"Fickle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their objects, which are all sophisticated there, and for the most part overwhelmed with their contraries: here pleasure, methinks, looks like a beautiful, constant, and modest wife; it is there an impudent, fickle, and painted harlot.—COWLEY. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... himself on his knees and mastering his wife's hand. "Grisell, Grisell, dost think I could turn to the feather-pated, dull-souled, fickle-hearted thing I know now Eleanor of Audley to be, instead ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all? What then? You do not fear the men: Perchance you only wish to hide your heart, And so, you fickle flirt, You don a khaki skirt To foil the deadly ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... assuredly have dissuaded her from the attempt which she made to force an entrance into Westminster Abbey on the coronation day, July 19, 1821. It was a painful scene when she, who had so lately been the idol of the fickle populace, was turned away from the doors amidst conflicting exclamations of derision and pity. A fortnight later, on August 2, she was officially reported to be seriously ill; on the 7th she was no more. In accordance with her own ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... feared that the Earl's mind had been too much cramped, and his feelings too much chilled, for such softening on his part as could alone, as it seemed, prevent Louis from being estranged, and left to his naturally fickle and indolent disposition. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... spirit upon the smaller profits to be derived from petty transactions in the bill-discounting line, and a championship of penniless sufferers of all classes, from a damsel who considered herself jilted by a fickle swain, in proof of whose inconstancy she could produce documentary evidence of the "pork-chop and tomato sauce" order, to a pedestrian who knocked his head against a projecting shutter in the Strand, and straightway walked home ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Trade's fickle signets coined From Mammon's molten dust, With reverence conjoined, Proclaim "In God we trust." Nor doth the legend lie: The People, patient, bide, Trusting the Lord on high, To thunder ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... soon the VAPOUR OF THE WOODS will wander afar, And the fickle moon will fade, and the stars disappear, Then, cheerless will they be, tho' they fairies are, If I, with my ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... her—for she sleeps well:[535] The fickle reek of popular breath,[536] the tongue Of hollow counsel, the false oracle, Which from the birth of Monarchy hath rung Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung Nations have armed in madness—the strange fate Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns,[537] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... never shall be mine To mourn the loss of such a heart; The fault was Nature's fault, not thine, Which made thee fickle as thou art. ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... peculiar change Which creeps into the air, and speaks of night While yet the day is full of golden light, We felt steal o'er us. Vivian broke the spell Of dream-fraught silence, throwing down his book: "Young ladies, please allow me to arrange These wraps about your shoulders. I know well The fickle nature of our atmosphere, - Her smile swift followed by a frown or tear, - And go prepared for changes. Now you look, Like—like—oh, where's a pretty simile? Had you a pocket mirror here you'd see How well my native talent is displayed In shawling ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... we work and toil and hustle in our life of haste and bustle, All that makes our life worth living comes unstriven for and free; Man may weary and importune, but the fickle goddess Fortune Deals him out his pain or pleasure, careless what his worth ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... white gate, respected (as a white gate always is) from its strong declaration of purpose. Outside of it, things may belong to the Crown, the Admiralty, Manor, or Trinity Brethren, or perhaps the sea itself—according to the latest ebb or flow of the fickle tide of Law Courts—but inside that gate everything belongs to the fine ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... excellent and able person. That the King, who not long ago did say of Bristoll, that he was a man able in three years to get himself a fortune in any kingdom in the world, and lose all again in three months, do now hug him, and commend his parts every where, above all the world. How fickle is this man [the King], and how unhappy we like to be! That he fears some furious courses will be taken against the Duke of York; and that he hath heard that it was designed, if they cannot carry matters against the Chancellor, to impeach ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... know about that," rejoined his angry rival. "If he wanted to steal back my bride he could take no surer course for doing it. Juliet, who is fickle as the wind, already looks from his face to mine as if she were contrasting us. And he is so damned handsome and suave ...
— The Old Stone House and Other Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... right hand to catch a view of a small but celebrated hill rising within the city near that on which he stood, called the Pnyx, where standing on a block of bare stone, Demosthenes and other distinguished orators had addressed the assembled people of Athens, swaying that arrogant and fickle democracy, and thereby making Philip of Macedon tremble, or working good or ill for the entire civilized world. Immediately before him looking upon the crowded city, studded in every part with memorials sacred to religion or patriotism, and exhibiting the ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... impatiently aside, "and what's more I knew then that I had loved you all my life without knowing it," he pursued. "You may taunt me with fickleness, but I'm not fickle—I was merely a fool. It took me a long time to find out what I wanted, but I've found out at last, and, so help me God, I'll have it yet. I never went without a thing I wanted ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... poor but they may build fairy castles in the air; none so wretched but they may fondly gaze upon the fickle star of Hope, flaming ever in that Heaven ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... gentleman but his worde and his promise? I must nowe saue this vilaines lyfe in any wise, And yet at hym already my handes doe tickle, I shall vneth holde them, they wyll be so fickle. But lo and Merygreeke haue not ...
— Roister Doister - Written, probably also represented, before 1553. Carefully - edited from the unique copy, now at Eton College • Nicholas Udall
... he exclaimed; "Heaven protect me from fastening such a yoke upon myself, or putting my happiness in the power of any creature so fickle, vain, capricious, haughty, obstinate, and heartless as a woman. Conrad, where did you get this wild idea? you know that I hate women; no, not hate, but fear them, as the lamb ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... appointed for it. Moreover, each work or duty should be accomplished in its appointed time; and this can be secured only by a strong will. The power of will admits of education, culture, improvement, as much as any faculty of the mind or quality of character. A fickle, planless life cannot accomplish much. System in our plans, and firmness of will in their execution, will place us beyond the reach of ordinary disasters; yet how often do young men go through a course of school studies without a plan, even for the moment, and enter ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... often made by railroad managers that excesses in railroad competition are the result of the peculiar conditions of their business, which has heavy fixed charges on one hand and a fickle patronage on the other; that the uncertainty of through business compels them to rely upon the local business for such revenue as is necessary to meet these fixed charges; and that, inasmuch as their trains must run, and any through freight hauled by them is so much business taken from ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... while a subdued hissing sound. The significance of this conduct I do not profess to have understood; it ended with his suddenly darting at the female, who took wing and was pursued. Not improbably the robin finds the feminine nature somewhat fickle, and counts it expedient to vary his tactics accordingly; for it is getting to be more and more believed that, in kind at least, the intelligence of the lower animals is not ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... said so sadly when he was a prisoner in Germany: "In France one must never be unfortunate." What was then left for her to do in that volcano, that land which swallows all greatness and glory, amid that fickle people who change their opinions and passions as an actress changes her dress? Where Napoleon, with all his genius, had made a complete failure, could a young, ignorant woman be reasonably expected to succeed in the face of all Europe? Were her hands strong ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... seems to me, ought to account for, and will possibly satisfy, the spectroscopic conditions observed just before, during, and after totality; which has probably led to the epithet used by some leading observers—"the fickle corona." The peculiar phenomenon observed in the spectroscope, the flickering bands or lines of the solar spectrum flashing upon and across the coronal spectrum, has caused ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various
... for a time to bear The badge which none but fickle lives should wear. How oft the envious tongue creates the dart That cleaves the saintly soul and breaks the heart: How oft the hasty ear full credence gives To words in which no grain of truth survives: Were Juno just, her heart would now delight ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... le coeur a rire, Thy heart was made for laughter, Moi je l'ai-t a pleurer; My heart 's in tears to-day; J'ai perdu ma maitresse Tears for a fickle mistress, Sans pouvoir la trouver. Flown from its ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... for the nearer you approach to nature the greater in all cases is your chance of success. And here, in concluding this chapter on Fly Fishing, let me advise every angler to make or learn to make his own flies; by so doing he will never be at a loss for a fly to suit the fickle Trout. Really, many of the flies from the tackle shops look neat and gaudy enough, but like Hodge's razors, are they not made to sell? When a man makes a fly for himself, he makes, I take ...
— The Teesdale Angler • R Lakeland
... musingly—"public favor, it is light as zephyr, as fickle as the seasons, it passes away like the latter, and when the north wind moves it, it will disappear." [Footnote: Le ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Time-Spirit is active, or fickle perhaps, and Mr. Yeats has already almost ceased to be a quite modern poet. He, like Mr. Gosse, formed his technique in the nineteenth century, and the twentieth century is casting about with feverish energy for a new technique ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... the fire was becoming fickle. Once in a while the flame would start up, and give quite some little illumination. Then dying down lower than ever, it allowed a condition of half darkness ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... consciously and definitely set to the task of making more marriages successful even when they have developed difficulty of adjustment, rather than one allowed to act as a means of easy separation of even fickle, selfish, and childish people ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... told, is a blind and fickle foster-mother, who showers her gifts at random upon her nurslings. But we do her a grave injustice if we believe such an accusation. Trace a man's career from his cradle to his grave and mark how Fortune has treated him. You will find that when he ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... "Fickle as the wind," murmured Sabina, threatening him with her finger. "Show me the stone—it is one of the largest and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... flashing and classic brown fingers never still, while he expounded to me his strange, half pagan, half Christian fatalism. He was of the South, "well toward the Boot Heel, signore," but Love, the master mariner, had driven him out of his course and brought him within fifty miles of Rome to court a fickle beauty of the hills, whose brother had come down for the wood-cutting and was friendly to ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... "Brothers, the English are not fickle. They do not withdraw their friendship without cause. As long as the red men are faithful to their promises they will find the English their steadfast friends. But if the Indians are false or do any injury to the English, the ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... Here by the way, good reader, thou hast one example worthie to be marked of fickle fortunes inconstancie, whereof the poet speaketh verie excellentlie; [Sidenote: M. Pal. in suo scor.] —— variat semper fortuna tenorem, Diuerso gaudens mortalia voluere casu, Nam qui scire velit, cur hunc fortuna vel illum ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (4 of 12) - Stephan Earle Of Bullongne • Raphael Holinshed
... us hasten: for this generosity in the heathen is unwonted; and fickle-mindedness has ever been an attribute of the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... with one hand upon the door-post, and with the other he sought to brush this monstrous illusion from his fickle eyes. But Mauburn and the details of his deadly British breakfast became only more distinct. The appalled observer groaned and rushed for the sideboard, whence a decanter, a bowl of cracked ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... diamond set in flint! hard heart in haughty breast! By a softer, warmer bosom the tiger's couch is prest. Thou art fickle as the sea, thou art wandering as the wind, And the restless ever-mounting flame is not more hard to bind. If the tears I shed were tongues, yet all too few would be To tell of all the treachery that thou hast shown to me. Oh! I could chide thee sharply—but every maiden knows ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... me!" the Deep Voice cried, "So long enjoyed, so oft misused Alternate, in thy fickle pride, Desired, neglected, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... their own King with the means of curbing France, lest those means should be used to destroy the liberties of England. The conflict between these apprehensions, both of which were perfectly legitimate, made the policy of the Opposition seem as eccentric and fickle as that of the Court. The Commons called for a war with France, till the King, pressed by Danby to comply with their wish, seemed disposed to yield, and began to raise an army. But, as soon as they saw that the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... enough, I gave order to the masters of the ships to cast anchor a good way off the land, that the people of Tiberias might not perceive that the ships had no men on board; but I went nearer to the people in one of the ships, and rebuked them for their folly, and that they were so fickle as, without any just occasion in the world, to revolt from their fidelity to me. However, assured them that I would entirely forgive them for the time to come, if they would send ten of the ringleaders of the multitude to me; and when they ...
— The Life of Flavius Josephus • Flavius Josephus
... rough and cheerless! what though Spring Nor kiss thy brow nor cool it with a flower, Yet will I hail thee, hail thy flinty couch, Where Valour and where Virtue have reposed." The nymph said, sweetly smiling, "Fickle man Would not be happy could he not regret! And I confess how, looking back, a thought Has touched and tuned or rather thrilled my heart, Too soft for sorrow and too strong for joy: Fond foolish maid, 'twas ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... ever awake and her tender heart filled with remorse for the sorrow she had caused the Queen. The brief years of enchantment were soon over, to be followed by disillusionment, when it was revealed to Louise that the fickle heart of Louis had succumbed to other charms; the final flight from court and the long years of repentance at ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... you are superior to the fickle public. In fact, you are now a part of the capricious public, my dear," he added in a jocular tone, "and may applaud the 'heavy father,' myself, or prattle about prevailing styles while the buskined tragedian is strutting below your box. Why turn to a blind bargain? Fame ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... close the imperfect story of my somewhat romantic life. I have experienced many ups and downs, but still am stout of heart. The labor of a lifetime has brought me nothing in a pecuniary way. I have worked hard, but fortune, fickle dame, has not smiled upon me. If poverty did not weigh me down as it does, I would not now be toiling by day with my needle, and writing by night, in the plain little room on the fourth floor of ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... Peter went one day to see her, prepared to make any amends in his power for his brother's sin. And beside the sofa where the girl lay he met Joan Whitby. And such are the vagaries of human nature, with its beginning on that day, the gay, light heart, the fickle fancies, light loves, wild escapades of the devil-may-care young sportsman, all vanished away into thin air before a love that filled his whole being. Lovelier, gayer, cleverer women, ready enough to meet ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... holdest as true) concerning pleasure and pain. But perhaps what men call Fame allures thee? Behold how quickly all things are forgotten! Before us, after us, the formless Void of endless ages! How vain is human praise! How fickle and undiscriminating those who seem to praise! How limited the sphere of the greatest fame! For the whole earth is but a point in space, thy dwelling-place a tiny nook therein. How few are those who dwell therein, and what manner of men are ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... that flow into the Missouri and Mississippi from the westward are notoriously fickle and changeable. Within a very few years, some of them have changed their course so that farms are divided into two parts, or are nearly wiped out by the wandering streams. In at least one instance, artful men have tried to steal part of a State by changing the boundary line along the bed ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... attempted to show how the intelligence of fashionable people, even the brightest of them, is without value, foundation, or weight; how slight is the basis of their beliefs, how feeble and indifferent is their interest in intellectual things, how fickle ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... merriment, Of thy sparkling, light content, Give me, my cheerful brook, That I may still be full of glee And gladsomeness, where'er I be, Though fickle fate hath prisoned me In some ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... despise them utterly; but the troops and the mobiles are sufficient to man the forts and the walls, and I believe that middle-class corps, like the one I have entered, will fight manfully; and the history of Paris has shown over and over again that the mob of Paris, fickle, vain-headed, noisy braggadocios as they are, and always have been, can at least starve well. They held out against Henry of Navarre till numbers dropped dead in the streets, and until the Spaniards came ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... subject of our conversation, and seem to be come in good time to receive the honors allotted you. I was interceding with the marchioness for her interest in your favor, with the lady Julia; but she absolutely refuses it; and though she allows you merit, alleges, that you are by nature fickle and inconstant. What say you—would not the beauty of lady Julia ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe
... effort (1832), the Government, still persisting in its plans, engaged the services of Ephraim Moses Pinner of Posen, who published specimens of his intended translation in his Compendium (Berlin, 1831). But the fickle or restless emperor seems to have tired of the plan, or perhaps he found Pinner too Jewish for his purposes. Of the twenty-eight volumes planned, only one, which was dedicated to Nicholas, appeared during the decade following Chiarini's death, and the ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... Toros, Senor," he went on, speaking rapidly and tensely, "the throngs cry, 'Bravo, matador!' and toss coins into the ring. Yet in a moment the same throngs may shout until their throats are hoarse: 'Bravo, toro!' A King is like a bull in the ring, Senor—he has a fickle fate. To me he is nothing—if it pleases them—it is their King—let them do as they wish." He ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... approve. The one, because I always think it dangerous unless it be absolutely necessary, the other, because I think it wholly unsuited to the emergency. For an extraordinary commission is a measure suited rather to the fickle character of the mob, one which does not at all become our dignity or this assembly. In the war against Antiochus, a great and important war, when Asia had fallen by lot to Lucius Scipio as his province, and when he was thought to have hardly spirit and hardly vigour enough for it, and ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... he felt repaid for all he had suffered in voluntarily severing himself from Gina Montani; and from that time he forgot her, or something very like it. And for this he could not be condemned, for it was in the line of honor and of duty. Yet it was another proof, if one were wanting, of the fickle nature of man's love. It has been well compared to words written on the sands. Many weeks elapsed ere the Lady Adelaide was convalescent; and some more before she ventured to join in the gayeties and festal meetings of the land. A two days' fete, given at the Capella Palace, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... parish minister, one of whose daughters his friend subsequently married. He himself became attached to an ex-pupil of Irving's, a Miss Margaret Gordon, with some of whose graces he afterward endowed the dark and fickle Blumine, of "Sartor Resartus." She reciprocated Carlyle's affection, but the aunt with whom she lived put a stop to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... display cheerfully all the petty dishonour and small lusts which the Renaissance regarded as mere flesh and blood characteristics. So also Ariosto's ladies: the charming, bright women, coquettish or Amazonian, are frail and fickle to the degree which was permissible to a court lady, who should be neither prudish nor coquettish; doing unchaste things and listening to unchaste words simply, gracefully, without prurience or horror; perfectly well-bred, gentili, as Ariosto calls them; prudent ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... their ally, and not as their foe, and that if they would join with him they should be citizens of the American republic, and treated in all respects on an equality with their comrades. The Creoles, caring little for the British, and rather fickle of nature, accepted the proposition with joy, and with the most enthusiastic loyalty toward Clark. Not only that, but sending messengers to their kinsmen on the Wabash, they persuaded the people of Vincennes likewise to cast off their allegiance to the British ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... It was nine o'clock on the next day, 22nd October, and we were on deck waiting for the arrival of the steamer from Norddeich. There was no change in the weather—still the same stringent cold, with a high barometer, and only fickle flaws of air; but the morning was gloriously clear, except for a wreath or two of mist curling like smoke from the sea, and an attenuated belt of opaque fog on the northern horizon. The harbour lay open before us, and very commodious and civilized it looked, enclosed between two long piers ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... came, and the fickle climate proceeded to show what it could do. When the thaw had been going on for a day and a night a terrific winter hurricane broke over the forest. Trees were shattered as if their trunks had been shot through by huge cannon balls. Here ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ask our country for the largest possible armies that can be raised, as so important a thing as the self-existence of a great nation should not be left to the fickle chances ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... fickle and false; he might have seen some other fairer face, which might have enchained his fancy, and woven for him a new heart's chain; death might have stepped between him and the realization of his fondest hopes; loss of fortune might have made ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... breast. He footed it on dusty roads, or sped magnificently in freight cars, counting time as of no account. And when he had found the heart of a city and listened to its secret confession, he strayed on, restless, to another. Fickle Raggles!—but perhaps he had not met the civic corporation that could engage and hold his ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... again lost her liberties; so the exiled family returned to position and power; so the fickle Florentines, who, in a fury of patriotism, had sacked the palace of Lorenzo, now shouted themselves hoarse for "Palle and ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... through the woods, tearing the pretty clothing of the trees to pieces and rudely hurling the dust of the street in one's face. The sun got behind the clouds and in grief and dismay hid his face while this dismal looting went on unrebuked and unrestrained. But Nature is fickle, possibly because she is feminine. At all events, she can change both mind and conduct, and in short order. So ere long she came out of her November rage and sat down in still, mellow sunshine, and gathering her children about her, whispered beautiful stories ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... The fickle goddess was late; she kept us waiting till after ten o'clock. Just before her arrival, when the horizon began to grow perceptibly brighter, and the opposite shore to assume a milky, silvery tint, a sudden wind rose. The waves, that had gone quietly to sleep at the feet of gigantic reeds, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... he! Can I mistake the clustered curls Upon his hated hyacinthine head? Have they not wiled from me the fickle heart Of perjured BANDOLINA! There, he stands Before my window, where a winsome form, Rotating slow with measured self-display, Has caught his errant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... delivered from their debt of gratitude; and the nominal gifts of the Carlovingians were no more than the just and irrevocable restitution of a scanty portion of the ecclesiastical state. The sovereignty of Rome no longer depended on the choice of a fickle people; and the successors of St. Peter and Constantine were invested with the purple and prerogatives of the Caesars. So deep was the ignorance and credulity of the times, that the most absurd of fables was received, with equal reverence, in ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... inconstancy. The one deceives, the other teaches; the one enchains the minds of those who enjoy her favour by the semblance of delusive good, the other delivers them by the knowledge of the frail nature of happiness. Accordingly, thou mayst see the one fickle, shifting as the breeze, and ever self-deceived; the other sober-minded, alert, and wary, by reason of the very discipline of adversity. Finally, Good Fortune, by her allurements, draws men far ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... within my eyes,—but a hatred which never returned, to curse my memory, from that day unto this. I may have found much to test my patience, much to dislike about him in those weary weeks which followed, much of weakness and of fickle spirit, but naught ever gave birth anew to the deep resentment ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... mean it!' said the repentant captain, hastening after. 'I do love her best—indeed I do—and I don't love you at all! I am not so fickle as that! I merely just for the moment admired you as a sweet little craft, and that's how I came to do it. You know, Miss Garland,' he continued earnestly, and still running after, ''tis like this: ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... did not wish him to marry me. He told me so. 'A fickle foreigner,' you said. And you were right, but it was not pleasant to me. I hated you then, though I had never spoken to you nor seen you; not because I wanted him, but because you interfered. He said once to me that you had told the truth in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... windmills are also used for pumping, but the wind is a fickle thing to depend on, and his utter dependence on the water supply makes the Egyptian agriculturist unwilling to run such risks. Steam-engines, both stationary and portable, are observed at frequent intervals. Both the engines and the coal for fuel ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... young man did well docilely to obey her whispered directions. In a month, there were a thousand young men about town, far above the station of a Gregoriev, who would have given half their prospects for Ivan's present position. But the fickle goddess loves well to show her face to him who has never sought to lift her veil; and to Ivan, whom she had hitherto served so ill, she chose suddenly to shower with all the things that youth desires. The young man found that, many and varied as had been ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Margray, looking after her with a perplexed gaze, and dropping her scissors. "Surely, Mary, you shouldn't tease her as you do. She's worn more in these four weeks than in as many years. You're a fickle changeling!