rent the sky! A Home! ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... his senseless sleep, and of that last tender, yearning, pitiful look of love, came back on him to arouse successive surges of grief. Contrast Christ's love with your ingratitude, Christ's constancy with your fickle devotion, Christ's meekness to take the yoke of His Father's will, and your unwillingness to bear His cross of shame, and ask if you, too, have no cause for tears like ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... my happiness at one time doth everything in his power maliciously and wantonly to make me miserable at another, I am very little obliged to such a person. And let it be a comfort to my dear Billy, that, however other friends may prove false and fickle to him, he hath one friend, whom no inconstancy of her own, nor any change of his fortune, nor time, nor age, nor sickness, nor any accident, can ever alter; but who will esteem, will love, and doat on him for ever." So saying, she flung her snowy arms about his neck, and ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... the heads of the Mountain pardoned this man, and admitted him into partnership with themselves, it was not without exacting pledges such as made it impossible for him, false and fickle as he was, ever again to find admission into the ranks which he had deserted. That was truly a terrible sacrament by which they admitted the apostate into their communion. They demanded of him that he should himself take the most prominent ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... European powers, looked upon them in a friendly manner. Prussia, indeed, solemnly promised assistance; and in the month of March, 1790, Frederic William even concluded a defensive alliance with Poland. But the friendship of courts is variable, and the favour of monarchs fickle. The King of Prussia had attached himself to the cause of Poland, not from any respect for her rights, but from a spirit of jealousy towards Russia, and in the hopes of obtaining something for himself. He was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... fickle as usual, saw fit to receive them at first with a smiling face. The gale eased to a plain smiling wind; the sullen black clouds dissolved away into fleckless blue, and a sun came out which peeled their arms and faces as they worked. During the afternoon they rose the brown ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... well enough the fickle nature of these savages, who might upon the morrow demand another council and perhaps arrive at different conclusions. Hearing there were no white prisoners in the villages farther to the west, he resolved to ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... unsociable, to mingle with his neighbours. His habits were indeed peculiar: not much to be envied or imitated; as they sometimes betrayed the flights of a madman, and sometimes the asperities of a cynic. His attachments were warm, but fickle both in choice and duration. He would frequently part from one, with whom he had lived on terms of close intimacy, without any assignable cause; and his enmities, once fixed, were immovable. There was, indeed, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... warped away from their opponents until they took the ground. This increase of distance was in every way a gain to the party standing on the defensive, and a corresponding loss to the assailants. Saumarez ordered the cables cut and sail made to close once more; but the light and fickle airs both baffled this effort and further embarrassed the British, through the difficulty of keeping their broadsides in position. Here happened the great disaster of the day. One of the outer ships, the Hannibal, tried to pass inside the headmost of the French, not realizing that the latter had ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... sends her outcast sons— I hail your joyless shores! my weary bark Long tempest-tost on Life's inclement sea, Here hails her haven! welcomes the drear scene, The marshy plain, the briar-entangled wood, And all the perils of a world unknown. For Elinor has nothing new to fear From fickle Fortune! all her rankling shafts Barb'd with disgrace, and venom'd with disease. Have pierced my bosom, and the dart of death Has lost its terrors ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... confessional and her prayers! The godly prior of St. Mark will discipline her imagination till she shall conceit the Neapolitan a Moor and an infidel. Just San Teodoro, forgive me! But thou canst remember the time, my friends, when the penance of the church was not without service on thine own fickle ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Abbott now just any minute." She added, eying the crowd—"I saw Fran on the street, long and merry ago!" Her accent was that of condemnation. Like a rock she sat, letting the fickle populace drift by to minstrel show and snake den. The severity of her double chin said they might all go thither—she would not; let them be swallowed up by that gigantic serpent whose tail, too long for bill-board illustration, must needs be left to coil in the imagination ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... said the fence-rail; "you are so fickle, so unsettled; you must always be travelling about into foreign lands when the cold commences here. You have no love of fatherland in you. There can be ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... unsteadfast state of mortal things! Who trust this world, leans to a brittle stay: Such fickle fruit his flattering bloom forth brings, Ere it be ripe, it falleth to decay." The joy and bliss that late I did possess, In weal at will, with one I loved best, Is turned now into so deep distress, As teacheth me to know the world's unrest.[42] ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... even his brilliance that appealed to me.... He touched my heart by the tokens of true love he gave me, and I do think he loved me truly. He was tender, impassioned. I asked no pledge save of his heart, and alas! his heart was fickle.... I blame no one but myself; it is my confession I am making, not his. I lay nothing to his charge, for indeed he is become a stranger to me. Ah! believe me, Evariste, I swear it, he is no more to me than if ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... awaiting his good pleasure. No visitor could fail to be delighted with the pretty, prosperous little island, and with its genial and hospitable inhabitants. For Americans, too, the place was a godsend, for in forty-eight hours they could escape from the extreme and fickle climate of New York, and find themselves in warm sunshine, tempered, it is true, by occasional downpours, for Nature, realising that the inhabitants were dependent on the rainfall for their water ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his fickle hour; Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st. If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill May ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... with Judge Kemble, a fine of twenty-five dollars, and lectures from all the grown people of his acquaintance, prevented him from regarding his escapade as a feat to boast of. He discovered, also, how fickle a thing is public favor, for very soon those who had praised began to tease, and it took all his courage, patience, and pride to carry him through the next week or two. The lads were never tired of alluding to No. 11, giving shrill whistles in his ear, asking if ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... common-sense tells her that a plunge into the concert field is still dangerous. Accordingly she remains two, or possibly three, more years and at the end if she has worked hard she is convinced that with proper management she may stand some chance of winning that fickle treasure, public favor. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... remained there upward of two years. At first he met with brilliant success, and deprived the Carthaginians of a great part of the island. Subsequently, however, he received a severe repulse in an attempt which he made upon the impregnable town of Lilybaeum. The fickle Greeks now began to form cabals and plots against him. This led to retaliation on his part, and he soon became as anxious to abandon the island as he had been before to leave Italy. Accordingly, when his Italian allies again begged him to come to their assistance, he readily complied ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... work for the comfortable life of a country gentleman. Of his later plays, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Winter's Tale, and Pericles show a decided falling off from his previous work, and indicate another period of experimentation; this time not to test his own powers but to catch the fickle humor of the public. As is usually the case with a theater-going people, they soon turned from serious drama to sentimental or more questionable spectacles; and with Fletcher, who worked with Shakespeare and succeeded him as the first playwright of London, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... up everything of our own; mother and I have felt the rub of hardship before today. The hardest of all was the falling away of those whom we believed to be friends. We learned that the favors of society are as fickle as those of fortune, and that they ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... that he had seen her only yesterday? Or was his visual memory so fickle that he had forgotten what she was like? She was so different from what ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... each other since his day, would never have given their sanction to the costumes and the acting had they not known that the Madonna approved of them. Why should She now think differently? The Mother of God was not a fickle earthly creature, to change Her mind from ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... night lowered black, and the circling shroud Of storm rolled near, and stout hearts learned dismay; Not Hers! To her tried Lord a Light and Stay Even in the Earthquake and the palpable cloud Of those dark months; and when a fickle crowd Panted for blood and pelted wrath and scorn On him she loved, her courage never stooped: But when the clouds were driven, and the day Poured Hope and glorious Sunshine, she who had borne, The night with ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... beyond the waters The fickle feet may roam, But they find no light so pure and bright As the one fair star of home; The star of tender hearts, lady, That glows in an ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... point out to ye that Fortune is a fickle, tricksy jade, and the luck o' the game might fall to your patriarch in the antediluvian ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a lasting feeling of any description. Hers was a life lived for the present only. A tea-party next week was of more importance to her than a change in fortune next year. Some people are thus, and Heaven help those whose lives come under their fickle influence! ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... incapacity finally led to the worst disaster that befell a British army during the nineteenth century, only one officer escaping from among the 4500 troops and 12,000 camp followers who sought to cut their way back through the Khyber Pass[281]. A policy of non-intervention in the affairs of so fickle and savage a people naturally ensued, and was stoutly maintained by Lords Canning, Elgin, and Lawrence, who held sway during and after the great storm of the Indian Mutiny. The worth of that theory of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... youth! It may not happen to me once— once in an age: but when I love then I am young. I loved when I was in Paris. Bathilde, Bathilde, I loved thee—ah, how fondly! Wine, I say, more wine! Love is ever young. I was a boy at the little feet of Bathilde de Bechamel—the fair, the fond, the fickle, ah, the false!" The strange old man's agony was here really terrific, and he showed himself much more agitated than when he had been speaking ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed. |
