Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Wayward   /wˈeɪwərd/   Listen
Wayward

adjective
1.
Resistant to guidance or discipline.  Synonyms: contrary, obstinate, perverse.  "An obstinate child with a violent temper" , "A perverse mood" , "Wayward behavior"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Wayward" Quotes from Famous Books



... democracy, belief in America's destiny, unbounded confidence in his ability to make his dreams come true. Said Harriet Martineau in 1834, "I regard the American people as a great embryo poet, now moody, now wild, but bringing out results of absolute good sense: restless and wayward in action, but with deep peace at his heart; exulting that he has caught the true aspect of things past, and the depth of futurity which lies before him, wherein to create something so magnificent as the world has scarcely begun to dream of. There is the strongest hope of a nation that is capable ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... duty, nay, her love and gratitude for many deeds of kindness done to her as a little child, conquered all fear. She would endure all imaginable terrors, although of daily occurrence. And she would patiently bear all wayward violence of temper; more than patiently would she bear it—pitifully, as one who knew of some awful curse awaiting the blood-shedder. She would watch over him tenderly, as the innocent should watch over the guilty; awaiting the gracious seasons, wherein to pour oil and balm into ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... out of a momentary agitation, no sudden spasmodic pang, anomalous and transitory, appeared from other concurrent anecdotes of Canning, reported by gentlemen from Liverpool, who described to us most graphically and picturesquely the wayward fitfulness (not coquettish, or wilful, but nervously overmastering and most unaffectedly distressing) which besieged this great artist in oratory, and the time approached—was coming—was going, at which the private signal should have been shown for proposing his health. Mr. P. (who had been, I ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... these were sights to tempt an anchorite! What! do I hear thy slender voice complain? Thou wailest when I talk of beauty's light, As if it brought the memory of pain. Thou art a wayward being—well, come near, And pour thy tale ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... me, won't you? It would be very sad to be dead, and to be remembered by no one. I have been wayward at times; I beg pardon of you all. I am sure that, if God had so willed it, we might yet have been happy, my Gwynplaine; for we take up but very little room, and we might have earned our bread together in another land. But God has willed it otherwise. I cannot make out in the least ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... from the small New England college to the Harvard Law School. He had been soberer there, marked as a pleader, and at last the day arrived when he was summoned by a great New York lawyer to discuss his future. Sunday intervened. Obeying a wayward impulse, he had gone to one of the metropolitan churches to hear a preacher renowned for his influence over men. There is, indeed, much that is stirring to the imagination in the spectacle of a mass of human beings thronging into a great church, pouring up ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... brook, we reached the dwelling of one of the original McGregors, or at least as good as an original. Mr. McGregor is a fiery-haired Scotchman and brother, cordial and hospitable, who entertained our wayward horse, and freely advised us where the trout on his farm were most likely to be found at this ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... him. Nina, for example, was a far more sympathetic companion; either she was enthusiastically happy, talkative, vivacious, gay as a lark, or she was wilfully sullen and offended, to be coaxed round again and petted, like a spoiled child, until the natural sunshine of her humor came through those wayward clouds. But Miss Cunyngham, while always friendly and pleasant, remained (as he thought) strangely remote, imperturbable, calm. She did not seem to care about his society at all. Perhaps she would rather have him ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... wandering 'mid the vine-clad hills. But know your sweetest strains are discords all compared with childhood's happy laugh—the laugh that fills the eyes with light and every heart with joy! O, rippling river of laughter, thou art the blessed boundary line between the beasts and men, and every wayward wave of thine doth drown some fretful fiend of care. O Laughter, rose lipped daughter of joy, there are dimples enough in thy cheeks to catch and hold and glorify all ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... bloodless child! doting, when others would have hated, loving his prodigal with a more anxious fondness as his ingratitude grew baser—as the claims upon a parent's heart dwindled more and more away. The grey-haired man was a girl in tenderness and sensibility. He remembered the mother of the wayward child, and the pains she had taken to misuse and spoil her only boy; his own conduct returned to him in the shape of heavy reproaches, and he could not forget, or call to mind without remorse, the smiles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... water or ice or swamp. He treated his body as an enemy, and strove to subdue it—though not for the good reasons of the Apostle—by every sort of harshness and imprudence; or rather he behaved toward it as a wayward father toward his child—at one time with cruel severity, at another with the utmost luxury and indulgence. No rich man, probably, ever gave his heir so many chances of inheritance, or excited in him so many false hopes, as did the Squire of ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... upon her every hour, could not fail to move at least her gratitude and esteem. But as the days flew by the young girl paled and drooped, and when the brief period of betrothal drew toward a close the mother's ingenuity must have been taxed to find excuses for the wayward moods and manifest misery of her unhappy child. She fell into melancholy, and sought in solitude opportunity for constant tears. Her favorite resort was a hill overlooking the road to Fontainebleau and Paris, and here she would sit ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... few words told how he had been engaged by Koswell and Larkspur to do a certain job that they said might take the best part of the afternoon and night. They had told him that a certain college professor at Brill had a wayward stepdaughter and that the daughter and her school chum had grossly insulted a lady teacher and were in danger of being arrested. The old professor wanted to get the two girls away and place them under the care of an old lady, a distant relative, ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer

... ever I tried to leave my hills To abide in the cramped haunts of men, The urge of the wild to her wayward child Would drag ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... was not of a wayward or capricious nature, and, being full of remorse, melted into tears. To what more conversation this might have led, we need not stop to inquire; for the wheels of the carriage were heard at that moment, and, being followed by a smart ring at the garden gate, caused the bustle in the ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... making silently but relentlessly for the destruction of all this starry universe in which our earth swims as a speck or mote. In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... away from angels' food to feed on garbage. Think of spending a whole life in contemplating the grandest things, and working for the most glorious ends, instructing the ignorant, consoling the sorrowing, winning the wayward back to duty and to peace, pointing the dying to Him who is the light and the life of men, animating the living to seek from the highest motives a holy life and a sublime destiny! O it is a life that might draw an angel from the skies! If there is a special hell for fools, it should be kept for ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald

... 'I was wayward; and declared that I cared for nothing provided that I were with him. One evening he came and bade me to make ready. He had a pair of horses outside, and across the back of his own steed my clothes, which he ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... to Mr. Wade. This wayward Senator from California has wide notoriety from his unhappy habits of intemperance. He has been described by a writer unfriendly to his politics as "the most brilliant man in the Senate; a man so wonderfully rich, that though he seeks to beggar himself in talents and opportunities, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... whispered, "I love you, I love you well, as I have always done, though I may have erred a little, as women wayward and still unwed are apt to do. Olaf, they told me yonder how you had matched yourself against the god, with his priests for judges, and smitten him, and I thought this the greatest deed that ever I have known. I used ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... five. The poor man, who is grown very old and devout, begs God to take from him the love of natural philosophy; and having observed some heterodox proceedings among bantam cocks, he proposes that all schools of girls and boys should be promiscuous, lest, if separated, they should learn wayward passions. But what struck me most were his dedications, the last was to God; this is to Lord Bute, as if he was determined to make his fortune in one world or ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... grow from La Boheme, The more I do regret that foolish shame Which made me hold it something to conceal, And so I did myself expatriate; For in my pulses and my feet I feel That wayward realm was still my own estate; Wise wagged our tongues when the dear nights grew late, And quainter, clearer, rose our quick conceits, And pure and mutual were our social sweets. Oh! ever thus convivial round the gate Of Letters have the masters ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend

... in a thousand, in a million. It was a chance, at any rate, that was not likely to come in Mr. Thomasson's way again. True, he appreciated more correctly than the others the obstacles in the way of success—the girl's strong will and wayward temper; but he knew also the humour which had now taken hold of her, and how likely it was that it might lead her to strange lengths if the right man spoke ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... with a great number of young girls, some of them good and true, but you have a character containing more than any three of them put together. With this power, if properly managed, you can gain the almost universal love of your fellows. But you are wild and wayward, you must curb and strain your spirit and bring it into subjection, else you will be worse than a person with the emptiest of characters. You will find that plain looks will not prevent you from gaining the friendship love of your fellows—the only real love there is. As for the ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... sir: he was an ordinary kind of person to look at; might be any age between thirty and forty; not a gentleman that I should have taken a fancy to myself, as I said before; but young women are that wayward and uncertain like, there's no knowing where ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... perceived, through GOD's grace, how that the enemies of the Truth, standing boldly in their malice, enforce them to withstand the freedom of CHRIST's Gospel; for which freedom, CHRIST became man, and shed his heart's blood. And therefore it is great pity and sorrow that many men and women do their own wayward will; nor busy them not to know nor to do the pleasant ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... overtook me, Rather a wayward, wilful wind That blew hot for awhile And then, as the even shadows came, blew cold. What pity it is that a man grown old in life's dreaming Should stop, e'en for a moment, to look into a woman's eyes. ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... ill at ease. That her St. Cecilia did not come up to the level of her ambition was a matter of course, and she was prepared for the disappointment. Whose first attempt in a new style ever paired with its conception? She felt that Mr. Hazard would think her wayward and weak. She could not tell him the real reason of her perplexity. She would have liked to work on patiently under Wharton's orders without a thought of herself, but how could she do so when Hazard was day by day coming nearer and nearer until already ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... one helpless in his coils. The obtuse Doctor, blundering in at morning, would find his adopted son with pallid cheeks and glittering eyes, but ever ready with a smile and pleasant greeting, obedience and help. Hiero Glyphic, however wayward and cross-grained, never had cause to censure this creature of his,—to remind him that he might have been food ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... to Him who bestoweth at the noonday, that He would avert from my royal master the misfortunes which threatened to overpower him. Allah heard my prayer as I lay prostrate in my cell; and the genius Bahoudi appearing, commanded me to seek thee in the forest of Tarapajan, whither thy wayward fortune should lead thee. 'O genius,' replied I, 'how shall age and infirmity comply with ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... to describe to you our first interview, which I can never forget. It belongs to those heart-secrets which cannot be spoken of; but this much I may tell you,—that, if there was no kindling of the old and wayward love, there grew out of it a respect for her present severity and elevation of character that I had never anticipated. At our age, indeed, (though, when I think of it, I must be many years your junior,) ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... life so exquisite as her dimpling smile. Would you know with more particularity how she appeared to him, look you straightway at the sweet maid in the foreground of that Coronation of the Virgin which Fra Lippo Lippi painted; and from the framing of wayward little curls that make their escape from a veil of silver tissue, a tangle withal to mesh a man's heart in, from that face, I say (though the painter-monk had ne'er the felicity to see her), ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... was, in truth, a rash and naughty thing to consider; for if I were but seen, then should that grim Brute make a signal unto the Evil Powers, and I be met swiftly with destruction. But surely the heart is a strange and wayward thing, and given to quick fears, and immediately unto great and uncountable rashnesses. And so I did go forward unwisely to the Northward of a safe and proper going; and it may be that an influence was upon me, and drew me thatwards; ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson

... this alien realm of shade We keep a sylvan Passover; We happy twain, a wayward maid, A careless, gay philosopher; But unto me she seems a Venus And ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park

... deep forest, or from the waves of the sea when the moon lay upon them; and sometimes as if they appeared suddenly in the streets of the city after the people had passed by and the houses had gone to sleep. They were as light as thistle-down, as unsubstantial as mists upon the mountain, as wayward and flickering as will-o'-the-wisps. But there was something immortal about them, and the man knew that the world would be nothing to him ...
— The Unruly Sprite - The Unknown Quantity, A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

... alone thy care we claim, Our wayward steps to win; We know thee by a dearer name, O Love of ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... a very good and studious little girl, and therefore it was a matter of surprise to everybody when Miss Carrie came down to dinner one day without her, and, in answer to Major Waldron's inquiry concerning her, replied that Diddie had been so wayward that she had been forced to keep her in, and that she was ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle

... effeminate style of beauty, the graceful curves of his figure, his expression, sometimes coaxing, sometimes saucy, reminding one of a page, gave him the appearance of a charming young scapegrace destined to inspire sudden passions and wayward fancies. While his pretended uncle was making himself at home most unceremoniously, Quennebert remarked that the chevalier at once began to lay siege to his fair hostess, bestowing tender and love-laden glances on her behind that ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... and the square brick blocks stood in blue silhouette against a champagne sky. He became conscious of a strange yearning for this young metropolis; a sort of parental brooding over a boisterous, lovable, wayward youth. It was his city; no one could claim it more than he. And it was a good city to look upon, and to mingle in, and to ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... long procession followed Fay; And still the little couch remained unblest: But, when those wayward sprites had passed away, Came One, the last, the mightiest, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... by, the holidays were approaching, and the far-off haven of home could almost, as it were, be seen with the naked eye. Whether the disastrous termination to the dormitory sports had really served as a warning to Jack to put some restraint upon his wayward inclinations, it would be difficult to say; but certainly since the affair of the obstacle race he had managed to keep clear of the headmaster's study, and had only indulged in such minor acts of disorder as were the natural consequences of his friendship with Garston, Rosher, and Teal. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... discipline so purifying and ennobling, we can but anticipate a still higher and holier future, for the women of our time. To them, we must look for the advancement of all noble and philanthropic enterprises; the lifting vagrant and wayward childhood from the paths of ruin; the universal diffusion of education and culture; the succor and elevation of the poor, the weak, and the down-trodden; the rescue and reformation of the fallen sisterhood; the improvement of hospitals and the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... takes it up and brings it to me. They want me up there, and I am going, Magsie; kiss me, dear.' The one arm stole around my neck; the chilled lips met mine in a lingering farewell pressure. He went on, feebly: 'I have been wild and wayward, Magsie, in the times gone by; I have grieved your great love sometimes, by giving you a cross word or look, not meaning it, dear, never meaning it, but because a perverse mood seized me. Forgive me, dear; don't remember ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... sent to starve in;— Rude remedy, I trow, for sore disease. Within these walls, stifled by damp and stench, Doth Hope's fair torch expire, and at the snuff, Ere yet 'tis quite extinct, rude, wild, and wayward, The desperate revelries of fell Despair, Kindling their hell-born cressets, light to deeds That the poor Captive would have died ere practised, Till bondage sunk his ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... stores possessed; For not alone they touch the village breast, But filled in elder time th' historic page. There Shakespeare's self, with every garland crowned,— [Flew to those fairy climes his fancy sheen!]— In musing hour, his wayward Sisters found, And with their terrors dressed the magic scene. From them he sung, when, 'mid his bold design, Before the Scot afflicted and aghast, The shadowy kings of Banquo's fated line Through the dark cave in gleamy pageant passed. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... an even, heavy tone, without any apparent feeling. Always he was mercilessly frank and never spared the truth. But Columbine, who knew him well, felt how this news flayed him. Resentment stirred in her toward the wayward son, but she knew better than to ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... then my ship, to which I go To-night, is no more home. I dread, As strange, the life I long have led; And as, when first I went to school, And found the horror of a rule Which only ask'd to be obey'd, I lay and wept, of dawn afraid, And thought, with bursting heart, of one Who, from her little, wayward son, Required obedience, but above Obedience still regarded love, So change I that enchanting place, The abode of innocence and grace And gaiety without reproof, For the black gun-deck's louring roof. Blind and inevitable law Which makes light duties burdens, awe Which is not reverence, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... disapproved of him strongly. But Matilda who was beautiful, warm-blooded and wayward did not. She loved Burgwyne with a reciprocal ardour, and when the masked ball at the Brevoorts' came on the tapis it seemed as though the Goddess of Romance had absolutely stretched out her hands to these two reckless, ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... walk over the surface of this fair Earth, an erring and a wayward being, at times dejected by the trials of a solitary and an almost abortive life, or sustained or elevated by its prosperous incidents; I sometimes think that no one other blessing of existence hath ever comforted my heart and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various

