"Erratic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was one of the most erratic and enthusiastic of beings. Being very wealthy, and living in the simplest way, money was no object; and he would go off anywhere, and at any cost, to obtain a few simple and rare plants for his herbarium. As Guest mused over the matter, he recollected ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... though erratic and vulgar, instituted wholesome reforms in the teaching of languages, and promulgated theories which, under ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... paddle and started pottering an erratic course in the general direction of the cluster of lights that marked the Makambo. But he was too feeble, panting and wheezing continually from the exertion and pausing to rest off strokes between strokes. The steward impatiently took the paddle away ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... yet bashful looks. Then the men seemed to fling them off and go at it entirely on their own account, yet keeping up a sort of revolving course round their partners, like satellites encircling their separate suns. Presently the men grew furious; rushed about the circle in wild erratic courses, leaped into the air, and while in that position slapped the soles of their feet with ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... had a long expected dinner suddenly snatched away from it; but the worse he became the louder M'Allister shrieked with laughter. The latter was now simply rolling about the room—for it could not be termed walking, it was so erratic—holding his sides and laughing, whilst the tears were chasing each other down his cheeks. He kept trying to speak, but had no sooner stuttered out the words, "Heh, mon! heh, mon!" than he was off again into another ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... well, you liberals, And navigators into realms intellectual, You sailors through heights imaginative, Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, And Tennessee Claflin Shopes— You found with all your boasted wisdom How hard at the last it is To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. While we, seekers of earth's treasures Getters ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... see me in an ordinary way—why should you not? But, of course, not in such a way as this. I should not have come now, if it had not happened that the Duke is away from home, so that there is nobody to check my erratic impulses.' ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... tenderness, on a suspicion that a quaint old high-frilled bleached and puckered Puritanical rectitude (her thoughts rose in pictures) possibly condemned the speculator as a description of gambler. An erratic severity in ethics is easily overlooked by the enthusiast for things old English. She was consciously ahead of them in the knowledge that her father had been, without the taint of gambling, a beneficent speculator. The Montgomery colony in South Africa, and his dealings with the natives ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... out in Beaulieu," he cried; "they shall not say it of me that I came back in rags. Look, here is a watch which I shall return to you, for it is mine; and, like its owner, it is erratic in ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... was coming up at full speed in pursuit. The Emden did not wait to discuss matters, but, firing her first shot at a range of about 3,700 yards, steamed north as hard as she could go. At first the firing of the Emden seemed excellent, while that of the Sydney was somewhat erratic. This, as I afterward learned, was due to the fact that the Australian cruiser's range finder was put out of action by one of the only two shots the Germans got home. However, the British gunners soon overcame any difficulties that this may have caused, and settled down to their work, so ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... little for individuals. He did not believe (as some one has said) that the history of mankind is the history of its great men. Great men with him were but larger atoms, obeying the same impulses with the rest, only perhaps a trifle more erratic. With them or without them, the course of things would have been ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, and had been educated as a surgeon; but being of an eccentric and erratic genius, he adopted literature as a profession, and was the principal editor of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Becoming embroiled in politics, he published a handbill of a seditious tendency, and consequently was compelled to seek a refuge in America, where ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... wild streak of the MacDuffs in her, and what could you expect? The Gordon family had generally been genteel enough to keep this objectionable MacDuff connection hidden, but occasionally it came out in red hair, deep gray eyes, and a wild, erratic disposition. To be sure, little Elizabeth's hair was not red, but a deep nut-brown, shading to rich yellow at the ends, where it curled upwards. But down the middle of her heavy brown braid ran a thick strand of reddish gold, quite enough to account ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... to be a drover, and he was on the spree and 'shouting' with spontaneity and freedom. His horse, a fine upstanding bay, stood saddled and bridled under McMahon's shed at the Drovers' Arms by day and night. His behaviour in drink was original and erratic. He would fraternise with the man at the bar for a time, and then go roaming at large about the township in a desultory way, sleeping casually in all sorts of absurd places; but Waddy had a large experience in 'drunks' and ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... thereunto Drawn out by his inquiring turn of mind,— "My Gran'ma she's read all books—ever' kind They is, 'at tells all 'bout the land an' sea An' Nations of the Earth!—An' she is the Historicul-est woman ever wuz!" (Forgive the verse's chuckling as it does In its erratic current.—Oftentimes The little willowy waterbrook of rhymes Must falter in its music, listening to The children laughing as they ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... temper as they now did, the boys were not unprepared for anything that might happen. Gritting their teeth they marched bravely on even though they felt that at any moment the erratic man behind them might send a bullet into their backs. They resolved, however, to show ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of the hurricane and fluttering away like a seabird from the mountains that towered far above and were only permitted to kiss her stern with their spray. The crew were forbidden to look behind while at the helm lest their nerves should be affected and cause erratic steering. There was really more danger in this than in any lack of seakindliness on the part of the vessel. Each time she ran away from a treacherous-looking breaker, the captain would pat the topgallant bulwarks and speak words of touching tenderness as though ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... one barely moving craft was in sight. This had received the brunt of our fire and seemed to be entirely unmanned, as not a moving figure was visible upon her decks. Slowly she swung from her course, circling back toward us in an erratic and pitiful manner. Instantly the warriors ceased firing, for it was quite apparent that the vessel was entirely helpless, and, far from being in a position to inflict harm upon us, she could not even control herself ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... truth. He shows us that among the sharks and harpies of Wall Street there are phases of honor and generosity—that the arrogance or coldness of a bank-officer may have a rational foundation—that feelings as intense are awakened in common business pursuits as in the most dramatic and erratic lives. In this just treatment of character,—this avoiding of the old saint and angel system of depicting men,—KIMBALL is truly pre-eminent, and under it even the casual SOL DOWNER strikes us with an ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and The Rebel rounded up their outfits and started south for the Mulberry, while Bob Quirk gathered his own and my lads preparatory to leaving for the Saw Log. I had agreed to remain on guard for that night, for with the erratic turn on Tolleston's part, we were doubly cautious. But when my outfit was ready to start, Runt Pickett, the feisty little rascal, had about twenty dollars in his possession which he insisted on gambling away before leaving town. Runt was comfortably drunk, and as Bob urged humoring him, I ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... she would answer she had been to see some one who was ill in the village, for if she and Mary heard Harry was likely to return to his home, they would oppose it, she knew. The household had become somewhat accustomed to Maud's erratic doings by this time, and so little wonder was expressed that she did not come into the keeping-room to supper. Every one supposed she was in her own room, and so at the usual hour the watch dogs were set upon their guard and the house locked up, and by the time Maud got ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... the best and most serious thing in the way of friendship, protection and guardianship that I have had during my life. That butterfly acted as my godmother. Do you wonder now at the zigzags, the erratic flights of my mind? Lucky for me that I have clung ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the speech of Fage's counsel, Margery, the dreaded wit, who convulses the whole assembly and the bench with the mere sound of his nasal 'Well.' Some fun was to be expected; the whole atmosphere of the place announced it, the erratic tilt of the barristers' caps, the gleam in the eyes and curl in the corners of the mouths of people giving one another little anticipatory smiles. There were endless anecdotes current about the achievements in gallantry ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... it which crossed the village street. For such projectiles as laden toboggans, passing across the trunk line of the village traffic at an average rate of a mile a minute, were hardly less dangerous than cannon-balls, and of much more erratic flight. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... enough to be self-sustaining. Too large a charge simply rekindles the original vortex—still larger—in its original crater. And the activity that must be matched varies so tremendously, in magnitude, maxima, and minima, and the cycle is so erratic—ranging from seconds to hours without discoverable rhyme or reason—that all attempts to do so at any predetermined instant have failed completely. Why, even Kinnison and Cardynge and the Conference of Scientists ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... arrived. And we arrived, furthermore, without any trouble, as you shall see; that is, without any trouble to amount to anything. To begin with, Roscoe tackled the navigating. He had the theory all right, but it was the first time he had ever applied it, as was evidenced by the erratic behaviour of the Snark. Not but what the Snark was perfectly steady on the sea; the pranks she cut were on the chart. On a day with a light breeze she would make a jump on the chart that advertised "a wet sail and a flowing sheet," and on a day when she just raced over the ocean, she ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... the craft's erratic course, as it swung loggily westward and headed toward that yawning abysm from which they had all ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... prevented the degeneration of species. It could boast of a temperature ever equable, and a soil which every plant had long enriched to thrive therein in the silence of its vigour. Its vegetation was mighty, magnificent, luxuriantly untended, full of erratic growths decked with monstrous blossoming, unknown to the spade and watering-pot of gardeners. Nature left to herself, free to grow as she listed, in the depths of that solitude protected by natural shelters, threw restraint ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... He never entirely shook off his erratic use of negatives. See, also, Lamon, 424; ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... "Ici on parle Francais," played on the boards which I, in my corporate capacity, had planed, and sawn, and nailed. My route last Sunday lay across the crisp sward of the Scrubbs; and it was quite a pleasure to be able to walk there without danger of falling pierced by the bullet of some erratic volunteer; for there are three butts on Wormwood Scrubbs, which I examined with minuteness on Sunday, and was exercised to see by marks on the brickwork how very wide of the target a volunteer's shot can go. I wonder there is not a wholesale slaughter of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... that possibly the near future may award to it. Certain fallacies existed for a long time as to the relative merits of the dry or molten and the wet or electrolytical methods of galvanizing. The latter was found to be costly and slow, and the results obtained were erratic and not satisfactory, and soon gave place to the dry or molten bath process, as in practice at the present day; but the difficulty of management in connexion with large baths of molten material, and the ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... of uneven ground crossed and recrossed by the narrow-gauge tracks upon which the sand and grit trucks ran, avoiding one or two localities where steam shot upward from the ground in a witch-like and erratic manner, with short angry hisses and chopping sounds that suggested danger, and finally stood before the door designated "OFFICE" in plain lettering. Joyce looked around at her companion with ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... also the father of one each of the offspring of daughters Nos. 2 and 3. Most of the children are delicate and poorly developed, and at least six of them are definitely tubercular. The remainder are either neurotic or erratic in their conduct and have given a great deal of trouble in their upbringing. The total cost to the State for the maintenance of these children may be quoted at L10,000, but of this amount L482 has been recovered from the various men liable. It is difficult to assess the State's total commitment. ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... even the average German official—wedded as he may be to his rank or his title, anxious as he may be to preserve an outward decorum in exact keeping with the precise shade of his public status—is often the most delightfully unconventional, good-natured, unsophisticated, and even erratic being in the world, as soon as he has left the cares of his office behind him. Germany is the classic land of queer people. It is the land of Quintus Fixlein, Onkel Braesig, Leberecht Huehnchen, and the host of Fliegende Blatter worthies; it is the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... lunch basket which the erratic ramifications of the road leading to Judson Centre had obliged them to carry, there was still, fortunately, a supply of sandwiches and fruit. A hasty search through the nearest pantry revealed jelly, marmalade, and pickles, ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... on either side, both of which were now down and barred. We were not quite sure whether the captain were really the Honourable John's relative, or whether our comrade's proposal to join the captain was only one of those erratic notions which visited his aristocratic brain, and were often carried through with a confidence so complete as to be rarely unsuccessful. He was unmercifully snubbed sometimes, and he richly deserved it; but the curious thing about ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... the fulfilment of its obligations. They must know themselves and their own powers in order to exercise control and direction on the current of their lives. The complaint made of many women is that they are wanting in self-control, creatures of impulse, erratic, irresponsible, at the mercy of chance influences that assume control of their lives for the moment, subject to "nerves," carried away by emotional enthusiasm beyond all bounds, and using a blind tenacity of will to land themselves with the cause they have embraced in a dead-lock ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... to the Union in 1850, owing to the erratic character of her early population, has passed through more vicissitudes than any other State, but she secured at last social order, justice in her courts and a somewhat liberal constitution, as far as the personal and property rights of the "white ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... study my psychological difficulties dwindled, and now the man stands before me exquisitely understood, a perfect piece of logic. All that seemed discordant and discrepant in his nature has now become harmonious and inevitable; the strangest and most erratic actions of his life now seem natural and consequential (I use the word in its grammatical sense) contradictions are reconciled, and looking at the man I see the pictures, and looking at the pictures ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... I took my stand, steadying myself by grasping the royal stay in my left hand. The motion away out there, at the far extremity of that long spar, was tremendous; so much so, indeed, that seasoned as I was to the wild and erratic movements of a ship in heavy weather, the sinkings and soarings and flourishings of that boom-end, as the vessel plunged and staggered down toward the wreck, made me feel distinctly giddy. The wait was not a ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... winging bullet did what the sentry's voice had failed to do. There came a clatter of spasmodic hoof-beats, an erratic shower of sparks, a curse in clean-lipped decent Urdu; a grunt, a struggle, more sparks again, and then a thud, followed by a devoutly worded prayer that Allah, the all-wise provider of just penalties, might ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... the Coast at that time was a fellow so erratic that he was nicknamed "Crazy-horse." Right in the midst of the strike Crazy-horse wired that he had secured a big silk shipment for New York. We were paralyzed. We had no engineers, no firemen, and no motive power to speak of. The strikers were pounding our men, wrecking ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Hornpipe, and one or two movements from a Scotch Reel, but as I was no dancer myself, I had no means of judging the quality of his performances. I kept a respectful distance away, as sometimes his movements were very erratic, and his boots, like those of the Emperor Frederick, were rather heavy. We could not persuade our friend to come with us a yard farther than the village. As a fellow bandsman, he confided the reason why to my brother; he ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the way, young man!" cried Mrs Frog, brushing indignantly past him, in one of her erratic bursts. "Oh! Bobby—where has that ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... naval preparations had been pushed with great vigor. A powerful squadron under Admiral Cervera, which had assembled at the Cape Verde Islands before the outbreak of hostilities, had crossed the ocean, and by its erratic movements in the Caribbean Sea delayed our military plans while baffling the pursuit of our fleets. For a time fears were felt lest the Oregon and Marietta, then nearing home after their long voyage from San Francisco of over ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... quiet. Harry Fleming saw a wonderful sight a whole people aroused and determined. There was no foolish boasting; no one talked of a British general eating his Christmas dinner in Berlin. But even Dick Mercer, excitable and erratic as he had always been, seemed to have undergone a ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... the creature, realising that again it was being cheated, started in pursuit. With leaps and bounds that seemed erratic and purposeless, it gradually diminished the distance between itself and the running man. Once it alighted on the outstanding branch of a gnarled tree, then from thence it took shelter in a clump of shrubs, then across the stream, swimming to the opposite shore; for the running man had rounded ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... aspect to ancient streams of lava congealed by the cold, an opinion which has not been generally received. Other astronomers have seen in these inexplicable rays a kind of moraines, ranges of erratic blocks thrown out at the epoch of the ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... his head. "After all," said he, "I can't trust them. Patricia is too erratic and too used to having her own way. Jack will try to break off with her now, of course; but Jack, where women are concerned, is as weak as water. It is not a nice thing to do, but—well! one must fight ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... their leave by this time. Angelica proceeded to deposit one of her erratic kisses somewhere on the old duke's head, with an emphasis which caused him to wince perceptibly. Then she went up to Father Ricardo, and shook ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the verdant and untrampled pastures of ingenious bees; but those are more like the mange of lecherous boars and he-goats. And though a voluptuous temper of mind be naturally erratic and precipitate, yet never any yet sacrificed an ox for joy that he had gained his will of his mistress; nor did any ever wish to die immediately, might he but once satiate himself with the costly dishes and comfits at the table of his prince. But now Eudoxus wished he might stand by the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... from outer space. Encouraging, truly, is the lesson taught us by the success of earnest study and careful inquiry in determining some at least among the laws which govern bodies once thought the wildest and most erratic creatures in the whole ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... a plane of life possibly far in advance of one's normal experience; so that while new centres of activity are as yet under imperfect control, the normal functions of the brain and other centres of action are left in neglect. Hence, to the casual observer, the erratic nature of Genius is not distinguishable from some incipent ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... his family, noble in name but in nothing else, the least said the better. He was born in London, but spent his childhood in Aberdeen, under the alternate care or negligence of his erratic mother. At ten he fell heir to a title, to the family seat of Newstead Abbey, and to estates yielding an income of some L1400 per year,—a large income for a poet, but as nothing to a lord accustomed to make ducks and ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... have ever suffered more, or more nobly redeemed an apparently lost cause, than the one which was defeated at Quebec and victorious at Saratoga. The train of misfortunes which brought Burgoyne's erratic course to so untimely an end was nothing by comparison. And the quickness with which raw yeomanry were formed into armies capable of fighting veteran troops, affords the strongest proof that the Americans ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... free initiative that makes the advance of civilisation, and also the greater part of its conservation, would in effect be allowed only in the erratic members of the kept classes; where at the same time it would have to work against the side-draught of conventional usage, which discountenances any pursuit that is not visibly futile according to some accepted manner of futility. Now under ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... to Norris that some indefinable change was coming over Dick. At times he was vivid, even fantastic, and again he lapsed into erratic silences out of which he came at new and unexpected points. He developed ideas that appeared to his friend not quite in keeping with the sterling Dick of old. He was less sensitive, so thought Ellery, in his code ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... that there was later some backsliding. Madison's record is characteristically erratic. His statement in The Federalist No. 39 written probably early in 1788, is very positive: The tribunal which is to ultimately decide, in controversies relating to the boundary between the two jurisdictions, is to be established under the general government. ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... different. I have seen the world. He is temperamental, your father, a genius in his way, and a little mad, perhaps. Leave him to me, Monsieur, and it will be quite all right. Last night, it was so sudden, that I was frightened for a moment. I should have remembered he is erratic and apt to change his mind. I should have guessed why he changed it. It is you, Monsieur. You have had a bad effect upon him. You have made him turn suddenly grotesque. What did you ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... you're right," said the minister. "She's a good woman if a little erratic, and a sovereign means a large part ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... some, and with others merely exchanging greetings. With some tribes we would perhaps travel a little way south, and only part with them when they were about to strike northwards; and as their course was simply from water-hole to water-hole, as I have told you, it was always pretty erratic. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... chimney-corner smoking his pipe, and making severe mental comments upon the conduct of Parliament, then in session, of whose erratic proceedings he was reading an account in a small but highly seasoned newspaper. Sammy shook his head ominously over the peppery reports, but feeling it as well to reserve his opinions for a select audience at The Crown, allowed Mrs. Craddock to ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... modern inquirer (of Mr. Langdon, for instance) is that he acknowledges the fog, and does not pretend to guide us out of it by haphazard hypotheses propounded with pontifical gravity and assurance—which was the way of that erratic genius, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... leaving that island in charge of his wife, set sail for Florida, where he soon safely disembarked, and sent his ships back, in order to leave no opportunity for relentment in the stern resolves of his followers. After a somewhat erratic journey, on his way passing through Georgia, Alabama, and Northern Mississippi, he struck the 'Great River' at the Lower Chickasaw Bluffs, as they are still called, and upon which now stands the city ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... market-place, Intends, to every saint and sinner in't, To state what he calls Ireland's Case; Meaning thereby the case of his shop,- Of curate, vicar, rector, bishop, And all those other grades seraphic, That make men's souls their special traffic, Tho' caring not a pin which way The erratic souls go, so they pay.— Just as some roguish country nurse, Who takes a foundling babe to suckle, First pops the payment in her purse, Then leaves poor dear to—suck its knuckle: Even so these reverend rigmaroles Pocket the money—starve the souls. Murtagh, however, in his glory, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... do not agree," Fred was saying. "The correlation is erratic; it makes no statistical sense. ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and archangels, well nigh forgotten; a man who, by pandering to human passions and setting wide as virtue's avenue the flower-tricked gates of vice; should thus, like Lucifer before him, in a comet-like career of victory, sweep the startled firmament of earth, and drag to his erratic orbit the stars of heaven from ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... attainments asked me if Connecticut was not the capital of Pittsburgh and notable for its great Mormon temple,"—an elaborate combination due solely to his own active brain. The same ingenuous (and ingenious) youth caused me to invent "an erratic young Londoner, who packed his bag and started at once for any out-of-the-way country for which a new guide-book was published." Another, with equal lack of ground, committed me to the unpatriotic ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the charm of his society, though it brought to light some startling defects, both in his mental and moral organization. I have before said that his knowledge, though it had swept over a wide circuit and dipped into curious, unfrequented recesses, was desultory and erratic. It certainly was not that knowledge, sustained and aspiring, which the poet assures us is "the wing on which we mount to heaven." So, in his faculties themselves there were singular inequalities, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had spent most of his life in the House of Representatives. He loved the associations and life of Congress. The most erratic and uncertain of bodies is Congress to an executive who does not understand its temper and characteristics. McKinley was past master of this. Almost every president has been greatly relieved when Congress adjourned, but Mr. McKinley often expressed to me his wish ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... a narrow bunk, watching the play of light that came through a porthole beyond his line of vision, noting in this erratic shuttling of reflected sunlight the roll and pitch of cabin walls, listening to the low boom of waves followed by the swash alongside that told him the Karluk was bucking heavy seas, a slow rage mastered him, centered against the doctor with the sardonic smile and Captain Simms, ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... of the little sloop should have been preparing breakfast, as he had for many mornings past, but, instead he swung his little craft into the wind and watched for near an hour the erratic rushes and shivering haltings of the larger ship. But long before this time had passed Thorpe knew he was observing the aimless maneuvers of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... exploring this path or that leading amongst the rugged cliffs, until finally he began to take note of his erratic wanderings and wonder where he was. Climbing an elevated rock near the path he poised himself upon its peak and studied the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... an erratic but harmless impulse in driving off recklessly with the priest; her nature, so long restrained by residence in a dull, circumscribed village instead of a lively town, needed some such prank to reanimate and amuse it. She seized the reins dramatically, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... tributaries. This river, which takes its rise in the distant mountains of the Mimbres, passes under various names through an immense extent of sandy barren country, the arid monotony of which is interrupted only by the ravines hollowed by the waters, which in their erratic ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... of a "Treatise on Differential Logarithms," and especially of a "Theory of Perpetual Motion," four volumes, quarto, with engravings, Paris, 1825; lived, in 1840, No. 9 rue du Val-de-Grace. Being very near-sighted and erratic, the prey of his thieving servant, Madame Lambert, his family thought that he needed a protector. Being instructor of Felix Phellion, with whom he took a trip to England, Picot made known his pupil's great ability, which the boy had modestly kept secret, at ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... the poetic Raggles in an erratic and singular way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold tea and that the city was a white, cold cloth that had been bound tightly around his brow to spur him to some unknown but tremendous mental effort. And, after all, ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... I am in the mood I am likely to write a dozen sheets to you. When I'm not, a page will be all you'll care to read. Will you agree to the most erratic correspondence you ever had, with the most ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... under the shadow of the grim and flame-throated mountain, while I was forced to listen to Major Stanleigh's persistent questionnaire and Leavitt's erratic and garrulous responses—all this, as I was to discover later, at the instigation of the Major's niece—had made me frankly curious about ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... all the time, no wonder George had begun to feel nervous. Even though he saved himself, and Nick, should he lose his boat, it would almost break his heart; for in spite of her many and serious faults the jaunty skipper of the erratic Wireless ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... especially transmissible:—dementia precox, a sort of precocious old age, in which the patient (generally young) sinks into a lethargy from which he rarely recovers; and manic-depressive insanity, an over-excitable condition, in which there are occasional very erratic motor discharges, alternating with periods of depression. Constitutional psychopathic inferiority, which means a lack of emotional adaptability, usually shows in the family history. The common type of insanity which is characterized by mild hallucinations ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... were full of the energy of a good night's sleep, of breakfast, and of comfortable nursery warmth. And George Lovegrove stepped among them carefully, watching their gambols moist-eyed, nervously anxious lest his quaintly solid figure should obstruct the erratic progress of toy-horse, or hoop, or ball. He craved for notice, for even the veriest scrap of friendly recognition, yet was too diffident to attempt any direct intercourse with these delectable small personages, who, on their ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Tulliver, indeed, fails in business; but his failure only serves as an offset to the general integrity and prosperity. His son is obstinate and wilful; but it is all on the side of virtue. His daughter is somewhat sentimental and erratic; but she is more conscientious yet. Conscience, in the classes from which George Eliot recruits her figures, is a universal gift. Decency and plenty and good-humor follow contentedly in its train. The word which sums up the common traits of our author's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... of telepathy, or thought transference, occurs on both the physical and the mental plane. On the physical plane it is more or less spontaneous and erratic in manifestation; while on the astral plane it is as clear, reliable and responsive to demand as is astral ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... abroad clearing tracks, dry snow-dust spinning from under them. At Longacre Square the flakes blew upward in spiral flurries, erratic, full of antics. The cab snorted, plunged, leaped forward. Mr. Fitzgibbons inclined toward the little ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... with that little knob of a sight, and when the smoke cleared away he saw it careering like a kite with too light a tail in the distance. Gould also missed twice, and then shot one the moment it was off the ground, before the erratic course commenced. ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... cooperation has had an erratic development. Within the past seven years, however, there has been a rapid increase in new societies until today it is estimated that there are about three thousand with a membership of half a million. In number of societies New York is far behind most of its sister states. It ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... of the Empire. When, after more than a year, the unfortunate druggist reached the last outpost of Russian power in North-Eastern Asia, and was set at liberty, he made his way to the little log church, entered the belfry, and proceeded to jangle the church bells in a sort of wild, erratic chime. When the people of the town ran to the belfry in alarm and inquired what was the matter, Schiller replied, with dignity, that he wished the whole population to know that 'by the Grace of God, Herman Schiller, after long and perilous wanderings, had reached, in safety, the town ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... and closely connected with the organization of the individual." He was inclined to accept lunar influence, and believed that the physiological cycle is made up of definite fractions and multiples of a period of seven days, especially a unit of three and a half days. Albrecht, a somewhat erratic zooelogist, put forth the view a few years ago that there are menstrual periods in men, giving the following reasons: (1) males are rudimentary females, (2) in all males of mammals, a rudimentary masculine ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... does that; but she's not erratic. She always has a reason for going off in that way. When you get to know her as I do, you will think she's the sweetest woman in ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... to Rory's, for the look on his face told only of a dogged resolution to continue sinning against the light. He knew that his own contumacy in this respect would land his soul in perdition, and he deliberately let it go at that. Brave old Rory! Never does erratic man appear to such advantage as when his own intuitive moral sense rigorously overbears a conscientiousness warped by some fallacy which he still accepts ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... laid the foundation of this branch of astronomy. Halley's comet punctually reappeared on Christmas Day, 1758, and effected its perihelion passage on the 12th of March following, thus proving beyond dispute that some at least of these erratic bodies are domesticated within our system, and strictly conform, if not to its unwritten customs (so to speak), at any rate to its fundamental laws. Their movements, in short, were demonstrated by the most unanswerable of all arguments—that of verified calculation—to ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... small difference between random and fugitive desires and those more fundamental desires that express truly the nature of a man. Desires organized and harmonized gain great strength, and are enabled to overcome and expel from the mind erratic impulses, the obedience to which may easily be followed by regret. Action taken without a clear foresight of consequences, with an imperfect conception of the relation of means to ends, is blind and irrational action. Reason, as bringing ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... but erratic Earl of Peterborough, had been engaged for two years, after the unsatisfactory inquiry into his conduct in Spain by the House of Lords in 1708, in preparing an account of the money he had received and expended. The change of Government brought him relief from his troubles; ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... erratic as our understanding; it is the shoe of Theramenes, fit for all feet. It is double and diverse, and the matters are double and diverse too. "Give me a drachm of silver," said a Cynic philosopher to Antigonus. "That is not a present befitting a king," replied he. "Give me ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... must, as it seemed to me, have been a novice or else have lost his nerve in this disturbance, for he drove vilely on the way to the station. Twice we nearly had collisions with other equally erratic vehicles, and I remember remarking to Summerlee that the standard of driving in London had very much declined. Once we brushed the very edge of a great crowd which was watching a fight at the corner of the Mall. The people, who were much excited, raised cries of ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... imaginings of Gustave only served his father and mother with food for laughter; and his erratic absurdities in making ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... Wallace went on the road again for eleven weeks, and Martie and Ted enjoyed a delicious spring together. They spent hours on the omnibuses, hours in the parks. Spring in the West was cold, erratic; spring here came with what a heavenly wash of fragrance and heat! It was like a re-birth to abandon all the heavy clothing of the winter, to send Teddy dancing into the sunshine in socks and ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... habits are being scrutinized, when standards are being formulated and personal responsibility is being realized, when ideals are made vital and controlling. It may be a period of storm and stress when the youth is in emotional unrest; when conduct is erratic and not to be depended on; when there is reaction against authority of all kinds. These characteristics are unfortunate and are usually the result of unwise treatment during the first period. If, on the other hand, the period of transition is prepared for during the preadolescent years by ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... to go on. Although our course has been erratic and irregular; although we have had one character disappearing for a long time (like Tom Troubridge); and, although we have had another entirely new coming bobbing up in the manner of Punch's victims, unexpected, and apparently unwanted; although, I say, the course of this ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... persons instructing Negroes, these philanthropists saw their schoolhouses burned, themselves expelled from the white churches, and finally driven from the city in 1858.[1] Other white men and women were teaching colored children during these years. The most prominent of these were Thomas Tabbs, an erratic philanthropist, Mr. Nutall, an Englishman; Mr. Talbot, a successful tutor stationed near the present site of the Franklin School; and Mrs. George Ford, a Virginian, conducting a school on New Jersey Avenue between K and L Streets.[2] The efforts of Miss Myrtilla Miner, their ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... Our erratic procedure naturally invited investigation, and when a Government pilot boat put off to enquire our reason for anchoring in a certain bay he came to the conclusion that our steering gear was not in very good order and that we had ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... more the "Black Gentleman"—the name they had given him—was erratic in his movements; he did not always come down the Rue du Tourniquet; the old woman sometimes saw him in the evening when he had not passed in the morning, and he did not come by at such regular hours as the clerks who served Madame Crochard instead of a clock; ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... know and all we ever shall know of the world of matter and of minds must rest ultimately upon observation,—observation of external things and of our own mind. We must clip the erratic wing of a "reason" which seeks to soar beyond such knowledge; which leaves the solid earth, and hangs suspended ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... on the impossibility of any such visit being admitted. According to her lights the coming of Colonel Osborne, after all that had been said, would be like the coming of Lucifer himself. The Colonel was, to her imagination, a horrible roaring lion. She had no idea that the erratic manoeuvres of such a beast might be milder and more innocent than the wooing of any turtle-dove. She would have asked whether the roaring lion had gone away again, and, if so, whether he had taken his prey with him, were it not that she was too much frightened at the moment ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... like this before in all his life," thought Bob, as he found considerable difficulty in keeping his saddle, such were the sudden whirls the black made in his erratic course. ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... was betrayed into one of his erratic positions, as when he moved to strike out the section against dueling, and also to expunge from the bill of rights all restrictions upon bearing arms. He said: "Let the people bear arms for their own protection, whether in their boots ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... answered their appeal readily, and for five years were busily engaged in bringing proofs of the new science before the commission. These were M. de Foissac, M. Dupotet, M. Chapelain, and M. de Geslin. It would be but an unprofitable, and by no means a pleasant task to follow the commissioners in their erratic career, as they were led hither and thither by the four lights of magnetism above mentioned; the four "Wills-o'-the-Wisp" which dazzled the benighted and bewildered doctors on that wide and shadowy region of metaphysical inquiry — the influence of mind over matter. It ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... pomp and dignity not unlike the funeral obsequies of a great lord. But my business is with that little chip; by some means it has been thrust out of the principal current, and, now that it is out, see what pranks it is playing. How erratic are its motions!—into what strange holes and corners it is thrust! The same phenomenon will happen in life. Once start a being out of the usual course of existence, and many and strange will be his adventures ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... stirring in the latter's heart. He had long been searching for a fitting rider for the erratic and sensitive Dixie—whimsical and uncertain of taste as any woman—and though he could not bring himself to believe in Crimmins' eulogy of Garrison's riding ability, he was anxious to ascertain how ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... Schurz's popularity—a popularity that was very marked in the earlier period of his career—is due in part to certain unsteady and erratic tendencies, some of which are in strong contrast with characteristics that are recognized as belonging in an especial degree to his race. Through all the centuries since Tacitus drew his vivid picture of the habits and manners of the Germans, their attachment, it might almost ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... stream, which it assumes at its issue from this lake. There are five creeks that fall into it, formed by innumerable streamlets oozing from the clay-beds at the bases of the hills, that consist of an accumulation of sand, gravel, and clay, intermixed with erratic fragments; being a more prominent portion of the great erratic deposit previously described, and which here is known by the name of 'Hauteurs des ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... course together, day in and day out, for four weeks. He was my partner in our foursome. Rather a helpful partner at times, I must admit, although he hasn't been at the game long enough to be a really experienced golfer. Fairly long off the tee, but erratic with the brassie, and not all dependable when it came to short iron work. However, as a rule we held them. Our opponents, ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... the stranded machine was the work of an instant for the erratic professor, and he extended his hand to Peggy. With a supreme effort she pulled herself together and accepted his proffered help. But agitated as she: was, she did not fail to notice a surprising fact, and that was that the professor's hair was on one side! The next ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... I haven't done," Darry answered. "It's also what none of us have done. We haven't thanked our very pleasant, even if slightly erratic, host for ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... and, except for the gleaming hand, and the erratic circles of light cast by the lantern, we could see nothing. The hand gradually moved faster, increasing to a good walking pace, passing over the garden-gate and leading us on till I completely lost knowledge of our position; but ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... soberly, "you could render me a little help, once or twice a day, if you would. It is not much that I would ask of you—merely to note the chronometer times for me when I take my observations of the sun for the longitude. I have sometimes thought that Chips has been a little erratic in his noting of the time; and I have more than once had it in my mind to ask you to undertake this small ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of this famous woman, by Miss Thomas, is the only one in existence. Those who have awaited it with pleasurable anticipation, but with some trepidation as to the treatment of the erratic side of her character, cannot fail to be pleased with the skill by which it is done. It is the best production on George Sand that has yet been published. The author modestly refers to it as a sketch, which it undoubtedly is, but a sketch that gives a just and discriminating analysis ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... hard on winter's traces. In fact, one belated train, after hours spent on the road, had succeeded in pushing through, an evidence that they all would soon be running with their accustomed, if rather erratic regularity, and there was naturally a tremendous excitement and jollification in the camp at this arrival of the first mail bearing news from the ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... wild and erratic imagination of our ancestors manifested itself, was in the creation of a world of visionary beings of a less terrific character, but which did not fail to annoy their thoughts, and perplex their determinations, known by ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... hear the sound of a fiddle, scraped in a loose and erratic fashion and giving forth an occasional note of a tune. I looked around and saw Lamborn sitting in the doorway of the hut. Zoe was near him, laughing at his half-drunken attempts to manage the instrument. Douglas looked up. A quick smile shot across his face. He glanced into my ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... I die. Talking of dying makes me tell you that my confounded stomach is much the same; indeed, of late has been rather worse, but for the last year, I think, I have been able to do more work. I have done nothing besides the barnacles, except, indeed, a little theoretical paper on erratic boulders (27/2. "On the Transportal of Erratic Boulders from a Lower to a Higher Level" ("Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc." Volume IV., pages 315-23. 1848). In this paper Darwin favours the view that the transport ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of a conic section moves along the axis of the curve to infinity, banished by the mutual consent of the individual particles which compose the curve, or the nation, a figure is formed, called a parabola. This is the curve which the most erratic bodies in the universe describe in space, as they rush along at a speed inconceivable to human minds, and are supposed to produce all kinds of mischief and injury to the worlds whose courses they wend their ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson
... action, of which they were not conscious. There is a vein of romance in the French composition; a love of adventure for the sake of the adventure itself, which, when not tamed or directed, makes a Frenchman fitful, erratic, and unreliable. When it is toned by personal ambition, it becomes a sort of Paladin contempt for danger; sometimes a crazy furor. When accompanied by powerful intellect, and strengthened by concentration on a purpose, it makes a great commander—great for the quickness ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... bat the visitors did not do as much. Perhaps Frazer managed to tighten up, and pitch better ball. He was very erratic, and could never be depended on to do consecutive good work. In every other inning the heavies could not seem to gauge his work at all, and he mowed them down. Then they would come at him again like furies, and knock his offerings to every part of the field as ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... to tell you that we believe that you and your erratic roommate are going to save a desperate situation for us," resumed the captain of the Navy team. "Not that we were destitute of good players before. But we lacked enough of different kinds to make a strong, all-around eleven. Now we've a team ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... watching the slanting volleys of rain driven by a strong southwester against the windows of the hotel reading-room, I was struck by the erratic movements of a dripping figure outside that seemed to be hesitating over the entrance to the hotel. At times furtively penetrating the porch as far as the vestibule, and again shyly recoiling from it, its ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Irishman turned to the right, and followed the stream into the rocks. The course was so winding that he speedily disappeared from sight. The boy, who was compelled to sit still and await his return, at perhaps the most dangerous portion of the road, felt anything but comfortable over the erratic proceeding of his friend. But, fortunately, the latter had been gone but a short time when he reappeared, hurrying forward as if somebody was at ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... was Nan's nightmare thought. Not intellectually, for Nan's brain was sharp and subtle and strong and fine, Mrs. Hilary's was an amorphous, undeveloped muddle. But where, if not from Mrs. Hilary, did Nan get her black fits of melancholy, her erratic irresponsible gaieties, her passionate angers, her sharp jealousies and egoisms? The clever young woman saw herself in the stupid elderly one; saw herself slipping down the years to that. That was why, where Neville and Pamela and their brothers pitied, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... and I returned in time for a late dinner), I wandered among the Roman remains of the place by the light of a magnificent moon, and gathered an impression which has lost little of its silvery glow. The moon of the evening before had been aqueous and erratic; but if on the present occasion it was guilty of any irregularity, the worst it did was only to linger beyond its time in the heavens, in order to let us look at things comfortably. The effect was admirable; it brought back ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... moment when his eye was taken from the mad game of ring-around-the-rosy, McGee demonstrated that the skill was not equally placed. The Fokker was now spinning down, obviously out of control, and McGee was following, filling it with enough lead to sink it. It spun earthward, sickening in its erratic gyrations. ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke |
