"Capriciously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which represented life to the youthful writers. It was a Charleston with an imposing background of history and oratory, forensic and legislative, against which the poetry and imagination of the new-comers glittered capriciously, like the glimmering of fireflies against the background of night, with swift, uncertain vividness that suggested the early extinguishing of those quivering lamps. But the heart of Charleston was kindled with a new ambition, and the new men brought ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... hearth-rug was a thing which nobody worked at from morning to night; it was taken up and put down; it was in the chair, on the floor, across the hand-rail, under the bed, kicked here, kicked there, rolled away in the closet, brought out again, and so on more capriciously perhaps than any other home-made article. Nobody was expected to finish a rug within a calculable period, and the wools of the beginning became faded and historical before the end was reached. A sense of ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... secret love: for, in the anguish begotten by its loss, it followed the departing glory in penitence to the inmost shrine where it ceased altogether; and because it seemed utterly lost and hopeless of attainment and capriciously denied to the seeker, a profound pit arose in the soul for those who, like it were seeking, but still in hope, for they had not come to the vain end of their endeavors. I understood that such pity is the last of the precious essences which make up the elixir ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... one! Whose harshest idea Will to melody run, O! is it thy will On the breezes to toss? Or, capriciously still, Like the lone Albatross, [23] Incumbent on night (As she on the air) To keep watch with delight On the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... farm, the threshing-floor, and the full granary, and stands beside the woman baking bread at the oven. With these fancies are connected certain simple rites, the half-understood local observance and the half-believed local legend reacting capriciously on each other. They leave her a fragment of bread and a morsel of meat at the crossroads to take on her journey; and perhaps some real Demeter carries them away, as she wanders through the country. The incidents of their yearly labour become to them acts of worship; they seek her blessing ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... The average Roman, moreover, was a lover of variety in respect of his habitation. We find in a somewhat later epigrammatist that one grandee keeps up four town houses in Rome itself, and moves capriciously from one to the other, so that you never know where you will find him. At different seasons or in different moods he might prefer this or that situation or aspect. As for country seats of various degrees of magnificence, a man might—like many modern nobles or royalties—possess three, four, a dozen, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Following a narrow walk, nearly obliterated, I entered a paved court. The first tramp awoke a train of echoes that seemed as though they had slumbered since my departure, and now started from their sleep to greet or to admonish the returning truant. Grass in luxuriant tufts, capriciously disposed, grew about in large patches. The breeze passed heavily by, rustling the dark swathe, and murmuring fitfully as it departed. Desolation seemed to have marked the spot for her own—the grim abode of solitude and despair. During twenty years' sojourn ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... shadow of a doubt. I have an odd fashion (very odd, Gustav!), Miss Ruyter, of associating ladies with flowers, and that gorgeous three-bird snapdragon always looks to me like some brilliant belle, who holds her glittering sceptre and wields it, capriciously perhaps, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... outside the glass-house, where the porter would certainly see him, and where he might be seen by any one else, staring at the window of his master's daughter's room on the other side of the canal. But what he really felt was that Marietta had treated him capriciously and that if he had a particle of self-respect he must show her that he did not care. For if Marietta was very like other carefully brought up girls of her age, Zorzi was nothing more than a boy where love was concerned, ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... patiently resigned to the new loneliness of Bayou des Acadiens as his thatched hut, which day by day sat so silent between the edges of the dark forest and the darker stream, looking out beyond the farther bank, and far over the green waste of rushes with its swarms of blackbirds sweeping capriciously now this way and now that, and the phantom cloud-shadows passing slowly across from one far line of cypress wood to another. But since that night when the hut's solitary occupant could not sleep for the winds and for thought ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... whom the march of events at Thorpe Ambrose had now thrust capriciously into a foremost place. This was the one friend at hand to whom Allan in his social isolation could turn for counsel in ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... cottage behind the stable. The stable door was locked but a small window at the side had been left open for ventilation. Monkey-wise she scrambled up and through it. A low nickering from the horses greeted her; they knew her at once. Apache was contentedly munching his hay. Horses sleep or eat capriciously. To slip on his bridle, adjust and cinch his saddle took but a few minutes. Then she led him from his stall, silently unbarred the big doors, led him outside, again closed the doors carefully, and mounted him. The night was clear and cold. The moon, though now well toward the western ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... evident pleasure in telling me how he would punish me if I disobeyed him when we were married. Though we had but little in common mentally, I was frequently struck with the similarity between his ideas and what my own had been in regard to my sister. He used his authority over me most capriciously. On one occasion he would not let me have any supper at a dance. On another he objected to my drinking black coffee. No day passed without a command or prohibition on some trifling point. Whenever he saw, though, that I really disliked the interference or made any decided resistance, which ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... geraniums,—the rich saffron and brown tints of thick clustered calceolarias,—the purple and crimson of pendulous fuchsias, whose blossoms tumbled one upon the other in a riot of splendid colour,—and all at once her thoughts strayed capriciously to the cool green seclusion of John Walden's garden. She remembered the spray of white lilac he had given her, and fancied she could almost inhale again its delicious perfume. But the lilac flowering-time ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers's half-awakened soul—wherein there had been a picture of a recent interview on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had begged him not to come again in tones whose vibration incited him to disobey. "What are you doing here? Why do you pursue me? Another belongs to you. If they were to see you they would seize you as a thief!" ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... seems to meditate, starts on its course again, shoots like an arrow from one end of the vessel to the other, whirls around, slips away, dodges, rears, bangs, crashes, kills, exterminates. It is a battering ram capriciously assaulting a wall. Add to this the fact that the ram is of metal, the wall ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... are so capriciously conceited now. Sirrah damnation, I have heard this knight Puntarvolo reported to be a gentleman of exceeding good humour, thou know'st him; prithee, how is his disposition? I never was so favoured of my stars, as to see him yet. Boy, do you look ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion, say so, Mary! Say..." And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... hardly extends farther back than the beginning of the sixteenth century. By that time their primitive character seems to have been corrupted, or at least their significance was so far forgotten, that distinct pastimes and ceremonials were capriciously intermixed. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the May sports in vogue were, besides a contest of archery, four pageants,—the Kingham, or election of a Lord and Lady of the May, otherwise called Summer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... even found at first a pleasant relaxation in leading the life of an ordinary person, and she tried to join in the life of the family in such a way as to be no longer a burden or a source of anxiety to those she had capriciously sacrificed during a year and a half. But with Hermione she was not the same as with the rest. She was with her what she had been on the first day when Hermione had declared her love for Paul, and it appeared to the young girl ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... to be noticed. Nothing was too small for his sharp little eyes, and he kept constantly stopping his brothers to ask the why and the wherefore of everything: why the bees dived into the fragrant flower-cups? why the swallows skimmed along the rivers? why the butterflies zigzagged capriciously along the fields? To all these questions Peter only answered with a burst of stupid laughter; while the surly Paul shrugged his shoulders, and crossly bade the little Thumbling hold his tongue, telling him he ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... acquaintance, a man of decent birth, but poor, by trade a dragoman, who had acquired a reputation for unusual wisdom. When he had nothing else to do, he came to me unfailingly, wherever I might chance to be established or encamped. He was sitting cross-legged in a corner, smoking his narghileh, capriciously illumined by thin slants of light, alive with motes, from the Venetian blinds. He seized upon the ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... quite handsome. She had been very pale and thin when he reached Pretoria, but before a month was over she had become, comparatively speaking, stout, which was an enormous gain to her appearance. Her pale face, too, gathered a faint tinge of colour that came and went capriciously, like star-light on the water, and her beautiful eyes grew deeper and more ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... cares; in fact, they know very little upon any subject, though they are often intelligent and highly inquisitive. They love dainties, play, and mischief. They are apt to be greatly beloved, and are themselves capriciously affectionate. They are little people, and can only do little things. When they are idle and mischievous, they are called Boggarts, and are a curse to the house they live in. When they are useful and considerate, they are Brownies, ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... fog; not moving like other winged creatures, with harmony of motion, but rising without unity, and filling the vale with discordant sounds. Nowhere could these sable birds have appeared more unearthly than in the "dark valley," as it was called by the natives, where the mists moved capriciously, yet remained persistently within the circumference of this natural cauldron, now falling like a pall and again hovering in mid air. Suddenly the uncanny birds vanished among the trees as quickly as they had arisen, and there was something mysterious about their unwarranted disappearance ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... gleamed capriciously upon the bauble of the fool, which he still carried, though now it hung downward from his saddle, foolishly enough. "A most merry fool," said the Lord of Content to himself. "I was wise to insist upon his accompanying this wayward child ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... governed, by an Intelligence, provided we admit that the intelligent Governor adheres to fixed laws, which are only modified or counteracted by other laws of the same dispensation, and are never either capriciously or providentially departed from. Whoever regards all events as parts of a constant order, each one being the invariable consequent of some antecedent condition, or combination of conditions, accepts fully ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... persuaded myself, was the murderer; for which persuasion I was unable to adduce a tittle of evidence. It was uncolored by the remotest possibility. It was truly and simply the suggestion of my vagrant fancy, which had mysteriously settled itself into a conviction; and having thus capriciously identified the stranger with Lieschen's murderer, I now, upon evidence quite as preposterous, identified ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... pity for her whom he could not name kept him from answering. And in the drift of his silence the vision capriciously failed him. He looked at Julia. He looked back at the wall. It was nothing but a funny old picture which hung there confronting them. The commonplaceness, beside it, of Julia's long-drawn expression made him snicker, until, as a result of this accidental reaction, they ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Villabuena's quarters. He came in sight of the house; its upper windows had just caught the first sunbeams; the balconies were filled with plants, whose bright blossoms and fresh contrasted pleasantly with the ancient stone-work of the heavy facade; on a myrtle spray, a bird, capriciously deserting the greenwood for the city, trimmed his feathers and carolled a lively note; every thing about the dwelling seemed so gay and cheerful, that Herrera involuntarily checked his horse, and felt inclined to turn back. For the second time a messenger of evil, how could he break ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... it stood in his memory, as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end of a long and dark vista: then came the poet, embodying outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in: stroke upon stroke, the drama proceeded: the light deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to the riveted gaze of the spectator: until at last, when the final words were spoken, it stood before him in broad sunlight, a model of immortal beauty. ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... began to blow hard again, and the heavens seemed to predict a gale. The barometer announced a speedy change, the mercury rising and falling capriciously; the sea also, in the south-east, raised long surges which indicated a tempest. The sun had set the evening before in a red mist, in the midst of the ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... come farther was Emerson. He went up to the bier, and with his arms crossed on his breast, and his elbows held in either hand, stood with his head pathetically fallen forward, looking down at the dead face. Those who knew how his memory was a mere blank, with faint gleams of recognition capriciously coming and going in it, must have felt that he was struggling to remember who it was lay there before him; and for me the electly simple words confessing his failure will always be pathetic with his remembered aspect: ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... where beauty is added, the possessor has invincible charms. It did not escape the eyes of Dexter that, in the society of other men, his young wife was gayer and more vivacious than when with him. This annoyed him so much, that he began to act capriciously, as it seemed to Jessie. Sometimes he would require her to leave a pleasant company long before the usual hour, and sometimes he would refuse to go with her to parties or places of amusement, yet ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... sister's intimates and whom she herself had seen in London, in Grosvenor Place, and even under the motherly old beeches at Mellows. But she thought it unpleasant and base in Selina to go abroad that way, like a commercial traveller, capriciously, clandestinely, without giving notice, when she had left her to understand that she was simply spending three or four days in town. It was bad taste and bad form, it was cabotin and had the mark of Selina's ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... several paths of literature, he has essayed his steps and made good a footing; in not one has he continuously persevered, but, although cheered by applause, has quickly struck into another track, which, in its turn, has been capriciously deserted. His "Studies of Roman history" give him an honourable claim to the title of historian; his "Notes of Archaeological Rambles" are greatly esteemed; he has written plays; and his prose fictions, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... glistening veil that was carelessly cast about her dainty limbs, her white arms and delicate ankles being adorned with circlets of tiny, golden bells, which kept up a melodious jingle- jangle as she moved. And now began the strangest music,—music that seemed to hover capriciously between luscious melody and harsh discord,—a wild and curious medley of fantastic, minor suggestions in which the imaginative soul might discover hints of tears and folly, love and madness. To ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... a theme may be called free when the understanding, while determining the connection of ideas, does so with so little prominence that the imagination appears to act quite capriciously in the matter, and to follow only the accident of time. The presentation of a subject becomes sensuous when it conceals the general in the particular, and when the fancy gives the living image (the whole representation), where ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... in black and masked by a vizor of polished steel, soldered to a helmet of the same nature, which altogether enveloped the whole of his head. The fire of the heavens cast red reflections on the polished surface, and these reflections, flying off capriciously, seemed to be angry looks launched by the unfortunate, instead of imprecations. In the middle of the gallery, the prisoner stopped for a moment, to contemplate the infinite horizon, to respire the sulphurous perfumes of ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... cannot bear these continual struggles—But I wish you to examine carefully your own heart and mind; and, if you perceive the least chance of being happier without me than with me, or if your inclination leans capriciously to that side, do not dissemble; but tell me frankly that you will never see me more. I will then adopt the plan I mentioned to you—for we must either live together, or I will be ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Alonzo; my reputation depends on my adherence to my first determination; justice to yourself and to Beauman also demand it. After what has passed, I should be considered as acting capriciously and inconsistently, should I depart from it. Beauman ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... means by which protection may be secured. Those means consist of the employment of spies and servants, giving them their just dues without haughtiness, the realisation of taxes with considerateness, never taking anything (from the subject) capriciously and without cause, O Yudhishthira, the selection of honest men (for the discharge of administrative functions), heroism, skill, and cleverness (in the transaction of business), truth, seeking the good of the people, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... took the other side, defended female heirship, and finally summed up thus: "It cannot but occur that women have natural and equitable claims as well as men, and these claims are not to be capriciously or lightly superseded or infringed. When fiefs inspired military service, it is easily discerned why females could not inherit them; but the reason is at an end. As manners make laws, so ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... point, i.e., clearly to apprehend that leading sentiment of the poet's mind, by their conformity to which the host of suggestions are arranged. Now this requisite exertion is not willingly made by the large majority of readers. It is so easy to judge capriciously, and according to ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... night; and above the island the Danube is at its widest, and the passage over the ice-floes the most difficult. Monstrous heaped-up masses of frozen snow form oblique stretches of barricade, and in many places the ice takes the shape of capriciously cleft ridges, from which rise six-foot pinnacles of frozen water instead of fingers of rock. In coasting round these, Timar suddenly found that he had lost himself. He had already been an hour on the river; his repeater struck a quarter to three; he ought long ago to have reached the other side; ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... Zvantzev's neck with a scarf. He stood in front of her, frowning, dissatisfied, his lips curled capriciously, the calves of his legs shivering. Foma became disgusted as he looked at them, and he went off to the other raft. He was astonished that all these people behaved as though they had not heard the song at all. In his breast the song was alive and there ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... colour truly, or most capriciously. Many annuals come true: thus I purchased German seeds of thirty-four named sub-varieties of one race of ten-week stocks (Matthiola annua), and raised a hundred and forty plants, all of which, with ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... white race is its normal condition. It goes further, and proves that social and political equality is abnormal to it, whether educated or not. Neither negroes nor mulattoes know how to use power when given to them. They always use it capriciously and tyrannically. Tschudi, a Swiss naturalist, [see Tschudi's Travels in Peru, London, 1848,] says, "that in Lima and Peru generally, the free negroes are a plague to society. Dishonesty seems to be a part of their very nature. Free born negroes, admitted into the houses ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... if you are a bee, fail to interest you, and necessitate an act of will; while butterflies, charmed by the continual surprises, satisfied by the immediate joys, of the present moment, flitted irresponsibly, capriciously, whithersoever a bright colour beckoned, and gave no thought to the moments that had not yet come. Everywhere there was business, rumour, action; but everywhere, none the less, there was the ineffable peace of early morning, of the hours when man—the peace-destroyer?—is still ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... lain empty for a long time—old Frank Edwards, so well known as a sportsman, had been dead for eighteen years, his horses sold, his kennels dismantled, and his son, after so absurdly long a minority, (for his father had capriciously fixed his majority at twenty-three,) only now coming of age; but whether he would reside at Bandvale, or continue in the neighbourhood of Leicester, where his guardian lived, or what he would do, nobody could tell. The estate, we were told, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Divine Personality. I lay down no dogmatic statements as to the efficacy of vocal prayers. What I do say is, that all I know of God as revealed in nature and law forbids me to entertain the notion that the order he has seen fit to establish is to be capriciously altered at the request of any of his creatures. It is not irreverence, but a sense of reverence which prohibits me from believing that the Being whose presence and power are revealed in the least as in the greatest of the phenomena of nature, is open to arbitrarily interfere with the established ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... would afford an agreeable variety by no means unmusical. In conversation with a very learned Grecian on this subject, he seemed to consider because the learned are constantly, and sometimes very capriciously, introducing new words into our language, that such words as en might be introduced for similar reasons, namely, mere fancy or caprice; on this subject I greatly differ from him: our aboriginal Saxon population has never corrupted ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... chiefs renowned in war; and with others came Tatatao, that was a mighty hunter of hares and had compassed famous hardships. For those men that delight in adventure and battle are most pleasantly minded to gentle women, for thus capriciously hath Atua, the all-god, ordained. But Liliokani had no ear to the wooing of these men, and the fisherman's daughter was ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... forefathers; this was all his own, free from the dread of co-ownership with money lenders and usurers. He even had handsome antiquities which no one could claim. Near the door was a pair of amphorae, drawn up by fishermen's nets—whitish earthern jars with pointed bases, indurated by the sea and capriciously decorated by Nature with garlands of adhering shells. In the center of the table, between the periwinkles, was another gift from Tio Ventolera, a terra cotta female head with a strange round tiara crowning her braided hair. The ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Marwitz rose capriciously and ate capriciously; trays with strange meals upon them were carried at strange hours to her rooms, and Barker, Mrs. Barker and Rose ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... and meanwhile listening to find out what was going on. Yet he could not overcome his sense of repugnance. After sipping a dozen spoonfuls of tea, he suddenly released his head, pushed the spoon away capriciously, and sank back on the pillow. There were actually real pillows under his head now, down pillows in clean cases, he observed that, too, and took note ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the valley are of extraordinary size, and a rich contour of growth. Scattered capriciously among the groves are no less than ten hamlets, all attached to Bocagnono. It is a wild and romantic neighbourhood; and the principal village, though surrounded with verdure, has a most desolate aspect, the houses being built of unhewn ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... the alleys cut amidst the grove around. Caught by the murmur of an unseen brook, she tracked it through the trees, as its sound grew louder and louder on her ear, till at length it stole upon her sight. The sun, only winning through the trees at intervals, played capriciously upon the cold and dark waters as they glided on, and gave to her, as the same effect has done to a thousand poets, ample matter for a simile or ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... capriciously than ever. She would be sullen and silent, or she would draw back fiercely at some harmless word or gesture, or she would look at him with her eyes narrowed in such a strange way and with such a wicked light in them that Dick swore to himself they were too much for him, and would leave ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... dark shadows pass capriciously over the pond. The shadows grew larger without apparent cause, covering the pond. She could not understand this, for the sun, which had risen above the horizon, was shining in the sky without a cloud. How did ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... from violent efforts and sudden desires; efforts which are soon remitted when they encounter difficulty, and desires, which, if they are indulged too often, will shake off the authority of reason, and range capriciously from ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of a genuine, as opposed to a factitious, expression. If we get the impression from a work of art that no part could be otherwise—not a single line or note or stroke of the brush—then we have the same sort of feeling towards it that we have towards the living thing that was not made by hands capriciously, but grew in its inevitable way in accordance with the laws of its own nature. Of course, works of art are products of thought, of plan, and conscious purpose; they are seldom composed all at one flash, but grow tentatively into their final ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... profuse luxury, which was disguised by the name of imperial magnificence or Christian charity. The immediate supplies had been exhausted by the unforeseen necessity of military preparations. A personal contribution, rigorously but capriciously imposed on the members of the senatorian order, was the only expedient that could disarm, without loss of time, the impatient avarice of Attila; and the poverty of the nobles compelled them to adopt the scandalous resource of exposing to public auction the jewels of their wives and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... thoroughfare. The dwellings were placed nearer or further from the sidewalk as their builders fancied, and the elms that met in a low arch above the street had an illusive symmetry in the perspective; they were really set at uneven intervals, and in a line that wavered capriciously in and out. The street itself lounged and curved along, widening and contracting like a river, and then suddenly lost itself over the brow of an upland which formed a natural boundary of the village. Beyond this was South Hatboro', a group of cottages built by city people ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... characteristics forcibly illustrate the moral and intellectual genius of the man. The impulsiveness which has been ascribed to him is a wrong expression, for it is usually interpreted to mean the action of sudden motives waywardly, capriciously, or at least intermittingly working; whereas the character which Shelley so constantly displayed was an overbearing strength of conviction and feeling, a species of audacious, but chivalrous readiness to act upon conviction as promptly as possible, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... to is yourself, my Public, much courted, much abused, and commonly accused of either being coldly neglectful or capriciously forgetful of all sorts of merit. To me, at least, you have proved most kind, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... that words can do even less than painting could to bring this window-scene at Promontogno before another eye. The casement just frames it. In the foreground are meadow slopes, thinly, capriciously planted with chestnut trees and walnuts, each standing with its shadow cast upon the sward. A little farther falls the torrent, foaming down between black jaws of rain-stained granite, with the wooden buildings of a rustic mill set on a ledge ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... easily displeased, and allowed himself to be capriciously resentful. He would sometimes leave lord Oxford silently, no one could tell why, and was to be courted back by more letters and messages than the footmen were willing to carry. The table was, indeed, infested by lady Mary Wortley, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... cannot go in the common interest has not so far been determined administratively but it may be necessary to consider this. If so, it is better that it be done quantitatively on the basis of a common library policy rather than that the present procedure should become an embarrassment or be administered capriciously or conservatively. ...
— Report of the National Library Service for the Year Ended 31 March 1958 • G. T. Alley and National Library Service (New Zealand)
... attributed the fun to her mistress's gladness in not having pursued her bent to quit the country. Redworth saw deeper, and was nevertheless amazed by the airy hawk-poise and pounce-down of her wit, as she ranged high and low, now capriciously generalizing, now dropping bolt upon things of passage—the postillion jogging from rum to gin, the rustics baconly agape, the horse-kneed ostlers. She touched them to the life in similes and phrases; and next she was aloft, derisively philosophizing, but with a comic afflatus ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... be doubted by the object of Mr Sparkler's affections. Miss Fanny was now in the difficult situation of being universally known in that light, and of not having dismissed Mr Sparkler, however capriciously she used him. Hence, she was sufficiently identified with the gentleman to feel compromised by his being more than usually ridiculous; and hence, being by no means deficient in quickness, she sometimes came to ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... must hide all that joy!—it had already become almost a guilty secret. He was the first man that had ever kissed her since her "Dad" died,—the first that had ever kissed her as a lover. Her mind flew suddenly and capriciously back to Briar Farm—to Robin Clifford who had longed to kiss her, and yet had refused to do so unless she could have loved him. She had never loved him—no!—and yet the thought of him just now gave her a thrill of remorseful tenderness. She knew in herself at last what love ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... Rhone has rambled at its sweet will over the vast tract of rubble that formed its delta in the diluvial age, changing its course capriciously, and always, wherever it went, covering up the pebble bed with a deposit of fertile soil. Other streams helped in the good work—the Herault, rich with red mud, the Ley, that flows past Montpellier, and the Vidourle from Lunel: consequently a very large ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... the supernatural powers of control attributed by credulous pilgrims to Madame Wagner do not exist. Prima donnas and tenors are as unmanageable at Bayreuth as anywhere else. Casts are capriciously changed; stage business is insufficiently rehearsed; the public are compelled to listen to a Brynhild or Siegfried of fifty when they have carefully arranged to see one of twenty-five, much as in any ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... thought, however, that song as it is known among the Sakais is the melodious sound we are in the habit of considering as such. With them it is an emission of notes, generally guttural ones which are capriciously alternated without any variety of tune and which in their integrity fail to express ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... just a trifle wayward, I will confess. But then that trifling waywardness gave just the spice that was wanting to this grand young lily. The white lilies are never more beautiful than when they wave capriciously in the summer wind; and if Laura Dunbar was a little passionate when you tried to thwart her; and if her great blue eyes at such times had a trick of lighting up with sudden fire in them, like a burst of lurid sunlight through a summer storm-cloud, there ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... charming voice. It seemed as if not only the strings of the violin made music, but its bridge, its pegs, and its sounding board. It was astonishing! The piece had been a most difficult one; but it seemed like play-as if the bow were but wandering capriciously over the strings. Such was the appearance of facility, that everyone might have supposed he could do it. The violin seemed to sound of itself, the bow to play of itself. These two seemed to do it all. One forgot the master ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... a principality. Over its bays, rivers, and islands, had it any, as well as over the mainland, he was given command forever. The dispensation of justice was his exclusive right. He and he only was the court with summary powers of "high, low and middle jurisdiction," which were harshly or capriciously exercised. Not only did he impose sentence for violation of laws, but he, himself, ordained those laws and they were laws which were always framed to coincide with his interests and personality. He had full authority to appoint officers and magistrates and enact laws. And finally ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... to be free, bound in nowise by what other men have adjudged music to be, and by what their practice has made it seem. He comes to his art without prejudice or preconception of any kind, it appears. He plays with its elements as capriciously as the child plays with paper and crayons. He amuses himself with each instrument of the band careless of its customary uses. There are times when Strawinsky comes into the solemn conclave of musicians ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... manner towards each, he imagined all to be as well as formerly.[1] That they were on the point of living apart, and of keeping up their habitual interchange of mind exclusively by letters, is no proof that either was capriciously or ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... condition. Then, in negotiation, let us avoid the same meddling policy—shall I falsely call it?—the same restless disposition to serve one State at another's expense; showing favour and dislike capriciously and alternately, guided by mere individual and personal feelings, whether towards States or statesmen, displaying groundless likings for some and groundless hatred for others; one day supporting this Power in its aggression upon that, and ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... Aristophanes for a great nation; but rather for a cultivated society which spent its time ... in guessing riddles and playing at charades.... Even in the dim Latin copy, through which we chiefly know it, the grace of the original is not wholly obliterated. persons and incidents seem capriciously or carelessly shuffled as in a game of cards; in the original a picture from life, it became in the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... pair pricked up their ears and whinnied. Sam went to meet them. The two men he dimly remembered as breed-boys around the settlement. Scarcely regarding them, he pulled the horses' ears and rubbed their noses, while they nozzled him capriciously with delicate whickerings. ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... minced, brush it up hastily with a new clothes-brush, and stir round rapidly and capriciously with a salt-spoon or ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... you go out to lives that you can make empty and self-indulgent and narrow if you like; you can shirk duties and eat capriciously or intemperately, and lie in bed too long; you can idle about all day amusing yourself, and fill your mind with dress and gossip and spite;—perhaps you would feel there was "no harm" in ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... fancy;—one image capriciously suggested by another, and but half connected with the subject of discourse; nay, half opposed to it; for in the gaiety of the speaker's animal spirits, the 'Dutchman's beard' is made to ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... physician in cases of drunkenness, recommended that Miguel's clothing should be removed, in order that he should lie more comfortably. But Jackson, who would seldom let any thing be done in the forecastle that was not proposed by himself, capriciously ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... The fire capriciously would, then it wouldn't. A tiny flame played tantalizingly along the top of a stick only to go sullenly out when it reached the end. Match after match was sacrificed to the cause, but at last, down deep under the surface, there was a steady, reassuring, cheerful crackle that made Phelan sit back ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... in these hues. Nature, apparently, has passed along this canon, touching the rocks capriciously; now staining an entire cliff as red as blood, now tingeing a light pinnacle with green, now spreading over the whole face of a mountain a vast Persian rug. Hence both sides of the canon present successive miles of Oriental tapestry. Moreover, every passing cloud works here ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... our lives so strangely and capriciously, that we are ever doing things, which in after moments surprise ourselves those unplanned, unplotted, spontaneous deeds of ours that spring from the natural source of action, directly as it is influenced by some passing circumstance of moment! These are where ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... orange petticoat, remaining fastened under her white inner waist with short sleeves, composed thus a costume much less severe than the first, and harmonized wonderfully with the scarlet stockings, and the Madras scarf so capriciously twisted around the head of the Creole. Nothing could be more pure, more beautiful, than the contour of her arms and shoulders, to which little dimples gave ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... and peace, but of fate. Remember, I have wealth more than wit can number; I have had power more than kings could emcompass; yet the world seems a desert; all nature appears an afflictive spectacle of warring passions. This blind fatality, that capriciously sports with the rules and lives of mortals, tells me that the mountains will never again send forth the water of their springs to my thirst. Oh, that I might be freed and set at liberty from wretchedness! But I fear, I fear this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to me. They not only forgive me for not taking any part in their conversation, but also for capriciously interrupting it. In a quiet way they seem even to derive hearty pleasure from my joy. Especially Juliana. I tell her very little about you, but she has a good intuition and surmises the rest. Certainly there is nothing more amiable than pure, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... consider only a few cases. In regard to {384} fish, I believe that the same species never occur in the fresh waters of distant continents. But on the same continent the species often range widely and almost capriciously; for two river-systems will have some fish in common and some different. A few facts seem to favour the possibility of their occasional transport by accidental means; like that of the live fish not rarely dropped by whirlwinds in India, and the vitality of their ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... the latter end of the month, and one of the earliest of the autumnal fogs hung thinly over the landscape. As the Earl wound along the sides of the hill on which his castle was built, the scene on which he gazed below received from the grey mists capriciously hovering over it, a dim and melancholy wildness. A broader and whiter vapour, that streaked the lower part of the valley, betrayed the course of the rivulet; and beyond, to the left, rose wan and spectral, the spire of ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... if a more difficult, is a less important one. The most pressing case is that of the metre known as the second Asclepiad, the "Sic te diva potens Cypri." With this, I fear, I shall be thought to have dealt rather capriciously, having rendered it by four different measures, three of them, however, varieties of the same general type. It so happens that the first Ode which I translated was the celebrated Amoebean Poem, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... the wood smoke—the mood veered, and there was nothing but I. Space and eternity were I—vast projections of myself, tingling with my consciousness to the remotest fringe of the outward swinging atom-drift; through immeasurable night, pierced capriciously with shafts of paradoxic day; through and beyond the awful circle of yearless duration, my ego lived and knew itself and thrilled with the glory of being. The slowly revolving Milky Way was only a glory ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... became fragmentary, veering as capriciously as the purple wind-flaws that spread across the shoals. But always to her question or comment she found in his response the charm of freshness, of quick intelligence, or of a humourous and idle ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... thoughts flickered capriciously over the astonishing events of my adventurous week-end. I was pleasantly replete with experience. In all my life I had never before entered thus completely into any of the great movements of life. I recalled my first thrills of anticipation amidst the glowing, excited youth of the ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... mother, and has ever asserted that her periodic suffering was far more intense than the pain experienced during her confinement. These neuralgic pains fly along the tracks of nerves to different organs, and capriciously dart from point to point with marvelous celerity, producing nausea, headache, and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... with its polo field, golf course and tennis courts; and in this same valley some of our wealthy citizens, such as Howard Ogilvy and Leonard Dickinson, had bought "farms," week-end playthings for spring and autumn. Hambleton Durrett had started the fashion. Capriciously, as he did everything else, he had become the owner of several hundred acres of pasture, woodland and orchard, acquired some seventy-five head of blooded stock, and proceeded to house them in model barns and milk by machinery; ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dress, the stately bow, the slightly rouged cheeks, the artificially graceful deportment, and the aristocratic features of the lady, formed a strange contrast with the roughness of surrounding objects. It struck one with as much astonishment as if diamonds had been found capriciously set by some unknown hand in one of the wild trees of the forest, or it reminded the imagination of those fairy tales in which a princess is found asleep in a solitude, where none but beasts of prey were expected ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... granted such powers to the adventurers as suited his own narrow and arbitrary views: he refused to sanction any sort of representative government in the colony, and vested all power in a council appointed by himself.[299] Virginia was, about that time, divided somewhat capriciously into two parts: the southern portion was givens to a merchant company of London, the northern to a merchant company of Bristol ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... abilities we revere, are of opinion that the trivial names of plants, which are or should be a kind of abridgment of the specific character, ought very rarely or never to be changed: we are not for altering them capriciously on every trivial occasion, but in such a case as the present, where the science is manifestly advanced by the alteration, it would surely have been criminal to have preferred a name, barely expressive, to one which immediately identifies ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 3 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... feel bound in honour to persist in the offer of your hand,—feel bound the more, because Miss Clavering is not my heiress; secondly, because had her attachment been stronger than her interest, and she had refused your offer, you might still have deemed her hardly and capriciously dealt with by me, and not only sought to augment her portion, but have profaned the house of my ancestors by receiving her there as an honoured and welcome relative and guest. Now, Charles Vernon, I ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unreservedly, the doctrine that "nothing is that errs from law." The phenomena which we call supernatural and those which we call natural, I view as alike the expression of the Divine Will: a Will which acts not capriciously, nor, as the phrase is, arbitrarily, but by law, "attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia." And so the theologians identify the Divine Will with the Divine Reason. Thus St. Augustine, "Lex aeterna est ratio divina vel voluntas Dei,"[48] ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... to be under the fierce rays of a blazing sun; and as it often happened that after laboriously trimming the yards and sheets to woo a wandering zephyr, it either expired before reaching the brig, or capriciously turned in another direction, passing her by without causing so much as a single flap of her canvas, it is not to be wondered at that the grumbling among all hands was both loud ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... fair, curly hair. His blue eyes looked vague. He had a little fair mustache and an expressive mouth, which was rarely still, but twitched with a thousand imperceptible movements. He was tall, and held himself badly—not from awkwardness, but from weariness or boredom. He conducted capriciously and lithely, with his whole awkward body swaying, like his music, with gestures, now caressing, now sharp and jerky. It was easy to see that he was very nervous, and his music was the exact reflection of himself. The quivering and jerky life of it broke through the usual apathy ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... properly so called, draws its sap from the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies, the gathered leaf-mould of countless generations ([Greek: oiae per phullon geneae]), and not from any top-dressing capriciously scattered over the surface at some master's bidding.[277] England had long been growing more truly insular in language and political ideas when the Reformation came to precipitate her national consciousness by secluding her more completely from the ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... to be flattering, they were suddenly obscured in darkness and despair. But, if I had not supposed myself marked in an extraordinary manner as the child of fortune, to whose smiles and frowns I seemed to be capriciously subjected, I know not what should have induced me to have written my history; or rather the history of my youth; for of what is yet reserved for ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... beginning two books together is also, no doubt, a fruitful source of the difficulty; for I am now sure I could not have invented the Carol at the commencement of the Chuzzlewit, or gone to a new book from the Chimes. But this is certain. I am sick, giddy, and capriciously despondent. I have bad nights; am full of disquietude and anxiety; and am constantly haunted by the idea that I am wasting the marrow of the larger book, and ought to be at rest. One letter that I wrote you before this, I have torn up. In that the Christmas ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... demurest of walking costumes, saying not a word. "He" was evidently "not about." We went slowly up the road that led to the Old Mill. She was apparently not strong and at times took my arm, relinquishing it and taking it again rather capriciously, I thought. Her mood, or rather her succession of moods, was as mutable as skylight in a rippling sea. She jested as if she had never heard of such a thing as death, and laughed on the lightest incitement, and directly afterward would sing a few ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... garrisons in distant and barbarous countries is necessarily connected the right of making peace and war in those countries. The joint-stock companies, which have had the one right, have constantly exercised the other, and have frequently had it expressly conferred upon them. How unjustly, how capriciously, how cruelly, they have commonly exercised it, is too ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Captain to the Cause of Liberty. And prospects were held out to him, quasi-offers made, of a really magnificent nature,—undeniable, though obscure. Herr Ranke has been among the Archives again; and comes out with fractional snatches of a very strange "Paper from England;" capriciously hiding all details about it, all intelligible explanation: so that you in vain ask, "Where, When, How, By whom?"—and can only guess to yourself that Carteret was somehow at the bottom of the thing; AUT CARTERETUS AUT DIABOLUS. "What ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... beginning work again that he should pay them the wages that were due to them, and also for the time they were unemployed. "We have no share in the cake," they said, "so you must take the risk too!" They made the one employer responsible for the other! And capriciously refused good work at a time when thousands were unemployed! Public opinion almost lost its head, and even their own press held aloof from them; but they obstinately kept to their determination, and joined the ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... meadows, part of our way lying along the banks of the Cherwell, which unites with the Isis to form the Thames, I believe. The Cherwell is a narrow and remarkably sluggish stream; but is deep in spots, and capriciously so,—so that a person may easily step from knee-deep to fifteen feet in depth. A gentleman present used a queer expression in reference to the drowning of two college men; he said "it was an awkward affair." I think this is equal ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne |
