"Self-willed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon God's revelation of Himself, and in essence are, in various fashions, the repetition of this prayer of my text: 'Be ... for Thou art,' that we can expect to have them answered. Much else may call itself prayer, but it is often but petulant and self-willed endeavour to force our wishes upon Him, and no answer will come to that. We are to pray about everything; but we are to pray about nothing, except within the lines which are marked out for us by what God has told us, in His words and acts, that He Himself is. Catch these up and fling them back ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... sister Alice! I tremble for you; so young and so self-willed. This is not my Alice, the happy, confiding Alice, who once loved ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... corrupting form of self-pleasing: "'Tis what I love determines how I love." Love is his "highest allegiance"; and it becomes ere long an allegiance before which truth, faith, and honour give way, and guidance and control of conscience are swept before the fierce storm of self-willed passion that brooks no interposition between ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... the finest insight. To some pilgrims the Valley of Humiliation was the pleasantest part of the journey. Mr. Feeblemind, in the second part of the story, was happier there than anywhere. But Christian is Bunyan himself; and Bunyan had a stiff self-willed nature, and had found his spirit the most stubborn part of him. Down here he encounters Apollyon himself, 'straddling quite over the whole breadth of the way'—a more effective devil than the Diabolus of the 'Holy War.' He fights him for half-a-day, is ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... and she had left off asking him questions. She drew back into herself and became every day more self-willed, more solitary, ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... I not written to? Why was I not told I had a child?" Again a groan escaped him. "My God!" he cried, "I forgot I had no right to expect that. Like a self-willed child I wantonly threw away life's choicest blessings, was unmindful of ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... concentration of responsibility upon executives or small commissions who represent the community as a whole, it is highly desirable to have a method available for quickly remedying mistakes. The danger of being recalled from office is a salutary influence upon a weak or a self-willed man. And the possibility of it allows the election of officials for longer terms, which are desirable from several points of view: they bring a more stable government, freed from too frequent breaks ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... things allowed, or in burning in things unallowed, to that use which is against nature; or are found guilty, raging with heart and tongue against Thee, kicking against the pricks; or when, bursting the pale of human society, they boldly joy in self-willed combinations or divisions, according as they have any object to gain or subject of offence. And these things are done when Thou art forsaken, O Fountain of Life, who art the only and true Creator and Governor ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... had died soon after the Baroness decided to adopt the child. She knew that Leonore would otherwise be all alone in the world, and she hoped that a gentle sister would have an extremely beneficial influence on the two self-willed brothers. Now a time began for me which was more wonderful than anything I could ever have imagined. Leonore was to continue her studies, of course, and take up new ones. For that purpose a very refined German lady came to the castle very soon after Leonore's arrival. Only years ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... the roof for the soldiers, a black speck settling for an instant upon whiteness, then carried away by a purifying wind. She knew that she would always be subject to such moments so long as she was a human being, that there would always be in her blood something that was self-willed. Otherwise, would she not be already in Paradise? She sat and prayed for strength in the battle of life, that could never be anything else ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of the deacon's good ladies, "that he is too proud and self-willed for our gentle Ellen;" and she took off her spectacles, which she wiped with her silk handkerchief, as if she thought they were wearied of the long scrutiny as her ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... and what is not true. I know I have been robbed of my brother's love, but I will not consent to the loss of his respect and consideration. Sire, Winterfeldt wrote to you; I know that he did so. If he wrote that I was obstinate and self-willed, and alone answerable for the disasters of the army, [Footnote: Warner's "Campaigns of Frederick the Great."] I call God to witness that he slandered me. Your majesty speaks of instructions. I received none. ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... about a Christmas-tree for the poor children. He urged her to stop and spend the night, but she insisted that she must go on, though it was nearly dark and raining hard, and the roads would have mired a cat (she was always self-willed). Next day he went to see the sick woman, and when he arrived he found her in one bed and Cousin Fanny in another, in the same room. When he had examined the patient, he turned and asked Cousin Fanny what was the matter with her. "Oh, just a little cold, ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... craved. Four men—all with better war records and more experience—stood between him and that coveted star, and two of the four were popular and beloved men. Frost was cold, selfish, intensely self-willed, indomitably persevering, and though "close-fisted," to the scale of a Scotch landlord as a rule, he would loose his purse strings and pay well for services he considered essential. When Frost had a consuming desire he let no money consideration stand in the way, and for Nita Terriss he stood ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... the great walrus, the roar of the seal rookeries, where millions of cubs wallowed, and where bulls lashed themselves in their rage and fought for mastery of the herd. By November, Waxel alone was holding the vessel up to the wind. No more solemn conferences of self-important, self-willed scientists filled the commander's cabin! No more solemn conclaves and arguments and counter-arguments to induce the commander to sail this way and that! Bedlam reigned above and below decks. No man had any thought but how to reach home alive. Prayers and vows and offerings went up from ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... colored, and was silent through the meal. She knew her tongue was sharp; she knew that she was self-willed and was not humble. But she had not taken herself in hand, religiously; to take one's self in hand morally, or on grounds of expediency, never amounts to much; and such taking in hand was all that Charlotte had as yet attempted. In a little passion of self-reproach and mortification, she ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... Ten days ago, when the boy thanked me for pulling him off Bertrand's back, he as much as said he had nothing to pay me with. Now if this lie of a plot against the King were the truth, would not a self-willed boy like the Dauphin, boastful as boys are, proud and galled by the debt he thought he owed me, have hinted that the day would come when he could pay in full, and sooner than some expected? He surely would. His pride ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... a man of business. Mr. Williams, too, is really most gentlemanly and well-informed. His weak points he certainly has, but these are not seen in society. Mr. Taylor—the little man—has again shown his parts; in fact, I suspect he is of the Helstone order of men—rigid, despotic, and self-willed. He tries to be very kind and even to express sympathy sometimes, but he does not manage it. He has a determined, dreadful nose in the middle of his face, which, when poked into my countenance, cuts into my soul ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... eyes of the multitude, Bismarck is a great but unscrupulous statesman, intent upon uniting Germany and making it the leading nation of Europe. As a man, he seems hard-headed, self-willed, and iron-handed. As a ruler, he is looked upon as the incarnation of the despotic spirit,—a believer in force, an ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... he sought fled from the presence of many men. Though the Indian had penetrated more or less to all these secluded regions, the Indian has enough of the reserve of outdoor life not to disturb any of the animals. It is the imperious, self-willed, noisy white man who drives away the shy creatures of ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... of the last Holy Week; the last Easter Sunday spent wholly with him. I think too, and that sadly enough, of having pained him sometimes by being self-willed, and doing just what he has not done, viz., chosen for myself when I ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not very deeply dipped after all; Mrs. Dalzell had her jointure off it, but he was an only son, and any little wildness or extravagance of youth was likely to be put an end to by marriage. Laura was a somewhat troublesome ward, so passionate and so self-willed that even at school she had carried her point against him by sheer determination over and over again, and he wished heartily to be well freed of her by marriage with a tolerably respectable man. Her fortune he would secure her future husband from making ducks and drakes of by settlements, ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... front, above the lunar forehead, among the coronal masses, darkly fair, she fixed a diamond star, and over it wound the smoky green like a turbaned vapor, wind-ruffled, through which the diamonds gleamed faintly by fits. Not once would she, while at her work, allow Hesper to look, and the self-willed lady had been submissive in her hands as a child of the chosen; but the moment she had succeeded—for her expectations were more than realized—she led her to the cheval-glass. Hesper gazed for an instant, then, turning, threw her arms ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... was particularly struck that morning with the behavior of a bouquet of nasturtiums which stood in a vase on my table. I never was fond of these flowers, and I noticed then for the first time how very self-willed and obstinate they were. No matter how nicely they were arranged, it would not be an hour before the whole bunch was in disorder, every blossom turning the way it preferred, and no two looking in the same direction. I thought, when I first observed this, that I must be mistaken, and I ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Gillies; but there is something irresistible in contradiction, even when it consists in doing a thing equally laborious, but not the thing you are especially called upon to do. It is a kind of cheating the devil, which a self-willed monster like me is particularly addicted to. Not to make myself worse than I am though, I was full of information about the Russian campaign, which might evaporate unless used, like lime, as soon after it was wrought up as possible. About three, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the savage law. No doubt, as Egyptologists tell us, the princesses of the royal house had separate households and abundant liberty of action. Still, it was bold to override the strict commands of such a monarch. But it was not a self-willed sense of power, but the beautiful daring of a compassionate woman, to which God committed the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... you I must be free to do as I please, without giving you the slightest details what I do. I have long wished for a young lover, who should be young and not self-willed, loving without distrust, loved without claiming the right to it. I have never found one. Men, instead of being satisfied in obtaining for a long time what they scarcely hoped to obtain once, exact from their mistresses ...
— Camille (La Dame aux Camilias) • Alexandre Dumas, fils
... was like many other weak men who have self-willed wives. He put off the inevitable day as long as he could, but finally achieved his purpose by strategy. Roger was in his seventeenth year when the news arrived that Sir Henry had died. It was right that James Tichborne should be present at his brother's funeral, and reasonable that he should take ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... suddenly in his arms, his fine young features aglow. This then was the goal of his desires; a goal of delight, far, far beyond all youthful dreams or early imaginings. With drooping eyelids, she stood in his embrace; she, once so proud, so self-willed. He drew her closer—kissed ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... not fifty cents in change, but a dollar bill would suit her exactly as well, she said, and secretly exulting in her mastery over the self-willed tyrant, she suffered him to depart, saying to himself as he descended the stair, "Twenty-five dollars for one bedstead. I won't stand it! I'll ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... was still formidable to the temporal power. It was, therefore, in the natural constitution of society that bigoted zeal, which in such times makes a show of public acts of penance, should avail itself of the semblance of religion. But this took place in such a manner that unbridled, self-willed penitence degenerated into luke-warmness, renounced obedience to the hierarchy, and prepared a fearful opposition to the Church, paralyzed as it was by ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Huldbrand; and he began to call in the most earnest manner: "Undine! Undine! Pray come back!" The old man shook his head, saying, that all that shouting would help but little, for the knight had no idea how self-willed the little truant was. But still he could not forbear often calling out with him in the dark night: "Undine! Ah! dear Undine, I beg you to come back—only ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... something I've never spoken of to anybody ... not even Mother ... and I'm going to do it, so you'll believe me when I say you're worth living. When I was eighteen years old I was a horrid, selfish, self-willed child. I suppose everybody's so at eighteen. I was just crazy for money and fine dresses and things like that, that we'd never had at home; and a man with a lot of money fell in love with me. It was my fault. I made him, though I didn't know then what I was doing, or at least I wouldn't ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... continued, 'is eminently a man of sense if I reflect on my boyhood, I see how admirable his treatment of me has always been. I fancy I must have been at one time rather hard to manage; I know I was very passionate and stubbornly self-willed. Yet he neither let me have my own way nor angered me by his opposition. In fact, he made me respect him. Now that we stand on equal terms, I dare say he has something of the same feeling towards myself. And So it comes that ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... were otherwise; and again a hundred times a day I would thank God that they are as they are, and praise him for showing me his will rather than my own. For the secret lies in this; that we must not follow our own impulses, and thus grow pettish and self-willed: neither must we float feebly upon the will of God, like a branch that spins in an eddy; rather we must try to put our utmost energy in line with the will of God, hasten with all our might where he calls us, and turn our back as resolutely as we can when he bids us ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... showed him how impossible it was for me or anybody to help him, except with a little money, till he had shown what he could do; and I entreated him to wait two years,—one year,—six months, before rushing on such a fate. Here, and here alone, he was self-willed. At first he explained to me that he had one piece of employment to rely on. He was to be the London correspondent of the Repeal organ in Dublin,—the "Nation" newspaper. The pay was next to nothing. He could not live, ever so frugally, on four times the amount: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... This self-willed and beautiful Naomi is a well-imagined character, but imperfectly developed. Indeed the whole novel may be described as a jumble of ill-connected scenes, and of half-drawn characters. We have some sad ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... certain that he would not observe his engagements, if it should be for his interest to violate them. Even if it should be for his interest to observe them, it might well be doubted whether the strongest and clearest interest would induce a man so haughty and self-willed to co-operate heartily with two governments which had always been the objects of his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with a slight cough, "let the thoughtful man picture a father: a desperate, self-willed man, who scorned the laws of God and society—keeping only faith with a miserable subterfuge he called 'honor,' and relying only on his own courage and his knowledge of human weakness. Imagine him cruel and bloody—a gambler by profession, an outlaw among ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... with Scotland.—Edward's dealings with Scotland, mistaken as they were, were not those of a self-willed tyrant. If it be once admitted that he was really the lord paramount of Scotland, everything that he did may be justified upon feudal principles. First, Balliol forfeited his vassal crown by breaking his obligations as a vassal. ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... the lady, 'why trust to these self-willed methods, and neglect the noble and exquisite forms which the Church has prepared for us as embodiments for every feeling of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... fine arts, much bravery, high notions of honour, a more than common share of wit, keen and ungovernable feelings, an impatience of contradiction, and an obstinacy in error, he is a compound of jarring elements, that augur tempests and peril. Vain, haughty, and self-willed, his family, his fortune, his accomplishments and himself are the pictures that fascinate his eye. It is attracted, for a moment, by the superior powers of another; but all his passions and propensities forebode that he is not to be held, even by ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... in company more than once or twice; and I must say that my conversation with him has been anything but pleasant or satisfactory. I have thought every time that he has increased in his idiosyncracy, that he has become more and more dogged, self-willed, and obstinate. I have wished that he might see himself as others see him. But to this he has been as blind as an owl in mid-day. Where is the salve that would give him this power of vision? He see himself ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... experienced the forgiveness of his sins, and has for a little while enjoyed the happiness of that mercy, it not unfrequently appears to his evil and inconstant heart too humiliating a condition to be constantly receiving grace for grace. There is no other radical cure for a proud, self-willed heart than every day and every hour to repeat that act by which we first came to Christ. Pray that you may have more of that childlike spirit which regards the grace of your Lord as a perennial fountain of life. Especially avoid the error of those who seek life for the sake of light, who ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... he became more self-willed and disobedient, and his manner to his mother was often very rude and his temper to the other chickens ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... family of this size, it was a case of every fellow shift for himself, which rule Napoleon followed out with a vengeance. He himself said in later years: "I was self-willed and obstinate, nothing awed me, nothing disconcerted me. I was quarrelsome, exasperating; I feared no one. I gave a blow here and a scratch there. Every one was afraid of me. My brother Joseph was the one with whom I had the most to do. He was beaten, bitten, scolded. I complained ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... memory. His comrades decried him as an impostor and deceiver. 'False to all men, a hateful fellow, a mere Machiavel,' Captain Parker called him, because he did not find his gold mine. Ralegh, for whom he had ventured and borne much, writes of him as an obstinate, self-willed man, and of his doleful end with a coldness which only gnawing despair can ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... smoke, as they certainly will, because they are animal and stubborn and self-indulgent and self-willed, let them at least confine their fireworks to their own apartments. If a wife would rather admit her fuliginous husband to her sitting-room than forego his society altogether,—as undoubtedly most women would, for you see it is not a question between ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... die the living death of Parasitism. Better an aberrant theology than a suppressed organization. Better a little faith dearly won, better launched alone on the infinite bewilderment of Truth, than perish on the splendid plenty of the richest creeds. Such Doubt is no self-willed presumption. Nor, truly exercised, will it prove itself, as much doubt does, the synonym for sorrow. It aims at a life-long learning, prepared for any sacrifice of will yet for none of independence; at that high progressive education which yields rest in work and work in rest, and ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... strangely on his path, This love engendered in his withered heart, This hindrance to his rituals,—might these not Have been ordained to teach him? Call him back To ways marked out for him by Love divine? And with a mind less self-willed to adore? ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... with impotency and ignorance, they are disgusting beyond expression. Augustus Brammel was the most sensual and self-engrossed of men—the most idle and dissipated; and, as if these were not enough to render him an object of the deepest aversion, he was as self-willed, thick-headed, overbearing a dunce as ever moved a man to that contempt "which wisdom holds unlawful ever;" and Brammel was not only a fool, but a conceited, upstart, irritating fool. He considered himself the shrewdest of mortals, and presumed to dictate, to be impertinent, to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... inquisitive, greedy child, with the fruit, whatever it was, part in her hand and part between her teeth, holding up her hand, or perhaps her mouth, to Adam. You see my idea of Eve is a sensual, self-willed, ignorant savage, who saw something beautiful, that smelt good, and looked as if it tasted good, and so tasted it, without any aspiration after any other knowledge. This real innate fleshly devil of greediness and indiscretion would, however, not bear the heavy theological superstruction ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... was away from them for an hour, they become all at once strong and calm; they stand before the fury of a Jewish mob and the threatenings of the Sanhedrim, unmoved and victorious. And these brave confessors and saintly heroes are the men who, a few weeks before, had been petulant, self-willed, jealous, cowardly. What had lifted them suddenly so far above themselves? Their Master's death? That would more naturally have taken any heart or courage out of them, and left them indeed as sheep in the midst of wolves. Why, then, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... on the end of a box-couch, a young woman was perched, thin shoulders rounded over the ink-stained drawing-board resting on her knees. She had a large, self-willed mouth and dark Bohemian hair, and wore a dreary cotton kimono over a silk petticoat whose past had been lurid. One hand clutched gingerly a bottle of India ink, the other wielded ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... pleasures. He thought, even, that the Rector—that name of fear—had at last found in himself the ideal which he had vainly sought in so many examples of lettered youth. He became vain, perhaps, but certainly a little self-willed, as was his nature, feeling himself to be on the top of the wave, and above those precautions for keeping himself there which had once seemed necessary. He did not, indeed, turn to any harm, for that was not in his nature; but feeling himself no longer a schoolboy, but a man, and the chosen ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Johnson has passed on the character is much too severe. Bertram is certainly not a pattern hero of romance, but full of faults such as we meet with every day in men of his age and class. He is a bold, ardent, self-willed youth, just dismissed into the world from domestic indulgence, with an excess of aristocratic and military pride, but not without some sense of true honor and generosity. I have lately read a defence of Bertram's character, written ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... large proportion, was schooling the people to hold Davis personally responsible for all their suffering. General Bragg was informed in a letter from a correspondent in Mobile that "men have been taught to look upon the President as an inexorably self-willed man who will see the country to the devil before giving up an opinion or a purpose." This deliberate fostering of an anti-Davis spirit might seem less malicious if the fact were not known that many editors detested Davis ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... an obscure and wistful fashion, for an introduction into society, in which, according to the belief of the family, Mrs. Rhodes occupied a secure and brilliant position. Rosamund had been revolving matters in her pretty and self-willed little head, and in her proud and self-willed little heart she had ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... Young men are ambitious, self-willed, self-indulgent, easily corrupted by bad example, of which there is always too much. I cannot say much for those of the present day, though it is not ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... he came to know the self-willed and wild-living maid-of-honour. Like many of the courtiers, Mistress Fitton affected the society of the players. Kemp, the clown of his company, knew her, and dedicated a book to her rather familiarly. I have always thought that Shakespeare resented ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... time, they borrowed the Roman Catholic burial-ground, and services were carried on, on Sunday, by one of the dissentient priests, but marriages were celebrated in the heathen fashion, and there was evidently a strong disposition to form a schism, which the reckless, easy, self-willed conduct of the Soodras showed would be Christianity only in name. There had even been an appeal to the Governor-General, and the Bishop felt the whole tone of Christianity in India to ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... David said: "Either thou art king and I am the general, or I am king and thou art the general." Joab had no choice but to obey. He selected the tribe of Gad as the first to be counted, because he thought that the Gadites, independent and self-willed, would hinder the execution of the royal order, and David would be forced to give up his plan of taking a census. The Gadites disappointed the expectations of Joab, and he betook himself to the tribe of Dan, hoping that if God's punishment descended, it would strike the idolatrous Danites. ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... was perfectly natural. A great and vivid personality, and forty years of exuberant and self-willed life had at a stroke been checked and changed. The crust of his mind had cooled; tempestuous passions had passed from the surface, giving place to kindlier emotions, but the furnace was there beneath the flower garden just as it is in the case ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... night. Alfred had been mild and slow; Captain Price (except when his daughter-in-law raised her finger) was a pleasant old roaring lion. Letty had been a gay, high-spirited little creature, not as retiring, perhaps, as a young female should be, and certainly self-willed; Mrs. North was completely under the thumb of her daughter Mary. Not that "under the thumb" means unhappiness; Mary North desired only her mother's welfare, and lived fiercely for that single purpose. ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... the portraits, some of them by famous masters, Hugh's eyes were arrested by a blonde beauty in the dress of the time of Charles II. There was such a reality of self-willed boldness as well as something worse in her face, that, though arrested by the picture, Hugh felt ashamed of looking at it in the presence of Euphra and her maid. The pictured woman almost put him out of countenance, and yet at the same time fascinated him. Dragging his eyes from it, he ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... heaven, because in music there is no self-will. Music goes on certain rules and laws. Man did not make these laws of music; he has only found them out; and, if he be self-willed and break them, there is an end of his music instantly: all he brings out is discord and ugly sounds: The greatest musician in the world is as much bound by those laws as the learner in the school; and the greatest musician is ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... head shook: 'and Rose, Rose is, simply self-willed; a "she will" or "she won't" sort of little person. No criterion! Henceforth the world is against us. We have to struggle with it: it does not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mightiness may fall in the twinkling of an eye. Shall Troy o'erthrown exalt our pride and make us overbold? Here we the Danaans stand on the spot whence she has fallen. Of old, I own, I have borne myself too haughtily, self-willed and proud of my power. But Fortune's favour, which had made another proud, has broken my pride. Priam, thou makest me proud, thou makest me tremble. I count the sceptre naught save a glory bright with worthless tinsel that sets the vain splendour of a crown upon my brow. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... tomahawk was also his pipe, and that he might wish to use it in that capacity before their business was closed. At this moment, a tall, lank-sided Pennsylvanian, who was standing among the spectators, and who, perhaps, had no love for the shining tomahawk of the self-willed chief, cautiously approached, and handed him an old, long stemmed, dirty looking earthen pipe, intimating, that if Tecumseh would deliver up the fearful tomahawk, he might smoke the aforesaid pipe. The chief took it between his ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... "She's a perverse, self-willed, capricious little puss. She's been too much indulged. She needs to be brought under discipline," said Gerald, angrily whipping off a blossom with his rattan as they walked ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... the director, delivered in impersonal kindness, the Sans found hard to swallow. Self-willed and self-centered, they bore honest criticism very badly. Neither were they appreciative of his offer to ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... Roberts," said the doctor importantly. "I do not know how you find him in your dealings, Anderson," he continued, "but as a patient I must say that of all the argumentative, self-willed young men I ever encountered Mr Roberts carries ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Majesty," I answered, rising and bowing, "and feel sure you have done all that is needful to keep my cousin at court. She has certain prudish standards which I fear are too easily shocked, and is as self-willed as—well, as ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... voice of a loving Father, calling to his self-willed children who have gone proudly and boldly away from their Father's house, and thrown off their Father's government, and said in their conceit: "We are men. Do not we know good and evil? Do we not know what is our interest? ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... close attention. He knew the Widow Guff as a person who took boarders in the town where he had sold his cow. She had three children, and had the reputation of being a rather tart and self-willed woman. ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... home, and pray that God may have mercy on all drowning souls? Or think what a picturesque and tragical scene it was, and what a beautiful poem it will make, when we have thrown it into an artistic form, and bedizened it with conceits and analogies stolen from all heaven and earth by our own self-willed fancy? ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... the enemies of the Cross into remorseless hatred of all mankind. As to the forged seals and signatures you talk of, and the deceptions practised on the Turks, if such there were, they were the self-willed act of our woivodes, and in no way instigated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... and Judas had. What helpeth the emperor, king, prince, duke, earl, baron, lord, knight, esquire, or gentleman, to cry for mercy being there? Nothing; for if on earth they would not be tyrants and self-willed, rich with covetousness, proud with pomp, gluttons, drunkards, whoremongers, backbiters, robbers, murderers, blasphemers, and such like, then were there some hope to be looked for; therefore, my Faustus, as ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... ink— 'Bouquet de la Reine', what do you think? Not the same receipt? Now, Martin, put away your conceit. Who will ever know? 'Extract of Nobility'—excellent, since most of them are killed." "But, Monsieur Antoine—" "You are self-willed, Martin. You need a salve For your conscience, do you? Very well, we'll halve The compliments, also the pastes and dentifrices; Send some to the Kings, and some to the Empresses. 'Oil of Bitter Almonds'—the Empress Josephine ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... I listened with a heart forlorn, The pulses of my being beat anew: And even as Life returns upon the drowned, Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains— Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe 65 Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart; And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of Hope; And Hope that scarce would know itself from Fear; Sense of past Youth, and Manhood come in vain, And Genius given, and Knowledge won in vain; 70 And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... young girl, the Princess Charlotte was by no means without faults of temper and manner. She was at times self-willed, passionate, capricious, and imperious, though ordinarily good-humored, kindly, and sympathetic. A Court lady of the time, speaking of her, says: "She is very clever, but at present has the manners of a hoyden school-girl. She talked all sorts of ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... and golden youth, Victurnien had never met with opposition to his wishes. He had been the king of the house; no one curbed the little prince's will; and naturally he grew up insolent and audacious, selfish as a prince, self-willed as the most high-spirited cardinal of the Middle Ages,—defects of character which any one might guess from his qualities, essentially ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... my boy," he said a minute later, "that I'm a converted man, and it isn't everyone who can say that—nor do I wish everyone to be converted, because it's a ghastly business preparing for the operation. It isn't everyone who needs it—only those self-willed, devilish, stand-off, proud people, who have to be braised in a mortar and pulverised to atoms. Then, when you are all to bits, you can be built up. Do you remember that stone we broke the other day? Well, I was a melted blob of stone, and then I was crystallised—now I'm full of eyes within! ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... power of his personality and his point of view would be diminished by the efficient centralization of political authority. He had no definite intention of using the democratic state governments for anti-social or revolutionary purposes, but he was self-willed and unruly in temper; and his savage treatment of the Tories during and after the Revolution had given him a taste of the sweets of confiscation. The spirit of his democracy was self-reliant, undisciplined, suspicious of authority, equalitarian, ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... Aryan nations have become the rulers of history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilization, commerce, and religion.' We may add, that though by nature tough and enduring, they have not been obstinate and self-willed; they have been distinguished from all other nations, and particularly from their elder brothers whom they left behind, by their common sense, by their power of adapting themselves to all circumstances, and by making the best ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... remarkably pretty? Everyone thought so at the dance. But she is terribly self-willed, this sweet little person. What are we to do with her? You will hardly believe that I had almost to bring her away ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... constantly being said of the Marquis that he was self-willed and incapable of taking advice. The charge was untrue. The difficulty was rather that he sought advice in the wrong quarters and lacked the judgment to weigh the counsel he received against the characters and aims of the men who gave it. He was constantly ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... ill-fated expedition for the capture of Duquesne with a force of about two thousand men, including the British regulars and the colonial militia, Washington accompanied the British general as one of his staff. Braddock was a gallant soldier, but imperious, and self-willed, and he looked almost with contempt upon the American troops. He made a forced march with twelve hundred men in order to surprise the French at Duquesne before they could receive reinforcements. Colonel Dunbar followed with the ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... surges were so loud-tongued and incessant, throwing themselves on the beach with a tremendous boom, and drawing the shingle back with them with an equally tremendous rattle, so impolite and noisy, bent only on showing their strength, reckless, rude, self-willed, and inconsiderate! This purposeless display of force, and this incessant waste of power, and the noisy self-assertion ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... naturally express my strong disapproval, but it may not be effective. When out of the reach of my personal influence, my wretched brother is self-willed to a degree." ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... papa; I am so deep that I see that it is easier to live under an absolute monarchy than to announce myself a member of a republic, and assert my prerogatives and defend my privileges—but I confess I have a temper, papa. Lilias says I am very self-willed, and I must grant that she is generally in ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... child does not attend to the order of reason; and in like manner "concupiscence does not listen to reason," according to Ethic. vii, 6. Secondly, they are alike as to the result. For a child, if left to his own will, becomes more self-willed: hence it is written (Ecclus. 30:8): "A horse not broken becometh stubborn, and a child left to himself will become headstrong." So, too, concupiscence, if indulged, gathers strength: wherefore Augustine says (Confess. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... fellow, who was going to speak what I knew to be true, in spite of all fools (and really did and do intend so to do), while all the while I was deceiving myself, and unaware of a canker at the heart the very opposite to the one against which you warn me. I mean the proud, self-willed, self-conceited spirit which made no allowance for other men's weakness or ignorance; nor again, for their superior experience and wisdom on points which I had never considered—which took a pride in shocking ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... and prattle with Bess, her little quarrels and tart replies, her generous, happy, winning, self-willed ways, were as if they had never been, and in their place came resignation, reserve, pride and a little—only a ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... Bess resolved to have her own way—and she had it. Like a sensible fellow, Dick conceded the point. There was something even of conjugal philosophy in his self-communion upon the occasion. "E'en let her take her own way and be hanged to her, for an obstinate, self-willed jade as she is," said he: "now her back is up there'll be no stopping her, I'm sure: she rattles away like a woman's tongue, and when that once begins, we all know what chance the curb has. Best to let her have it out, or rather to lend her a lift. 'Twill ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... whom Edward, whenever he was able, was glad to avoid. On this occasion however Eleazar came too quickly upon him, and besides had so much business to talk over, that the head overseer was compelled to stay and hear what the manager of the looms had to say. Eleazar was a little sickly man, self-willed and sullen, even more so than his master, the old man of the mountain, as Conrad, after the custom of the ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... "She was very self-willed, that gentle Eglantine, in spite of her soft, pretty ways. There was no moving her. She turned her back as nearly as she could on Sir Scraggo, and bent farther and farther toward the south, stretching her arms out as if imploring her heartless lover to stay with her. I fastened ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... Benjamin erred in the matter. He was by nature headstrong and independent; and, perhaps, he was more self-willed on account of his success in the business. But, after all allowances are made, James must be regarded as the chief offender in the troubles, and on him the responsibility for it ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... cloud stood upon the horizon of his self-esteem nor did shadows darken his glowing hopes. He had promised Richard Gessner to arrest the girl Lois Boriskoff, and arrested she would be before twelve o'clock to-morrow. As for this amiable English lad, so full of fine resolutions, so defiant, so self-willed, it would be a good jest enough to clap him in a police-station for four-and-twenty hours and to bow him out again, with profuse apologies, when the girl was on her way to Petersburg to join her amiable father ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... full of heartfelt pity, promised to hide her "dear child" from every one, which promise, however, did not prevent her, for she was very self-willed, from going, without Jacqueline's knowledge, to see Madame de Talbrun and tell her all that had taken place. She was hurt and amazed at her reception by Giselle, and at her saying, without any offer of help or words of sympathy, "She has ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... this scurril fool, Ajax is grown self-willed as broad Achilles. He keeps a table too, makes factious feasts, Rails on our state of war, and sets Thersites (A slanderous slave of an o'erflowing gall) To level us with low comparisons. They tax our policy with cowardice, Count wisdom of no moment in the war, In brief, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... replied the Indian, quietly, "and he thinks that Slugs will go too—but the white hunter is self-willed; he has ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... know of. The neighbors and the ladies' aid society often said my mother was cruel with that angel child. But the neighbors did not know what kind of an insect mother was trying to raise. Mother did know. She knew how stubborn and self-willed I was. It came from father's "side ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... volume Eleanor Savelli, the self-willed, temperamental daughter of an Italian violin virtuoso, furnished much of the interest of the book. The efforts of Grace and her chums to create in this girl a healthy, wholesome enjoyment for High School life, and her repudiation ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... believe the Lord allows us to be self-willed. I have not slept either; but I have sat up by the fire. Your father used to say that we would not make haste if we trusted, and I have learned that it is so. All I have done is ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... more difficult matter to get officers than soldiers. Very few of those appointed made their appearance; one of the captains had been promoted; two declined; Washington found himself left, almost alone, to manage a number of self-willed, undisciplined recruits. Happily he had with him, in the rank of lieutenant, that soldier of fortune, Jacob Van Braam, his old "master of fence," ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... impetuous, and self-willed boy, such as the sons of rich and powerful men are very apt to become. They imbibe, by a sort of sympathy, the ambitious and aspiring spirit of their fathers; and as all their childish caprices and passions are generally indulged, ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... mind of the countess of Essex. Voluptuous and self-willed in her disposition, she would hear of no one but Carr. But her opportunities of seeing him were both short and rare. In this emergency she applied to Mrs. Turner, a woman whose profession it was to study and to ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... enters. He is a short, squat, broad-shouldered man of about fifty, with a round, weather-beaten, red face from which his light blue eyes peer short-sightedly, twinkling with a simple good humor. His large mouth, overhung by a thick, drooping, yellow mustache, is childishly self-willed and weak, of an obstinate kindliness. A thick neck is jammed like a post into the heavy trunk of his body. His arms with their big, hairy, freckled hands, and his stumpy legs terminating in large flat feet, are ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... John did not answer. She threw the music from side to side, every minute growing more impatient. "It is most strange," she said at last, looking up at Evelyn. Evelyn smiled. With all her brusque, self-willed ways, Sister Mary John was clearly a lady born ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... action and self-indulgent repose; a hard run, and a long revel after it: this is what over-much horse tends to animalize a man into. Such antecedents may have helped to make little Dick Venner a self-willed, capricious boy, and a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... to speak of you, dear, whom I love very much, though you are not perfect, I have other pupils, and do you suppose, that amongst so many as I have to teach at Miss Humphrey's school, for instance, there is not one self-willed, not one impertinent, not one idle, not one dull scholar? My dear, there never was a person, you may be sure of that, who had nothing to be tried, or, as you say, put out with. But not to talk of my troubles, and I have not ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... against yourself for grasping at everything which may serve your passion. What! must nature and society alike be in bondage to your caprice? You are the old Louise; you have never acquired the qualities which ought to be a woman's; self-willed and unreasonable as a girl, you introduce withal into your love the keenest and most mercenary of calculations! Are you sure that, after all, the price you ask for your toilets is not too high? All these precautions are to my mind ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... four hundred thousand honest women whom we have so carefully sifted out from all the European nations, we indulge the belief that there are a certain number, say three hundred thousand, who will be sufficiently self-willed, charming, adorable, and bellicose to raise the standard ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... displeasure, she paused for a long time between each. Now when the next course of cakes came on she idly brake some bread and tossed a crumb or two into her mouth; in fact she ate less than would satisfy the stomach of a sparrow. I marvelled much to see her so obstinate and self-willed but I said to myself, in mine innocence, "May be she hath not been accustomed to eat with men, and especially she may be too shame faced to eat heartily in presence of her husband: she will in time do whatso do other folk." I thought also that perchance she hath already broken her fast ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... were to work out the destinies of Dorothy and myself without our assistance. Self-willed, arrogant creatures are those same fates, but they save us a deal of trouble by ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... it proved that he was in sympathy with their enemies. The court did not venture at once to strike down one so formidable. A mission was assigned the cardinal at Rome, to remove him from the country. He refused to accept it. The boy-king was growing reckless, passionate, self-willed. He began to feel the power that was in his hand. The cardinal was warned of his danger. He smiled, and said "that, sustained by his ecclesiastical rank, he had nothing ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... is now told. His career was brief. It is however pregnant with unfortunate events, and contains excellent material for moral reflection. It is in itself a lesson for the young and the inexperienced, showing the sad results of a self-willed confidence, the love of vain-glory in adventure, the yielding of moral principles to gratify the desire of either oneself or that of others:—and worse than all, the sacrificing of the nobler attributes of ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... capable of reaching. There might be seen in Banks's fine bust of him, the cause why Warren Hastings, though he was endowed with many good qualities which endeared him to his friends, was, nevertheless, covetous, self-willed, domineering, unjust, and, in some instances, pitiless, as Governor-General of India. What a contrast to this did the bust of the Marquis of Wellesley, by Nollekens, present. Not only did it indicate that the disposition of that distinguished ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... angry!" demanded Mr. Bennett, with that sense of injury which comes to self-willed men when their whims are thwarted. "Why the devil shouldn't I be angry? I am angry! I come here and find you like—like this, and you seem to expect me to throw my hat in the air and give three ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... cling close to Him. Ye ha' muckle need o' His care. An' dinna trust your life to the dochtering o' a sullen ignoramus like the captain,—an obstinate, self-willed brute, that, right or wrang, will ha' his ain way. Dinna ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Xenophon, have you not always believed Critobulus to be a man of sound sense, not wild and self-willed? Should you not have said that he was remarkable for his prudence rather than thoughtless ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... to be sensible enough of your errors now.—So are all giddy girls, when it is too late: and what a crest-fallen figure then do the consequences of their self-willed obstinacy and headstrongness ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the Kensington Convent.... All the little straw-mats on the slippery floor of the parlour were swept like chaff before the hurricane of her advancing petticoats as she bore down upon the most disappointing, erratic, and self-willed niece that ever brought the grey hairs of a solicitous and devoted aunt in sorrow to the grave, demanding in Heaven's name what Bridget-Mary meant by this maniacal decision? Then she drew back, for at first she hardly credited that this tall, pale, quiet ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... married a wife who had stolen a necklace, and who would not make restitution. He might marry her, and insist on giving it up afterwards; but he foresaw terrible difficulties in the way of such an arrangement. Lady Eustace was self-willed, and had already told him that she did not intend to keep the jewels in his house,—but in her own! What should he do, so that no human being,—not the most bigoted Tory that ever expressed scorn for a Whig lord,—should ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... face, and shook her little saucy head, and said plainly, "I won't tell you!" Punished again for this, she would own to being sorry for saying "won't;" but, bread and water notwithstanding, she never told you. Self-willed—devilish self-willed sometimes—I grant; but the finest creature, nevertheless, that ever walked the ways of this lower world. Perhaps you think you see a certain contradiction here? In that case, a word in your ear. Study your wife closely, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Castile, and in which the will of Berenguela, the person most interested, had not been consulted in any manner whatever. It is not on record that Eleanor was opposed to this arrangement for her daughter, not from any lack of independent spirit,—for she came of a self-willed race, as the erratic life of her brother, Richard Coeur de Lion, will show,—but because such marriages were the common lot of the royal maidens of her time and were accepted as matters of necessity. It must be remembered that the ideals of marriage were yet much ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... one of us reaches back to our first struggles as we emerged from self-willed childhood into a recognition of family obligations. We have all gradually learned to respond to them, and yet most of us have had at least fleeting glimpses of what it might be to disregard them and the elemental claim they make upon us. We have yielded at times to the temptation of ignoring ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... so much I am thinking of as her future. I should like my little Mysa to marry happily. She is a little self-willed, and has been indulged; and although, of course, she would marry as I arrange for her, I would not give her to any one who was not altogether agreeable to her. I fear that should anything happen to me the ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... I will be your husband!" And as she shook her head and looked at me sadly, I added: "Oh! I well know that my uncle is self-willed, but I will be more self-willed still; and, since he must be forced to say 'yes,' I will force ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... the beginning of their career of extravagance; but the very similarity of their tastes and habits proved ultimately the cause of the most violent quarrels. As they both were expensive, selfish, and self-willed, neither would, from regard to the other, forbear. Comparisons between their different degrees of extravagance commenced; and, once begun, they never ended. It was impossible to settle, to the satisfaction of either party, which of them was most to blame. Recrimination ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... quarters; and the soldiers of Fimbria were said to have become difficult to manage, from being accustomed to obey no commander. They were the men who joined Fimbria in putting to death Flaccus, who was a consul and their general, and who gave up Fimbria himself to Sulla[343]—self-willed and lawless men, but brave and full of endurance, and experienced soldiers. However, in a short time, Lucullus took down the insolence of these soldiers, and changed the character of the rest, who then, for the first time, as it seems, knew ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... insubordinate to arbitrary forms. It could not, with the witling in the play, cap verses with any man. The moment its tasks were dictated and the form prescribed, that moment there was ground to expect the self-willed jade to play a jade's trick, and leave us with no decent results of inspiration. For odes and sonnets, and other such Procrustean moulds into which poetic thought is at times cast, Tennyson had neither gift nor liking. When, therefore, with the Duke's death, came a sudden demand upon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... day went to pray again—but not that she might be delivered. She brought to the shrine at which she knelt substantial promises as offerings. Hers were not the prayers of a saint, but of a passionate, importunate child, self-willed and tempestuous. She would not have prayed if she could have hoped for help from any earthly means. She had never prayed for anything before. She had always taken what she wanted and gone her way; but she had had few ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... political intrigues. There had been a time when Somerset was one of them, and had sought his own advancement as they now did theirs. And the deserted regiment never pardons the deserter. The faction complained that Somerset was proud and self-willed: he worked alone; he acted on his own responsibility; he did not consult his friends. This of course meant in the case of each member of the faction (as such complaints usually do), "He did not consult me." Somerset ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt |
