"Wilful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... younger. It was probably introduced by a mention of Philo's books[249]. Some considerable portion of the speech must have been directed against the innovations made by Philo upon the genuine Carneadean doctrine. These the elder Catulus had repudiated with great warmth, even charging Philo with wilful misrepresentation of the older Academics[250]. The most important part of the speech, however, must have consisted of a defence of Carneades and Arcesilas against the dogmatic schools[251]. Catulus evidently ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the first transgression of divine law on the part of man, conceived of as involving the whole human race in the guilt of it, and represented as consisting in the wilful partaking of the fruit of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of both good and evil. The story of the Fall in Genesis has in later times been regarded as a spiritual allegory, and simply the Hebrew ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... on hers. It might be best to give it up by mutual consent; but as long as one party was bound, so was the other; and he thoroughly sided with Edgar in not being threatened out of it whilst Alice persisted. Still more flatly did he refuse Miss Pearson's entreaty that he would see the wilful girl, and persuade her how hopeless was her resistance, and how little prospect of the attachment being prosperous. Nothing but despair and perplexity could have prompted the good aunts to try such a resource, but they were at their wits' end. ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the ode and the song, owe their musical perfection. Mr. Swinburne, in an essay upon Matthew Arnold's New Poems (1867), has said, truly, that 'rhyme is the native condition of lyric verse in England'; and that 'to throw away the natural grace of rhyme from a modern song is a wilful abdication of half the charm and half the power of verse.' To this general rule he might possibly admit one exception—Tennyson's short poem beginning with 'Tears, idle tears,' which is so delicately modulated that the absence of rhyme is not missed. At any rate it is certain that all popular ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... stood amazed to see Contempt of wealth, and wilful poverty: And, though ill habits are not soon controll'd, A while suspended her desire of gold. But civilly drew in her sharpen'd paws, Not violating hospitable laws; And pacified her tail, and lick'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... rushed away to the Gulf of Pechili (Peh-chihli). This produced as much consternation as the Mississippi would occasion if it should plough its way across the state that bears its name and enter the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile Bay. The same phenomenon has occurred at long intervals in times past. The wilful stream has oscillated with something like periodical regularity from side to side of the Shantung promontory, and sometimes it has flowed with a divided current, converting that territory into an island. Now, however, the river seems to have settled itself in its new ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... them in it are very inadequate to the purpose. If criminality could be engraved on a graduated scale, their deaths ought in general to be written down at some intermediate point between accidental homicide and wilful murder. The persecution of this unfortunate race may be said to commence before they are born; and, though the strength of a nation depends much on its population, less care is taken to encourage it, than to produce mushrooms, or to preserve hares ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... accept any truth which is opposed to her wishes. As she looks back over the vista of years, filled with many activities, no monument of wholesome constructiveness remains; she has blighted what she touched. Lena Platt, a wilful, spoiled, selfish hysteric! ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... rid of a greater one, Jim. When my father died he left a hundred thousand between us, my sister and I. I've turned my share into a million, but that is by the way. Because she was a fairly rich girl and a wilful girl, Jim, she broke her heart. Because they knew she had the money the worst men were attracted to her—and she chose the ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... becomes a standing theme of ridicule to those of her own sex who are blest with children. The pride and honour of parents among them depend upon the number of their family. Another reason why barrenness is disgraceful, is, that it is considered to be brought on by incontinence or wilful abortions. ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... nature is too lightly tost And ruffled without cause; complaining on— Restless with rest—until, being overthrown, It learneth to lie quiet. Let a frost Or a small wasp have crept to the innermost Of our ripe peach; or let the wilful sun Shine westward of our window,—straight we run A furlong's sigh, as if the world were lost. But what time through the heart and through the brain God hath transfix'd us—we, so moved before, Attain to a calm! Ay, shouldering weights of pain, We anchor in deep waters, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... practice of the whole Christian world the authoritative teaching of the Church of England appeared to be in strict harmony. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion, a discourse which inculcates, in unmeasured terms, the duty of obeying rulers, speaks of none but actual rulers. Nay, the people are distinctly told in that Homily that they are bound to obey, not only their legitimate prince, but any usurper whom God shall in anger set ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... But it don't foller that it did, because he says so. Anyhow, he got a hard corner of his nut against it. He ain't delicate. He says he'll have it out of the landlord—action for damages—wilful neglect—'sorlt ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the spring. Once upon a time the Old Lady—when she had not been the Old Lady, but pretty, wilful, high-spirited Margaret Lloyd—had loved springs; now she hated them because they hurt her; and this particular spring of this particular May chapter hurt her more than any that had gone before. The Old Lady felt as if she could NOT endure the ache of it. Everything hurt her—the new green ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... evidence of sweetness in the strong man who had been so readily accused of harshness by grasping courtiers. The ignorant ingratitude of the people was even perhaps more melancholy than the wilful ingratitude of the King. The great Colbert had to be buried by night, lest his remains should be insulted by the mob. He, whose heart had bled for the people's sore anguish, was rashly supposed to be the cause of that anguish. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... not see with his eyes. Ho rejected—we trust in polite terms—the offer of "the Thunderer." "In other respects also," says our main authority, "he was impracticable, unmalleable, and as independent and wilful as if he were the heir to a peerage. He had created no 'public' of his own; the public which existed could not understand his writings and would not buy them; and thus it was that in Cheyne Row he was more neglected than he had been in Scotland." ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... and those on land, with their gangs of living corpses chained together like wild beasts, are too horrible to be pictured here. How European officials, representatives of Christian ideas of humanity and decency, can continue to countenance the apathy or wilful brutality of the prime minister, who, as the executive officer of the government in this department, is mainly responsible for the cruelties and outrages I may not ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... the notion of living here seems to me. Forgive me. I am going from bad to worse. I don't mean to wound you. After all, it is your country, and you must love it. But, indeed, I could not think of living here. I could not take the burden of its wilful misery on my soul. I must live in Altruria, and you, when you have once seen my country, our country, will never consent ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... brave, and passing kind. But, Rosalinde, when 'mid my father's vines, A child I roamed, I shunned the rich, ripe fruit Within my reach, and stretched my little arm Beyond its strength, for that which farthest hung, Though poorest too perchance. Years past away, The wilful child is grown a woman now, Yet wilful still, and wayward as ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... is wilful and alert, and rather haughty. She is looking out of herself; her beauty is of a more human type, and she knows it. Saint Clotilde, is the Abbe ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... forward, eagerly, and his faint voice wavered. "'The expression of the best,'—that, Ivan Mikhailovitch, is what you tried to give me the chance for: what you always have done yourself. You were moving steadily upward. I was always plunging farther down.—And it was my wilful choice. I think I know the truth now. My service of God was never freely given. It was not the best I could do: the finest work I was capable of, just for the sake of the work, and the high thoughts it brought, to me and to others. There were more sordid motives. I wanted—first, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... person of character, connected with the best houses in our country, and employed here by a committee of Congress to purchase goods, we cannot conceive him capable of any wilful offence against the laws of this nation. Our personal regard for him, as well as the duty of our station, obliges us to interest ourselves in his behalf, and to request, as we do most earnestly, that he may be immediately ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... Major Brooks in the right eye. The Major instantly fell and died. Colonel Bolton was hurried off and remained in concealment for a short time. It was said that the firing of the pistols was heard in Major Brooks' house at the corner of Daulby-street. An inquiry was held, when a verdict of wilful murder was found, but in consequence of the strong recommendations of Major Brooks's friends, admitting that he was entirely to blame, and that his dreadful fate was entirely brought on by himself, the matter passed over without further notice, everyone admitting that Colonel ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... would not be right to leave a distinguished guest before he has received the rites of hospitality, and quit his presence in this wilful manner. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... being brought low by the remorse of their former life and errors, after they once began to look up unto the light of the Gospel, and believe in Christ, might be opened with the Word of God, even as a door is opened with a key. Contrariwise, that the wicked and wilful folk, and such as would not believe, nor return into the right way, should be left still as fast locked, and shut up, and, as St. Paul saith, "wax worse and worse." This take we to be the meaning of the keys; and that ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... you are crazy, or ignorant of what is going on, and I consider it my duty to enlighten you,"—a gossip's duties are all away from home,—"unless, of course, you prefer to remain in blissful or wilful ignorance." ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... independent Slav states (Russia, Montenegro, Bulgaria). And just in this terrible war it became clear to all the world that Serbia was the only democratic state in the Near East. Turkey is governed by an oligarchy, Bulgaria by a German despot, Greece by a wilful king whose patriotism is overshadowed by his nepotism, Roumania is ruled more by the wish of the landlords (boyars) and court than by the wish of the people. I will say nothing about the very profanation of democracy in the dark realm of ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... to speak with the less hesitation, having, in preparing the sheets for the press, had occasion to compare many parts of the Diary with different accounts of the same transactions recorded elsewhere; and in no instance could I detect any material error or wilful misrepresentation. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... recompense thee for the favour that thou hast done me to-day. And what is my recompense for thee? To show thee how to turn from the evil and slippery road which thou hast trodden until now, and to journey along the straight and saving pathway which thou hast avoided, not in ignorance, but by wilful wrongdoing, throwing thyself into depths and precipices of iniquity. Understand then, Nachor, man of understanding as thou art, and be thou zealous to gain Christ only, and the life that is hid ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... cast her mind on Arthur. Truly ridiculous. But there was something compact and energetic and wilful about him that she magnified ten-fold and so obtained, imaginatively, an attractive lover. She brooded her days shabbily away in Manchester House, busy with housework drudgery. Since the collapse of Throttle-Ha'penny, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... painful to witness the pale cheeks and the dejected looks of those boys who are often flogged? If their tempers are mild, their spirits are broken; if their dispositions are at all obstinate, they become hardened and wilful, and are made little better than brutes. [Footnote: "I would have given him, Captain Fleming, had he been my son," quoth old Pearson the elder, "such's good sound drubbing as he never ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... deed? What liberty? if no defence Be won for feeble innocence. Father of all! though wilful manhood read His punishment in soul distress Grant to the morn of life its ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... spirits, and weakened him; and he confessed it did, but said, his "life could not be better spent, than in the service of his Master Jesus, who had done and suffered so much for him. But," said he, "I will not be wilful; for though my spirit be willing, yet I find my flesh is weak; and therefore Mr. Bostock shall be appointed to read prayers for me to-morrow; and I will now be only a hearer of them, till this mortal shall put on ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... those days particularly noticeable in the head of Coventry Patmore: the vast convex brows, arched with vision; the bright, shrewd, bluish-grey eyes, the outer fold of one eyelid permanently and humorously drooping; and the wilful, sensuous mouth. These three seemed ever at war among themselves; they spoke three different tongues; they proclaimed a man of dreams, a canny man of business, a man of vehement determination. It was the harmony of these in apparently discordant contrast ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... influence to the extent of going to her aunt, Mrs. Stanton, whenever she wished. She had come to be quite a sensation in her father's native village, his hosts of friends readily tracing a likeness to himself. She was a sweet, rather wilful maiden, not exactly pretty, but very ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... one of several neighbors, whose looks denoted disapproval of wilful waste, she benevolently emptied the tomatoes into the woman's ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... best, now the eye has been fixed upon, to discuss the question of the hair. The professor opens his book of patterns. Maybe the lady is of a wilful disposition. She loves to run laughing through the woods during exceptionally rainy weather; or to gallop across the downs without a hat, her fair ringlets streaming in the wind, the old family coachman panting and expostulating in the rear. If one may trust the popular novel, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... see the sights and view the atrocious system and regularity of wilful destruction which had obviously been planned months before by the Huns to carry out Hindenburg's orders and make the whole land a desert. Not a tree was standing; whole orchards were hewn down; every fruit ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... her after the fashion Lady Hamilton was said to do, and represented, like her, the Muses, and various statues. With the curtain and one light she managed to give a very statuesque effect. Mr. Lewis was evidently very proud of her grace and talent, and she had a pretty, wilful, bird-like way with him, that was fascinating, and did not seem, as I thought it must really be, mechanical. I felt, more than ever, how idle it must be to talk with her. The affectionate respect, the joyful uplooking of wifehood, was not to be taught by words, nor to be taught, in fact, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... know; but this is evident, that it was he, and not Campbell, who was guilty of taking unfair advantage of his companions. How the book came into Campbell's desk I know not. But as Egerton has been, in these two matters, convicted of telling a wilful untruth, I am ready to believe him capable of any further deceitful conduct to screen himself. It rests with Doctor Palmer to conclude ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... so perfect, seems to me to go astray. The universe, Thompson tells us, was Shelley's box of toys. "He gets between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the lap of patient Nature, and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred wilful fashions, to see how she will look nicest in his song." This last is not, I think, Shelley's motive; it is not the truth about the spring of his genius. He undoubtedly shatters the world to bits, but only to build ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... wilful on this point as I heard you were. I would not believe it, because I always thought you a superior woman. But now—I wish I could persuade you to see ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... had no intention of recording my "experiences" in print; and as my notes taken at the time were few and meagre, and have been elaborated from memory, some inaccuracies have occurred which it will not take a keen eye to detect. These must be set down to want of correct information rather than to wilful misrepresentation. The statistical information given is taken from works compiled by the Americans themselves. The few matters on which I write which did not come under my own observation, I learned from trustworthy persons who have been long ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... branches for bearing and ripening wood for the ensuing year, as well as to regulate and proportion the size of the tree to the functions of the roots in supplying sustenance, and the convenience of picking the berries when ripe. Every old bough which has seen its day, every wilful shoot growing in a wrong direction, every fork, every cross branch or dead limb, ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... is too strong a word for the resentful spite, like the jealous rage of a spoiled child, which gleamed now and then in her eyes. I couldn't think of her as wicked any more than I could think of a bad child as wicked. She was merely wilful and undisciplined and—I hardly know how to convey what ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... has had a splendid mother. Hamilton's mother was a woman of wit, beauty and education. While very young, through the machinations of her elders, she had been married to a man much older than herself—rich, wilful and dissipated. The man's name was Lavine, but his first name we do not know, so hidden were the times in a maze of obscurity. The young wife very soon discovered the depravity of this man whom she had vowed to love and obey; divorce ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Moore—an insight, which, in spite of his irritated egotism, is the mark of a man with the instincts of a poet, with some cosmopolitan sympathies, and a courage on occasion to avow them at any risk. "Lord Byron," he says truly, "has been too much admired by the English because he was sulky and wilful, and reflected in his own person their love of dictation and excitement. They owe his memory a greater regard, and would do it much greater honour if they admired him for letting them know they were not so perfect a nation as ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... However, the matter is clearly and definitely dealt with by the General Council of Lateran (1213) and by the Bulls, Quod a nobis and Ex proximo, of Pope Pius V. (1571). This Pope expressly states that wilful omission of the Divine Office is a grave sin—"grave ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... or mother Tell the woes of wilful waste; Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother, You can hang or ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... obstacles in the way; for in proportion as self-will sways him, whatever seems to oppose or hinder his plans will disturb or annoy; and, instead of quietly leaving all such hindrances and obstacles to the Lord, to deal with them as He pleases, in His own way and time, the wilful disciple will, impatiently and in the energy of the flesh, set himself to remove them by his own scheming and struggling, and he ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... of modern research is now in the movement. The latest bulletins of Giorgione, Pater would have been delighted to hear, are highly satisfactory. Pictures once torn from the altars of authenticity are being reinstated under the acolytage of Mr. Herbert Cook. A curious and perhaps wilful error, too, has escaped Mr. Benson's notice. Referring to the tomb of Cardinal Jacopo at San Miniato, Pater says, 'insignis forma fui—his epitaph dares to say;' the inscription reads fuit. But perhaps the t ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... does not employ the Bulimus' method. It also disdains that of our dressmakers, who split the overtight garment and let in a piece of suitable width between the edges of the opening. To break the jar when it becomes too small would be a wilful waste of material; to split it lengthwise and increase its capacity by inserting a strip would be an imprudent expedient, which would expose the occupant to danger during the slow work of repair. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... judges and juries realize that its full enforcement would destroy the business of the country; for the result is to make decent railroad men violators of the law against their will, and to put a premium on the behavior of the wilful wrongdoers. Such a result in turn tends to throw the decent man and the wilful wrongdoer into close association, and in the end to drag down the former to the latter's level; for the man who becomes a lawbreaker in one way unhappily tends ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... is called childhood cannot be assumed at will. With regard to the latter meaning, however, a doubt arises, viz. whether the text means to say that he who aims at perfect knowledge is to assume all the ways of a child, as e.g. its wilful behaviour, or only its freedom from pride and the like.—The former, the Prvapakshin maintains. For the text gives no specification, and texts enjoining restraints of different kinds (on the man desirous of knowledge) are sublated ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... by a rash and ill-assorted engagement. In the younger sister, the influence of sensibility and imagination predominates; and she, as was to be expected, also falls in love, but with more unbridled and wilful passion. Her lover, gifted with all the qualities of exterior polish and vivacity, proves faithless, and marries a woman of large fortune. The interest and merit of the piece depend altogether upon the behaviour of the elder sister, while obliged at once to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... my child rose up and said, "Father, let us also go a-foot; I can no longer guard myself from him here behind!" But he pulled her down again by her clothes, and cried out angrily, "Wait, thou wicked witch, I will help thee to go a-foot if thou art so wilful; thou shalt be chained to the block this very night." Whereupon she answered, "Do you do that which you cannot help doing: the righteous God, it is to be hoped, will one day do unto you what He cannot ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... she will only have a just opinion of you," replied her father coldly; "and all your friends will soon cease to love you, if you continue to show such a wilful temper; my patience is almost worn out, Elsie, and I shall try some very severe measures before long, unless you see proper to submit. Go now to your own room; I do not wish to see ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... parties who were supposed to be concerned in the murder; the coroner was sent for, and, the body being taken out of the earth the next morning, several fractures were found in the head: an inquest was held, and a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown was returned: witness particularly examined the fence: there appeared to have been a fire made under the lower rail, as if to burn out the mark: the blood seemed as if it were sprinkled over the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... from little Fay, who, hitherto, had obeyed nobody. Tony, less wilful and not so prone to be destructive, was secretly still unwon, though outwardly quite friendly. He waited and watched and weighed Jan in the balance of his small judgment. Tony was never in any hurry to ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... law-suit with a dogged neighbour who was as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse-proud as the other: and this law-suit begot higher oppositions, and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits; for you must remember that both were rich, and must therefore have their wills. Well! this wilful, purse-proud law-suit lasted during the life of the first husband; after which his wife vext and chid, and chid and vext, till she also chid and vext herself into her grave: and so the wealth of these poor rich people was curst into a punishment, because they wanted meek ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... libraries. These abuses are manifold and far-reaching. Most of them are committed through ignorance, and can be corrected by the courteous but firm interposition of the librarian, instructing the delinquent how to treat a book in hand. Others are wilful and unpardonable offences against property rights and public morals, even if not made penal offences by law. One of these is book mutilation, very widely practiced, but rarely detected until the mischief ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... the Puritan colonies were to be regulated, a mission which called for the utmost tact. The men chosen for the work were far from the best that might have been selected to bring back to the path of true obedience and impartial justice a colony that was deemed wilful and perverse. They were Richard Nicolls, a favorite of the Duke of York and the only commissioner possessed of discrimination and wisdom, but who, as governor of the yet unconquered Dutch colony, was likely to be taken up with his duties to such an extent as to preclude his sharing prominently ...
— The Fathers of New England - A Chronicle of the Puritan Commonwealths • Charles M. Andrews
... the history which you are about to read is not my own. It is the story of a beautiful, wilful girl, who was madly in love with the one man in all the world whom she should have avoided—as girls are wont to be. This perverse tendency, philosophers tell us, is owing to the fact that the unattainable is strangely alluring to womankind. I, being a man, ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... Lady, from a wilful hand Has met unkindness; so indeed he told me, And you remember such was my report: From what has just befallen me I have cause To fear the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... face is smeared with candy or perhaps it's only dirt, An' it's really most alarming how you tear your little shirt; But I have to smile upon you, an' with all your wilful ways, I'm certain that I need you 'round about me all my days; Yes, I've got to have you with me, for somehow it's come to be That I couldn't live without you, for you're all the world ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... and myself there were constant feuds, in which Nessy MacLeod never failed to take the side of Betsy Beauty, while my poor mother became a target for the shafts of Aunt Bridget, who said I was a wilful, wicked, underhand little vixen, and no wonder, seeing how disgracefully I was indulged, and how shockingly I was being ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Daphnes roote groan'd for Apollo's wrong: Hermophrodite wept shewers and wisht his birth had neuer bin, or that he more had clung To Salmacis, and Clitie grieued in vaine: Leueothoes wrong, the occasion of her baine, my wilful eie (this should the burthen be) Hath rob'd me ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... on fire, the occupier of such house or building shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding twenty shillings; but if such occupier proves that he has incurred such penalty by reason of the neglect or wilful default of any other person, he may recover summarily from such person the whole or any part of the penalty he may ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... this act prescribed, such person so offending and being thereof duly convicted, shall be subject to the pains, penalties, and disabilities which by law are provided for the punishment of the crime of wilful and corrupt perjury. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... at it without prejudice, without passion, you must concede that I am not doing a rash thing, a thoughtless, wilful thing, with nothing substantial behind it to justify it. I did not create the American claimant to the earldom of Rossmore; I did not hunt for him, did not find him, did not obtrude him upon your notice. He found himself, he injected himself into ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... smooth forehead. Her cheeks were glowing. The wind sent the red to them. She stepped along with a free, strongly athletic movement. There was a hint of the Amazon in her. On her white neck some wisps of light yellow hair, loosened by the wind's fingers, quivered as if separately alive and wilful with energy. ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... the construction of his swinging nest, as try to stir these creatures from their own way of doing their own work. It was not a question with Iris, whether she was entitled by any special relation or by the fitness of things to play the part of a nurse. She was a wilful creature that must have her way in this matter. And it so proved that it called for much patience and long endurance to carry through the duties, say rather the kind offices, the painful pleasures, which she had chosen as her share ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... and to "Buster," good friends both, sometimes to recall to them places and occasions at Mike Marr's: Dead Man's Point, Rolling Ledge, the Canoe Landing, the swift and wilful waters of the West Branch, Squaw Mountain, the trail to Dead Stream, the raft on Horseshoe, the Big Fish, the gracious kindness of the L. L. of E. O., (as well as her sandwiches), and the never-to-be-forgotten flapjacks that "didn't look it" ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... and jokes the said brother John did lift up the said Mary Sowley and did take, carry, and convey her across a stream, to the infinite relish of the devil and the exceeding detriment of his own soul, which scandalous and wilful falling away was witnessed by ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a wilful lie, Mary, you know. I'd scorn it, and I never break my word,—but still, look at truth's reward,—here! the home of an honest man, and there!' he pointed towards the castle. 'Ah! forgive me, Mary, stupid ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... thereto by the repeated and solemn assurances of Sir Clarence that no such irregularity as was suspected regarding his birth had in fact occurred. Latterly, however, from fresh information accidentally received, it appeared that Sir Clarence had either been guilty of a wilful and criminal misstatement, or that he had been deceived. In confirmation whereof, the Honorable Richard produced documents of undoubted genuineness, showing that an illegitimate son had been born to Sir John; and now called upon the defendant to prove that this ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... Duncan," she said, consolingly, "mother's often threatened and never done it before, and Elsie's a wilful child, with a spirit and temper that must needs be broken. But what was ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... anything wonderful in that? She taught me the love of evil with her milk—she sang it in lullabies over my cradle—she gave it me in the playthings of my boyhood; her schoolings have made me the morbid, the fierce criminal, the wilful, vexing spirit, from whose association all the gentler virtues must always desire to fly. If, in the doom which may finish my life of doom, I have any one person to accuse of ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the Coroner's jury returns a verdict of Wilful Murder against Alfred Inglethorp. What becomes ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... they, "you will see that Fairies are not idle, wilful Spirits, as mortals believe. Come, we will show ...
— Flower Fables • Louisa May Alcott
... Spanish succession by France was the frustration of William's efforts during thirty years. He had striven and made war for peace and civilisation against wilful attack and the reign of force. That good cause was defeated now, and the security of national rights and international conventions was at an end. The craving for empire and the hegemony of Europe had prevailed. The temper of England ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... show Peet a thing or two,' cried Alan with a wilful smile. 'He must learn he can't speak to me like that. He is Aunt Betty's servant, worse luck. If he had been Father's, I'd have been down on him ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... brings me to observe here, and it is a little for the ease of the tradesman's mind in such severe cases, that there is a distinction to be made in this case between wilful premeditated lying, and the necessity men may be driven to by their disappointments, and other accidents of their circumstances, to break such promises, as they had made with an honest ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... be given consideration in diagnosis is the fact that related history of the case is not always dependable, because of lack of accurate observation or wilful deceit on the part of the owner or attendant. The successful veterinarian soon acquires the faculty of obtaining information in a manner best adapted to his client,—either by direct interrogation or by subtle means of suggestion, and in this way he draws out evaded ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... "Wilful creature, have I not already told you? On occasions of state you are to be one of my trainbearers; and when his majesty comes to visit me, you station yourself at my side. Then you are to drive out with me daily, and as you alone will be with me in the carriage, ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... is their wilful attempt to improve the architect's design by making alterations in cold blood, through sheer ignorance and conceit. They will reduce the size of the doors and windows; substitute some other moulding for that on the drawing; or tell you they have made a bracket, or a bay-window, or a cupola, ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... "A.C. is really a tremendous personality—dramatic, wilful, generous, whimsical, at times almost cruel in pressing his own conviction upon others, and then again tender, affectionate, emotional, always imaginative, unusual and wide-visioned in his views. He is ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... parted lips, fingering her handkerchief and evidently pondering the entirely new suggestion. I thought it best to let her ponder. As a general rule, people will do anything in the world rather than think; so, when one sees a human being wrapped in thought, one ought to regard wilful disturbance of the process as sacrilege. I lit a cigarette and wandered about ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... frenzy is accepted in its exact innocent signification of 'this is my pretty wilful will and way,' and the lady responded to it cordially; for it is pleasant to have some one to show, and pleasant to assist some one eager to see: besides, many had petitioned her for a sight of Alvan; she was ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the parentage of Francis Vivian seemed to me a positive discovery. Nothing more likely than that this wilful boy had formed some headstrong attachment which no father would sanction, and so, thwarted and irritated, thrown himself on the world. Such an explanation was the more agreeable to me as it cleared up much that had appeared discreditable in the mystery that surrounded Vivian. I could never ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... together, preserved me, through this dangerous time of youth, and the hazardous situations I was sometimes in among strangers, remote from the eye and advice of my father, free from any wilful gross immorality or injustice, that might have been expected from my want of religion. I say wilful because the instances I have mentioned had something of necessity in them, from my youth, inexperience, and the knavery of others. I had therefore a tolerable character to begin the world with; I valued it properly, and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... children up," Mrs. MacDougall replied. "Since my good man died and left me with them, it's been a hard matter at times, but never so hard as now. There's my Elsie, growing as fine a lass as may be, though a deal bit wilful without a man to intimidate her. She'll have to take service in a few years more, for what else can I do with her? an' I'm thinking she'll take it hard, for she's got rare notions, an' is a bit clever above the common. Duncan's over young yet to fret about; ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... she could make clear to him? And yet more than ever she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word was pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity for wilful harmfulness. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... for the encounter, the Englishman was clothed with little authority except what he could draw from the resources of his own mind and from the strength of his own wilful nature. Yet it was presently seen that those who were near him fell under his dominion, and did as he bid them, and that the circle of deference to his will was always increasing around him; and soon it appeared that, tho he moved gently, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... watchfulness,— Watching, watching, watching all below, And man in all his wilfulness for woe! —Dear Lord, one wonders that Thou bearest still With man on whom Thou didst such grace bestow, And with his wilful ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... by the insensible progress of daily experience. Even this argument derived from its utter uselessness does not however weigh so much with us as the other argument derived from the want of common-sense, involved in the wilful forestalling and artificial concentrating into one long rosary of anomalies, what else the nature of the case has by good luck dispersed over the whole territory of the Latin language. To be consistent, a tutor should take the same proleptical course with regard to the prosody of ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... than a century back, was the Boniface at the Blue House: Alexandre Menut. A veritable Soyer was Monsieur Menut. During the American invasion, in the autumn of 1775, Monsieur Menut, owing to a vis major, was forced to entertain a rather boisterous and wilful class of customers: Richard Montgomery and his warlike Continentals. More than once a well-aimed ball or shell from General Carleton's batteries in the city must have disturbed the good cheer of the New York and New England riflemen lounging about ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... piquant blending of delicacy, grace, vivacity, and passion. The following summary of her character by the clever, caustic, but little scrupulous De Retz, graphic as it is, and based on a certain amount of truth, must not be unhesitatingly accepted, it being over-coloured by wilful exaggeration:—"I have never seen anyone else," says he, "in whom vivacity so far usurped the place of judgment. It very often inspired her with such brilliant sallies that they flashed like lightning, and so sensible withal, that they might not have been disowned by the greatest men of any age. ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... is only Thackeray, among the great, who seems to find a positively wilful pleasure in damaging his own story by open maltreatment of this kind; there are times when Thackeray will even boast of his own independence, insisting in so many words on his freedom to say what he pleases about his ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... Wilful, spoiled woman, if you will, ready to leave her husband without thought of the consequences, to go with another man; but his premeditated ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... ravishment of ward. The activities of slaves were elaborately restricted; any property they might acquire was considered as belonging to their masters; their marriages were without legal recognition; and although the wilful killing of slaves was generally held to be murder, the violation of their women was without criminal penalty. Under the law as it generally stood no slave might raise his hand against a white person ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... countrymen so well. As a critic, I must say that his style is peculiarly unepigrammatic; and yet what collector of epigrams or epigrammatic stories has ever done what the Dean has done for Scotland? It seems as if the wilful excluding of point was acceptable, otherwise how to explain the popularity of that book? All over the world, wherever Scotch men and Scotch language have made their way—and that embraces wide regions—the stories of the Reminiscences, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... for he was distinctly not eligible. But it was very easy to puff up poor Mick's mind with pictures of America as a Tom Tiddler's ground, and the mother did this in private, while in public she wrung her hands over the wilful boy that would go and leave her lonesome in her old age. Pretty soon the matter was settled, and Mick went about as vain as any young recruit when he has taken the Queen's shilling and donned the scarlet, and has not yet realised ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... French, ma toute belle" she said, indicating the Abbe, by a pretty, wilful gesture; "I will teach you;—and you shall teach me English. Oh, I shall try so hard ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... to eight. The severity of the slave code can be shown by comparison of the capital crimes for white persons at the same time. These were four in number, (1) murder, (2) carnal abuse of a female under ten years of age, (3) wilful burning of the penitentiary and (4) being an accessory to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... "But the wilful young rat ran off with a flirt of his tail to a dear little, fluffy kitten, who was not much larger than himself, and asked if she ...
— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice
... saw such an out-and-out wilful old girl as you are, Mary!" ejaculated Lynde, scarlet with mortification. "I ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the appearances of contrivance that have resulted from the operation find their obvious and complete explanation in the assumption of a contriver, and all such hazy films as that of variability producing variation cease to be capable of serving as excuses for wilful blindness. And why should not the power in question be so credited? Here is Mr. Darwin's solitary reason why. He doubts whether the inference implied may not be 'presumptuous.' He apprehends that we have no 'right ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... more just now. Which day shall we go? You shall manage things for me now: I won't be wilful again. Shall the servants go on first ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... the truth now up in Heaven, the beloved old man? Surely; for the beloved old woman, who alone knew it on earth, is she not there? He knows now how his selfish, wilful, school-hating scamp, of whom only he and Aunt Judy ever boded any good, stole away from his playmates and his games, every afternoon when school was dismissed, and with that baleful phantom before him, and that doleful cry in his ears, flew through the bustle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... other gentlemen. Finally, having used up Europe, she made her way to Syria, where she married a "dirty little black" [221] Bedawin shaykh. Mrs. Burton, with her innocent, impulsive, flamboyant mind, not only grappled Jane Digby with hoops of steel, but stigmatised all the charges against her as wilful and malicious. Burton, however, mistrusted the lady from the first. Says Mrs. Burton of her new friend, "She was a most beautiful woman, though sixty-one, tall, commanding, and queen-like. She was grande dame jusqu' au bout des doights, as much as if she had just left the salons of London ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... thereof, such damages, in all cases to be assessed at such sum, not less than one hundred dollars for the first and fifty dollars for every subsequent performance, as to the court shall appear to be just. If the unlawful performance and representation be wilful and for profit, such person or persons shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction shall be imprisoned for a period not exceeding one year.—U.S. Revised Statutes: Title ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... away, a sad, sad moan sighed through the branches of the old Oak. 'Twas a cry of anguish for its wilful child. ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... should desire so much To have me sleep with shame for bedfellow A whole life's space; she would be glad to die To escape such life. It may be too her love Is but an amorous quarrel with herself, Not love of me but her own wilful soul; Then she will live and be more glad of this Than girls of their own will and their heart's love Before love mars them: so God go with her! For mine own love-I wonder will she come Sad at her mouth a little, with drawn cheeks And eyelids ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Government, beginning to exhibit itself, is through the combinations of the designing to obtain a mercenary corps of voters, insignificant as to numbers, but formidable by their union, to hold the balance of power, and to effect their purposes by practising on the wilful, blind, wayward, and, we might almost add, fatal obstinacy of the two great political parties of the country. Here, in our view, is the danger that the nation has most to apprehend. The result is as plain as it is lamentable. In effect, it throws the political power of the entire Republic ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper
... must be set down as mere bald assertion, without a particle of evidence. In other words we should term it arrant fudge.' The perversion at this point is involved in a willful misapplication of the word 'principles.' I say 'wilful' because, at page 63, I am particularly careful to distinguish between the principles proper, Attraction and Repulsion, and those merely resultant sub-principles which control the universe in detail. To these sub-principles, swayed by the immediate spiritual ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... hold commune: haply hence, That still the living spirit in our frame, Which loves not to behold a lifeless thing, Transfuses into all things its own Will, And its own pleasures; sometimes with deep faith, And sometimes with a wilful playfulness That stealing pardon from our common sense Smiles, as self-scornful, to disarm the scorn For these wild reliques of our childish Thought, That flit about, oft go, and oft return Not uninvited. Ah there was a time, When oft amused ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... hints of this in what is called Black Magic—the wilful and intentional throwing of evil conditions on other people, making hard and cruel images of them in the mind, and so forth. But all that is as child's play to what would happen if the absolute clay were put into their hands, as it ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... the Constitution of 1844 had been rejected a second time. But the majority against its ratification had been cut down by at least one half. Angry with disappointment the editor of the Iowa Capital Reporter declared that its defeat was due to "the pertinacious and wilful misrepresentation of the Whig press relative ...
— History of the Constitutions of Iowa • Benjamin F. Shambaugh
... is usually very good tempered and not inclined to be quarrelsome with his kennel mates; but he is wilful, and loves to roam apart in search of game, and is not very amenable to discipline when alone. On the other hand, he works admirably with his companions in the pack, when he is most painstaking and indefatigable. Endowed with ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... the child in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury to health, including injury to or loss of sight, hearing or limb, or any organ of the body or any mental derangement; and the act or omission must be wilful, i.e. deliberate and intentional, and not merely accidental or inadvertent. The offence may be punished either summarily or on indictment, and the offender may be sent to penal servitude if it is shown that he was directly or indirectly ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of circumstances it irked him to be kept waiting. Here, following on the clerk's saucy familiarity, the wilful delay made his gorge rise. For a few seconds he fumed in silence; then, his patience exhausted, he burst out: "My time, sir, is as precious as your own. With your permission, I will take my ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... Diana's arm, and pulled a little too;—what gloves they were, for colour and fit and make! Her foot was a study. Her hat might have been a fairy queen's hat. And the face under it, pretty and gay and wilful and sweet, how could any man help being fascinated by it? Diana made up her mind ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... systems whose graver errors or weaker absurdities now form subjects of regret and ridicule; and fomented among the members of smaller societies and sects discords, strifes, and recriminations, which have been based on no other foundation than wilful or accidental ignorance. By bringing those in contact who otherwise would never have met, and improving the acquaintance of those who have, railways have spread individual opinions, tastes, and information more equally than before; and out of this mixture of the social and moral elements ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... remember that the sole object of our own existence was to give pleasure and amusement to our possessors, we have no hesitation in believing that we deserved a handsomer return than to have had our springs broken, our paint dirtied, and our earthly careers so untimely shortened by wilful mischief or fickle neglect. My friends, the prisoner ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... accordingly fought without seconds by the dim light of a single candle; and, although Mr Chaworth was the more skilful swordsman of the two, he received a mortal wound; but he lived long enough to disclose some particulars of the rencounter, which induced the coroner's jury to return a verdict of wilful murder, and Lord Byron was tried for ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... stepmother was no improvement on the mother. She had lofty ideas of discipline and being "minded." No doubt that little Stephen, crooked in eyes, crooked in body, short and swart, with brown, bare legs, was stubborn and wilful. He looked the part all right. His brown, bare legs were a temptation for the stepmother's willow switch. He decided to relieve everybody of the temptation to switch his legs by running away to sea and taking his brown, bare legs with him. There ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the outrage that makes the Frenchman most revengeful is not the murder of his family or the defilement of his women, but the wilful killing of his land and orchards. The land gave birth to all his flesh and blood; when his farm is laid waste wilfully, it is as though the mother of all his generations was violated. This accounts for the indomitable way in which the peasants insist on staying on in their houses ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... worse than this. Breach of promise is only a negative crime. The Allies went to the other extreme; their help took the form of positive wilful obstruction. The Japanese, by bolstering up Semianoff and Kalmakoff, and the Americans, by protecting and organising enemies, made it practically impossible for the Omsk Government to maintain its authority ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... the all; because it is only by the co-operation of all the members of a body, that any one member can fulfil its calling in health and freedom; because, as long as you stand aloof from the clergy, or from any other class, through pride, self-interest, or wilful ignorance, you are keeping up those very class distinctions of which you and I too complain, as 'hateful equally to God and to his enemies;' and, finally, because the clergy are the class which God has appointed to unite ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... best way of producing war." The Balkan policy of conquest and strangulation "was not the German policy, but that of the Austrian Imperial House." What better testimony is required to prove that Austria was not the blind tool, but the willing and wilful accomplice of Germany? ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... authority a little to his fellow-Hermoulites, clustered about me and the bicycle, for, at the expiration of half an hour, my revolver and passport are handed back to me, and without further inquiries or explanations I am allowed to depart in peace. As though in wilful aggravation of the case, a village of gypsies have their tents pitched and their donkeys grazing in the last Mohammedan cemetery I see ere passing over the Roumelian border into Turkey proper, where, at the very first village, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the characteristics of this utterly dead school are, first the wilful closing of its eyes to natural facts;—for, however ignorant a person may be, he need only look at a human being to see that it has a mouth as well as eyes; and secondly, the endeavour to adorn or idealize natural fact according to its own notions: it ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... Richard. "It was not to discuss these things that I put myself in jeopardy; and to assert my innocence can do no good; it cannot set aside the coroner's verdict of 'Wilful murder against Richard Hare, the younger.' Is my father as ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... They were indulged in all their little fancies, and kept in sprightly humour. Another of them had said, when the sailors were flogged, it was out of the hearing of the Africans, lest it should depress their spirits. He by no means wished to say that such descriptions were wilful misrepresentations. If they were not, it proved that interest of prejudice was capable of spreading a film over the eyes thick enough to ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... and the Regulus, and the Manhattan, and the Wilful Girl, and the Deborah-Angelina, and the Sukey and Katy, which, my dear young lady, I may say, was my first love. She was only a fore-and-after, carrying no standing topsail, even, and we named her after two of the river girls, who were flyers, in their way; at ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... you know how she repulsed him, and taunted him with wilful desertion of her—desertion, indeed! that honest Cardo, whose very soul was bound up in her! Had I not heard it from his own lips, I could never have believed that Valmai would have used the words 'base and ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... his shoulders. "I have been told that a woman will usually be more or less attracted by the most successful man in her circle. Of course we cannot realize how a wilful, dominating personality like his would influence a girl whose affections were not bestowed elsewhere; especially if he laid himself out to win her. It is probably an overwhelming thing to be courted by a man whose name is known all over the world. She had heard ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... friends. Away from Paris they carry on a fairly regular correspondence. Such of Bakkus's letters as Lackaday has kept and as I have read, are literary gems with—always—a perverse and wilful flaw ... like the ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Although I have used this merely as an illustration, this is very much the situation that confronts Pelagie's friends. You see, I have some reason to feel alarmed, and I fear I have no right to permit her to go to this picnic. Yet," with a grimace, "what can I? Where a wilful maiden will, ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... fast," said the priest. "Even zeal is nought without obedience. If you could serve the Church better than by going into a convent, would you be wilful?" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... and most earnestly at the end, taking me by the hand and looking me full in the face. But I could not look him back again, and turned my eyes away, for I was wilful, and would not bring myself to let the diamond go. Yet all the while I thought that what he said was true, and I remembered that sermon that Mr. Glennie preached, saying that life was like a 'Y', and that to each comes a time when two ways part, and where he must choose whether he ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... shame and a warning to us. Our children are taught to remember it so. The "little group of wilful men," the eleven who came near to shipwrecking the country, were equally bad, perhaps, but they are forgotten. La Follette stands for them and bears the curses of his ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... no reply; and, despite his efforts to the contrary, felt highly flattered. He also felt the pangs of hunger, and, after resisting them for some time, resolved to eat, as it were, under protest. With a reckless, wilful air, therefore, he opened the tarpaulin bag, and helped himself to a large "hunk" of bread and a piece of cheese. Whereupon Mr Jones smiled grimly, and remarked that there was nothing like grub for giving a man heart—except grog, he added, producing a ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... my friend, Socialism does not mean that everything is to be divided up equally among the people every little while. That is either a fool's notion or the wilful misrepresentation of a liar. Socialism does not mean that there is to be a great bureaucratic government owning everything and controlling everybody. It does not mean doing away with private initiative and making of humanity a great herd, everybody ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... dictated by personal spite and jealousy, and which is expressed with the intention of doing mischief and giving pain to the person of whom the judgment is expressed. You will occasionally find such judgments supported by wilful misrepresentation, and even by pure invention. In such a case as this, the essential thing is not the unfavorable opinion; it is the malice which leads to its entertainment and expression. And the conduct of the offending party should be regarded with that feeling which, on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... came in contact. Without it, Livingstone, with his ardent temperament, his enthusiasm, his high spirit and courage, must have become uncompanionable, and a hard master. Religion had tamed him, and made him a Christian gentleman; the crude and wilful were refined and subdued; religion had made him the most companionable of men and indulgent of masters—a man whose society was pleasurable ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... converse. Nevertheless at the north gate I got a rare fright; for, though it wanted a full half-hour of sunset, the porter was in the act of closing it. Seeing us, he waited grumbling until we came up, and then muttered, in answer to my remonstrance, something about queer times and wilful people having their way. I took little notice of what he said, however, being anxious only to get through the gate and leave as few traces of ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... and forbids a sharp, cutting manner in playing the sforzati at the last return of the subject. Kullak is copious in his directions, and thinks the touch should be light and the hand gliding, and in the B major part "fiery, wilful accentuation of the inferior beats." Capricious, fantastic, and graceful, this study is Chopin in rare spirits. Schumann has the phrase—the study should be executed with "amiable bravura." There is a misprint ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... this search, he believed the Cardinal Bellarmine to be the best defender of the Roman cause, and therefore betook himself to the examination of his reasons. The cause was weighty, and wilful delays had been inexcusable both towards God and his own conscience: he therefore proceeded in this search with all moderate haste, and about the twentieth year of his age did show the then Dean of Gloucester—whose ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... sin superior to every other, it is that of wilful and offensive war.... He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death." (A copy of this, together with the President's recent message, might advantageously be sent to a certain well-known address ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... and scones! I know your days in town. Ah, well, a wilful woman must have her way! If you have made up your mind to go, it's no use arguing; but I don't know what it can be you need so badly. We seem to ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey |
