"Whim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... engage in different pursuits which would excite admiration, while his indolence prevented him from persevering long enough for success. Directly anything bored him he dropped it. Self-indulgence seemed to him the only true wisdom. He never resisted the whim of the moment except through fear of the consequences, and unfortunately many ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... since the Western powers' hope of speedy decisive blows on the part of Russia have shriveled up, they would like to lure the Japanese Army, two to four hundred thousand men, to the Continent. What was scoffed at as a whim of Pinchon and Clemenceau now is unveiled as a yearning of those at the head of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... any recourse, since they dare not interpose that plea before the Audiencia, as it is so powerless to exercise its functions; consequently, to state the case in few words, the archbishop does whatever suits his whim, without there being any one ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... drying of her tears. She was so far from wishing to be a strong-minded person of either gender, that she did not comprehend that her aunt could wish it for her, or could herself seriously claim to be one. The talk about a professorship was in her estimation the wayward, humorous whim of an eccentric who was fond of solemn joking. Mrs. Stanley, meanwhile, could not see why her utterance should not be taken in earnest, and opened her ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... where Jesus is kept under arrest, and questions Him. He has been informed that Jesus claims to be the king of the Jews. Is that so? Is the charge but a piece of malicious slander? If it is, there is an end of the matter. Pilate is not going to lend himself to humour the whim of those hateful Jews, whom he affects to despise while in his heart he is mortally afraid of them. There is nothing of the bearing of the violent insurgent in this calm peasant who stands before him. Surely this is some stupid mistake, or there ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... dear Holy Child, my only treasure, I abandon myself to Thy every whim. I seek no other joy than that of calling forth Thy sweet Smile. Vouchsafe to me the graces and the virtues of Thy Holy Childhood, so that on the day of my birth into Heaven the Angels and Saints may recognise in Thy Spouse: Teresa ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... in wishes. Don't dissipate your energies by trying to satisfy every whim. Concentrate on doing something really worth while. The man that sticks to something is not the ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... agitations the statesman-inventor and the political psychologist find the raw material for their work. It is not the business of the politician to preserve an Olympian indifference to what stupid people call "popular whim." Being lofty about the "passing fad" and the ephemeral outcry is all very well in the biographies of dead men, but rank nonsense in the rulers of real ones. Oscar Wilde once remarked that only superficial people disliked the superficial. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... "It's a whim of Uncle's," says Alvin, chucklin'. "He's gone a little cracked over making and saving money. Poor old chap! Ego developed most abnormally. But the Judge he took me before was that kind too; so I am compelled to live with Dr. Slade. Jolly ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... kept for us, without trouble on our parts, and we adjourn after dinner, when one of the old world (old friends) drops casually down among us. Come and find us out, and seal our judicious change with your approbation, whenever the whim bites, or the sun prompts. No need of announcement, for we are sure ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... whim it happened that six days later a little caravan of women crossed the old front lines beyond Pont-a-Mousson as dusk was falling, and as dark was falling entered ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... selfish—though I hope it is not—when I ask you to leave that bear entirely to me. You know, Vic, that your sister Elsie once expressed a wish for a grizzly-bear collar, and at the time I inwardly resolved to get her one, of my own procuring, if I could. It is a whim, you know, but, in the ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... "the blame of part of the misfortunes of that day: but the mischief is done; no more is to be said about it." I read this new twenty-ninth bulletin: a few slight changes, suggested by General Drouot, were assented to by the Emperor; but, from what whim I know not, he would not confess, that his carriages had fallen into the hands of the enemy. "When you get to Paris," said M. de Flahaut to him, "it will be plainly seen, that your carriages have been taken. If you conceal this, you will ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... and politicians, saw the reason and the necessity of reform. The hero of a victorious war, at the height of his popularity, his party in undisputed and seemingly indisputable supremacy, made the attempt. Congress, good-naturedly tolerating what it considered his whim of inexperience, granted money to try an experiment. The adverse pressure was tremendous. "I am used to pressure," said the soldier. So he was, but not to this pressure. He was driven by unknown and incalculable currents. He was enveloped in whirlwinds of sophistry, scorn, and incredulity. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... its being traced to me." Then he sat looking for a time at the embers reflectively. "'T is folly to want her," he said finally, as he rose and began the removal of his coat, "now that ye need not her money; but she's enough to tempt any man with blood in his veins, and I can afford the whim. Keep that blood in check, however, till ye have her fast; and do not frighten her as ye have done. To think of Lord Clowes, cool enough to match any man, losing his head over a whiffling bit of woman-flesh! What ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and Mrs. Mosby—Aunt Loraine—joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance. She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched and streaked with a chestnut red, colour not so ill as misapplied. Her dress rustled as she swept forward and there were numberless faint clickings and clackings of chains ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... anything beyond a newspaper; and we on this side have emancipated our tongues more than our pens. What stands between Americans and good writing is usually want of culture; we write as well as we know how, while in England the obstacle seems to be merely a boorish whim. The style of English books and magazines is growing far less careful than ours,—less finished, less harmonious, more slipshod, more slangy. What second-rate American writer would see any wit in describing himself, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... to the north, into a region that they did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high railings shadowed with trees, the six friends were startled, but somewhat relieved, to see the President leap from the fire-engine, though whether through another whim or the increasing protest of his entertainers they could not see. Before the three cabs, however, could reach up to the spot, he had gone up the high railings like a huge grey cat, tossed himself over, and vanished ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... father! 'Tis only your whim! His house is high over the stars in the sky, Where the white swan sails undefiled, So high 'tis beyond any mortal eye Save that of the dreaming child!— The church that you spoke of! So then it is there We shall ride in festal procession, As ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... work is done, we must entreat our readers to visit with us, once again, the old Isle of Shepey. The thoughtless, good-tempered, dissipated, extravagant, ungrateful, unprincipled Charles, had been called by the sedate, thinking, and moral people of England to reign over them. But with English whim, or English wisdom, we have at present nought to do; we leave abler and stronger heads to determine, when reviewing the page of history, whether we are or are not a most change-loving people—lovers of change for the sake ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... original of that picture, and never again talk to me of going to see those Percys; for though the girl may be only an unfashioned country beauty, and Georgiana has so many polished advantages, yet there is no knowing what whim a young man ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... made money in business, and bore the reputation of possessing great wealth. Cuthbert, was the only child of infatuated parents, who had spared no expense in his upbringing, and were ready to gratify his every whim. For a genteel occupation he had been placed in a bank—"not that it would be necessary for him to earn his living at it," as Mrs. Aston was careful to inform her lady friends; "but it was well to give him something to do, ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... little aisle an exquisite perfume of crushed violets, and he heard the soft rustling of a gown which was surely worn by none of those who were gathered together to listen to him. He opened his eyes involuntarily, and met the steady gaze of the lady whose whim it had ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... all this in good part. The truth is, he regarded it as a very innocent whim, which required to be indulged in his wife's delicate situation; so he always joined in her hopeful anticipations, and endeavored to sympathize with them. It was under these auspicious circumstances ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... aside from its accidental disarray; the cut of his waistcoat was the extreme of the then fashion, the white tie (twisted beneath one ear) an exaggerated "butterfly," his collar nearly an inch too tall; and he was shod with pumps suitable only for the dancing-floor,—a whim of the young-bloods ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the showman astute On that wily galoot Soon dropped, and you'll say that he leathered him — Not he; with a grim Sort of humorous whim, He took him and tarred him and ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... feathers, th' mis'rable old haythen was locked up in a garret with a revolver in his hand ready to shoot anny wan that come next or near him. He suffered fr'm dyspepsia an' he cuddent sleep nights. He cud ate nawthin' sthronger thin milk toast. He was foorced be fashion's whim to have five hundhred wives whin wan was abundant. Take it all in all, he led a dog's life, an' I bet ye he's happyer now where he is, wathrin' th' geeranyums, mowin' th' lawn, an' sneakin' into Constantinople ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... detail, it might pass for the work of a genii, who knew naught of the weaknesses and ills with which mankind are beset. It is not a great national temple erected by a free and united people, it owes its creation to the whim of an absolute ruler who was free to squander the resources of the State in commemorating his personal sorrows ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... who, in their whim of seeing in every original writer a copy of some predecessor, have declared that Hawthorne is derived from Tieck, and Poe from Hoffmann, just as Dickens modelled himself on Smollett and Thackeray followed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... there are who reason thus—"Oh, the child will grow out of this folly. 'Tis a mere whim—a youthful fancy, not worthy of respect,"—forgetting or shutting their eyes to the fact, that, light though the whim or fancy may be in their eyes, it has positive weight to those who cherish it, and the thwarting of it is as destructive of peace ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... there had been a dance at Piping Tree, and because she had danced twice with Gay (who had ridden over in obedience to a whim), Abel had parted from her in anger. For the first time she had felt the white heat of his jealousy, and it had aroused rebellion, not acquiescence, in her heart. Jonathan Gay was nothing to her (though he called her his cousin)—he had openly shown his preference ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... German Rhine Provinces into a neutral State, I do hope that we shall have the common sense not to guarantee either its independence or its neutrality. If we do so, within ten years we shall infallibly be dragged into a Continental war. We have a whim about Belgium, one day it will prove a costly one; we cannot, however, afford to indulge in ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... justifiable. I had, as I believed, got rid of all the traces of the savages outside the tent. When I found the arrows sticking inside it in my bed, it did not occur to me that it would be equally necessary to get rid of them. The whim seized me of keeping them as a memorial of my escape. Instead, however, of concealing them under the bed, I arranged them in the form of a star on the tent covering just above my head, and every time I looked at them I felt grateful that ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... little Canadian Frenchman, and Charley was English. Both, in the parlance of the road, were "floaters"; that is to say, no locality ever knew them long; the earth was their floor, the sky their ceiling—and their god was Whim. Naturally our trip had appealed to them, and one month in Benton had aggravated ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... vast ruins of Hadrian's Villa, I tried to picture the villa as it was when its first owner walked among the buildings which his whim had created. The moment Hadrian himself appeared upon the scene, antiquity seemed an illusion. How ultra-modern he was, this man whom his contemporaries called "a searcher out of strange things"! These ruins could not by the mere process of time become ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... for a romantic girl to see unmoved, and it was an enigmatic face; one that did not lend itself to immediate comprehension, and that, to one of my temperament, was a fatal attraction, especially as enough was known of his more than peculiar habits to assure me that character, rather than whim, lay ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... the urgency of her summons and decided that she spoke thus conventionally to gain time. On another occasion he might have humoured such a whim, but to-night it goaded him almost beyond endurance. Surely they had passed that ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Roderick is led into different countries (whose peculiarities are described), and falls into the society of wits, sharpers, courtiers, and harlots. Occasionally lavish, he is essentially mean; with a dash of humor, he is contemptibly revengeful; and, though generous minded when the whim jumps with his wishes, he is thoroughly selfish. His treatment of Strap is revolting to a generous mind. Strap lends him money in his necessity, but the heartless Roderick wastes the loan, treats Strap as a mere servant, fleeces him at dice, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... With a docile old general and a niece so young, she had less resistance to encounter than, perhaps, her ardent soul would have relished. Fortunately for the general it was only now and then that Aunt Becky took a whim to command the Royal Irish Artillery. She had other hobbies just as odd, though not quite so scandalous. It had struck her active mind that such of the ancient women of Chapelizod as were destitute of letters—mendicants ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Chinese children is a doleful one. It is understood, of course, that their life is not the same, nor to be compared with that of children in Europe or America: and it should be remembered further that the pleasures of child-life are not measured by the gratification of every childish whim. Many of the little street children who spend a large part of their time in efforts to support the family, when allowed to go to a fair or have a public holiday enjoy themselves more in a single day than the child of wealth, in a whole month ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... sum of money, left in your hands as a sacred trust, and go on a pleasure trip with it. He has intrusted to you the richest and rarest gifts, and every day that you have misappropriated them is a burden upon your conscience. You will feel the same after a long life of adulation, in which every whim has been gratified. Believe me, Miss Marsden, it is a very sad thing to come to the end of one's life with no other possession than a burdened conscience and a heavy, guilty heart. I long to save you from such a fate. That would be ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... his innovations, which were rigorously carried out. Menshikof, once a pastry-cook's boy, aided the Tsar to crush any discontent that might break out, and himself shaved many wrathful nobles who were afraid to resist. It was Peter's whim to give such lavish presents to this minister that he could live in splendid luxury and entertain the Tsar's own guests. Peter himself preferred simplicity, and despised the magnificence of fine palaces. He married a serving-maid named Catherine for his second wife, and loved her homely household ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... asked him to cut off the head of S. John the Baptist, and give it her in a dish. Now, as soon as she asked this, the king was sorry, for he knew that S. John was a good man, and he knew also that he had no right to have a man murdered in prison to please the whim of a wicked woman; however, because he had passed his word, he was too proud and cowardly to go back from it, and refuse her what she had no right to ask. Then he sent an executioner, and he cut off the head of the saint, and put it in a dish, and it was brought thus to the ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... with the additional advantage of his proper chicken flavour being fully developed. The above remarks, however, concerning the capon, only apply to such as are naturally fed, and not crammed. The latter process may produce a handsome-looking bird, and it may weigh enough to satisfy the whim or avarice of its stuffer; but, when before the fire, it will reveal the cruel treatment to which it has been subjected, and will weep a drippingpan-ful of fat tears. You will never find heart enough to place such a grief-worn guest at the head ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... has shaped so cruelly? What whim has cast such fate? Where is, in our creation, The ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... with the ravishing prospect—her eager hopes converting the possible into the probable, and again, by a rapid change, the probable into the certain, the Greek stood spurning the needle work at her feet. Then glancing around, the whim seized upon her to assume, for a moment in advance, her coming stately dignity. At the side of the room, upon a slightly elevated platform, was a crimson lounge—AEnone's especial and proper seat. Over one arm of this lounge ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Lafayette; and Lafayette's Carriage, flaring with lights, rolls this moment through the inner Arch of the Carrousel,—where a Lady shaded in broad gypsy-hat, and leaning on the arm of a servant, also of the Runner or Courier sort, stands aside to let it pass, and has even the whim to touch a spoke of it with her badine,—light little magic rod which she calls badine, such as the Beautiful then wore. The flare of Lafayette's Carriage, rolls past: all is found quiet in the Court-of-Princes; sentries at their post; Majesties' Apartments closed ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... longer such a place engage. While William's natural romantic turn Led him all offers, good and ill, to spurn. He thought of little but Canadian farms, And heeded not Rebellion's loud alarms, [Footnote: The Rebellion of 1837.] Which his old master pointed out to him, To put a stop to such a foolish whim. Yet it caused them sincerest grief of heart From all kind friends and relatives to part, Without a prospect of beholding more Each much-loved face, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Sir Francis," rejoined the other, "that vengeance—ample, refined vengeance—cannot be too dearly purchased; and you will now perceive that I am willing to pay as extravagantly as yourself for the gratification of a whim. On no other terms than these would Lanyere consent to part with the authority he possesses, which while it will ensure you the hand of Aveline, will ensure me the keenest revenge upon Sir Jocelyn. I have therefore acceded to his terms. Thou hast got a rare bargain, Lanyere; ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... thanksgiving. Some pigeons, white, and blue-grey, with a lovely mingling and interplay of metallic lustres on their feathery throats, but with none of that almost grotesque obtrusion of over-driven individuality of kind, in which the graciousness of common beauty is now sacrificed to the whim of the fashion the vulgar fancier initiates, picked up the crumbs under the windows of lady Margaret's nursery, or flew hither and thither among the roofs with wapping and ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... his grief, Till thought is wearied out, and dreams grow dim. What bitter chance, what woe beyond belief Could keep his lady's heart so hid from him? Or was her love indeed but light and brief, A passing thought, a moment's dreamy whim? Aye there it stings, the woe that never sleeps: Poor Nino leans upon his ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... half animal, the sport of impulse, whim, and conceit, 'pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,' a being who, left to his will, roams at night and sleeps in the day, whose speech knows no word of love, whose passions, once aroused, are as the fury of the tiger—they ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... to keep on buying up new land—new desert, that is. Irrigation there's just a question of power—that's how he looks at it. And of course the bigger the scale of the work the cheaper the power will work out. But the Khedive's holding back. It may be just a temporary whim—may be all right again to-morrow. But you never know. And if you think Ferdinand's the man to give in to a cranky Khedive, you're much mistaken. His idea now is to raise all the capital he can lay hands on, and buy him out! What do you say to that? Buy the Khedive clean out of the company. ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... explained that infancy was a sine qua non. They especially wished that the child should be too young to have acquired tastes or habits of any kind, whether good or the reverse. They did not seek to gratify a mere whim of the moment,—simply to provide themselves with a plaything,—but hoped to aid in shaping a life of more than ordinary usefulness and worth. The doctor made answer that he would gladly do his best to find such a child as they wished, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... of? Why, you don't know how to ride. Lord save us, what might happen! What whim is this has come over you all ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... infamy midway between blackmail and burglary. There is to me something in any man's personality that is sacred, something before which there should be a veil, never to be drawn aside save in secret places. An effete whim, no doubt. At any rate it explained why I had enjoyed no success as an interviewer, why I had come away from Mr. Carville without extracting from him his age, his income, his position, the names of his employers, his ship, his tailor or his God. Nothing of all this I knew, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... A whim seized the fair wearer of the negligee. "Come in and sit down, I want to talk to you. There, leave the clothes, boy. I'll pay your mother next time," and she pushed the boy out, and drew the young girl ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... The more she thought of it, the less easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity. From regarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave that desire the appearance of a whim. But could she really set in train events, which, if not abortive, would take her to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... was Saturday, and here he was, at three o'clock in the afternoon, turning over in his mind the best way of sending on an expensive trip abroad a girl who had not the remotest notion of his existence. It was a whim, and a harmless one, and he excused it to his practical mind by the reflection that he was entitled to one day of extravagance after seven years of hard labor. For his own part, he was weary of mountains. He had wrought ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... looks of simple subtlety,—where whim, and sense, and seriousness, and nonsense, are so blended, that all the languages of Babel set loose together, could not express them;- -they are communicated and caught so instantaneously, that you can scarce say which party is the infector. I leave it to your men ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... any person he chooses. It is really the truth—I believe he could ruin any man in the city whom he chose to set out after. He can have anything that he wants done, so far as the police are concerned. It is simply a matter of paying them. And he is accustomed to rule in everything; his lightest whim is law. If he wants a thing, he buys it, and that is his attitude toward women. He is used to being treated as a master; women seek him, and vie for his favour. If you had been able to hold it, you might have had a million-dollar palace on Riverside Drive, or a cottage ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... also prevailed of temporary or experimental marriage, lasting a day, a week, or more. The seal of the compact was merely the acceptance of a gift of wampum made by the suitor to the object of his desire or his whim. These gifts were never returned on the dissolution of the connection; and as an attractive and enterprising damsel might, and often did, make twenty such marriages before her final establishment, she ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... whose eccentric entertainment we have laughed many an hour, has here produced a most pleasant and lively melange, the result of much whim and observation, blended with a vast fund of genuine anecdotes, and a very particular account of the various amusements, customs, manners, and inhabitants of the places of fashionable resort in this kingdom."—Monthly Mirror ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... production of pleasant objects, to fill them; and for its drawing-room tables Miss Greenaway produced books that were in the same key. But as the architecture and the fittings, at their best, proved to be no passing whim, but the germ of a style, so her illustration is not a trifling sport, but a very real, if small, item in the history of the evolution of picture-books. Good taste is the prominent feature of her work, and good taste, if out of fashion for a time, always returns, and is ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... is not that. I want to tell you now, for I think it may save difficulties afterwards. I do not wish to lead a gay life: I cannot go to dances or theatres with an easy conscience. Don't think it a mere whim or passing fancy; it is a matter of principle with me. I have given myself to God for His service, and I look at everything in that light, and from ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... the cuckoo to search for a built nest, and to cast away its foundling egg there, as it is for other birds to welcome and feed the intruder. It seems so satanically clever a thing to do; such a strange fantastic whim of the Creator to take thought in originating it! It is this whimsicality, the bizarre humour in Nature, that puzzles me more than anything in the world, because it seems like the sport of a child with odd inconsequent fancies, and with omnipotence behind it all the time. ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to know us in our own characters, at the end. But Leopold is a man, not a romantic girl, as you are. He has always had a reputation for pride and austerity, for being just before he would let himself be generous; and it may be that to one of his nature, a wild whim like yours—" ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... am, those few simple words your sister spoke to the judge went through and through me like a knife. Strange, in a man like me, isn't it? I am amazed at it myself. My life? Bah! I've let it out for hire to be kicked about by rascals from one dirty place to another, like a football! It's my whim to give it a last kick myself, and throw it away decently before it lodges on the dunghill forever. Your sister kept a good cup of coffee hot for me, and I give her a bad life in return for the compliment. You want to thank me for it? What ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... shameful bargain, thus to submit to a pirate's whim, but the wretched ship's company hailed it as a glad surprise. They had stood in the shadow of death and this was a respite and a chance of salvation. Captain Wellsby was heart-sick with humiliation but it was ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... scorned them, and they scorned him; And he scorned all they did; and they Did all that men of their own trim 285 Are wont to do to please their whim, Drinking, ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... This sudden whim surprised no one. Some prisoners intrench themselves behind a system of defence, and nothing can divert them from it; others vary with each new question, denying what they have just affirmed, and constantly inventing some new absurdity which anon they reject ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... make beds, and, while breakfast is being cooked, to dismantle the camp and, so far as may be, to repack Pilgrim; the Boy collects driftwood, wipes dishes, and helps at what he can—while all hands row or paddle through the livelong day, as whim or ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... excogitation[obs3], "a fine frenzy"; cloudland[obs3], dreamland; flight of fancy, fumes of fancy; "thick coming fancies" [Macbeth]; creation of the brain, coinage of the brain; imagery. conceit, maggot, figment, myth, dream, vision, shadow, chimera; phantasm, phantasy; fantasy, fancy; whim, whimsey[obs3], whimsy; vagary, rhapsody, romance, gest[obs3], geste[obs3], extravaganza; air drawn dagger, bugbear, nightmare. flying Dutchman, great sea serpent, man in the moon, castle in the air, pipe dream, pie-in-the-sky, chateau ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... blow quickly followed. Only a few days after that marriage which her father thought promised so much security and consolation to his old age, the Emperor Paul, in a cruel whim, suddenly banished him from Petersburg. Retiring to Moscow, the galling sense of his disgrace, the separation from his darling daughter, together with a frigid reception by a friend on whom he had especially relied, plunged him into the deepest grief. A terrible attack of apoplexy swept him ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... mild, To make a wash, would hardly stew a child; Has even been proved to grant a lover's prayer, And paid a tradesman once to make him stare; Gave alms at Easter, in a Christian trim, And made a widow happy, for a whim. Why then declare good-nature is her scorn, When 'tis by that alone she can be borne? Why pique all mortals, yet affect a name? A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame: Now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... a passing fancy, a whim. The battle-breeze from this white man's war has risen to a tempest, unroofing the Long House, scattering you for the moment, creating a disorder, inciting a passion foreign to the traditions of the Iroquois. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard, on stormy nights, by some poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was at sea, they had been sometimes known to beat a blustering Nor'Wester; ay, "all ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... yes; but how of my fate, and that of those we love? Are we all to be ruined, and perhaps slaughtered, to satisfy your whim, girl?" ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... of the dog commences with maiming him while a puppy. He finds fault with the ears that nature has given him, and they are rounded or cut into various shapes, according to his whim or caprice. It is a cruel operation. A great deal of pain is inflicted by it, and it is often a long time before the edge of the wound will heal: a fortnight or three weeks at least will elapse ere the animal is free ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... for whom no one had been good enough—should have fallen thus easily to the careless attraction of a man to whom she was nothing, nothing but a piece of prettiness to be bought as cheaply as possible and treasured not at all. Some whim of inspiration had moved him. He had obeyed his Muse. And he had been ready—he had been ready—even to offer her life in sacrifice to his idol. She did not count with him in the smallest degree. He had never cared—he ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... in the fact that he not only dared not flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman; did not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money on a whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except on business—in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits, which she did not in the least understand but to which she attributed great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had the right to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the end, and this requires still more work. These erasers are round or flat or six-sided or wedge-shaped. They are let into the pencil itself, or into a nickel tip, or drawn over the end like a cap, so that any one's special whim may be gratified. Indeed, however hard to please any one may be, he ought to be able to find a pencil to suit his taste, for a single factory in the United States makes more than six hundred kinds of pencils, and makes so many of them that if they were laid end to end ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... other of the same brood of enemies to man's success in laudable undertakings; and of which ignorance is the chief, and may be regarded as the prolific source of all the others. In this case, undoubtedly, as in others, some are opposed from a mere notion of opposition, or from a mere whim; others again, simply to agree with, or differ from, some, who are either in favor or opposed; whilst some must oppose whatever they themselves do not originate;—and, others again, have no doubt been led honestly to entertain a distrust which has finally grown into an opposition, through the influence ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... quiet, refined, and courtly, and the union of their fortunes would assure a competence for the years that might be left to them. The church of St. Paul, on Broadway, was appointed for the wedding, and it was a whim of the groom that his bride should meet him there. At the appointed hour a company of the curious had assembled in the edifice; a rattle of wheels was heard, and a bevy of bridesmaids and friends in hoop, patch, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of "Nathan" was suggested to Lessing by Boccaccio's story of "The Three Rings," which is supposed to have had a Jewish origin. Saladin, pretending to be inspired by a sudden, imperious whim, such as is "not unbecoming in a Sultan," demands that Nathan shall answer him on the spur of the moment which of the three great religions then known—Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity—is adjudged by reason to be the true one. For a moment the philosopher is in a quandary. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... various branches of antiquity. We have never seen a mine so rich as the volumes before us. The variety of Pepys's tastes and pursuits led him into almost every department of life. He was a man of business, a man of information if not of learning; a man of taste; a man of whim; and to a certain degree a man of pleasure. He was a statesman, a BEL ESPRIT, a virtuoso, and a connoisseur. His curiosity made him an unwearied as well as an universal learner, and whatever he saw found its way into his tables. Thus, his Diary absolutely resembles the genial ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... for Saint Patrick a bitterly hard life, for little kindness was wasted on those who were sold into bondage, and slaves were compelled to labor terribly with aching muscles and empty bellies, beaten and cuffed at the whim of their master—who had a perfect right to slay them if he so desired Hunger, blows and fatigue were Saint Patrick's portion and were added to the homesickness of a young man torn ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... there was youth, and there was liberty; and Corbario was at hand, always ready to encourage and satisfy his slightest whim, on the plea that a convalescent must be humoured at any cost, and that there would be time enough to consider what should be done with Regina after Marcello was completely recovered. After all, Corbario told him, the girl had saved his life, and it was only right to be grateful, ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... like the popular novelist, not for their art but for some foolish gift, some facile trick of notoriety, whose actions have tickled the fancy, not the understanding of the world. The coward and the impostor have been set upon a pedestal of glory either by accident or by the whim of posterity. For more than a century Dick Turpin has appeared not so much the greatest of highwaymen, as the Highwaymen Incarnate. His prowess has been extolled in novels and upon the stage; his ride to York is still bepraised for a feat of miraculous courage and endurance; ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... languishing as then, Give them but one fastidious look, And if you see a trace of him Who humoured you in every whim, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... other Pope—the one in Rome. Has he anything approaching it? Can he turn a priest out of his pulpit and strip him of his office and his livelihood just upon a whim, a caprice, and meanwhile furnishing no reasons to the parish? Not in America. And ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whole benchful accounted for at one swoop." Still Jemmy did not reply. The sunbeam drifting between the benches before him fell on a little patch of earth—a patch collected by one of the slaves whose comrades, humouring his whim, had brought him a handful or two in their pockets whenever they returned from shore. Upon this patch of earth were sunk the prints of a pair of feet, far apart; and between these footprints glimmered two lines of green, with two other lines ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a letter to her father; and he hoped this would settle the matter without further discussion. But in this he was disappointed. There had to be a long correspondence with long arguments and protestations from Henriette's father and from his own mother. It seemed such a singular whim. Everybody persisted in diagnosing his symptoms, in questioning him about what the doctor had said, who the doctor was, how he had come to consult him—all of which, of course, was very embarrassing to George, who could not see why they had to make ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... from her tightened lips. He could not have called it unmusical and did not resent it, although he did regard it as without the slenderest excuse. Her eyes and brow, still confronting his in a distress of mirth, confessed the whim's forlorn senselessness, while his face returned not the smallest sign of an emotion. As the moment lengthened, the transport, so far from passing, spread through all her lithe form. Suddenly she turned aside, drew herself up, faced him again, and began to inquire, "Do they ever—" but broke down ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Trevannion began to busy himself with a heavy oil lantern. "I am going to have a look at the section on the way," he said; "just to see that the river has not come over the top," he added jestingly. "It's a whim of mine. But don't come if you'd rather not. I can ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... come home jes' long enough To take the whim 'At he'd like to go back in the calvery— And the old man jes' wrapped up in him! Jim 'lowed 'at he'd had sich luck afore, Guessed he'd tackle her three years more. And the old man give him a colt ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... his throne. He had a beautiful concubine, for the sake of whose company he neglected the affairs of government. The lady was of a melancholy turn, never being seen to smile. She said she loved the sound of rent silk, and to gratify her whim many fine pieces of silk were torn to shreds. The king offered a thousand ounces of gold to any one who would make her laugh; whereupon his chief minister suggested that the beacon-fires should be lighted to summon the feudal nobles with their armies, as though the royal house were in danger. The ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... a hotel register. Your mistress is an odd bit of humanity, a most whimsical bit, I must say. First, she's no and then she's yes. You're lucky, my coin, to have fallen into the custody of one who will not give you over to the mercy of strangers for the sake of a whim. You are now retired on a pension, well deserved after valiant service in the cause of a most ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... such a whim, out of all nature and reason, absurd, and I fully agree with you; yet, have I known a few grown-up children in my day, of high reputation for judgment, who in some of the fancies they have cherished, and in some of the bargains ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... by bayonets grim And babies slaughtered for a whim, Cathedrals made the sport of shells, No mercy, even for a child, As though the imps of all the hells Were crazed ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... The women gathered round the fountain in the Place Royal and filled their water jars and gossiped about Salvatore Urso's silly whim with his child. Madame Dubois settled her cap and gave it as her opinion that no good would come of such a foolish thing. Madame Tilsit knew better, if the child wanted to play, why, let her play. The priest would not forbid it. Madame Perche knew it was far better than teaching children to read. ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... good soul; if the whim seized him he might pay me for my work a shilling in advance, even without my asking for it. People of that sort had sometimes the ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... not rely on God and his truth, otherwise it would war with fraud and deception; but its object is to clothe itself with a misleading garb, even assuming the name of God, and thus to deceive, belie, betray and forsake its neighbor at the bidding of every fiendish whim, and all for the satisfaction of its ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... To please a whim of Madame de Maintenon's, who fed them with scraps from the royal table, some carp were taken out of a muddy pool and placed in a marble basin of bright, clean water. The carp perished. The animals might be sacrificed, but man could never infect them with the leprosy of flattery. A courtier ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... finally, happiest in dreams. I looked at him now in that vein. In and out, elbow-deep sometimes, went his hands and arms, plunging, swimming in that luxurious mesh of hair. He sprayed it out in a shower for Danae; he clutched it hard and drew it into thick burnished ropes of fine gold. Anon, as the whim caught him, he would pile it up and hedge it with great silver pins, fan-shape, such as country girls use, till it took the semblance, now of a tower, now of a wheel, now of some winged beast—sphinx or basilisk—couching on the girl's ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... a whim, a fad of Mr Ensler's. He went to a lot of expense over it. I don't suppose you noticed it, but just out over the cut-water close to the bowsprit, there's a great cut-glass silver star, fitted inside with a set of the most wonderful silver reflectors, parabolic they ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... roughened by winds and storms; Tete Rouge's was bloated by sherry cobblers and brandy toddy. Henry talked of Indians and buffalo; Tete Rouge of theaters and oyster cellars. Henry had led a life of hardship and privation; Tete Rouge never had a whim which he would not gratify at the first moment he was able. Henry moreover was the most disinterested man I ever saw; while Tete Rouge, though equally good-natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would not have lost him on any account; he admirably served the purpose of a jester ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... deny him this last whim. He found and strung a bow, and chose a Ghibelline war-arrow. Behind them, young Foresto drew in his breath with a hiss, laid his hand on his dagger, and turned the colour of clay. Old Baldo raised the bow, put all his remaining strength into the draw, and uttered a cracking shout ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... dear fellow," said he, as we watched the rear carriages of our train disappearing round a curve; "I am sorry to make you the victim of what may seem a mere whim, but on my life, Watson, I simply CAN'T leave that case in this condition. Every instinct that I possess cries out against it. It's wrong—it's all wrong—I'll swear that it's wrong. And yet the lady's story was complete, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... safe at last from the wiles of Ahenobarbus and his Greek coadjutors, there was still a great dread which would steal over Drusus lest at any moment a stroke might fall. Those were days when children murdered parents, wives husbands, for whim or passion, and very little came to punish their guilt. The scramble for money was universal. Drusus looked forth into the world, and saw little in it that was good. He had tried to cherish an ideal, and found fidelity to it more than difficult. His philosophy ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Abbey had grown into the habit of coming there rather more often than mere neighborliness called for, and it was palpable that he did not come to hold converse with Benton or Benton's gang, although he was "hail fellow" with all woodsmen. At first his coming might have been laid to any whim. Latterly Stella herself was unmistakably the attraction. He brought his sister once, a fair-haired girl about Stella's age. She proved an exceedingly self-contained young person, whose speech during ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was red-haired and of florid complexion, and seemed full of a conviction that his whim of entering must be their pleasure, which for the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... indulge every whim and fancy she'll spend everything she has before she is fairly grown. She's too young to understand and she has been brought up so far in an irresponsible fashion. Generosity ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Ireland a few days afterwards, 'was that I had met with men of far less power who had got greater insight into religious truth.' But he had come close to the affectionate nature and the nobility of soul that lay behind the cloud of whim and dyspepsia, and he kept to that, and for the rest, confined his expectations thenceforth to what Carlyle had to give. 'The greatest power of Carlyle,' he afterwards wrote, 'like that of Burke, seems to me to reside in the form. Neither of them is a poet, born to ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... this foolish whim, and failed to quite understand him. We remained together until we "collapsed," at Bowling Green, when we decided to ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... in a hardware shop, And all around was a loving crop Of scissors and needles, nails and knives, Offering love for all their lives; But for iron the Magnet felt no whim; Though he charmed iron, it charmed not him; From needles and nails and knives he'd turn, For he'd set his ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... the term conjures up those days of the Dark Ages when armour-clad knights found their chief recreation in running lances through one another; when the overworked, underfed labourers of the field cringed and cowered before every lordly whim. Most readers seem to get their notions of chivalry from Scott's Talisman, and their ideas on feudalism from the same author's immortal Ivanhoe. While scholars keep up a merry disputation as to the historical origin of the feudal system, the public imagination ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... illustrating. This is the practice our young female minds want. They do not think enough. They do not dig for thought, search for ideas, investigate for truth. They are too light, frivolous, and giddy. They will run by a great thought to trifle with a silly whim. They will leave a rich intellectual lecture for a giddy party. They will turn away from a mental feast to enjoy an idle gossip; I mean too ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... a merry little rumble. I think she knew we were going back to the Professor. Bock careered mightily along the wayside. And I had much time for thinking. On the whole, I was glad; for I had much to ponder. An adventure that had started as a mere lark or whim had now become for me the very gist of life itself. I was fanciful, I guess, and as romantic as a young hen, but by the bones of George Eliot, I'm sorry for the woman that never has a chance to be fanciful. Mifflin was in jail; aye, but he might have ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... breeze, and if the remuda was freed intelligently, at darkness, the wind holding from the same quarter during the night, a practical wrangler would know where to find his horses at dawn. The quarter of the breeze was therefore always noted, any variation after darkness, as if subject to the whim of the wind, turning the course of the grazing remuda. As among men, there were leaders among horses, and by noting these and applying hobbles, any inclination to wander was restrained. Fortunately, the husky boy had no fear of a horse, his approach being as masterly as his leave-taking was gentle ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... and Harry got indignant, and after Margaret had made a passionate defence of Chad in the presence of the family, that the General and Mrs. Dean took the matter in hand. It was a childish thing, of course; a girlish whim. It was right that they should be kind to the boy—for Major Buford's sake, if not for his own; but they could not have even the pretence of more than a friendly intimacy between the two, and so Margaret was told the truth. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... iron bands that riven stone That century on century has slept Until into its heart a tendril crept, And in the quiet majesty of birth New nature broke into her own! Or bid the sun stand still! Or fashion wings To herd the heaven's stars and make them be Subservient to will and rule and whim! Or rein the winds, and still the ocean's hymn! More surely ye shall manage all these things Than chain the Life ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... writing it out for Y.R.H., I find a petitioner who is under the delusion that his request will be better received if made through me. What can I do? A good action cannot be too soon performed, and even a whim must be sometimes humored. The bearer of this is Kapellmeister Drechsler, of the Josephstadt and Baden Theatre; he wishes to obtain the situation of second Court organist. He has a good knowledge of thorough bass, and is also a good ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... Browning's "Caliban on Setebos," who sprawls on the shore watching a line of crabs make for the sea, and squashes the twentieth for mere variety and sport. If Jehovah is requested to explain his loves and hates, he answers with Shylock, "it is my whim." It was his whim to love Jacob and hate Esau, and it was no doubt his whim to accept Abel's offering ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... that he had put a clause in his will against its appearance even at his own funeral. Marie Louise loved him dearly, but she feared his prejudices. She had an abject terror of offending him, because she felt that she owed everything she had, and was, to the whim of his good grace. Gratitude was a passion with her, and it doomed her, as all passions do, good or bad, to the penalties human beings pay for every excess of virtue or vice—if, indeed, vice is anything ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... men were completely deceived, and fell in love in earnest. She laughed at them, she was utterly insensible. "I am loved!" she told herself. "He loves me!" The certainty sufficed her. It is enough for the miser to know that his every whim might be fulfilled if he chose; so it was with the Duchess, and perhaps she did not even go so far as to ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... and personal liberty. Let the bishops once be seated; and would they not introduce ecclesiastical courts, demand uniformity, and impose a general tax for their church which might be perverted to any use that the whim of the King and of his subservient bishops might propose? There is no question that this subject of the episcopate, with its political and constitutional phases, and with the considerations of personal and civil liberty involved, did much to familiarize the people with those ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... that as Jack's taste in female beauty, and in the disposition and colours of dress, are borrowed from a very questionable model, his labours in adorning the figure-head are apt to produce strange monsters. I once heard of a captain who indulged his boatswain in this whim of representing his absent love as far as the king's allowance of paint could carry the art; and it must be owned, that, as the original Dulcinea owed her roses to the same source, the representation "came very close aboard of the original," as the delighted boatswain ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... was having his first taste of the unreasoning whim of the autocrat who was entitled to break into shipboard discipline, even in a critical moment. Mayo felt exasperation surging in him, but he was willing ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... months past I have been rambling over the country, but I am now confined with some lingering complaints, originating, as I take it, in the stomach. To divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. My name has made some little noise in this country; you have done me the honour to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think a faithful account of what character of a man I am, and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse you in an idle moment. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... necessary, in travelling with Bedouins, to make them yield to the traveller's wishes; for though they care little for fatigue in their own business, they are extremely averse to go out of their way, to gratify what they consider an absurd whim of their companion. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... irritation of Henry VIII against the pope, who refused to grant the king a divorce from his first wife in order that he might marry a younger and prettier woman. But a permanent change in the religious convictions of a whole people cannot fairly be attributed to the whim of even so despotic a ruler as Henry. There were changes taking place in England before the revolt similar to those which prepared the way in ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... suffering of privation and of over-supply, there could then no longer be any need of these powerful fleets which ruin, and these great armies which crush them; the peace of the world could no more be compromised by the whim of a Thiers or a Palmerston, and wars would cease, from want of resources, motives, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... is it with the great, With whom the whim doth always run, That Heaven all creatures doth create For their behoof beneath the sun— Count they four feet, or two, or none. If one should dare the fact dispute, He's straight set down a stupid brute. Now, grant it so,—such lords among, What ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... call, And through the stilly woods there fall, Ripe nuts at intervals, where'er The squirrel, perched in upper air, From tree-top barks at thee his fear; His cunning eyes, mistrustingly, Do spy at thee around the tree; Then, prompted by a sudden whim, Down leaping on the quivering limb, Gains the smooth hickory, from whence He nimbly scours along ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... fortified with pride, caution, or indifference. But, among all the nymphs of this gay place, he did not meet with one object that disputed the empire of his heart with Emilia, and therefore he divided his attachment according to the suggestions of vanity and whim; so that, before he had resided a fortnight at Bath, he had set all the ladies by the ears, and furnished all the hundred tongues of scandal with full employment. The splendour of his appearance excited the inquiries of envy, which, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... but foolish," Rochester answered. "I need no thanks, I deserve none. I yield to a whim, nothing else. I do this thing for my own pleasure. The sum of money which I propose to put into your hands will probably represent to me what a five-shilling piece might to you. This may sound vulgar, but it is true. I think that I need not warn you never ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... consciousness into the sleepy, oyster-bedded bay; even the accretion of human life there never has been able to utter itself in the myriad rebellious phases of a great city, but falls gravely into the drilled monotony of its streets. Brick and mortar will not yield themselves there to express any whim in the mind of their owner: the house-fronts turn the same impassive, show-hating faces on the sidewalks from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. Give the busiest street a moment's chance and it broods down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... into her room for a while, and called together her maids and passed them in review. It was a whim of the good-hearted young Duchess to go round to country-houses carrying three maids along with her. She had one maid as her personal and bodily attendant, a second to dress her hair, and a third maid to look after her packing and her ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... it was not the least trouble, and he thought she looked beautiful when she said so. Whosoever of the male kind, young, and of ardent, not to say impatient, spirit, has ever been aided and abetted in a sudden whim, assisted, forwarded, above all, sympathised with, through all the changes and chances of a reigning fancy, may possibly conceive how charming, and more charming every hour, perhaps minute, Helen became in Beauclerc's ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... thou, then? I left thee supping with Peisianax, With thy head full of wine, and thy hair crown'd, Touching thy harp as the whim came on thee, And praised and spoil'd by master and by guests Almost as much as the new dancing-girl. Why ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the matter worse), Before our names were fix'd, As we were being wash'd by nurse We got completely mix'd; And thus, you see, by Fate's decree, (Or rather nurse's whim), My brother John got christen'd me, And ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the sake of argument that a bodiless God can create the world by his will and activity. Did he take to creation through a personal whim? In that case there would be no natural laws and order in the world. Did he take to it in accordance with the moral and immoral actions of men? Then he is guided by a moral order and is not independent. Is it through mercy that he took to creation? Well then, we suppose there should have been ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... "The cloth is at any rascal's beck and call. Old Holles, my Lord's man, is dying up yonder, and the whim seized him to have a clergyman in. God knows why, for it appears to me that one knave might very easily make his way to hell without having another knave to help him. And Holles?—eh, well, from what I myself know of him, the rogue is triply damned." His mouth puckered as he set about unbuttoning ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the thing seemed to penetrate even his darkened mind, and then he would whisper, "I'll make believe it's Charlie, any way," so Charlie he persisted in calling her, and Richard encouraged him in this whim, when he found how much satisfaction it afforded the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... so long, and prayed for you so much, they have your best interests at heart. At the same time let parents review their opposition to a proposed marital alliance, and see if their opposition is founded on a genuine wish for the child's welfare, or on some whim, or notion, or prejudice, or selfishness, fighting a natural law and trying to make Niagara run up stream. William Pitt, the Prime Minister of England in the reign of George III., was always saying wise things. One day Sir Walter Farquhar called on him in great perturbation. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... so it is with human happiness— Each seeks his own according to his whim; One toils for wealth, one Fame alone can bless, One asks a quid—a quid ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Atherlys, and an infinite pity and sense of duty towards his own race. He had devoted himself and his increasing wealth to this one object; it seemed to him at times almost providential that his position as a legislator, which he had accepted as a whim or fancy, should have given him ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... recognized by the man himself, may be vastly more significant than the passing individual decision, although the latter be accompanied by clear consciousness. In certain cases the latter is a true exponent of character, but not infrequently it is not. It may be the result of a whim, of an irrational impulse little congruous with a man's nature. It may be the outcome of some misconception and in contradiction with what the man would will, if enlightened. The individual volition appears only to disappear; it may leave no ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing Through whose heart in such an hour 295 Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 300 But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all,— Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, 305 Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... to your house to-day, are you? That will be news to Viola. She's got the whim that you don't intend ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... for her Highness in some whim had insulted him with his origin, caused pork to be removed from before him at table, or injured him in some such silly way; and he had a violent animosity to the old Baron de Magny, both in his capacity of Protestant, and because the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no bargain," quoth the Vidame. "And I have no time to lose, splitting hairs here. Set it down to what you like. Say it is a whim of mine, a fad, a caprice. Only understand that Madame de Pavannes stays. We go. And—" he added this, as a sudden thought seemed to strike him, "though I would not willingly use compulsion to a lady, I think Madame d'O had ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... a whim, but it is more than that," replied Carrados. "It is, well, partly vanity, partly ennui, partly"—certainly there was something more nearly tragic in his ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... proletarian, who has nothing but his two hands, who consumes to-day what he earned yesterday, who is subject to every possible chance, and has not the slightest guarantee for being able to earn the barest necessities of life, whom every crisis, every whim of his employer may deprive of bread, this proletarian is placed in the most revolting, inhuman position conceivable for a human being. The slave is assured of a bare livelihood by the self-interest of his master, the serf has at least ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... into effect. Well armed and equipped, they started the very next morning for the North. The following day they walked into the Hudson's Bay Post to apprize the white man of their errand, so that there might be no suspicion of their blood-guiltiness, not knowing that by a strange whim of fortune Kalleligak and Anatalik were already there and were seated in one room while they were ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... shown any interest in scenery, and Alan stared at her for a moment with a puzzled look. If Henry de Hauteville had been likely to join her at Culoz he could have understood this whim of hers; but de Hauteville was safely lodged by this time in the nearest Swiss canton, and not at all likely to intercept their journey. He did her bidding, however, without comprehension of her reasons, as he had done many a time before. Again, he ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant |