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from waking up Ginger just at that moment. A fickle breath of wind pounced upon an outspread newspaper lying on the grass, fluttered it for a moment, and then, getting fairly under the printed sheet, heaved it into ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... is essentially fickle; and Gordon's lambent spirit, which had for some time almost ceased to strive for anything, suddenly swept round to the other extreme, and was filled with the desire to reassert itself at all costs. Suddenly, almost without realising it, Gordon was fired with the wish to finish his school career ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... specksioneer, absence was equivalent to faithless forgetfulness. He thought that he had just grounds for this decision in the account he had heard of Kinraid's behaviour to Annie Coulson; to the other nameless young girl, her successor in his fickle heart; in the ribald talk of the sailors in the Newcastle public-house. It would be well for Sylvia if she could forget as quickly; and, to promote this oblivion, the name of her lover should never be brought up, either in praise or blame. And Philip would be ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... that champion's glorious career!" cried the Secretary. "Let the hydra alone. Like the antique god of mythology, it eats up its own children as soon as they get large enough to be eaten. It is a fickle beast, and the idol of to-day it ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... seen of the Kaiser that he has gone to the trenches. Probably he is dead. Let us forgive the barber. But let us bear in mind that the futile fancies of youth may be deadly things, and that one of them falling on a fickle mind may so stir its shallows as to urge it to disturb and set in motion the avalanches ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... elegant trifling which shows itself everywhere as a national characteristic, does not prepare one to believe that some of the greatest of mathematicians, philosophers, and scientific men are Frenchmen and Parisians; but such is the fact. The French are fickle, love pleasure, and one would think that these qualities would unfit men for coolness, perseverance, and prolonged research; and I am sometimes inclined to think that the proficiency of the French in philosophy, the arts, and sciences, is not so much the ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Adagio!" With a sibilant cry she fell into his out-stretched arms. "Mio, mio," she echoed in ecstasy, "I am yours and you are mine!" So lightly was the first stepping-stone passed on her reckless path of immorality and vice. Her fickle heart soon tired of the debonair Vibrato, and in a fit of satiated pique she had his ears cut off and his tongue removed and tied to his big toe. Thus was her ever-increasing lust for bloodshed apparent even at that early ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... accountable for the act he had so thoughtlessly committed that day, and a burden of responsibility settled upon his weight of sorrow that made him groan aloud. For a moment his soul cried out against it in rebellion. Why could he not have loved this sweet self-sacrificing girl instead of her fickle sister? Why? Why? She might perhaps have loved him in return, but now nothing could ever be! Earth was filled with a black sorrow, and life henceforth meant renunciation and one long struggle to hide his trouble ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... was a fitting opportunity for an ambitious and courageous woman who, though she might not find full measure of happiness and love which only comes with respect, yet would meet with adventure, would dare fate and hazard chance with fickle fortune. The prospect to her mind was more pleasing than to be the wife of a gentleman farmer and grow fat and matronly—the other chance ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... now, then. Put your hair round your mamma's neck, and give me one good long kiss, and I won't talk any more in that way about your lover. After all, some young men are not so fickle as others; but even if he's the ficklest, there is consolation. The love of an inconstant man is ten times more ardent than that of a faithful man—that is, while ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... P'an was, by nature, gifted with a fickle disposition; to-day, he would incline to the east, and to-morrow to the west, so that having recently obtained new friends, he put Hsiang Lin and Y Ai aside. Chin Jung too was at one time an intimate friend of his, but ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... him as tenant under the crown. It seems, however, as if Essex had his eye still upon the property.' Under such circumstances, it was easy to assume that O'Neill was still playing false. So he resolved that he should not be able to do so any longer. 'He determined to make sure work with so fickle a people.' He returned to Clandeboye, as if on a friendly visit. Sir Brian and Lady O'Neill received him with all hospitality. The Irish Annalists say that they gave him a banquet. They not only let him off safe, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... pondered reverently, The fickle folk began to move away. "It is but one star less for us to see; And what does one star signify?" quoth they: "The heavens are full of them." "But, ah!" said he, "That star was bright while yet she lasted." "Ay!" They answered: "Praise her, Poet, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... however, did not last, for, as the settlers became more firmly fixed in the land, the Indians, fickle and changeable, grew jealous and resented their intrusion, and refused to sell corn, hoping by this ...
— The Story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith • E. Boyd Smith
... poor Henry was to blame for not accepting your generous offer; but that does not excuse this heartless, fickle girl." ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Mr. Yankee Adventurer. Again we are not mistaken, for we find that what few critics are present when the curtain is rung up, leave the house when the first act ends with the death of the aforesaid adventurer. How the fickle dame flirts with all the neighboring young men, and at last, at the end of the second act, has her attention led by Captain Location to the hero of the piece as a suitable mate for her wayward daughter, Miss Prosperity,—all this is usually written up from hearsay. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... will discipline her imagination till she shall conceit the Neapolitan a Moor and an infidel. Just San Teodoro, forgive me! But thou canst remember the time, my friends, when the penance of the church was not without service on thine own fickle tastes ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of the male students were animated by a wild and reckless spirit, the result of a fickle roving from town to town. The pretext for this course was the necessity of hunting up skilful teachers; but with many it was only love for a career of frolic and idleness. The oldest and strongest scholars, young men of ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... onslaught in the columns of the leading newspaper. It was positively the worst blast from the black trumpet of the wind-god AEolus then possible for any inhabitant of England; and not even that poor company of suitors to whom, in Chaucer's poem, fickle Queen Fame awarded this black blast from the wind-god, instead of the blast of praise from his golden trumpet which they were expecting, can have been more discomfited than most persons would have been had they been in Milton's place a day or two after Palmer's sermon. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the blue violet, which, though it had been taught to bloom far away from the mossy bed where it had first opened its meek eye to the light, had not yet forgotten its gentleness and modesty; and not far from them were the fickle hydrangea, the cardinal flower with its rich, showy petals, and the proud, vain, and ostentatious, but beautiful crimson and white peonias. The dahlias had yet put forth but very few blossoms, but they were elegant, and the swelling buds promised that ere long there ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... "Women are fickle. See that pretty woman by the window? She was smiling at me flirtatiously a few minutes ago and now she looks ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... The fickle Muse! As ladies will, She sometimes wearies of her wooer; A goddess, yet a woman still, She flies the more that we pursue her; In short, with worst as well as best, Five months in six, your hapless poet Is just as prosy as the rest, But cannot ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... antagonist in cavalry, at least equal in infantry, had simply to remain in its existing position, in order to compel the enemy either to attempt in the winter season the passage of the river and an attack upon the camp, or to suspend his advance and to test the fickle temper of the Gauls by the burden of winter quarters. Clear, however, as this was, it was no less clear that it was now December, and that under the course proposed the victory might perhaps be gained by Rome, but would not be gained by the consul Tiberius Sempronius, who held the sole command ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... 1825, shows the excited state of the poet at this period. 'I fear,' wrote Clare, 'I shall get nothing ready for you this month; at least I fear so now, but may have fifty subjects ready tomorrow. The muse is a fickle hussy with me; she sometimes stirs me up to madness, and then leaves me as a beggar by the wayside, with no more life than what's mortal, and that nearly extinguished by melancholy forebodings.' Further on he breaks out into the exclamation: ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... garment of rebellion With some fine colour, that may please the eye Of fickle changelings, and poor discontents, Which gape and rub the elbow at the news Of hurlyburly innovation.—HENRY THE ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... who, like Downing, had been proud of the honour of lacqueying his coach, might insult him in loyal speeches and addresses. Venal poets might transfer to the king the same eulogies little the worse for wear, which they had bestowed on the Protector. A fickle multitude might crowd to shout and scoff round the gibbeted remains of the greatest Prince and Soldier of the age. But when the Dutch cannon startled an effeminate tyrant in his own palace, when the conquests which had been won by the armies of Cromwell were sold to pamper the harlots of Charles, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... devotes to this subject, she says, "The friendships of women are much more common than those of men; but rarely or never so firm, so just, or so enduring." But then she proceeds, justly, though with a little inconsistency, to say, "With women these relations may be sentimental, foolish, and fickle; but they are honest, free from secondary motives of interest, and infinitely more respectable than the time-serving, place-hunting, dinner-seeking devotion which Messrs. Tape and Tadpole choose to denominate friendship." That the sharper and sincerer ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... York earlier than usual, worked steadily at my profession and with increasing success, and began to accept opportunities (which I had previously declined) of making myself personally known to the great, impressible, fickle, tyrannical public. One or two of my speeches in the hall of the Cooper Institute, on various occasions—as you may perhaps remember—gave me a good headway with the party, and were the chief cause of my nomination for the State office which I still hold. (There, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... she murmured aloud as she went down, with Jock frisking and barking before her. "What will he think of me when he gets my letter? He will believe me fickle; he will believe that I have another lover. That is certain. Well, I must allow him to believe it. We have parted, and we must now, alas! remain apart for ever. Probably he will seek from my father the truth concerning my disappearance from Glencardine. Dad ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... remarkable feats, of which his flight above the Atlantic, his race with the torpedo-boat-destroyers across the North Sea, and his sensational display during the military man[oe]uvres on Salisbury Plain, impressed his name and personality firmly upon the fickle mind of the public, and explains the tremendous excitement caused by his inexplicable disappearance during the great aviation meeting at Attercliffe, near London, towards the end of ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... poverty of its leader, throned on a borrowed colt, and attended, not by warriors or dignitaries, but by poor men unarmed, and saluted, not with the blare of trumpets, but with the shouts of joyful, though, alas! fickle hearts. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... humour's giddy range Mislead the brutal mind? Can elephants their friendship change, As fickle as mankind? ...
— Ballads - Founded On Anecdotes Relating To Animals • William Hayley
... wisdom, born to rule a mighty State, Fair Draupadi, ever faithful, wins the smiles of fickle Fate! ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Ceylon pearl-fishery; compared with it, any state lottery pales to insignificance. From the taking of the first oyster to the draining of the last vatful of "matter," every step is attended by fickle fortune; and never is the interest of the people of Portugal or of Mexico keener over a drawing of a lottery, the tickets of which may have been sold at the very thresholds of the cathedrals, than is that of the natives of Ceylon ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... conferring honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... shortening words was very popular in the 17th century, from which period date cit(izen), mob(ile vulgus), the fickle crowd, and, pun(digrion). We often find the fuller mobile used for mob. The origin of pundigrion is uncertain. It may be an illiterate attempt at Ital. puntiglio, which, like Fr. pointe, was used of a verbal quibble or fine distinction. Most ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... no one would do the honor of shoveling him under. The Duke of Wellington refused to have his iron fence mended, because it had been broken by an infuriated populace in some hour of political excitement, and he left it in ruins that men might learn what a fickle thing is human favor. "But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting to them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto the children's children of such as keep His covenant, and to those who remember His commandments to do them." This ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... was fickle in his passions is shown by an anecdote of George Sand's. According to her, he was in love with a young Parisienne, who received him very kindly. All went well until one day he visited her with another musician, who was at that time better known than Chopin in Paris. Because the ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... kinsman his character assumes a most revolting aspect. Envious, revengeful, subtle, he was as fickle and petulant as he was suspicious and cruel. His brother, even the offspring of his brother, became to him objects of jealousy, if not of hatred. Their friends must, he thought, be his enemies, and applause bestowed upon them was odious to his soul. There were many horrid tragedies in ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... Mobilis alis hora, nec ulli Praestat velox Fortuna fidem. SENECA. Hippol. 1141. On fickle wings the minutes haste, And fortune's ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... vain, unsteadfast state of mortal things! Who trust this world, leans to a brittle stay: Such fickle fruit his flattering bloom forth brings, Ere it be ripe, it falleth to decay." The joy and bliss that late I did possess, In weal at will, with one I loved best, Is turned now into so deep distress, As teacheth me to know the world's unrest.[42] For neither wit nor princely stomachs serve Against ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... unquestionably be freed, and the only question for us is how to soften the blow. There is no doubt that our slaves, both at the Orangery and at the other plantations, are contented and happy; but you know how fickle and easily led the negroes are, and in the excitement of finding them selves free and able to go where they please, you may be sure that the greater number will wander away. My proposal is, that we should at once mark out a plot of land for each family and tell them that as ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... And him, the rising Sun, adore and love. When Doeg, who with Egypt did combine, And to enslave Judea did designe, Accus'd of Treason by the Sanhedrim, Kept in the Tower of Jerusalem; The Object prov'd of fickle Fortunes sport, And lost the Honours he possest at Court. Elam in favour grew, out stript by none, And seem'd a Prop to Amazia's Throne. He had in foreign parts been sent to School, And did in Doeg's place the Kings thin Treasure rule. He to Eliakim was neer alli'd; ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... gentle and good; not easily excited; clever and penetrating, seeing things very clearly in her mind, and expressing herself well and in few but careful words; easily finding a way out of a difficulty, and choosing her line of conduct in the most embarrassing circumstances; light-minded and fickle; unstable, paying no attention if the same thing were said several times over. For this reason," continued the doctor, "I was obliged to alter what I had to say from time to time, keeping her but a short time ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... be pursued; and the inexperienced youth, after ascending another flight of stairs, is, on the second-floor, ushered into a brothel. Cloyed or disgusted there, he is again induced to try the humour of the fickle goddess, and repairs once more to the gaming-table, till, having lost all his money, he is under the necessity of descending to the entresol to pawn his watch, before he can even procure a ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... used in the ceremonial of Buddhist worship, but the heart of the ancient faith was atrophied by the indifference of the people, and the zealous attempt to galvanise a moribund creed into fresh life failed even to arrest the progress of decay. National thought, fickle as the wind, had turned from an impersonal philosophy to the materialistic cult of Hindu deities, as the Israelites of old hankered after the visible symbol of Isis and Osiris in the Golden Calf. No definite creed succeeded in gaining ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... foundation that is laid. We must lay our affections deep down in the man Christ Jesus. As we see Him in men—and, when we cannot see that, see men in Him—we shall be more stable, less childish, less fickle. We never go deep enough. We skim over {84} life. We must get into its heart. We must never begin an affection which can have an end. For all affection must draw us into God, and God has no end. The moment we see any ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... many people in the belief of her heartlessness; but the reason which probably determined her action on this latter occasion was that she had already met the one man, who, she recognised, could enchain her fickle ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... matters it to him, the Nation's love or the Nation's blame, restin' there by the calm waters he loved. The tides come in, and the tides go out; jest as they did in his life; the fickle tide of public favor that swept by him, movin' him not on his heavenly mission of ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... that this other lover was richer than Giles and had a title, but of course he found out that this was the case. The fickle Irish beauty had caught the fancy of an elderly English nobleman with a large family of grown-up sons and daughters. My dear, it was a very heartless piece of work: it changed Giles completely. He never spoke about it to any one, but if ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... what had happened to her? He must despise her to have imagined it. His outburst had filled her with the oddest and most petulant resentment. Were all men self-seeking? Did all men think women shallow and fickle? Could a man and a woman never be honestly and simply friends? If he had made love to her, he could not possibly—and there was the sting of it—feel towards her maiden dignity that romantic respect which she herself cherished towards it. For it was ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
