"Flighty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opinions should be marked, "Subject to change without notice." We cannot all indulge ourselves in the complacency of the maiden lady who gave her age year after year as twenty-seven, because she said she was not one of these flighty things who say "one thing to-day ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... dear. A very proper dislike to the flighty behaviour of the girls of the present day. As he tells me, he feels it ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... had gone back to her hammock and was lying with one arm thrown up across the cushion, her face concealed behind it. She, too, felt miserably misunderstood. Flighty she was, spoiled and impulsive, but beneath it all she had her father's practical strain of hard sense. Mary V had grown older in the past three days. She had faced some bitter possibilities and had done a good deal of sober thinking. She felt now that Johnny was ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... Wawa; 'tay baby!" she would stop below at Mrs. Hoffstott's door to beg, almost with tears, that she would look after things a little, and not let flighty Molly neglect the child; which the good woman was always ready to do. Those were anxious days, which even the madame's and Mrs. Macon's kindness could not ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... on as it began that day. Not once a day, and sometimes not once in twenty days, did any human being speak to him. The village baker would not sell him bread; his groceries he had to buy from the neighbouring parishes, for the grocer's flighty wife called for the constable when he entered the bake-shop of Pontiac. He had to bake his own bread, and do his own cooking, washing, cleaning, and gardening. His hair grew long and his clothes became shabbier. At last, when he needed a new suit—so torn had his others become at woodchopping ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a contract made in London by your uncle, a director of this company, to be engaged on arrival as clerk at L10 a week. You, Mr. Boozer, are to be engaged at L6 a week as book-keeper; and you, Mr. Flighty, at L5 a week as an assistant engineer, and so on. Now, gentlemen, in my position as manager here I may tell you plainly that your relatives and friends—the directors in London—are not conversant with the business here in detail. Were they, I am certain, gentlemen, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... him! Yes, that would be the best way of all; it couldn't help succeeding. He imagines you as a flighty Parisienne; he is afraid of you; he is more angry with me for loving you than for refusing to carry on his practice. If he could only see you, he would ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... hardly seated themselves, and Sheffield was pouring out coffee, and a plate of muffins was going round, and Bateman was engaged, saucepan in hand, in the operation of landing his eggs, now boiled, upon the table, when our flighty youth, whose name was White, observed how beautiful the Catholic custom was of making eggs the emblem of the Easter-festival. "It is truly Catholic," said he; "for it is retained in parts of England, you have it in Russia, and in Rome itself, where an egg is served up on every ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... were published in a month's time. Some accounted it unseemly haste, after the other banns which had come to naught, and some said 'twas better so, and they blamed not Parson Fair for placing such a flighty and jilting maid safe within the pale of wedlock—and they guessed he was thankful enough to find a husband for her, even if 'twas ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... daughters are very expert at that; Emmeline thinks nothing of giving fifty dollars for a flimsy pocket-handkerchief, and as much for a flighty-looking hat. But I've no objections; I'll tell you in confidence, that is what we make our money for, Miss Elinor—for our children to spend," added Mr. Hubbard, smiling good-naturedly. "I dare say you will find a right ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... outside, but with only a little more of Dr. Mansfield's pluck, and the Spirit of W—— H—— would have been present, and the fee pocketed. However, from whatever cause, whether fright or repentance, the 'flighty purpose was o'ertook,' and the Medium supposed that a little mucilage would ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... this passage. Arthur was flighty; Arthur was volatile; Arthur was even fickle, when the mood took him. Some arrangement that partook more of the hard-and-fast was needed. But there was comfort—of a kind—in the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... Epicurean or rather frivolous, were the adherents of Assaji and Punabbasu, who, according to another chapter of the Cullavagga (I. 13), 'cut flowers, planted cuttings of flowers, used ointment and scents, danced, wore garlands, and revelled wickedly.' A list of the amusements in which indulged these flighty monks includes 'games played with six and ten pieces, tossing up, hopping over diagrams, dice, jackstraws,[38] ball, sketching, racing, marbles, wrestling,' etc; to which a like list (Tevijja, II) adds chess or checkers ('playing with a board of sixty-four squares ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... corn spilled in a golden shower, and the doves, fickle as all flighty things are, ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... old man's constant chatter grew flighty and incoherent. He talked of people and things unknown to Edith, and spoke his mother's name many times. Then he fell asleep. In the morning he seemed very weak, and his ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... recalled their commissaries, but the year was lost; nor had greater results been brought about in Italy or on the Rhine. The spirits of the allies were only sustained by the romantic exploits of Lord Peterborough in Spain. Profligate, unprincipled, flighty as he was, Peterborough had a genius for war, and his seizure of Barcelona with a handful of men, a step followed by his recognition of the old liberties of Aragon, roused that province to support the cause of the second ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... Kentucky he crippled us again and we had to move here. Trying to make our fortune here, he brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He's an honest soul, and means the very best in the world, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid he's too flighty. He has splendid ideas, and he'll divide his chances with his friends with a free hand, the good generous soul, but something does seem to always interfere and spoil everything. I never did think he was right well balanced. But I don't blame my husband, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... upstairs to the drawing-room, with their arms round each other's waists, and sitting there together hand in hand. Cynthia's whole manner was more quiet than it had been, when the weight of her unpleasant secret rested on her mind, and made her alternately despondent or flighty. ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... its advanced stage. The face that might have been handsome was the reflection of a roue, dashing, devilish. He was fair-haired and tall, taller than his companions by half a head. With reckless abandon he drank and sang and jested, arrogant in his flighty merriment. His cohorts were not far behind ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Mademoiselle Sara Bernhardt's La Jeune Fille et la Mort—a veiled skeleton coming up behind a young girl and touching her on the shoulder—it would attract little attention if it had not been signed by the flighty (and lately fleeing) actress. The verses underneath the picture are the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... if you are quiet and kind, and not flighty, he will forget all that, and be glad to let you ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... responded gloomily. "It's nip an' tuck 'tween him an' Mark Wilson. That girl draws 'em as molasses does flies! She does it 'thout liftin' a finger, too, no more 'n the molasses does. She just sets still an' IS! An' all the time she's nothin' but a flighty little red-headed spitfire that don't know a good husband when she sees one. The feller that gits her will live to regret it, that's my opinion!" And Cephas thought to himself: "Good Lord, don't I wish I was regrettin' ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... flighty like, and whispered, 'Good-bye, dear house!' and then ran out to the wagon. I expect she meant that for you and your grandmother, as much as for me, so I'm particular to tell you. This house had always been a refuge ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... being reported to Mrs. Frere, the lady wept indignant tears of wounded pride and shame. It appeared that North had watched her out of the house, returned, and related—in a "stumbling, hesitating way", Mrs. Field said—how he disliked Mrs. Frere, how he did not want to visit her, and how flighty and reprehensible such conduct was in a married woman of her rank and station. This act of baseness—or profound nobleness—achieved its purpose. Sylvia noticed the unhappy priest no more. Between the Commandant and the chaplain now arose a coolness, and ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... pulling out the loops of her tatting. "Katherine Liddell is an uncommon sort of girl," she said, "but I like her. I have an idea that she likes me better than any of the others did, yet there are not many things on which we agree. She is a little flighty in some ways, but she has some sense too, some notion of the value of money; she does not lose her dead about dress, nor does she buy costly baubles at the jewellers'. She, certainly wastes a good many pounds on books, when a three-guinea ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... at Quincy, and at the age of twenty-four, Mr. Adams was present, in this town, on the argument before the supreme court respecting Writs of Assistance, and heard the celebrated and patriotic speech of James Otis. Unquestionably, that was a masterly performance. No flighty declamation about liberty, no superficial discussion of popular topics, it was a learned, penetrating, convincing, constitutional argument, expressed in a strain of high and resolute patriotism. He grasped the question then pending between England and her colonies with the strength ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... fancy, and advancing with fabulous bounds, and nothing can check it. For them everything happens, and anything may happen. They make no effort to conquer events, to overcome resistance, to overturn obstacles. By a sudden caprice of their flighty imagination they become princes, emperors, or gods, are possessed of all the wealth of the world, all the delightful things of life, enjoy all pleasures, are always strong, always beautiful, always young, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... conferences between the legal representatives of the opposing parties. By means of these conferences, the two legal gentlemen run up very respectable bills of expenses. In the end, we get our ten thousand dollars, and the flighty old General gets back his letters.... My dear," Mary concluded vaingloriously, "we're inside the law, and so we're perfectly safe. And ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... Algerians; white long-legged beasts from the Soudan; tough grey "belody" camels from the Delta; tall, wayward Somalis; massive, heavy-limbed Maghrabis—magnificent creatures; a sprinkling of russet-brown Indian camels; and, lest the female element be neglected, a company of flighty "nitties," very full of their own importance. The native drivers were of as many shades as the camels they led, from the pale brown of the town-bred Egyptian to the coal-black Nubian or Donglawi. Twenty-five thousand camels carrying water! The ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... what I am going to write too flighty: but, by my faith, I have conceived such a profound reverence for her sense and judgment, that, far from thinking the man excusable who should treat her basely, I am ready to regret that such an angel ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... across the balcony? No!—it was the loud talking of a group of men on the road outside. She shook all over, unable to restrain herself. 'What would Uncle Ben think of me?' she said to herself in despair. For Uncle Ben loved calm and self-control in women, and had often praised her for not being flighty and foolish, as he in his bachelor solitude conceived most other ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... months after admission she one day suddenly became talkative, distractible and emotional, laughing and crying. There was with this, however, no open elation. Her talk was obscene, at times flighty, at times definitely scattered. ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... to the KAISER, Self-anointed Lord of Earth, Left that furious monarch wiser Re our troops' intrinsic worth, Frankly, I had thought you flighty, Callous to the very core; Lovely?—yes, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... Experience forbids her to count upon this man as a positive lover, but he is an admirer. They have a disagreeable habit of going so far and then taking wing. Marriage seems an event rather difficult of accomplishment, for with all Marcia's flighty romance she shrinks from encountering actual poverty, but it might be this man's admiration is sufficiently strong to lead him beyond the debatable land. She hesitates just a little, then solaces herself ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... hospital, and Maggie had seen the last of her friend. Poor Annabel died in two days, and afterward Maggie took the fever. Yes, she has been quite changed since then. She always had moods, as she called them, but not like now. Sometimes I think she is almost flighty." ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... caused him to walk the sixty leagues more gaily and briskly than was his wont; for, though he had a rather large sum of money in his pocket, he travelled on foot for pleasure. He was a good-tempered fellow, and not without wit, but so very thoughtless and flighty that people looked upon him as being rather weak-minded. His doublet buttoned awry, his periwig flying to the wind, his hat under his arm, he followed the banks of the Seine, at times finding enjoyment in his own thoughts and again indulging in ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... figures who are coming out of church, an affected, flighty Frenchwoman, with her fluttering fop of a husband, and a boy, habited a-la-mode de Paris, claim our first attention. In dress, air, and manner, they have a national character. The whole congregation, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... it was only too plain that she was filled with remorse. I really pitied her, for she was a light-hearted, flighty, little woman who loved gaiety, and, without an evil thought, had no doubt allowed her friends to draw her into that round of amusement. They sympathised with her—as every woman who marries an old man is sympathised with—and they gave her what pleasures they could. Alas! that such ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... bright-eyed, foreign-looking woman, who retrieved an insignificant appearance by a distinguished manner and, sitting there in a well-worn waterproof, talked with striking familiarity of the courts of Europe. There was nothing flighty about Mrs. Touchett, but she recognised no social superiors, and, judging the great ones of the earth in a way that spoke of this, enjoyed the consciousness of making an impression on a candid and susceptible mind. Isabel at first had answered a good many ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... "I'd say that you were cut out for a different role." There was a deeper meaning in the country girl's words than the flighty city ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... aspersions. Mr. Towle finds that, if Henry was a rake in youth and a bigot in manhood, he was certainly a very amiable rake and a very earnest bigot. "There can be no doubt," says our historian, in his convincing way, "that he often paused in his reckless career, filled with remorse, wrestling with his flighty spirit, to overcome his unseemly sports"; and as to the sincerity of his fanaticism, "to suppose otherwise is to charge a mere youth with a hypocritical cunning worthy of the Borgias in their zenith." Masterly strokes like these are, of course, intended to console the reader ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... nice," continued Dora, "to have you to help me to keep my flighty progenitors in ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... disappearance of that old man. Nobody about here can recognize him from my descriptions. He walked toward the old mill down the Newark road, and the next time I looked up he was gone. The people in the house there think I am flighty in my mind for insisting upon his ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... all she needs Lamira offers here; Nor does she fear a rigid Cato's frown, When she lays by the rich embroidered gown, And modestly compounds for just enough, Perhaps some dozens of mere flighty stuff; With lawns and lute strings, blonde and Mechlin laces, Fringes and jewels, fans and tweezer-cases; Gay cloaks and hat, of every shape and size, Scarfs, cardinals, and ribands, of all dyes, With ruffles stamped and aprons ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... saw how eagerly she watched for the mail on Tuesdays and Fridays, and how she sought a quiet place at once in order to read and dream over her letters. She was restless a day or two before a certain letter came, with an eager, excited, expectant air. Then, after reading it, she was absent-minded, flighty in conversation, and at last listlessly uneasy, moving slowly about from one thing to another, in a kind of restless inability to take ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... so much broke down by this as we've been thinkin'; he was as cool, when I spoke to him to-day, as any man I ever see in my life. The truth is, she was a flighty young person, noways equal to the parson. I've been a-suspectin' it this long while; she never, in my opinion, took a real hard hold upon him. But, Tourtelot, you should go and see Mr. Johns; and I hope you'll talk consolingly and Scripterally to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... not moralists, like Southey, when He prated to the world of 'Pantisocracy;' Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy; Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy; When he and Southey, following the same path, Espoused two partners ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... about in garrison towns and elsewhere with my father, till I was quite flighty and unsettled. He was an officer in the army. I should not have mentioned this had I not thought it best you should know ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... it was in April or May of this year, 1606, and consequently a few days after his return from Sedan, that he surprised me one night as I sat at supper, and, requesting me to dismiss my servants, let me know that he was in a flighty mood; and that nothing would content him but to play the Caliph in my company. I was not too willing, for I did not fail to recognise the risk to which these expeditions exposed his person; but, in the end, I consented, making ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... a little spell Of absence changed that heart of thine; And I, who know the change full well, Have found another place for mine. No more such fair but fickle she Shall find me her obedient; And, flighty shepherdess, we'll see Which of the twain ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... a few seconds he sank down again and grew flighty of speech. One of our people was at last penetrated with something vaguely akin to compassion, may be, for he looked out through the gratings at the guardian officer, pacing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... then the place in public estimation which it now does. Theatrical people were little known and even less understood. Even the people who did not think all actors drunkards and all actresses immoral, did think they were a lot of flighty, silly buffoons, not to be taken seriously for a moment. The profession, by reason of this feeling, was rather a close corporation. The recruits were generally young relatives of the older actors. There was plenty of room, and ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... married just six months, after, as he put it, the hardest courtship a man ever undertook. She was more like a piece of quicksilver than a girl. She was as uncertain as a spring wind, as flighty as a ball of thistledown—"Doesn't know her own mind for ten minutes together," he groaned. "Hasn't any mind at all," he'd think an hour later. While, on the following day, it might be—"That woman is too deep, she is dodging all round me, she is sticking her finger in ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... motionless, his eyes narrowing, his long, flat, cruel mouth compressed as with a keen scrutiny he marked all the characteristics of the strangers,—first of one, then deliberately of the other. A war captain (his flighty name was Watatuga, the Dragon-fly, although he looked with his high nose and eagle glance more like a bird of prey), assuming precedence of the others, pressed up beside the prophet, and the challenge of his eyes and the contempt that dilated his nostrils might have seemed more formidable ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... "No; I'm not flighty," persisted Azalea, who was entirely composed now, and who spoke firmly, though she was evidently controlling ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... "I'll be getting flighty if I keep brooding on this thing by myself much longer," Charley mused. "I am beginning to fear my own judgment is wrong. I'll confide it all to someone else to-morrow and see if their opinion agrees with mine." With little ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... began to bustle about in the kitchen and look into all the corners to see if the maid had not again put something aside for one of her followers. She was such a flighty person. Indeed, if she had not looked upon it as the duty of a Christian not to thrust the girl back into the misery from which Mr. Tiralla had rescued her, she ought to be turned out of the house—the sooner the better. She had ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... to his purpose about Smith with much more steadiness than Hume felt able to give him credit for. Townshend, it need perhaps hardly be said, was the brilliant but flighty young statesman to whom we owe the beginnings of our difficulties with America. He was the colonial minister who first awoke the question of "colonial rights," by depriving the colonists of the appointment of their own judges, and he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... tongue how awful! O power of lungs how mighty! Whence draw ye, honest gentlemen, your constant wind supply? Whence comes your inspiration, belligerent or flighty? Your common-place that grovels and your metaphors so high? Pray, why not try, for novelty, a kind of solo speaking? One man upon his legs—only one upon the floor? For eloquence,'tis possible, does not consist in shrieking, And ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... it, except that I had received it, then I prattled away all about another would-be godfather for whom you, naturally, have no earthly use. And to-day my heart is filled with remorse and my head is filled with fears lest you should think your dear godchild is ungrateful, fickle, and flighty. I want to tell you how every detail of your life—from knob-polishing and bug-swallowing to poetry-writing is dear and precious to me. How I wish I could do the same! How I live in eager expectation of your letters; how I gloat and ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... since his utmost vanity had never led him to entertain any matrimonial hopes with her, and he thought his fortune as likely to profit from the civility of her friends as of herself. For Morrice, however flighty, and wild, had always at heart the study of his own interest; and though from a giddy forwardness of disposition he often gave offence, his meaning and his serious attention was not the less directed to the advancement of his own affairs: he formed no connection ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... "But do you suppose our friend the Flighty Hun won't have a peep at us to-morrow morning to see where those shells landed? If he does, or if he takes a photograph, those holes will show up like a chalk-mark on a blackboard; then he has only to tell his gun to step this way a couple of ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... gone and I couldn't bear to have her lying there frightened and worried and not remembering why I had left her alone. She's like a child at times. You know how it is," he said, turning to Georgina. "Not flighty, but just needing to be soothed and ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... have I given you any reason to think I'm so madly infatuated? Of course I was foolish to come out with you this way, but I assure you I'm no flighty girl." ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... — [sharply again, scandalized.] — Let you not be minding if it's flat or rounded she is; for she's a flighty, foolish woman, you'll hear when you're off a long way, and she making a great noise and ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... but when one maid goes the others want to, and it has been a difficult matter to keep them all contented and busy. Gabrielle was a good nurse, but a bit flighty ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... people walking aimlessly about, and a few more solitary figures. But in each case they were accompanied by people whom I saw to be warders. We passed indeed close to an elderly man, rather fantastically dressed, who looked possessed with a kind of flighty cheerfulness. He was talking to himself with odd, emphatic gestures, as if he were ticking off the points of a speech. He came up to us and made us an effusive greeting, praising the situation and convenience of the place, and wishing us a pleasant sojourn. ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... underlying thought—still more discreditable to Daisy Medland. The injustice angered her: it would have angered her at any time; but her anger was forced to lie deeply hidden and secret, and the suppression made it more intense. Dick's flighty fancy caricatured the feeling with which she was struggling: the family attitude towards it faintly foreshadowed the consternation that the lightest hint of her unbanishable dream would raise. And, worst of all—so it seemed to her—what must Medland think? He must surely scorn them all—this ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... be conceived that I could not carry this huge package on my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to choose a beast of burden. Now, a horse is a fine lady among animals—flighty, timid, delicate in eating, of tender health; he is too valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that you are chained to your brute as to a fellow galley-slave; a dangerous road puts him out of his wits; in short, he's an uncertain and exacting ally, and adds thirty-fold to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and for three minutes there was a lively fusillade all along the northward side. Then it slowly died away, and other voices, close at hand,—someone speaking his name,—called the lad's attention. He was weak from loss of blood, and just a little dazed and flighty. He had meant three hours agone that when next he encountered his post commander his manner should plainly show that senior that even a second lieutenant had rights a major was bound to respect. But, only mistily now, he saw bending ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... treeless, without bud or flower, herd or herdsman, church or cottage, to the shadowed horizon, looming dark as the twilight deepened, was in sympathy with the gloom which had come upon me as Martin Hall ceased to speak. I had thought the man a fool and witless, flighty in purpose and shallow in thought, and yet he seemed to speak of great mysteries—and of death. In one moment the jester's cloak fell from him, and I saw the mail beneath. He had made a great impression upon me, but I concealed ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... precisely to the tale I have related, and not a man, woman, or child in the neighborhood but knew it by heart. Some always pretended to doubt the reality of it, and insisted that Rip had been out of his head, and that this was one point on which he always remained flighty. The old Dutch inhabitants, however, almost universally gave it full credit. Even to this day they never hear a thunder-storm of a summer afternoon about the Kaatskill, but they say Hendrick Hudson and his crew are at their game of ninepins; and it is a common wish of all henpecked husbands ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... the flighty Frenchman waited not for the completion of the ceremony he had proposed, but, taking on trust the respectability of the strangers, he hastily led the way to his cottage. Burr noticed that he was attired in a tight-fitting suit ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... it must not wander off like the crickets, or to blow away like the floss in your own pods. Young grass is very foolish,—I think I heard the farmer call it green the other day, but we don't like the expression ourselves,—and it would be apt to do flighty things if we did n't pin it down where it belongs. When we have taught it its lesson, we can go to sleep. We always stay until the last minute, and then we slip on our white nightcaps,—so fluffy and light and soft they ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... excited about something known only to herself, for she was strangely irritable on our walk, contradicted me fiercely, inquired testily who Nelson might be, then chid me for a dry old schoolmaster, when I told her, and such like flighty vagaries, inseparable, I believed, from her sex in general and her temperament in particular. If I have never taken the trouble to defend myself from the accusation of thinking The Pearl perfect in her somewhat spoiled relations ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Not a little flighty?" The guard nodded; Mr. Gillett whispered a few instructions, asked a number of other questions. Meanwhile the child had paused before one of the cells and, fascinated, was gazing within. What was it that held her? the pity of the spectacle? the terror of it? Her blue eyes continued ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... Jim," said the sick man, and dozed off into a troubled sleep. The surgeon had been giving the patient some powerful medicine, and told Sedgwick it might make him flighty, but not to permit that to alarm him; that he thought he could promise to hold the life in his friend for ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... age," she said. "If it had happened four or five years ago, I could have done pretty well for myself. Now, I should be out of the running among the debutantes, and a little too young and flighty to ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... he was very much troubled about it. I only thought he was flighty from want of sleep. At your age you don't mind the loss ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... TILBY (a flighty young person who, when she has a moment or two to spare from the higher flirtation with the local policeman, puts in a little light work about the bedrooms). Oh, I say, this'll be one in the eye for ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... breakfast-room, she was saluted with the customary remonstrance which her flighty disregard of all punctuality habitually provoked from the long-suffering household authorities. In Miss Garth's favorite phrase, "Magdalen was born with all the senses—except a sense ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... keep shut up in the house when she cum back? ah, for days and weeks;—and arter that, wut made her so flighty and fickle? carryin' herself as proud as a lady a mincin' and a trapesin' along, wi' all the young farmer's a follerin' her, like a fine ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... thirty years of age, of diminutive stature and delicate proportions. His face was handsome, but womanish. His movements were rapid and restless, and there was that appearance in his eye which would have warranted the supposition that he was a little flighty, even if his conduct had not fully ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... against the doctor one worked for was an unpardonable offence. No physician would think of employing her again. She might have the purest motives for her action, they would not help her one particle. Henceforward she would be branded as flighty, irrational, not to be depended upon. Her living would be taken away, but something even worse might happen. She stood the chance of landing herself in a libel action, she might indeed be accused of having the intent to blackmail. She knew one case of the ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... blight of crops, disease of cattle, were charged to them; children complained of being pricked with thorns and pins (the pins are still preserved in Salem), and if hysterical girls spoke the name of any feeble old woman, while in flighty talk, they virtually sentenced her to die. The word of a child of eleven years sufficed to hang, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... "She's a flighty young dame, with a new notion for every minute," he told himself. "You can see that plain enough. It's probably all jolly on her part. However, in these days, if a fellow keeps his head steady and his feet busy, there's no telling what the tango may lead to. This may be ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... "Cocaine makes me flighty and nervous, but these pebbles sort of ballast me and hold me down. How on earth do you know that that bubble comes from the ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... they were placed on the table she nearly swooned, and her disgust lasted some time, until at the end of half an hour or so she took her first morsel.[46] On the whole, if we accept the current standard of sanity, Madame de Warens must be pronounced ever so little flighty; but a monotonous world can afford to be lenient to people with a slight craziness, if it only has hearty benevolence and cheerfulness in its company, and is free ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... head cutter, betrothed himself to Fanny Fersht, the prettiest of the machinists, the Ghetto blessed the match, always excepting Sugarman the Shadchan (whom love matches shocked), and Goldenberg's relatives (who considered Fanny flighty and ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... "Any one would! But them prospectors ain't human, that a way. They lives in the deserts so much they gets kind of wild and flighty, ma'am. Water is so scarce that they gets to regardin' it as somethin' onnatural and dangerous. More'n enough of it to give 'em a drink or two and water the Jennies acts on 'em all same like it does on a hydrophoby skunk. They foams at ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... and discretion," began Kenny with bitter fluency. "I'm an unsuccessful parent with an over-supply of hair and teeth, afflicted with hairbrained, unquenchable youth. I'd be a perennial in the Land of the Young and could hobnob indefinitely with his Flighty Highness, the King of Youth. I'm forty-four years young and highly temperamentalized. I've made a mess of parenting Brian and I'm ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... domestic troubles, divorced his wife, in fact, and it was as a relief from that, I think, that he took up politics of the rabid sort. He was a fanatical Radical—a Socialist—or typical Liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school. Energetic—flighty—undisciplined. Overwork upon a controversy did this for him. I remember the pamphlet he wrote—a curious production. Wild, whirling stuff. There were one or two prophecies. Some of them are already exploded, some of them are established facts. But for the most part to read such a thesis is ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... beseeching eyes, "what wid the men all rarin' about the bit of garden, calling, 'Molly, isn't she coming down?' and the girls, calling down the kitchen tube, 'Molly aren't they through talking?' I'm fair getting nervous myself—we feel like witches we're that flighty—" ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... eye, Palest blue—a candid feature Which informs the passer-by Phyllis is a flighty creature; Golden locks and fair complexion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... wait: the mutiny of the sailors in the ship—ship of the state, or of one's own soul: the echoes and beams and shadows of that half-illuminated cavern, the human mind: the caged birds in the Theatetus, which are like the flighty, half-contained notions of an imperfectly educated understanding. Real notions are to be ingrained by persistent thoroughness of the "dialectic" method, as if by conscientious dyers. He makes us stay ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... a large group, that of the "average person," not specially flighty and not particularly thoughtful. But the average person is of very great importance. The greatest share in the work of the world is probably done by "average" people, not only for the obvious reason that there are more of them, but also because they are more accessible, more reliable, and ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... deal, and wished Emlyn would go instead, but Mrs. Elmwood would not have hired that flighty damsel on any account, and Emlyn was sure it would be but mopish work to live under a starched old Puritan. Mrs. Lightfoot was therefore applied to, to find a service for Emlyn Gaythorn, and she presently discovered one Mistress Sloggett, a haberdasher's wife of wealth and consideration, ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a ladies' man. Courtly, refined, and a splendid linguist, as he was, the girls always voted him great fun; but from the elder ones, and from married women especially, he somehow held himself aloof. His one woman-friend, as everybody knew, was the flighty, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... younger daughter of the Marquis de Casteran; born Beatrix-Maximilienne-Rose de Casteran, about 1808, in the Casteran Castle, department of Orne. After being reared there she became the wife of the Marquis of Rochefide in 1828. She was fair of skin, but a flighty vain coquette, without heart or brains—a second Madame d'Espard, except for her lack of intelligence. About 1832 she left her husband to flee into Italy with the musician, Gennaro Conti, whom she took from her friend, Mademoiselle ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Mr. Somers, "a man may lawfully set out to take a ride without intending to break his own neck, or anybody else's; and find it done at the end, without blame to himself. I never was, I hope, a promoter of—ha!—flighty marriages—to which ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the wheel as possible; for Baldy was being seriously considered as a permanent wheeler in the Racing Team. His qualifications were not brilliant, but he had proved in the Juvenile Race that he possessed the power to enforce his authority on flighty and reckless dogs; and on the trip to the Hot Springs that his courage ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... with using threatening and insubordinate language to his commanding officer, among them; and Gray is down with brain fever. The doctors say he is too ill to be disturbed, and his side of the story is hard to get at, as the boy is too flighty to talk sense. From Canker's own admission I learned that he accused Gray of having knowledge of the whereabouts of that packet of letters stolen from General Drayton's tent, and the youngster's reply was furious. Canker had to place ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... of my cursed fortune, and in that moment I saw that he thought me a fool and an idiot. He went away, and I saw him no more. Yet I still hoped. I dreamed of their joy at finding me, and the reward that my wealth would give them. Perhaps I was a little weak still, perhaps a little flighty, too, at times; but I was quite happy that year, even in my disappointment, for ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... said I, "I am afraid that our partnership would be of short duration; you would find me too eccentric and flighty for the law. Have you a good practice?" ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... find some centre either of power or action or intellect about which they may group themselves, and I think that Pearse became the leader because his temperament was more profoundly emotional than any of the others. He was emotional not in a flighty, but in a serious way, and one felt more that he suffered ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... others who have involved it in its entirety in broad and sweeping condemnation. As if it were possible that so great labour on the part of so great a naturalist should have led him to 'a fantastic conclusion' only—to a 'flighty error,' and, as has been often said, though not written, to 'one absurdity the more.' Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his protracted old age, saddened alike by the weight of years and ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Moreover, he keenly regretted on her account his own physical condition. Since rising from his bed of fever he had carefully avoided all fatigue, according to his doctor's injunction. But now, after this morning's efforts, his legs were weak and his head was flighty. Things showed a tendency to dance before his eyes in a way that he had not experienced heretofore. When he lay upon the ground an hour ago he did it, among other reasons, to avoid tumbling from ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... proper possessions, this Mr. Morris had a wife and children. They were the right sort of wife, and the right sort and number of children, of course; nothing imaginative or highty-flighty about any of them, so far as Mr. Morris could see; they wore perfectly correct clothing, neither smart nor hygienic nor faddy in any way, but just sensible; and they lived in a nice sensible house in the later Victorian ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... was a cloud on his brow as he followed her into her boudoir, where they frequently spent hours together. He questioned her concerning her aunt and her relations generally, but Lillian knew little more than that her aunt resided in Toronto, and was generally considered to be what is called "flighty." ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... always made a fuss about taking more than a very little beer, and never touched spirits. He did not know much more about hysterics than he did about drunkenness, but he had always heard that women who were about to become mothers were liable to be easily upset and were often rather flighty, so he was not greatly surprised, and thought he had settled the matter by registering the discovery that being about to become a father has its troublesome as well as its ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... now took great delight in exercising Tommy and Patty (who were big enough to be trusted) in flighty and would often skim round the whole island with them before I could walk half through the wood. And she would teach them also to swim or sail, I know not which to call it, for sometimes you should see them ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... saddle-makers sat idle at their doors, greeting every one that passed; solemn Talebs stood in knots, with faces that shone under the closed hoods of their dark jellabs; and the bareheaded Berbers encamped in the market-square capered about like flighty children, grinned like apes, fired their long guns into the air for love of hearing the powder speak, often wept, and sometimes embraced each other, thinking of their homes that were ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... black with reproach upon him. Then turning to the ladies: "That shows how he misunderstands me. Just because I had a witty mother,—just because I 'm not a stolid, phlegmatic ox of a John Bull,—just because I 'm sensitive and impressionable,—he calls me flighty. But you know better, don't you? You, with all your fine feminine instincts and perceptions, you know that I 'm really as steady and as serious as the pyramids of Egypt. Even my very jokes have a moral purpose—and ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... the houses which she visited did not appal her by their splendour. Many objections were made to her. A character from an aunt was objectionable. Her ringlets were objectionable. She was a deal too flighty-looking. She spoke up much too free. At last one happy mother of five children offered to take her on approval for a month, at L12 a year, Ruby to find her own tea and wash for herself. This was slavery;—abject slavery. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... by the presence of unprogressive French in Canada, and of unprogressive Dutch in South Africa. Certainly, the all- British dominions have been more advanced in their political experiments than those in which the flighty Anglo-Saxon has been tempered by more stolid elements; and the pendulum swings little more in French Canada than it does in Celtic Ireland. In New Zealand old age pensions were in force long before they were introduced into the mother-country; and compulsory arbitration in ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... fastened to the pack animal by a surcingle. The Indians who came with the burro train were pleasant-faced, sturdy fellows, dressed in "store clothes" and straw hats. Their burros were as cantankerous as donkeys can be, never fractious or flighty, but stubbornly resisting, step by step, every effort to haul them near ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... of so different a cast, and knowing how often the wisest of men must do what any fool can do, was bitterly vexed at the flighty ways of Willie, and could do no more than hope, with a general contempt, that when the boy grew older he might be a wiser fool. But Willie's dear mother maintained, with great consistency, that such a perfect wonder could ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... struggling against his bad habits; and that by degrees he became able to exercise his mind in following after the good and beautiful instead of after the bad and ugly. It was a hard task to him for many a long day to fix his flighty thoughts down to the business in hand, and to dismiss from before his eyes the ridiculous images that often presented themselves. But his Mother's wishes, or the Genie's advice, or something better still, prevailed. And you cannot think, of what wonderful ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... whether he won her down by faithfulness and devotion nobody knows. Nobody quite knows how or why she changed toward him. I don't believe she does. He was just about the last man anybody thought she'd marry. But anyway her young and flighty affections got round to him at last, and fastened to him. They fastened to him like leeches. No man was ever loved as hard as she loved him when she got round to it. She made up for all the sorry dances she'd led him. She was absolutely ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... Stirling with his command was steadily marching through the night, the visitors were gathered. There was a cook-fire and a pot, and a stewing dog leaped in the froth. Old men in blankets and feathers sat near it, listening to young Cheschapah's talk in the flighty lustre of the flames. An old squaw acted as interpreter between Crow and Sioux. Round about, at a certain distance, the figures of the crowd lounged at the edge of the darkness. Two grizzled squaws stirred the pot, spreading a clawed ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... now-a-days To give one's dwelling some fantastic name To recommend it to the stranger's gaze, Or afford it an imaginary claim To more gentility than others; 'tis the same In the metropolis, for folks arrange (Flighty mammas, perhaps, are more to blame) To call their homes "The Beeches" or "The Grange," For probably they think ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... well and cheerful; I never once in all my lines mentioned business. Friend Hicks must have been sensibly astonished. That night when I went home friend Jordan for the first time grated upon me, and I would fain have gone into my room and closed the door and thought long and painfully. In my flighty mind I saw Barbara pining, and for me! Never before had I thought she cared so well for me as now when she was not in fair health. It is a sad happiness to think that some dear one is far from thee, and heavy of heart ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... His Honour the Acting Governor, and His Honour's consort. We were also introduced to Mrs. Balmossie, the lady who was to chaperon us to Moozuffernuggar. Her husband was a soldierly Scotchman from Forfarshire, but she herself was English—a flighty little body with a perpetual giggle. She giggled so much over the idea of the Maharajah's inviting us to his palace that I wondered why on earth she accepted his invitation. At this she seemed surprised. 'Why, it's one of the ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... flighty," replied the other. "Do you notice that he doesn't seem to be as jolly and full of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... escapade was a tragedy at every hearth-side. It was immeasurably shocking that a young woman married to a reputable man, and with a child still toddling after her, should have done this grievous thing. To say that she had always been flighty, and that it was what might have been expected of a woman as headstrong as she had been as a girl, was no mollification of the blow to the local conscience, acutely sensitive in all that pertained to the honor and sanctity of the marriage tie. And Jack Holton! That she should have thrown away ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... farm on the fourth concession. The Raeburns were English, an' they had high notions o' their position. The mother was dead, and the three girls managed the home. Florence was the youngest, and the other two were older than her by ten years or more. Consequently, they thought her a bit flighty, an' needin' o' some restriction. They did not let her associate with any o' the neighbors, an' a great fuss they raised when she made friends with me while her horse took a drink at the trough when she was passing. I pitied the child, fer she had a pretty face, an' big, sad eyes ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... gayly, "We shall drink a votre succes dans la guerre," and the flighty girl raised a glass of wine on high. Several of the guests crowded around and all were about to ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... thunderstruck, her father full of grief, her relations indignant, the authorities all in a ferment, the officers of the Brotherhood in arms. They scoured the roads, they searched the woods and all quarters, and at the end of three days they found the flighty Leandra in a mountain cave, stript to her shift, and robbed of all the money and precious jewels she had carried ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... in his good-natured, rolling tones; "since the days of the great Jonathan, our New-England metaphysicians have generally been broken-down poets, and should be treated with the greatest tenderness. Some flighty minds will prefer dangerous trips to dream-land to the rigid demonstrations of figures; but the mass of our graduates accept the teaching of their Alma Mater, that only the mathematician has the right to investigate, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... her throne and made a signal to her attendants. The children, whispering together among the cushions on the steps of the throne, decided that she was very beautiful and very kind, but perhaps just the least bit flighty. ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... such as live these two lives of daylight and lamp-light;—flattered that an arm should encircle their waists in the dance, which is unworthy of cleaning the shoes they wear, or sweeping the ground they tread,—flattered by the attentions and flighty words falling from lips across whose threshold comes the foul breath of sin and dissipation. Such is the dignity of the youth of our century; such is the brazen insolence which causes them to establish themselves as the social equals of well ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera |
