"Self-willed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one of us reaches back to our first struggles as we emerged from self-willed childhood into a recognition of family obligations. We have all gradually learned to respond to them, and yet most of us have had at least fleeting glimpses of what it might be to disregard them and the elemental claim they make ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... Arnold. I'm going to tell you something I've never spoken of to anybody ... not even Mother ... and I'm going to do it, so you'll believe me when I say you're worth living. When I was eighteen years old I was a horrid, selfish, self-willed child. I suppose everybody's so at eighteen. I was just crazy for money and fine dresses and things like that, that we'd never had at home; and a man with a lot of money fell in love with me. It ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the natives of Ratinga turned round, childlike—and they were little more than grown up children— swallowed all he had to say and did all he bid them do—or nearly all, for of course there were a few self-willed characters among them who objected at first to the wholesale changes that Waroonga introduced in their manners and customs. In the course of a few months they formally embraced Christianity, burned their idols, and solemnly promised that ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... of him at this time that he was "self-willed, capricious, inclined to be imperious, and though of generous impulses, not steadily kind, nor even amiable." Part of this temper on his part may have come from the fact that the aristocratic boys of the school hinted that his father and mother had not been ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... age; full of ache, sorrow and grief, children again, dizzards, they carl many times as they sit, and talk to themselves, they are angry, waspish, displeased with every thing, "suspicious of all, wayward, covetous, hard" (saith Tully,) "self-willed, superstitious, self-conceited, braggers and admirers of themselves," as [1305]Balthazar Castilio hath truly noted of them. [1306]This natural infirmity is most eminent in old women, and such as are poor, solitary, live in most base esteem and beggary, or such as are witches; insomuch ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Lineage and Station, Richard Twining was an upright and a God-fearing man, and Mary, his wife, patterned in all things after the Behaviour of her godly Ancestor." Either Richard or Mary, his wife, must have something "patterned" after a liberal and occasionally self-willed model, else whence came the spice of independence in the little Mary's character? She was an only child, and only children were probably in the middle of the eighteenth very much what they are in the close of the nineteenth century,—little beings allowed greater liberties, and burdened ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... of a king is He? He is a king of law, and order, and justice. He is not selfish, fanciful, self-willed. He said himself that He came not to do His own will, but His Father's. He is a king of gentleness and meekness too: but do not mistake that. There is no weak indulgence in Him. A man may be very meek, and yet stern enough and strong enough. Moses was the meekest ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... terribly head-strong and self-willed in all they do. They do not seem to know what fear means in any sense—they are dangerous lovers and husbands to trifle with, for they will stop at nothing if their ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... exports will take care of themselves," may chance to meet with many strange facts to confound their arbitrary theorems on the banks of the Neva. Absolute of wisdom, however, as they arrogate to be, and casehardened as they are, against assaulting results which should destroy their self-willed principle—a principle, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, proclaimed to be unchanged and unchangeable—in face of which facts are powerless and adverse experience contumeliously scouted, or mendaciously perverted, it is sufficiently obvious that lessons in political economy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... something, judge. His father was right when he said I took advantage of him. I did. I saw that he was sentimental and self-willed, and all that. I started out to attract him. I was tired of the life I was living, the hard work, the loneliness, and all the rest of it, and I made up my mind to catch him if I could. I didn't think ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... thrown away on the self-willed king. His armies had lately conquered Portugal; England could not stand before their valor; one battle at sea and another on shore would decide the contest; the fleet he was building would overwhelm all the ships that England possessed; the land forces of Elizabeth, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... Agafia did not get on well with her. The austere earnestness of the former "wearer of the coarse petticoat." [Footnote: The Panovnitsa, or wearer of the Panovna, a sort of petticoat made of a coarse stuff of motley hue.] did not please the impatient and self-willed old lady. Agafia obtained leave to go on a pilgrimage, and she never came back. Vague rumors asserted that she had retired into a schismatic convent. But the impression left by her on Liza's heart did not disappear. Just as before, the ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... well; I will leave your nose alone. Underneath it, I see two small red lips, and a little forward chin; a rather self-willed little chin, if you please, Cary—and a good figure, which has learned to hold itself up and to walk gracefully. Will that ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... self-willed," offered Aunt Trudy, "and I have no strength left this hot weather. I said yesterday that you ought to ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... Yoshimune had three sons, Ieshige, Munetake, and Munetada. Of these the most promising was the second, Munetake, whose taste for literature and military art almost equalled his father's. Matsudaira Norimura, prime minister, recognizing that Ieshige, who was weak, passionate, and self-willed, would not be able to fill worthily the high office of shogun, suggested to Yoshimune the advisability of nominating Munetake. But Yoshimune had his own programme. Ieshige's son, Ieharu, was a very gifted youth, and Yoshimune reckoned on himself retaining the direction of affairs ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... fascination which Madame possessed, and the mother, whom so many misfortunes and deceptions had taught experience, replied: "Henrietta was sure to be illustrious in one way or another, whether born in a palace or born in obscurity; for she is a woman of great imagination, capricious and self-willed." De Wardes and Manicamp, in their self-assumed character of courtiers, had announced the princess's arrival. The procession was met at Nanterre by a brilliant escort of cavaliers and carriages. It was Monsieur himself, followed by ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... A self-willed, obstinate fairy, suffering from swelled head. And then there was that personal note. Merely that he should marry the Princess Berchta! She would see King Heremon, and Anniamus, in his silly old wizard's robe, and the Fays of Brittany, and all the rest of ...
— Malvina of Brittany • Jerome K. Jerome
... some one may say, "I know I have sinned, and I do wish and long to obey God, but I am so weak, and my sins have so entangled me, that I cannot obey God. I long to do so. I feel and know, when I look back, that all my sin and shame and unhappiness come from being proud and self-willed and determined to have my own way. But ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... not written to? Why was I not told I had a child?" Again a groan escaped him. "My God!" he cried, "I forgot I had no right to expect that. Like a self-willed child I wantonly threw away life's choicest blessings, was unmindful of its most ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... old gentleman here (I may venture to tell you freely) seems to me to be in a pretty odd way of late—moping, dejected, self-willed, and as if surrounded with some perplexing circumstances. Though I visit him pretty frequently for short intervals, I say very little to his affairs, not choosing to be a party concerned, especially in cases of so critical and tender a nature. There is much mystery in almost all ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... utterly rotten social state was ever drawn than this book gives of the luxury, licentiousness, and oppressiveness of the ruling classes. This passage deals rather with the religious declension underlying the moral filth, and sets forth the self-willed idolatry of the people (vs. 4, 5), their obstinate resistance to God's merciful chastisement (vs. 6-11), and the heavier impending judgment (vs. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the four hundred thousand honest women whom we have so carefully sifted out from all the European nations, we indulge the belief that there are a certain number, say three hundred thousand, who will be sufficiently self-willed, charming, adorable, and bellicose to raise ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... cruel when he chose. To admit this is, as I know, a proof of weakness. So be it, I have never concealed from myself that I am weak. Yet, believe me, I struggled while I could; I wrote to you even, but they intercepted my letter; and I told all the truth to Mr. Cohen, but he was self-willed and passionate, and would take no heed of my pleading. So I married him, Leonard, and was fairly happy with him, for he was kindness itself to me, but from that ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... blame. Moreover, the press, at least in dangerously large proportion, was schooling the people to hold Davis personally responsible for all their suffering. General Bragg was informed in a letter from a correspondent in Mobile that "men have been taught to look upon the President as an inexorably self-willed man who will see the country to the devil before giving up an opinion or a purpose." This deliberate fostering of an anti-Davis spirit might seem less malicious if the fact were not known that many editors detested Davis because of his desire ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... masses, darkly fair, she fixed a diamond star, and over it wound the smoky green like a turbaned vapor, wind-ruffled, through which the diamonds gleamed faintly by fits. Not once would she, while at her work, allow Hesper to look, and the self-willed lady had been submissive in her hands as a child of the chosen; but the moment she had succeeded—for her expectations were more than realized—she led her to the cheval-glass. Hesper gazed for an instant, then, turning, threw her arms about ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... glowing hopes. He had promised Richard Gessner to arrest the girl Lois Boriskoff, and arrested she would be before twelve o'clock to-morrow. As for this amiable English lad, so full of fine resolutions, so defiant, so self-willed, it would be a good jest enough to clap him in a police-station for four-and-twenty hours and to bow him out again, with profuse apologies, when the girl was on her way to Petersburg to join her amiable father in ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant day would seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so as he looked at her. She was pretty. Would have been self-willed (he thought in his eminently practical way) but for ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... is very difficult to keep, and for a cat religiously brought up it is very little inclined to seclusion. It never sees a window without wishing to jump out, it would have leaped over the wall twenty times if it had not been prevented, and no secular cat could be more lawless or more self-willed." ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... either. She looked you straight in the face, and shook her little saucy head, and said plainly, "I won't tell you!" Punished again for this, she would own to being sorry for saying "won't;" but, bread and water notwithstanding, she never told you. Self-willed—devilish self-willed sometimes—I grant; but the finest creature, nevertheless, that ever walked the ways of this lower world. Perhaps you think you see a certain contradiction here? In that case, a word in your ear. Study your wife closely, for the next four-and-twenty hours. If your ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of military organization relied upon throughout the West was that of the volunteer militia. In periods of ordinary Indian warfare the system served its purpose fairly well. Under stern necessity, the self-willed, independence-loving backwoodsmen could be brought to act together for a few weeks or months; but they had little systematic training, and their impatience of restraint prevented the building up of any real discipline. ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... still formidable to the temporal power. It was therefore in the natural constitution of society that bigoted zeal, which in such times makes a show of public acts of penance, should avail itself of the semblance of religion. But this took place in such a manner, that unbridled, self-willed penitence, degenerated into lukewarmness, renounced obedience to the hierarchy, and prepared a fearful opposition to the Church, paralysed as it was ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... my child," and there was a ring of something very like defiance in her voice which smote strangely on her brother's ear; for Emelie Seabrook had ever been regarded as one of the gentlest and least self-willed of women. ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... young men, do not remember this, how among our turbulent, self-willed gentry, always under arms though they were, no police were ever needed: while the true faith flourished, laws were respected; there was liberty with order and glory along with plenty I In other lands, I hear, the government maintains soldiers ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... perverse, self-willed, capricious little puss. She's been too much indulged. She needs to be brought under discipline," said Gerald, angrily whipping off a blossom with his rattan as ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... love determines how I love." Love is his "highest allegiance"; and it becomes ere long an allegiance before which truth, faith, and honour give way, and guidance and control of conscience are swept before the fierce storm of self-willed passion that brooks no interposition between ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... girl of eighteen along with me as an advocate, and seriously concerned for the misconstruction to which her motives might be exposed, I endeavoured to combat her resolution to accompany me to Squire Inglewood's. The self-willed girl told me roundly, that my dissuasions were absolutely in vain; that she was a true Vernon, whom no consideration, not even that of being able to do but little to assist him, should induce to abandon a friend in distress; and that all I could say on the subject might be very well for pretty, ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fifty cents in change, but a dollar bill would suit her exactly as well, she said, and secretly exulting in her mastery over the self-willed tyrant, she suffered him to depart, saying to himself as he descended the stair, "Twenty-five dollars for one bedstead. I won't ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... to work out the destinies of Dorothy and myself without our assistance. Self-willed, arrogant creatures are those same fates, but they save us a deal of ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... be left to him. His mother believed that a strong will, directed upon worthy objects, was a valuable manly quality if properly guided, and she acted accordingly. When others about her commented on the boy's self-will, she would merely say, "Never mind—he is self-willed now—you will see it will turn out well in the end." Fowell learnt very little at school, and was regarded as a dunce and an idler. He got other boys to do his exercises for him, while he romped and scrambled about. He ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... due to animal magnetism, and to the unconscious efforts of the audience, who are ever anxious for the ghost to come and something startling to happen. The ladies, in particular, I would point out, press a little hard with their dainty but determined hands, or with their self-willed knees resort to a few sly pushes. When this does not happen, I think it is quite possible that an elemental or some other equally undesirable type of phantasm does actually attend the seance, and, emphasising its arrival by sundry noises, is responsible for many, if not all the phenomena. ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... lesson a little, and see in the Amreeta wine, the spirit of God pervading all his works, but producing in those who see and taste an effect, for good or evil, according to the nature of the recipient. The strong, powerful, self-willed, passionate character of Mrs. Hazleton, found, in the calm meditative fall of the cataract, in the ever shifting play of the wild waters, and in the watchful stillness of the air around, a softening, enfeebling ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... nothing but a self-willed child yourself, unable to bear the slightest disappointment," ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... between two jays. I happened not to see the beginning, for I was particularly struck that morning with the behavior of a bouquet of nasturtiums which stood in a vase on my table. I never was fond of these flowers, and I noticed then for the first time how very self-willed and obstinate they were. No matter how nicely they were arranged, it would not be an hour before the whole bunch was in disorder, every blossom turning the way it preferred, and no two looking in the same direction. I thought, when I first observed this, ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... talking of his ideas to his fellow workers or employers. This tendency eventually led to his commitment, but as long ago as 1906 a physician said he was insane. For the past six years he has been cross, stubborn and self-willed so that none of family dared to speak to him. He even left home and took a furnished room by himself. In spite of this evident anti-social tendency he speaks of himself as having been filled during this period with a great hope; he has been looking into the future and content ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... walk with me to the church door," she returned, decidedly. I was beginning to find out that Carrie could be self-willed sometimes. "I must talk to you, Esther; I must tell you how I hate it. Fancy trying to hammer French and music into those children's heads, when I might—I might—" But here she stopped, actually ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... enormities, ma'am. I judge the Sergeant to have been utterly wrong; and I offer the opinion that, if he had known Rachel's character as I know it, he would have suspected everybody in the house but HER. I admit that she has her faults—she is secret, and self-willed; odd and wild, and unlike other girls of her age. But true as steel, and high-minded and generous to a fault. If the plainest evidence in the world pointed one way, and if nothing but Rachel's word of honour pointed the other, I would take her word before the evidence, lawyer ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... lot, that the moral character of a savage is truly to be sought; and who can turn without horror from the Esquimaux, peaceably seated after a day of honest labour with his wife and children in their snow-built hut, to the self-willed and vindictive Indian, wantonly plunging his dagger into the bosom of the helpless woman whom nature bids ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... and free colleges, supported by public taxes. Sects and parties may have as many seminaries as they choose, and with rules of study and conduct so easily to be complied with, and administrations so lax, that the most contemptible idler or the most independent and self-willed simpleton shall see in them nothing to conflict with his habit or temper; but the graduates of these seminaries will not ascend the pinnacles of fame nor direct the affairs of nations: such affairs will be left for those who have learned, with their arithmetic, the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... Alfred had been mild and slow; Captain Price (except when his daughter-in-law raised her finger) was a pleasant old roaring lion. Letty had been a gay, high-spirited little creature, not as retiring, perhaps, as a young female should be, and certainly self-willed; Mrs. North was completely under the thumb of her daughter Mary. Not that "under the thumb" means unhappiness; Mary North desired only her mother's welfare, and lived fiercely for that single purpose. From morning until night ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... a self-willed and rather bad-tempered girl of about twelve, evading the vigilance of her mother, who had forbidden her to go out as she had a cold, ran to the gate one evening to see if I was anywhere in sight. Though barely five o'clock, the moon was high in the sky, and the shadows of the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... with puzzles. I therefore will at once say, in explanation of my name, that I have briefly thrust myself into the life of my friends; and of my appearance, that the Middle-Aged Man of the Sea, who is a very self-willed person, caused the costume which I ordinarily wear, and in which I arrived, to be abstracted and hidden, so that I am obliged, while here, to wear clothes belonging to others. Now, you see, Mr. Understudy, everything ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... never arrive, it is not because the seed is not there, but because it is neglected. Thus was it with the singular being of whose feelings we have just spoken. The germ of goodness had been implanted early in him, and was nursed with tenderness and care, until, self-willed, and governed by passion; he had thrown off the connections of youth and childhood, to connect himself with Spike—a connection that had left him what he was. Before closing our legend, we shall ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... her choice to be made, and the imperium would descend on the noblest head that had ever worn a crown. Dea Flavia felt the hot blood rush to her cheeks at thought that the choice did rest with her, that the man who was so proud, so self-absorbed, so self-willed but a few days ago in the Forum, would receive supreme gifts through her; that he would be the recipient and she, like the goddess holding riches, power, honour in her hands; that she would shower them on him while he knelt—a ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... house. But I felt that it was clear that the least want of firmness at the outset would endanger my whole educational plan; therefore, I stood firm, and indeed gained my point, though at the price of being called headstrong, self-willed, and stubborn. That my assumption of my post was attended with a sharp contest was a very good and wholesome discipline for me. It was the fitting inauguration of a position and a sphere of work which was henceforth to be attended, for me, with perpetual ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... things may be gathered that tend to make the biography somewhat more distinct than before, in some particulars. On the subject of his first unfortunate marriage, we are made aware that his wife was a self-willed, ill-taught young woman, who set her own father at defiance, and threw herself on the protection of such a wandering oddity as Percy Shelley. She was strong-minded, and brought with her into her husband's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... finest insight. To some pilgrims the Valley of Humiliation was the pleasantest part of the journey. Mr. Feeblemind, in the second part of the story, was happier there than anywhere. But Christian is Bunyan himself; and Bunyan had a stiff self-willed nature, and had found his spirit the most stubborn part of him. Down here he encounters Apollyon himself, 'straddling quite over the whole breadth of the way'—a more effective devil than the Diabolus of the 'Holy War.' ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... walrus, the roar of the seal rookeries, where millions of cubs wallowed, and where bulls lashed themselves in their rage and fought for mastery of the herd. By November, Waxel alone was holding the vessel up to the wind. No more solemn conferences of self-important, self-willed scientists filled the commander's cabin! No more solemn conclaves and arguments and counter-arguments to induce the commander to sail this way and that! Bedlam reigned above and below decks. No man had any thought but how to reach home alive. ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... help us. Think of them when the people rasp you, when the devil pricks you with his fiery darts, when your sensitive, self-willed spirit chafes or frets; let a gentle voice be heard above the strife, whispering, "Keep sweet, keep sweet!" And, if you will but heed it quickly, you will be saved from a thousand falls ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... enjoyment, came; and opened with more kindness to Fanny than such self-willed, unmanageable days often volunteer, for soon after breakfast a very friendly note was brought from Mr. Crawford to William, stating that as he found himself obliged to go to London on the morrow for a few days, he could not help trying to procure ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... a more difficult matter to get officers than soldiers. Very few of those appointed made their appearance; one of the captains had been promoted; two declined; Washington found himself left, almost alone, to manage a number of self-willed, undisciplined recruits. Happily he had with him, in the rank of lieutenant, that soldier of fortune, Jacob Van Braam, his old "master of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... a very handsome young man in those days—very handsome, very aristocratic-looking, rather haughty in his manners to strangers, but affable and free-spoken to those who happened to take his fancy. He was very extravagant in all his ways; generous and open-handed with money; but passionate and self-willed. It's scarcely strange he should have been so, for he was an only child; he had neither brother nor sister to interfere with him; and his uncle Hugh, who was then close upon fifty, was a confirmed bachelor,—so Henry considered himself heir ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... height such as neither Pitt, nor Fox, nor even Chatham was capable of reaching. There might be seen in Banks's fine bust of him, the cause why Warren Hastings, though he was endowed with many good qualities which endeared him to his friends, was, nevertheless, covetous, self-willed, domineering, unjust, and, in some instances, pitiless, as Governor-General of India. What a contrast to this did the bust of the Marquis of Wellesley, by Nollekens, present. Not only did it indicate that the disposition ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... This self-willed and beautiful Naomi is a well-imagined character, but imperfectly developed. Indeed the whole novel may be described as a jumble of ill-connected scenes, and of half-drawn characters. We have some sad imitations of the worst models of our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... career through life. He was naturally high-spirited; and, having been indulged by his mother, and seldom controlled by his male guardian, a brother some ten years older than himself, Harry was rather disposed to be self-willed, and cherished some false notions regarding independence of character. His friends hoped, however, that as he grew older, he would become wiser. Something of this feeling had been mixed up with the motives which had lately led him ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... Eva knew she would not. Mistaken, Toni might often be—foolish, self-willed, a little intolerant of advice; but she would never be selfish. If she could be convinced that her departure would be beneficial to the man she loved, she would certainly leave him, though it ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... knew Eustace and Meg would have called me self-willed, when my mother had once made such a noise about our taking shelter from Broussel's mob at the Maison Darpent; but this was a mere visit of charity and necessity, for it was quite certain that the two good ladies could never have understood one another without me to interpret for them. Moreover, ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Wenzel had to spoil his hat-full of eyes in learning how to operate for cataract, or an ELEGANT like Brummel to point to an armful of failures in the attempt to achieve a perfect tie. This son of mine, whom I have not seen for these twenty-five years, generously counted, was a self-willed youth, always too ready to utter his unchastised fancies. He, like too many American young people, got the spur when he should have had the rein. He therefore helped to fill the market with that unripe fruit which his father says in one of these ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... her absence the bailiff would unbosom himself to Gilbert on the subject of his daughter's undutiful conduct; telling him what a prosperous marriage the girl might make if she had only common sense enough to see her own interests in the right light, and wasn't the most obstinate self-willed hussy that ever set her own foolish whims and ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... yielding liquid material of water by arm and foot movements. The resistance met on account of currents and waves may be very great, but it is still that of a will-less and passive object. But in riding man has to deal with a self-willed being whose vitality calls forth not only his strength but also his intelligence and courage. The exercise is therefore very complicated, and the rider must be able perpetually to individualize it according to the necessity; at the same ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... It was, therefore, in the natural constitution of society that bigoted zeal, which in such times makes a show of public acts of penance, should avail itself of the semblance of religion. But this took place in such a manner that unbridled, self-willed penitence degenerated into luke-warmness, renounced obedience to the hierarchy, and prepared a fearful opposition to the Church, paralyzed as it was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the little garden at Tarascon would brighten its monotony, and be sweeter to see and breathe than that everlasting baobab, arbos gigantea, diminutively confined in the mignonette pot. With her childlike eyes, and her broad brow, thoughtful and self-willed, Sonia looked at him, and she, too, dreamed—but who knows what the ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... pretentious and hypocritical Communist, dividing his lands, money, and treasure among the people; he will be very ambitious and aspiring, doing or being anything so he may gain his point; he will be very self-willed; he will be very boastful, speaking great words; he will be very cruel, not heeding the plea of woman; he will be very sacrilegious, sitting in the temple of God—that is, the new temple, built by the returned Jews—and actually claim to be ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... knew it. Wealth he had in abundance. It was rank and power that he craved. Four men—all with better war records and more experience—stood between him and that coveted star, and two of the four were popular and beloved men. Frost was cold, selfish, intensely self-willed, indomitably persevering, and though "close-fisted," to the scale of a Scotch landlord as a rule, he would loose his purse strings and pay well for services he considered essential. When Frost had a consuming desire he let no money consideration stand in the way, and ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... is mere child's play compared with the leading under certain circumstances, of one or more self-willed, obstinate, vain-glorious camels. ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... hers, which, in her ecstasy of doubt, terror, and perplexity, she cast up towards him, "I have ever remarked that when others called thee girlish and wilful, there lay under that external semblance of youthful and self-willed folly deep feeling and strong sense. In this I will confide, trusting your own fate in your own hands for the space of twenty-four hours, without my interference ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... their parents, or indifferent to check, should have come to more or less grief. Certainly no one was strong enough to control them, least of all their mother, the queen-bee of the hive, on whom nine-tenths of the burden fell, on whose strength they all depended, but whose children were much too self-willed and self-confident to take guidance from her, or from any one else, unless in the direction they fancied. Father and mother were about equally helpless. Almost every large family in those days produced at least one black sheep, and if this generation of Adamses escaped, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... way to rear one stubborn boy I know of. The neighbors and the ladies' aid society often said my mother was cruel with that angel child. But the neighbors did not know what kind of an insect mother was trying to raise. Mother did know. She knew how stubborn and self-willed I was. It came from ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... foot themselves upon God's revelation of Himself, and in essence are, in various fashions, the repetition of this prayer of my text: 'Be ... for Thou art,' that we can expect to have them answered. Much else may call itself prayer, but it is often but petulant and self-willed endeavour to force our wishes upon Him, and no answer will come to that. We are to pray about everything; but we are to pray about nothing, except within the lines which are marked out for us by what God has ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Accordingly, he made known his wish to Easter's parents that the marriage should take place as soon as possible. Both received the suggestion with silent assent. Then had followed many difficulties. Only as a great concession to the ideas and customs of " fur-riners" would the self-willed old mountaineer agree that the ceremony should take place at night, and that after the supper and the dance, the two should leave Jellico at daybreak. Mountain marriages were solemnized in the daytime, and ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... dreams had come to nothing. And it was this little monster, who looked as fair and as white as a seraph, who had just shattered my first hopes. Huddled up in the cab, an expression of fear on her self-willed looking face and her thin lips compressed, she was gazing at me under her ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... this communication with close attention. He knew the Widow Guff as a person who took boarders in the town where he had sold his cow. She had three children, and had the reputation of being a rather tart and self-willed woman. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... named and described by his own naked name; so Bunyan is always best illustrated out of his own works. And I turn accordingly to the Heavenly Footman for an excellent illustration of the wilfulness of the will both in a good man and in a bad; as, thus: 'Your self-willed people, nobody knows what to do with them. We use to say, He will have his own will, do all we can. If a man be willing, then any argument shall be matter of encouragement; but if unwilling, then any argument shall give discouragement. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... against the Western insurgents should now be with difficulty kept down by sword and carbine, these were signs full of evil omen to the House of Stuart. The warning, however, was lost on the dull, stubborn, self-willed tyrant. He was resolved to transfer to his own Church all the wealthiest and most splendid foundations of England. It was to no purpose that the best and wisest of his Roman Catholic counsellors remonstrated. They represented to him that he had it in his power to render a great service ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the schooner would have a much better chance to get through the blockaders in tow of the Trafalgar than in going on her own hook. Bird is a big fellow in his own estimation; but it struck me that Captain Sullendine had an ignorant and self-willed fellow for a mate, and probably he took the best one he could find; for I think good seamen, outside of the Confederate navy, must be very ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... of the director, delivered in impersonal kindness, the Sans found hard to swallow. Self-willed and self-centered, they bore honest criticism very badly. Neither were they appreciative of his offer to ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... and boisterous; truth is meek—error is proud and self-sufficient; truth is modest—error is bold and forward; truth is diffident—error is confident and assuming; truth is resigned to the will of God—error is self-willed. To arrive at the truth is not the design of such persons. It is not their eternal interests, nor those of their fellow creatures that stimulate them to effort. They read the Scriptures, not as honest inquirers after truth, but with a view of finding something ...
— A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin - or, An Essay on Slavery • A. Woodward
... but everybody else should be so with a blush of conscious exposure, and human nature should be stripped of the hypocritical fig-leaves that betrayed by attempting to hide its identity with the brutes that perish. His sincerity was not unconscious, but self-willed and aggressive. But it would be unjust to overlook that he began with himself. He despised mankind because he found something despicable in Jonathan Swift, as he makes Gulliver hate the Yahoos in proportion to their likeness with himself. He had ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... be thinking of? She is very handsome, of course, but—" then her words failed her. "When Aldous remembers his mother, how can he?—undisciplined! self-willed! Why, she laid down the law to you, Henry, as though you had nothing to do but to take your opinions from a chit of a girl like her. Oh! no, no; I really can't; you must give me time. And her father—the disgrace and trouble of it! I ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you seem. There, see now, I do repent me of my discourtesy. You, Sir Robert, shall squire me to the hall, and Lord Seymour must even content himself with playing the gallant to good Mistress Ashley"; and, leaning on the arm of the now pacified Dudley, the self-willed girl tripped ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... go, to let it depart from them. Wherefore there must go a great deal to the making of a man a Christian; for as to that, every man is a fool, yea, the greatest fool, the most unconcerned fool, the most self-willed fool of all fools; yea, one that will not be turned from his folly but by the breaking of his heart. David was one of these fools; Manasseh was one of these fools; Saul, otherwise called Paul, was one of these fools; and so was I—and that ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... them, and then ticket them anew. She explored their ancestral history on both sides for the origin of their traits, and there were times when she reduced them in formula to mere congeries of inherited characteristics. If Eunice was self-willed and despotic, she was just like her grandmother Mavering; if Minnie was all sentiment and gentle stubbornness, it was because two aunts of hers, one on either side, were exactly so; if Dan loved pleasure and beauty, and was sinuous and uncertain in so many ways, and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... you, I know, if you were not yourself an exception to my rule, when I say that flat waists should have the preference over round ones. The round waist is a sign of strength; but women thus formed are imperious, self-willed, and more voluptuous than tender. On the other hand, women with flat waists are devoted in soul, delicately perceptive, inclined to sadness, more truly woman than the other class. The flat waist is supple and yielding; the round waist is ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... than forgive him. Die, did I say? I'll live these fifty years to plague him. At our last meeting, his impudence had almost put me out of temper. An obstinate, passionate, self-willed boy! Who can he take after? This is my return for getting him before all his brothers and sisters!—for putting him, at twelve years old, into a marching regiment, and allowing him fifty pounds a year, besides his ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... do? Was she to aid and abet Lucy, against her father's will, in pursuing David Grieve? And if in spite of all appearances the little self-willed creature succeeded, and Dora were the means of her marrying David, how would Dora's conscience stand? Here was a young man who believed in nothing, and openly said so, who took part in those terrible atheistical meetings and discussions, which, as Father ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... deceive me. The generalissimo is desirous of punishing me for my victories at Sacile and St. Boniface, and for advocating a declaration of war when he pronounced three times against it. He has already several times told the emperor that I am self-willed, disobedient, and always inclined to oppose his orders by words or even deeds; and the emperor always takes pleasure in informing me ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... in all. Thus, beneath the younger son's caressing gentleness, there grew up a certain regard for self; it was latent, it took amiable colours; it had even a certain charm and grace in so sweet a child, but selfishness it was not the less. In this he differed from his brother. Philip was self-willed: Sidney self-loving. A certain timidity of character, endearing perhaps to the anxious heart of a mother, made this fault in the younger boy more likely to take root. For, in bold natures, there is a lavish and uncalculating recklessness ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... prepossessions, to admit that the two first chapters of Matthew and the two first chapters of Luke are mutually destructive,[1] would it have been faithfulness to the God of Truth, or a self-willed love of my own prejudices, if I had said, "I will not inquire further, for fear it should unsettle my faith?" The reader's conscience will witness to me, that, on the contrary, I was bound to say, what I did say: ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... were not frequent. That worthy man, however, looked upon all her sufferings as the mere pinings of a self-willed girl, lovesick and sentimental, such as he had sometimes heard of, or read in books, and only worthy to be laughed at and treated with contempt. He himself was now progressing in an opposite direction, so far as health was concerned, to that of his daughter. In ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... unallowed, to that use which is against nature; or are found guilty, raging with heart and tongue against Thee, kicking against the pricks; or when, bursting the pale of human society, they boldly joy in self-willed combinations or divisions, according as they have any object to gain or subject of offence. And these things are done when Thou art forsaken, O Fountain of Life, who art the only and true Creator and Governor of the Universe, and by a self-willed ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... disappointed. Tennyson's Muse was ever a wild and wilful creature, defiant of rules, and daringly insubordinate to arbitrary forms. It could not, with the witling in the play, cap verses with any man. The moment its tasks were dictated and the form prescribed, that moment there was ground to expect the self-willed jade to play a jade's trick, and leave us with no decent results of inspiration. For odes and sonnets, and other such Procrustean moulds into which poetic thought is at times cast, Tennyson had neither gift nor liking. When, therefore, with the Duke's death, came a sudden demand upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... little "book learning" in a backwoods school and a little more in a minister's study at Albany. At thirteen he entered Yale; but he was a self-willed lad and was presently dismissed from college. A little later, after receiving some scant nautical training on a merchantman, he entered the navy as midshipman; but after a brief experience in the service he married and resigned his commission. That was in 1811, and the date is significant. It ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... joining the vessel, knowing as he did, the lawless character of her crew. He offered to obtain my discharge if I would come and live with him. His words made a deep impression on my heart, although I was too self-willed to follow his advice. During the voyage, while we were sailing from island to island, those words often and often recurred to my mind. I in vain attempted to drive them from me. When I saw my companions being put to death—expecting to meet the same fate— how ...
— Mary Liddiard - The Missionary's Daughter • W.H.G. Kingston
... is that which severeth faith and repentance; concluding that the soul shall be saved by grace, though the man was never made sorry for his sins, nor the love of the heart turned therefrom. This is to be self-willed, as Peter has it; and this is a despising the Word of the Lord, for that has put repentance and faith together (Mark 1:15). And 'because he hath despised the Word of the Lord, and hath broken his commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut off: his iniquity shall be upon ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... "Thou art a self-willed fool for thy pains," said Julian, turning from him; and signing Christie to approach, he whispered in his ear, "there is promise in that young fellow's looks, Christie, and we want men of limbs and sinews so compacted—those thou hast brought to me of late are the mere ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... even cowed in spirit by the treatment he had received, never were they more deluded. "Snuffed out by an article," indeed! He had infinitely more magnanimity, in its fullest sense, than that very spoiled, self-willed, and mean-souled man,—and I have authority for the last term. To say nothing of personal and private transactions, pages 204-207 in the first volume of Mr. Monckton Milnes's life of our poet will be full authority for my estimate of his Lordship. "Johnny Keats" ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... and self-will are opposed the one to the other. Self-will always means rebellion against God's will. Therefore if a person chooses what he will do, and leaves undone what he finds distasteful, he, and not God, is the master. This self-willed disposition is very noticeable among nominal professors of religion. They profess to be God's servants, and yet they set their wills not to do certain things that they ought to do, or else to do certain things that they ought not ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... and she had left off asking him questions. She drew back into herself and became every day more self-willed, more solitary, ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... as ever trod in shoe leather, replied: "General, I do not remember exactly, but as near as I can judge it was about twenty minutes." That remark settled the friendly relations between the two men. I want to say here that Gillem was not the man for the place. He was self-willed, self-opinionated, knew nothing about Indian warfare; in fact, got his shoulder straps through the enterprise of one of his officers and the treachery of a woman, in killing the Confederate Gen. Morgan. He had nothing else to recommend him, and would not take advice from old veterans ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... will be happy here," returned Grace kindly. After all it might be better not to take this self-willed young woman too seriously. She had, at least, the virtue of truthfulness. She was entirely frank in the expression of her opinions. She might have many other redeeming qualities which would quite overbalance the disagreeably self-centered side ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... is the story of a schoolmaster, his trials, disappointments, and final victory. It will recall to many a man his experience in teaching pupils, and in managing their opinionated and self-willed parents. The story has the charm which is always found ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... and the next day went to pray again—but not that she might be delivered. She brought to the shrine at which she knelt substantial promises as offerings. Hers were not the prayers of a saint, but of a passionate, importunate child, self-willed and tempestuous. She would not have prayed if she could have hoped for help from any earthly means. She had never prayed for anything before. She had always taken what she wanted and gone her way; but she had had few needs. Now in this strange anguish ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... usually called philosophy, and spoils their lives, until the wear and tear of daily life and new anxieties have erased all trace of the old bitterness. Such was the case of Andre Elsberger. He would have liked to be a writer: but his brother, who was very self-willed, had made him follow in his footsteps and enter upon a scientific career. Andre was clever, and quite well equipped for scientific work—or for literature, for that matter: he was not sure enough of being an artist, and he was too sure that he was middle-class: and so, provisionally at first,—(one ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... fine arts, much bravery, high notions of honour, a more than common share of wit, keen and ungovernable feelings, an impatience of contradiction, and an obstinacy in error, he is a compound of jarring elements, that augur tempests and peril. Vain, haughty, and self-willed, his family, his fortune, his accomplishments and himself are the pictures that fascinate his eye. It is attracted, for a moment, by the superior powers of another; but all his passions and propensities forebode that he is not to be held, even by ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... these. Sharp alternations of violent action and self-indulgent repose; a hard run, and a long revel after it: this is what over-much horse tends to animalize a man into. Such antecedents may have helped to make little Dick Venner a self-willed, capricious boy, and a rough ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... well managed, that the income was received regularly, that he could have this, and that it would be intensely disagreeable for her to visit New York. He, who had yielded indifferently to all her little exactions, was inexorable, and the proud, self-willed woman found that he had so much law and reason on his side that ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... favour of Debussy's or of Scarlatini's 17th century tiraliras; or wore spectacles and had to have their front teeth in gold clamps. Just clear-eyed, good-tempered, good-looking, roguish and spontaneously natural and reasonably self-willed children, who adored their parents and did not openly mock at the Elishas that called ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... get winded and ready to drop. Only then is he ready to drop it. Sin can't be patched up or mended. Nursing only helps it to its feet for a fresh start. The whole trouble is in the nature of the thing. The heart pumps the hot blood of rebellion. Its lungs can breathe only self-willed air. The worst punishment of sin is that left alone it breeds more sin, and worse sin. The worst of sin is in its brood. It is very prolific. Every sin is a seed-sin. The breeding process gets the sort more ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... wishes. The Dowager-Duchess rushed to the Kensington Convent.... All the little straw-mats on the slippery floor of the parlour were swept like chaff before the hurricane of her advancing petticoats as she bore down upon the most disappointing, erratic, and self-willed niece that ever brought the grey hairs of a solicitous and devoted aunt in sorrow to the grave, demanding in Heaven's name what Bridget-Mary meant by this maniacal decision? Then she drew back, for at first she hardly credited ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... beautiful scenes and glorious speeches such as only a master of magic could have gotten out of the original story. The Eddaic account of the Valkyr's disobedience to All-Father, pictures a saucy and self-willed maiden. Sentence has been pronounced upon her, and thus the story continues: "But I said I would vow a vow against it, and marry no man that knew fear." The Voelsunga Saga gives exactly the same account, but the poetic ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... replied his mother; "but he is self-willed to madness. He would simply give his life for the thing because it is denied him. If your mistress Nefert were his, perhaps he might be easier; but what is the use of chattering? I must go over to the gold tent, where everyone goes now who has any money in their purse, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... from their infancy to imagine that the whole world was made for them, every wish they have gratified, every day showing them people dependent on them and grateful for favors; and no allowance is made for such a temptation to become haughty, self-willed and overbearing. But of course it stands to reason that the rich never have justice done them in plays and stories, for the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... the "trial and error" method is the natural way of learning. Children take up one habit after another for the sake of experience and discard them by themselves. For a child to lie, to steal, to fight, to be selfish, to be self-willed is not at all unnatural; for him to have bad table manners and to forget admonition in general and against these manners in particular is his birthright, so ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... humouredly quotes a sentence from a friend's letter, written in 1884, "I find a solid line of enemies to you everywhere." And yet, he says, for all that, and in spite of everything, he has had "his say entirely his own way, and put it unerringly on record." It is simply "a faithful, and doubtless self-willed record," ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... stubborn, obdurate, casehardened; inflexible &c. (hard) 323; balky; immovable, unshakable, not to be moved; inert &c. 172; unchangeable &c. 150; inexorable &c. (determined) 604; mulish, obstinate as a mule, pig-headed. dogged; sullen, sulky; unmoved, uninfluenced unaffected. willful, self-willed, perverse; resty[obs3], restive, restiff|; pervicacious[obs3], wayward, refractory, unruly; heady, headstrong; entete[Fr]; contumacious; crossgrained[obs3]. arbitrary, dogmatic, positive, bigoted; prejudiced &c. 481; creed- bound; prepossessed, infatuated; stiff-backed, stiff necked, stiff ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... close to Him. Ye ha' muckle need o' His care. An' dinna trust your life to the dochtering o' a sullen ignoramus like the captain,—an obstinate, self-willed brute, that, right or wrang, will ha' his ain way. Dinna tak' ony medicine ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... three: Katherine, aged seventeen; Hubert, aged ten; and Eliza, aged eight. The girls had their father's handsome features, but in their skin there ran a dusky tinge, hinting of other than pure Saxon blood; and they were every whit as haughtily self-willed as he was. The boy, Hubert, was extremely pretty, his face fair, his complexion delicately beautiful, his auburn hair bright, his manner winning; but he liked to exercise his own will, and appeared to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... Many who heard him play, engaged lessons and he was well on the road to social success. Yet his brusque manners often antagonized his patrons. He made no effort to please or conciliate; he was obstinate and self-willed. In spite of all this, the innate nobleness and truth of his character retained the regard of men and women belonging to the highest ranks of society. With the Prince and Princess Lichnowsky Beethoven ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... with a heart forlorn The pulses of my being beat anew: And even as life returns upon the drowned, Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains— Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart; And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope; And hope that scarce would know itself from fear; Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain, And genius given, and knowledge won in vain; And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... to Thorkel foulmouth's booth, and Asgrim said then to his companions, "This booth Thorkel foulmouth owns, a great champion, and it were worth much to us to get his help. We must here take heed in everything, for he is self-willed and bad tempered; and now I will beg thee, Skarphedinn, not to let thyself ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... have been more impressed, had she ever ceased to think of Master Jemmy otherwise than as a self-willed but candid boy; and she answered as if he had been throwing himself on her mercy after breaking a window, or ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on the end of a box-couch, a young woman was perched, thin shoulders rounded over the ink-stained drawing-board resting on her knees. She had a large, self-willed mouth and dark Bohemian hair, and wore a dreary cotton kimono over a silk petticoat whose past had been lurid. One hand clutched gingerly a bottle of India ink, the other wielded a ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... happened to be unpopular, with holding beliefs and doing things which they neither believed nor did. Socrates was executed for corrupting youth and infidelity to the gods; Jesus for proposing to overthrow the government; Luther was to the officials of his time one who taught "a loose, self-willed life, severed from all ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... castle,—without a doubt, rather than find himself in the mess of having married a wife who had stolen a necklace, and who would not make restitution. He might marry her, and insist on giving it up afterwards; but he foresaw terrible difficulties in the way of such an arrangement. Lady Eustace was self-willed, and had already told him that she did not intend to keep the jewels in his house,—but in her own! What should he do, so that no human being,—not the most bigoted Tory that ever expressed scorn for a Whig lord,—should be able to say that he had done wrong? He was engaged ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... favorite bird, a starling. Alas! he but repeats what he has heard echoed through the solitude of these rooms. I thought I had smothered him up sufficiently to insure his silence during this interview. But he is a self-willed bird, and seems disposed to defy the wrappings I have bound around him; which fact warns me to be speedy and hasten our explanations. Thomas, this is what I require: John Poindexter—you do not know where he is at this hour, but I do—received a telegram but now, ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... in every other; nor that among those who are good men, there are not those who may have allowed party spirit to take the place of Christian principle; men who have exhibited a mournful destitution of Christian charity; who have indulged in an overbearing, denouncing, and self-willed pertinacity as to measures. Yet with these reservations, I believe that the above is no more than a fair and just exhibition of that class of men who are embraced in the party of Abolitionists. And all this can be admitted, and yet ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... chose Decima, not he; and therefore my father opposed it. To Decima and to Decima's family he could not have any possible objection—in fact, he had not. But he liked to oppose his will to mine. I—if I know anything of myself—am the very reverse of self-willed, and I had always yielded to him. No question, until this, had ever arisen that was of vital importance to my ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... happy childhood and golden youth, Victurnien had never met with opposition to his wishes. He had been the king of the house; no one curbed the little prince's will; and naturally he grew up insolent and audacious, selfish as a prince, self-willed as the most high-spirited cardinal of the Middle Ages,—defects of character which any one might guess from his qualities, essentially those of ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... Grecian epic had arrived, and with Aeschylus, philosophy passed into poetry. The dark doctrine of fatality imparted its stern and awful interest to the narration of events—men were delineated, not as mere self-acting and self-willed mortals, but as the agents of a destiny inevitable and unseen—the gods themselves are no longer the gods of Homer, entering into the sphere of human action for petty motives and for individual purposes—drawing their grandeur, not from the part they perform, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and exhorted them to desist. The proclamation was effective in the south, and the opposition died out in North Carolina. Not so in Pennsylvania. There the Scotch-Irish borderers who lived in the western counties were bent on having their way. A brave, self-willed, hotheaded, turbulent people, they were going to have their fight out. They had ridden rough-shod over the Quaker and German government in Pennsylvania before this, and they no doubt thought they could do the same ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... won't, and you won't. Look here, Francie, this is not a self-willed freak for our own amusement. The keeping up the Church schools here depends upon what we can raise. I hate bazaars. I hate to have to obtain help for the Church through these people's idle amusement, but you and I have not two or three thousands to give away to a strange place ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said Mrs Winn. "There's a great deal of good in Delia, but she is conceited and self-willed, ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... noticed moreover that Hsi Jen had ever since her youth not been blind to the fact that Pao-yue had an extraordinary temperament, that he was self-willed and perverse, far even in excess of all young lads, and that he had, in addition, a good many peculiarities and many unspeakable defects. And as of late he had placed such reliance in the fond love ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... regret for the past; for all that I would ask of you is, that you would aid me to live. Help me to get honest work to do, and I would do it. My condition places me at the disadvantage of seeming to have only my selfish ends to serve, but try if that be so or not. Try if I be self-willed, obdurate, and haughty, as I was; or have been disciplined in a rough school. Let the voice of nature and association plead between us, Grandfather; and do not, for one fault, however thankless, quite ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... Margery Noble herself, earnest, demure, and given to reflection, was Polly's willing slave and victim. However, I've forgotten to tell you that Polly was as open and frank as the daylight, at once torrid and constant in her affections, brave, self-forgetting as well as self-willed; and that though she did have a tongue just the least bit saucy, she used it valiantly in the defence of others. 'She'll come out all right,' said a dear old-fashioned grandfather of hers whom she had left way back in a Vermont farmhouse. 'She's ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... were hardly to be considered safe with so passionate a companion, and for the sake of the reputation of his school, he must ask her to save him the necessity of a public dismissal of her son. Sad by this time were the forebodings of Mrs. Elwyn, but they were useless; her remonstrances with her self-willed son were vain. If Lewie was obliged to submit to being accompanied by his mother wherever he went, he seemed determined to show her, that her wishes had not the slightest power over him. The sowing time had ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... ordinary American democrat felt that the power of his personality and his point of view would be diminished by the efficient centralization of political authority. He had no definite intention of using the democratic state governments for anti-social or revolutionary purposes, but he was self-willed and unruly in temper; and his savage treatment of the Tories during and after the Revolution had given him a taste of the sweets of confiscation. The spirit of his democracy was self-reliant, undisciplined, suspicious of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... door in a moment; she feared he had thought her self-willed in the morning, and she was the more bent on rousing him. She knocked—she opened the door. He had thrown himself into his arm-chair, and was bending over the dreary, smouldering, sulky log and white ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... looking, after an obscure and wistful fashion, for an introduction into society, in which, according to the belief of the family, Mrs. Rhodes occupied a secure and brilliant position. Rosamund had been revolving matters in her pretty and self-willed little head, and in her proud and self-willed little heart she had decided upon a ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... in many unexpected ways. An observant missionary lady once remarked that she had often wondered how such unruly, self-willed children as grow up under Japanese training, or its lack, finally become such respectable members of society. She concluded that instead of being punished out of their misbehaviors they were laughed out of them. The children are constantly told that if they do so and so they will be laughed ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... has experienced the forgiveness of his sins, and has for a little while enjoyed the happiness of that mercy, it not unfrequently appears to his evil and inconstant heart too humiliating a condition to be constantly receiving grace for grace. There is no other radical cure for a proud, self-willed heart than every day and every hour to repeat that act by which we first came to Christ. Pray that you may have more of that childlike spirit which regards the grace of your Lord as a perennial fountain of life. Especially avoid the error ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Dr. Joshua Wream, his step-brother, many years his senior, professor of all the dead languages ever left unburied, had put a considerable fortune into his hands, and into his brain the dream of a life-work—even the building of a great university in the West. For the Wreams were a stubborn, self-willed, bookish breed, who held that salvation of souls could come only through possession of a college diploma. Young Fenneben had come to Kansas with all his youth and health and money, with high ideals and culture ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... characteristic of English Toryism, that it gives way just in time. Every reform has hitherto been granted as it was on the point of being extorted. Official carriages roll over the very spot where Charles I. dropped his self-willed head; Lady Macbeth might wash her hands as soon as the English people their memories of the civil bloodstain. Toryism knows one thing well: that no water-pipes can be made strong enough to withstand the sudden stoppage of a long column of water. They will burst and overflow. No matter what material ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various |