... keeping his edges so well guarded that the vision in its circuit may be kept within the canvas. A large proportion of the changes which all pictures pass through in process of construction is stimulated by this consideration—how to stop a wayward eye from getting too near the edge and escaping from the picture. When every practical device has been tried, as a last resource ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... is left By a little crooked, crotchety man, Who cannot find his wayward son; When the horn begins to blow, He has to drop his light and run. Of course he limps so slow He squeezes through the very last, When he is gone the naughty scamp Jumps up and puff! out ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... remarkable girl. Wild, wayward, with all the passions—brimful with untamed vitality—incapable of the common restraints. Her face was neither beautiful, nor, perhaps, even pretty—but Diana herself might have envied the full, lithe figure, the free grace of her movements. She was the creature of her desires—knowing no laws ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming

... to intercourse with the great world, and possessed of any elevation of mind, you have no embarrassment in speaking to a King; but to a Great Man you present yourself not without fear. Friedrich, in his private sphere, was of sufficiently unequal humor; wayward, wilful; open to prejudices; indulged in mockery, often enough epigrammatic upon the French;—agreeable in a high degree to strangers whom he pleased to favor; but bitterly piquant for those he was prepossessed against, or who, without ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... purpose, to the neutral civilian, seemed certainly to be the wayward pleasure of complicating his life; and in that line it excelled in the last refinements of ingenuity. Instructions began to shower on us after the lull of the first days: instructions as to what to do, and what not to do, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... not be able to bury the dead; others saw apparitions in the air: and I must be allowed to say of both, I hope without breach of charity, that they heard voices that never spake, and saw sights that never appeared. But the imagination of the people was really turned wayward and possessed; and no wonder if they who were poring continually at the clouds saw shapes and figures, representations and appearances, which had nothing in them but air and vapor. Here they told us they saw a flaming sword held in a hand, coming out ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe

... heterogeneity may make havoc of the subject's life. There are persons whose existence is little more than a series of zig-zags, as now one tendency and now another gets the upper hand. Their spirit wars with their flesh, they wish for incompatibles, wayward impulses interrupt their most deliberate plans, and their lives are one long drama of repentance and of effort ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... I then with patient mind Still attend her wayward pleasure? Time will make her prove more kind, Let her coyness then take leisure: She ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various

... mediaeval Christendom for a woman to be emperor; it was not till late in the Middle Ages that Spain saw a queen regnant, and France has never yet allowed such rule. It was not till long after Saxo that the great queen of the North, Margaret, wielded a wider sway than that rejected by Gustavus' wayward daughter. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... and a little carping, but still holding fast to his ideals; "Sir Galahad," a medieval romance of purity; "Ulysses," an epitome of exploration in all ages; "The Revenge," a stirring war song; "Rizpah," a dramatic portrayal of a mother's grief for a wayward son; "Romney's Remorse," a character study of Tennyson's later years; and a few shorter poems, such as "The Higher Pantheism," "Flower in the Crannied Wall," "Wages" and "The Making of Man," which ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... members of probity, loyal and honourable in their intentions, who would never become the destroyers of a limited legitimate monarchy, or the corrupt regicides of a rump Parliament, such as brought the wayward Charles the First, of England, ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe

... unhappily only an additional oppression; and all Lucilla's aversion to solitude did not prevent her friend's absence from being a relief. It was all that she could at present desire to be released from the effort of being companionable, and be able to indulge her languor without remark, her wayward appetite without causing distress, and her dejection without caresses, commiseration, or ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... gigantic trees of the forest. In another hour they would be married. And then they would forever be beyond the reach of the clamor of her voluble tongue. She began to relent. The old man, accustomed to her wayward humors, instinctively perceived it. Stepping up to David, and placing his hand upon the neck of his ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... of their experience. The beautiful woman in the center draws to her side the splendid warrior, whose mother on his left gives her affectionate advice. On the right of the panel, a father restrains a wayward and jealous youth who has been ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... them up, and to defend them, though he knew that ideas prevailed among a few of his people, which might dispose them to cavil at his notions, if not absolutely to oppose him. Men are fond of change; half the time, for a reason no better than that it is change; and, not unfrequently, they permit this wayward feeling to unsettle interests that are of the last importance to them, and which find no small part of their ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... incomprehensible except on one hateful supposition; but Stane's words had made it clear that the girl had come to warn them, and if there was anything behind that warning, if, as she suspected, the girl loved Stane with a wild, wayward love, that was not the man's fault. She remembered his declaration that he had never seen Miskodeed except on the two occasions at Fort Malsun, and though Ainley's evil suggestions recurred to her mind, she dismissed them instantly. Her ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... Philippa had been with her mother, living in Paris, or Dresden, or on the Riviera, as the elder lady's wayward mind directed. Mrs. Harford, who had mourned her husband with all sincerity for longer than her friends anticipated, had recently married again. Philippa had just bade good-bye to the bridal pair, ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay

... as the squirrel and wayward as the swallow, Swift as the swallow along the river's light Circleting the surface to meet his mirrored winglets, Fleeter she seems in her stay than in her flight. Shy as the squirrel that leaps among ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... other professions besides the law, Monsieur Mouillard. I have studied Fabien. His temperament is somewhat wayward. With special training he might have become an artist. Lacking that early moulding into shape, he never will be anything more ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... partridge adds another figure to this fantastic embroidery upon the winter snow. Her course is a clear, strong line, sometimes quite wayward, but generally very direct, steering for the densest, most impenetrable places,—leading you over logs and through brush, alert and expectant, till, suddenly, she bursts up a few yards from you, and goes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various

... her house ran high; it is reported that the guests left money under their plates to pay for what they had eaten. St. Evremond, poet and man of the world, was frequently there, and he seems to have constituted himself "guide, philosopher, and friend" to the wayward lady. She was only fifty-two when she died in 1699, and the chief records of her life are found in St. Evremond's writings. He, her faithful admirer to the end, was buried ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton

... meagre? Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil, I am he who knew what it was to be evil, I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, Blabb'd, blush'd, resented, lied, stole, grudg'd, Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak, Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant, The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me. The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... is unfounded. Faith is dearly bought at the cost of knowledge; nor in a better sense has it yet gone from among us. Far more sublime than any known to the barbarian is the faith of the astronomer, who spends the nights in marking the seemingly wayward motions of the stars, or of the anatomist, who studies with unwearied zeal the minute fibres of the organism, each upheld by the unshaken conviction that from least to greatest throughout this universe, purpose and order ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... before the great-grandfather, the sky in the west was red like a glowing face. The sunset poured a soft mellow light upon the huge gray stone and the solitary figure beside it. It was the smile of the Great Spirit upon the grandfather and the wayward child. ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa

... case, not an unusual effect is that those who are charged with the infancy of the new type in the family are incompetent to their duty; and accordingly Shelley was regarded merely as "a strange boy," wayward, mutinous, and to be severely chastised into obedience. It has been said that he attracted no particular notice at school; but this is not true. At Eton his resentment of tyrannical authority displayed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... than the melancholy life of that wayward statesman,—down even to the beginning of the present civil war, and perhaps to this very moment,—there lingered in Richmond a memorial of those days, most peculiar and most instructive. Before the days of Secession, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... together. "Her ladyship," he explained, "has gone forth in person to seek Lord Rotherby. She believes that she knows where to find him—in some disreputable haunt, no doubt, whither her ladyship would have been better advised to have sent a servant. But women are wayward cattle—wayward, headstrong cattle! Have you not ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini

... this moment, but every day brought guests who stayed eight-and-forty hours, and then flitted. Lady Montfort, like the manager of a theatre, took care that there should be a succession of novelties to please or to surprise the wayward audience for whom she had to cater. On the whole, Lord Montfort was, for him, in an extremely good humour; never very ill; Princedown was the only place where he never was very ill; he was a little excited, too, by the state ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... My father therefore, still minded to make me a churchman, sent me to Robert of Montrose's new college that stands in the South Street of St. Andrews, a city not far from our house of Pitcullo. But there, like a wayward boy, I took more pleasure in the battles of the "nations"—as of Fife against Galloway and the Lennox; or in games of catch-pull, football, wrestling, hurling the bar, archery, and golf—than in divine learning—as of logic, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... tiresome and perverse and wanting in faith.' And Miss Locke, who was used to these wild moods, patted her sister's shoulder, and bade her drink her tea before it got cold, in a sensible matter-of-fact way, that was not without its influence on the wayward creature; for she did not refuse the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... happiness. A thousand times upon that hand have I sealed my gratitude. Yet do I stand in need of fresh assurances. Mutual attachment subsists not but in communication and sympathy. I count the tedious moments. My wayward fancy paints in turn all the events that are within the region of possibility. Too many of them there are, against the apprehension of which no precaution can secure me. Do not, my lovely Matilda, do not voluntarily ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... in his mouth, that you are alluding to, aunt?" she inquired as she returned her smile. "When I was at home, I remember my mother telling me more than once of this very cousin, who (she said) was a year older than I, and whose infant name was Pao-yue. She added that his disposition was really wayward, but that he treats all his cousins with the utmost consideration. Besides, now that I have come here, I shall, of course, be always together with my female cousins, while the boys will have their own court, and separate quarters; and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... quite useless: neither the memories of the place nor their setting were sufficient to engage the wayward thoughts of these curiously assorted pilgrims; and the colonel, after some attempts to bring the matter home to himself and the others, was obliged to abandon Mr. Arbuton to his tender reveries of Kitty, and Kitty to ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... maiden's eyes, Soft as a maiden's breath the wind that flies Up from the perfumed bosom of the South. Like sentinels, the pines stand in the park; And hither hastening, like rakes that roam, With lamps to light their wayward footsteps home, The fireflies come stagg'ring down ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... peculiar force, that Nan Brent never again would laugh that joyous elfin laugh of other days. He had seen the pulse beating in her creamy neck again—a neck fuller, rounder, glorious with the beauty of fully developed womanhood. And the riot of golden hair was subdued, with the exception of little wayward wisps that whipped her white temples. Her eyes, somewhat darker now, like the sea near the horizon after the sun has set but while the glory of the day still lingers, were bright with unshed tears. The sweet curves of her mouth were drawn in pain. The northwest trade-wind blowing across ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... A wayward twinkle in her eyes should have warned Shirley that she was planning a little mischief. But, he was too preoccupied in finding the real front of her baffling street cloak to observe it. They left for the tearoom, while Helene still laughed to herself over ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... nearly finished, and I'm itching to get on with a new story I've thought of. I'm calling it 'The Wayward ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... one. Then some sudden recollection would bring back the scene of the review at the Tuileries and fill her eyes with tears. Her father's prophetic warnings rang in her ears, and conscience reproached her that she had not recognized its wisdom. Her troubles had all come of her own wayward folly, and often she knew not which among so many were the hardest to bear. The sweet treasures of her soul were unheeded, and not only so, she could never succeed in making her husband understand her, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... day a spirit of mischief urged the Prince on to a gay prank, as also a wayward spirit urged him no longer to brook ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor

... blood? Grandpa, too, had fondled and caressed her idolized mother, and even his wandering faculties had detected her lineage, so that he had clung to her for some better reason than an impulsive and wayward fancy! ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... to be greeted by his chamberlain as "Your Majesty." The trumpeter's daughter was at last a Queen, in fact, if not in name, more secure in her husband's love than ever, and with long years of splendour and happiness before her. That his fancy, ever wayward, flitted to other women as fair as herself, did not trouble her a whit. Like Madame de Pompadour, she was prepared even to encourage such rivalry, so long as the first place (and this she knew) in her husband's heart ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... do beseech you, either not believe The envious slanders of her false accusers; Or, if she be accus'd on true report, Bear with her weakness, which I think proceeds From wayward sickness, and no ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... insignificant one; sometimes you will think that some misfortune or disappointment which has befallen you is a very crushing one; sometimes you will think that it is better as it is. Ah, my brother, it is a poor, weak, wayward thing, the human heart! ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd

... was alone in the world. And looking up to the clear blue sky, I prayed that God would help me to keep in the path of truth and duty. I really hoped that, if I had done wrong, or was then doing wrong, I might be convicted of my error. I prayed for light. I was afraid that I had been wilful and wayward; but as I knew that I was right so far as Poodles was concerned, I could not accuse myself of obstinacy in refusing to apologize. On the whole, I was satisfied with myself, though willing to acknowledge that in some things I had ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic

... unbridled. In vain did his riches and his revenues increase; in vain was plenty poured into his lap, and all that wealth could compass accumulate in lavish profusion. Of what avail was this outward and goodly show against the cruel and wayward temper ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... loved her handsome, wayward husband. He had hurt her deeply more times than she chose to remember during the six years of their married life, but she had loved him in spite of the wounds up to the instant when she stood beside his dead body in the cold little room at Burton's Inn. She went there loving him as he had lived, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... listened. It was curious to her to see the wayward, giddy child stand and look into the eyes of her questioner as if fascinated. The ordinary answer from Julia would have been a toss and a fling. Now she stood and said sedately, "I ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... down, thou, awful, heart-inspecting Judge, Look down with mercy on thy erring creature, And teach my soul the lowliness it needs! And if some sad remains of human weakness Should sometimes mingle with my best resolves, O breathe thy spirit on this wayward heart, And teach me to repent th' intruding sin In it's first birth of thought! [Noise within.] What noise is that? The clash of swords! should ...
— Percy - A Tragedy • Hannah More

... purposes will meet with little success. For such plantations superintendents may be needed, but, besides doing little good, their own position I think will be very unpleasant. Nor do I think it unmanly to withdraw from such plantations. The irregular wayward life which the people on such places would probably lead undoubtedly will help to develop their self-reliance, but our style of development—that of regular, persistent industry—is so wholly different, that I doubt the wisdom of attempting to yoke ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various

... park-land rising up behind her, and the low sun catching her short locks and surrounding her head, her exquisitely bowed head, with a pale-yellow halo. But I confess I thought the original Alice Oke, siren and murderess though she might be, very uninteresting compared with this wayward and exquisite creature whom I had rashly promised myself to send down to posterity in all ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... In this case (and there can be no other true or ostensible one) I believe that the more are good; and nearly in the same proportion as there are animals and plants produced healthy and vigorous than wayward and weakly. Strange is the opinion of Mr. Hobbes, that, when God hath poured so abundantly His benefits on other creatures, the only one capable of great good should be uniformly ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... King by the Grace of God, relented somewhat in his dislike of Fox before the latter died, and his wayward son, the Prince of Wales, said "that his father was well pleased with Mr. Fox in all their dealings after he came into office." It is an amazing form of intelligence that commits a nation to join in a war against another for having brought about a revolution and for creating their first soldier-statesman ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... Stead. Stead liked the Great Imperialist as well as one man can like another, and had a great and justified confidence in Rhodes' good heart as well as in that indefinable nobility which manifested itself at times in his strange, wayward nature. Moreover, being gifted with a keen sense of intuition, the famous journalist realised quite well the immense work that might have been done by England through Rhodes had the latter consented to sweep away those men ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill

... wayward destiny that night was mine; at once both saved and lost! a hidden passage dug beneath the rampart, twining through many a cavern'd maze, at distance opened to the woods. I reached the secret entrance of that pass, just as the turret fell and screened me from pursuit. Concealing darkness wrapt ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... voice is heard far up amid the mists of the heights—not the eagle's cry this time—not the freak of a wayward echo—but human words, which say "Shall we begin?" Silence! It is a host that holds its breath and listens. Was it a spirit of the upper air parleying with its kind? If so, it has its answer countersigned across the dark gulf. "Noch nicht!"—"Not ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various

... Charlotte Bronte, as they have been made known to us by her biographer's unsparing revelations. It was not to be expected that any one should have imagined the life of Howorth [Trasncriber's note: sic] parsonage; the gifted, wayward, and unhappy sisterhood in their cheerless home; the rudeness of the only society which was within their reach; while their views of anything beyond their own immediate circle, and certain unpleasing forms of school-life which they had known, were drawn from the representations of a brother ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... England, and from which Greville had rescued her. The temptation to plunge into the boisterous merriment of a higher order of depravity than that to which she had been accustomed must have been very great to such a temperament as hers. But she worthily kept her wild, wayward spirit under restraint, and, according to Sir William Hamilton, she conducted herself in a way that caused him to be satisfied with his reforming guidance. She adapted herself to the ways of the more select social community of her new existence, and ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... only to be purchased by the practice of virtue. Things will fall out—so it hath been ordained in this scene of trial—even to the best and purest of heart, which must carry sorrow to the bosom, and bring tears to the eyelids; and then to the wayward and the wicked, bitter is their misery as the waters of Marah. But never can the good man be wholly unhappy; he has that within which passeth show; the anchor of his faith is fixed on the Rock of Ages; and when the dark cloud hath glided over—and it will ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... very name and she was a tower of strength to him. 'Mothers!' he used to say, 'if you only knew your power! God be merciful to the wayward one who ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... this wayward child after all," said Mrs. West, pushing her spectacles back, and looking up. "But who of these people would believe that such was in store for them? These men would not leave their homes without a severe struggle." "The ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... locality. I find a favourite wild-flower here, and the spot is dear to me; you find yours yonder. Neither painter nor writer can show the spectator their originals. It would be very easy, too, to pass any of these places and see nothing, or but little. Birds are wayward, wild creatures uncertain. The tree crowded with wood-pigeons one minute is empty the next. To traverse the paths day by day, and week by week; to keep an eye ever on the fields from year's end to year's end, is the one only method of knowing ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... humble destiny, I considered my own full of difficulty and agitation, so crowded and yet doubtless equally empty; I followed in my mind's eye the lives of my friends; and I reflected that the nature of us women, alike of the most wayward and the most direct, is too delicate and too complex for us easily to keep our balance in a state of ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... repentant child. For some time did that interview continue; and when Caroline retired to rest, it was with a spirit lighter than it had been for many weeks, spite of the dark clouds she still felt were around her. All her strange wayward feelings had been confessed. She laid no stress on those continued letters she had received from Annie, which had from the first alienated her from her mother. Remorse was too busy within to bid her attempt to defend herself by inculpating others; but ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... in danger; and but for me thou mightst even now be lying snug abed at Moonfleet, instead of hiding in the chambers of these rocks. So speak not of that, but if thou hast a mind to air thyself an hour, I see little harm in it. These wayward fancies fall on men as they get better of sickness; and I must go tonight to that ruined house of which I spoke to thee, to fetch a pocket compass Master Ratsey was to put there. So thou canst come with me and smell the night air on ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... idea of Mrs. Hind-Willet's about caring for wayward girls. Mrs. Willet thinks that it is cruel and silly to send them into virtual imprisonment, to punish them and watch them and confront them at every turn with threats and the merciless routine of discipline. She thinks that the thing to do is to give them a chance ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... show the glory of our art? And, which is worse, all you have done Hath been but for a wayward son, Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do, Loves for his own ends, not for you." ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... whirlpools, to absorb every thing within their reach. He contrasted their circumspect liberality with her thoughtless waste; the matronly sobriety and tempered magnificence of their attire with her new fangled fickleness and wanton costliness; their modest dignified courtesy with her wayward perverseness; their gravity with her lightness, in acting at court-revels and maskings, familiar with every gallant, and accepting praise from the most polluted sources. He spoke to the winds; the full proof of that perfidy which Evellin had so long struggled to ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... events were fitful and wayward, so that effects started up without causes, and like causes under like conditions produced unlike effects, and anything might come of anything, there would be no such thing as that which we call nature. ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... light of their own hearts, and bow down before outer order and outer fixity, and that then the light would cease, and none escape the curse except the foolish good man who could not, and the passionate wicked man who would not, think. Already, the Voice told him, the wayward light of the heart was shining out upon the world to keep it alive, with a less clear lustre, and that, as it paled, a strange infection was touching the stars and the hills and the grass and the trees with corruption, and that none of those who had seen clearly the truth and the ancient ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats

... probably been shortened by his scrupulous regard for justice. His career was one splendid refutation of the popular fallacy, that genius has of necessity vices—that its light must be meteoric—and its courses wayward and uncontrolled. He has left mankind two great lessons,—we scarcely know which is the most valuable. He has taught us how much delight one human being can confer upon the world; he has taught us also that the imagination may aspire to the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various

... were a happy pair. This wayward, but generous heart never forgot her offence, and his forgiveness. She gave herself to him heart and soul, at the altar, and well she redeemed her vow. He rose high in political life: and paid the penalty of that sort of ambition; his heart was often sore. But by his own ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... inscrutable, and obedient to irritation; and the lubras were apt, and merry, and open-hearted, and wayward beyond comprehension. Sam did exactly as he was told, and the lubras did exactly as they thought fit, and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... will you have me do?" she asked; "for you have fairly won me, and my wayward fancies shall no longer vex you. Shall I greet your friends with kindness, or shall we send them ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin

... Charles VII. when we think how faithfully, in loneliness and ruin, the Lady of Beauty loved her apathetic, senseless, discrowned king. Others never found it out, but there must have been something precious hid in a dark corner of his wayward heart near which Agnes nestled so long. We look leniently on Otho—parasite and profligate—when we see him lingering on his last march, on the very verge of the death-struggle, in the teeth of Galba's legions, ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... petulant, untoward, factious, intractable, stubborn, wayward, fractious, obstinate, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... I called on Lady Janet to thank her, and encountered a new revelation of the wayward and original character of my ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... know what that old lady is doing at the present time, and whether she is past reform. Miss Warren even has her moments of doubt as to the flawless perfection of her own life: whether the path of duty in 1897 did not rather lie in the direction of a serious attempt to be a daughter to her wayward mother and reclaim her then, instead of going off at a tangent as the mannish type of New Woman, to whom applicable Mathematics are everything and human affections very little. I suppose the truth, the commonplace ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston

... ask where Nawadaha Found these songs so wild and wayward, Found these legends and traditions, I should answer, I should tell you, "In the bird's-nests of the forest, In the lodges of the beaver, In the hoofprint of the bison, In ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow

... of by the hand with the greeting, "How d'ye do, old Lake Poet!"—his stammering voice might have broken with impunity on the doctor's weightiest utterances with the absurdest quips and twists of speech of which even he was capable. Yet both were of wayward nature, and had they met might not ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... energy of talent prematurely developed. Her voice had distinctive quality, unusual in little girls of nine. When she talked, it was with perfect articulation and a sense of the value and beauty of words. Her manners were prettily wayward, but not precocious. She moved with the quiet self-possession of one who has something to do and knows just how to do it, one who took her little self ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... god once worshiped, now fills a lowly place, Though sometimes raised to favor by the wayward human race. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... subject. Bernardo Tasso possessed qualities of genius and temper which suited his proposed task. Deficient in humor, he had no difficulty in eliminating that element from the Amadigi. Chivalrous sentiment took the place of irony; scholarly method supplied the want of wayward fancy. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... voice reached my senses in fugitive cadence. Sick, through the storied cities, with wretched hopes, and upbraidings Of my own heart for its hopes, I went from wonder to wonder, Blind to them all, or only beholding them wronged, and related, Through some trick of wayward thought, to myself and my trouble. Not surprise nor regret, but a fierce, precipitate gladness Sent the blood to my throbbing heart when I found him in Venice. "Waiting for you," he whispered; "you would so." I ...
— Poems • William D. Howells

... control of reason, of what fantastic caprices are ye the originators 137—what caricatures of the various features of our waking life do ye not exhibit to us, ludicrous and distorted indeed, but still preserving through their most extravagant exaggerations a wayward and grotesque likeness to the realities they shadow forth! And stranger even than your most strange vagaries, is the cool matter-of-fact way in which our sleeping senses calmly accept and acquiesce in the medley ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... the result of her activity, amounted to very little. Even her own daughter, Urraca, in spite of the fact that she undoubtedly inherited more from her father than she did from her mother, was, beyond peradventure, rendered more wayward and more reckless by the mother's narrow view of life. The gracious Eleanor, on the other hand, was more liberal-minded, did everything in her power to get into touch with her subjects, and by her kindliness and strength of character was able to aid ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... similar to his own will suffice, but there will be no need to descend to a subdivision so minute as his own. A task of this sort is never an easy one, and in this instance the difficulties are increased by the diffuse and complicated nature of the subject matter; and because, owing to Cardan's wayward mental habit, there is no saying in what corner of the ten large folios which contain his writings some pregnant and characteristic sentence, picturing effectively some aspect of his nature or perhaps exhibiting the man at a glance, may not ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... praying, Thou shouldst hear me weeping, Ever was I wayward, always full of tears, Take no heed of this grief. Sweet the gift Thou gavest All the cherished treasure of those ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... her writings. In vain has she chosen the mask of a man: the features of a woman are everywhere visible. Since Goethe no one has been able to say with so much truth, "My writings are my confessions." Her biography lies there, presented, indeed, in a fragmentary shape and under wayward disguises, but nevertheless giving to the motley groups the strong and uumistakable charm of reality. Her grandmother, by whom she was brought up, disgusted at her not being a boy, resolved to remedy the misfortune as far as possible by educating her like a boy. We ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... 157:—'Though many among my fellow students [at the university] took the opportunity of a more remiss discipline to gratify their passions, yet virtue preserved her natural superiority, and those who ventured to neglect were not suffered to insult her.' Oxford at this date was somewhat wayward in her love for religion. Whitefield records:—'I had no sooner received the sacrament publicly on a week-day at St. Mary's, but I was set up as a mark for all the polite students that knew me to shoot at. By this they knew that I was commenced Methodist, for ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... world, where we may walk joyously, with his love in our hearts as well as all about our path; and yet we sit in the dust weeping, and forget that he is our Father, and that he is watching for us to turn towards him—poor, wandering, wayward children that ...
— Little Alice's Palace - or, The Sunny Heart • Anonymous

... water-holes or more abundant feeding grounds. They were wonderfully intelligent animals—these collies. Donald constantly marveled at their cleverness. They were quick in singling out the slow or wayward sheep and would bite their heels to hurry them along. They also recognized the leaders and it was to them that they communicated the directions Sandy gave them. Yet Sandy seldom spoke to his dogs. A motion of his arm and they would spring ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett

... He rarely speaks but makes a noise like a mouse, scratching his paper. It's for Him I've treasured up my little heart, my precious cat's heart, and He, without words, has given me his. This exchange makes me happy and reserved. Now and then with that pretty, wayward, ruling instinct which makes us cats rivals of women, I try my power over him. When we are alone, I point my ears forward devilishly as a sign that I'm about to spring upon his scratching paper. The tap, tap, tap of my paws straight through pens and letters and ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette

... giving him their own and accepting his. Day and night, at all hours, and in all weather, he would face them. If it rained, he might fling his plaid over him, but would take no admonition. He must have his way. On such occasions, dutiful as he was in higher matters, he remained incurably wayward. In vain one reminded him that a letter needed an answer, or that the storm would soon be over. It was very necessary for him to do what he liked; and one of his dearest friends said to me, with a smile of the most affectionate humour, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth



Words linked to "Wayward" :   disobedient



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com