"Wilfulness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ends by asking, "What, then, is pietas? Surely it is with those who know not war; who keep at peace with all men; who love their enemies and count all men their brethren; who can control their anger and curb all mental wilfulness." And once again, pietas is the main ingredient in iustitia, that is, in Christian righteousness, for "pietas nihil aliud est quam Dei notio." Even here it is not so far removed from its old meaning; but in a Christian ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the new West, at once startlingly and attractively true. * * * The heroine is a strange, sweet mixture of pride, wilfulness and lovable courage. The characters are superbly drawn; the atmosphere is convincing. There is about it a sweetness, a wholesomeness and a sturdiness that commends it to earnest, kindly ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... Blacklock told a pitiful story of the wilfulness of her son; that she was obliged to do just as he said, and if he wanted anything, however absurd it might be, she was obliged to give it to him, or he made the house too "hot" for her. Her husband had died when the children were small, and the whole care of them had devolved ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... not suffer a serious impartial examination of a man's self, these, I say, are the bottom of this vain persuasion, that possesseth the generality of men. Now, what it wants of knowledge, it hath of wilfulness. It is a conceit altogether void of reason, but it is so wilful and pertinacious, that it is almost utterly inconvincible, and so it puts souls in the most desperate forlorn estate that can be imagined. It makes them, as the apostle speaks, (Eph. v. 6) {GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON}{GREEK SMALL ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... mocking glance defiantly. With a sudden wilfulness, born of the incessant opposition she encountered, she determined to let Miss Carson's second challenge go unanswered. She had tried—tried desperately—to win the affection, or even the bare liking, of Roger's women-kind, and she had failed. It was all just so much useless effort. Henceforward ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... answered, with a feeble voice, "My lord and king, I know well my death is come, and through my own wilfulness, for I am smitten in the wound Sir Lancelot gave me. Alas! that I have been the cause of all this war, for but for me thou hadst been now at peace with Lancelot, and then had Modred never done this treason. I pray ye, therefore, ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... many others, that Bella was in no danger of being captivated by Alfred. She distrusted and disliked him. Indeed, her perception was so quick, and her observation so sharp, that after all she mistrusted his wife too, though with her giddy vanity and wilfulness she squeezed the mistrust away into a corner of her mind, and blocked ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... arrival in Europe, he was entrusted with a command in Portugal, against the French then occupying that country. He was much embarrassed by his own government, and the wilfulness of the people to rescue whom was his mission. The convention of Cintra arrested his successes. The stupidity of his superiors defeated his schemes of conquest. "Yet, even as things stood, the success achieved was of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to take, and I to ask." Soon as the father from Josiah learn'd What pass'd with Sybil, he the truth discern'd. "He loves," the man exclaim'd, "he loves, 'tis plain, The thoughtless girl, and shall he love in vain? She may be stubborn, but she shall be tried, Born as she is of wilfulness and pride." With anger fraught, but willing to persuade, The wrathful father met the smiling maid: "Sybil," said he, "I long, and yet I dread To know thy conduct—hath Josiah fled? And, grieved and fretted by ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... could be mingled with horror. I think, however, he struggled to master the fatality, and that his resolution to marry was dictated by an honourable desire to give hostages to society, against the wild wilfulness of his imagination. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... limitations, His struggles, His defeats, but there is no life unless you believe that He ultimately must win, that this world is going upward, not downward, that the devil is to be beaten,—the devil inside of ourselves, the devil of wilfulness, of waywardness, of cynicism, and the devil that is represented by the overbearing, cruel militarism and ruthless inhumanity of Germany. You are a soldier of the Lord, just ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... (as they can tell that knew him) was a man very well learned and grave, but somewhat sour and of no plausible utterance: the gentleman's chance was to say: 'My lord, the simple woman is not so much to blame as her leud abettors, who by violent persuasions have led her into this wilfulness.' Quoth the Judge; 'What need such eloquent terms in this place?' The gentleman replied, 'Doth your lordship mislike the term (violent)? and methinks I speak it to great purpose; for I am sure she would never have done it, but ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... of tender remonstrance; but the slightest insinuation of a difference of opinion was sufficient to fan the embers of Henrietta's distemperature into a conflagration. The blaze was not strong, indeed; for the lady had always been accustomed to find a fit of wilfulness, or of affected despondency, more available and becoming than one of hasty anger. But she was tolerably expert in those piquant flippancies of speech which harass the enemy like a straggling fire; and could contrive, when it suited her purpose, to make herself as disagreeable as if her face had not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... be the only satisfying harmony in dramatic art. It takes the place, in our modern world, of the Necessity of the Greeks; and is not less impressive because it arises from the impulse and unreasoning wilfulness of man rather than from the implacable insistency of God. It is with perfect justice, both moral and artistic, that the fatal crisis, though mediately the result of accident, of error, is shown to be the consequence and the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... why I should care to, but I do," she replied, with charming and childlike wilfulness; so the three of them trudged up the slippery path to the operator's den ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... freely over her slight young shoulders had acquired a decorousness of curve, although the hue was unchanged. The shoulders were exactly the same in contour, on a slightly larger scale; and the manner of carrying her head—a manner peculiarly her own, and suggestive of a certain gentle wilfulness—was unaltered. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... every conversation; but still Mr. Leigh was a gentleman's son, and it would not do to be rude to a neighboring squire and a good customer; and Rose was the rich man's daughter and they poor cousins, so it would not do either to quarrel with her; and besides, the pretty maid, half by wilfulness, and half by her sweet winning tricks, generally contrived to get her own way wheresoever she went; and she herself had been wise enough to beg her aunt never to leave them alone,—for she "could not a-bear the sight of Mr. Eustace, only she must have some one to talk with down ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... contempt. Thou art well-versed in the shastras, intelligent and endowed with wisdom. My inclination was never to war, not did I delight in the destruction of my race. I made no distinction between my own children and the children of Pandu. My own sons were prone to wilfulness and despised me because I am old. Blind as I am, because of my miserable plight and through paternal affection, I bore it all. I was foolish alter the thoughtless Duryodhana ever growing in folly. Having been a spectator of the riches of the mighty sons of Pandu, my son was derided ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... sorrow and want. The cry hath entered into the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth; the creature groaneth and travaileth; all men unconsciously pray this prayer when they weep and when they hope. Christian men pray it when they mourn their rebellious wilfulness and when they feel the weight of all this anarchic world, or when their work in bringing it back to its King seems almost vain, the souls underneath the altar pray it when they cry, 'How long, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... house and household, with many other ridiculous excuses; but all his allegations being proved against him, both by ancient and modern custom, by hundred of examples, and nothing left him to defend himself but his own peevish wilfulness, my husband pursued the business with much vigour, telling the gentleman that brought him the President's letter, that his master, the President, as to him had once been very civil, but as to the King, his master, most uncivil, both in the acting and defending so indecent a business; for which ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... party tends to perplex friends and give a handle to opponents. And with all his confidence in his cause, and also in his power and his call to use it, he had a curious shyness and self-distrust as to his own way of doing what he had to do; he was afraid of "wilfulness," of too great reliance on intellect. He had long been accustomed to observe and judge himself, and while conscious of his force, he was fully alive to the drawbacks, moral and intellectual, which wait on the highest powers. When attacks were made on him by authorities, as in the ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... of the early period shows Debussy developing freely and naturally. The independence of his thinking is unmistakable, but it does not run into wilfulness. There is no violent break with the past, but simply the quickening of certain French qualities by the infusion of a new personality. It seemed as if a new and charming miniaturist had appeared, who was doing both for piano and song what had never ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... had gone with the young heiress into the gallery, for, with her childish wilfulness, she had preferred to go alone, and single out the Carset ladies by their resemblance to ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... both the concurrence and compromise, regulating all wilfulness of design: and, more curious still, the crystals do NOT always give way to each other. They show exactly the same varieties of temper that human creatures might. Sometimes they yield the required place with perfect grace and courtesy; forming fantastic, but exquisitely finished groups: ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... return," said the king perversely. And Suffolk, knowing his wilfulness, and that all remonstrance would prove fruitless, retraced his steps with him. They had not proceeded far when they perceived a female figure at the bottom of the ascent, just where the path turned off on the margin of ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... with broad shoulders and slim hips, showing great muscular power and the symmetry of beauty as well. The face matched the figure; it was strong and fine, full of intelligence and life, and bearing no trace of boyish wilfulness. If wilfulness was there, which I think, it was rather the considered and consistent wilfulness of a man. As he came in at the open door, Esther's position and look struck him; he paused half a minute. Then he came forward, came to ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... taking very slight notice of the raillery of the young officers, answering Mrs. Evelyn with polite words, and silencing his mother as he came up with one of those looks out of his dark eyes to which she always forgave the wilfulness for the sake of the beauty and the winning power. She was completely conquered, and stepped ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... fact, must be the will to love, which is the will to experience in a certain way; and out of that will to love right action will naturally ensue. Is this a platitude? If it is, it is flatly contradicted by the German doctrine of wilfulness. For the Germanic hero exercises his will always upon other men and things, not upon himself; and we all admire this Germanic hero, when he is not an obvious danger to us all, and when he is not made ridiculous by the German presentment of him. ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... the cleverest women of our time; deafness and ugliness have induced her to cultivate to the utmost degree her intellectual faculties, and several of her books are illustrations of a mind even masculine in its power and activity; but the constitutional feebleness, waywardness, and wilfulness of woman is nevertheless not unfrequently evinced by her, and as she grows older the infirmities of her nature are more and more conspicuous; vexed with neglect, without the kindly influences of home or friendship, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... kingly power of Christ hath been opposed in all ages, and especially in this of ours, by quarrelsome queries, wrangling disputes, plausible pretences, subtle policies, strong self-interests, and mere violent wilfulness of many in England, even after they are brought under the oath of God to reform church government according to the word of God. Yet it will be easily granted that there should be a government in the Church of God, otherwise ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... could move for pain. And if the iron galled my flesh, my spirit chafed ten times more within those damp and dismal walls; yet all that time Elzevir never breathed a word of reproach, though it was my wilfulness had led us into so ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... heart which has tried to find pleasure in everything else, to find out that everything else disappoints, and to come back to him, the fountain of all wholesome pleasure, the well-spring of all life fit for a man to live. When the fool finds out his folly; when the wilful man gives up his wilfulness; when the rebel submits himself to law; when the son comes back to his father's house—there is no sternness, no peevishness, no up-braiding, no pride, no revenge; but the everlasting and boundless love of God wells forth again as rich as ever. He has condescended to wait for his creature; because ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... I did hope that no marriage would take place between Dorothea and you to-night. I hoped that, before you came to that, you'd realize to what a degree you're taking advantage of her wilfulness and her love for you—for it's a mixture of both—to put her in a false position, from which she'll never wholly free herself as long as she lives. I hoped you'd be man enough to go back and win her from her father by open ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... loved the girl after his fashion: "I am growing old, my child. If I should die, what would become of you? I have no son; your Uncle Franz, who is but a year or two younger than I am, would reign, and he would not tolerate your madcap ways. You must marry at once. I love you in spite of your wilfulness. But you have shown yourself incapable of loving. Doppelkinn is wealthy. ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... well do. And yet Polly had originally no actual intention or desire to do wrong. Simply she had yielded to a sudden impulse, to an intense curiosity. But now things were different; for Polly was realizing her wilfulness completely, and instead of repenting and turning back to confess her folly, was every moment trying to plan by what method her purpose ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... parti-coloured, very high, in his head; a man glorious, dexterous, thus, with horror and terror, who has a wonderful apparel, both raiment and weapons and appearance and splendour and dress; he raises himself with the prowess of a warrior, with achievements of ——, with the pride of wilfulness, with a going through battle to rout overwhelming numbers, with wrath upon foes, with a marching on many hostile countries without protection. In truth, mightily have they come on their course into ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... those about her, and her thought journeyed swiftly back to the old happy days. "Yes, there is a species of insanity in my veins." She turned to them again. "But it is the insanity of a sane person, the insanity of impulse and folly, of wilfulness and lack of foresight. As Mr. O'Mally said, I have gone and done it. What possessed me to say that I am the princess is as inexplicable to me as to you, though you may not believe it. But for me there is no withdrawing now; flight ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... earliest comic style was often a boyish or a birdlike wantonness, very capable of such liberties and levities as those of Lesbia's sparrow with the lip or bosom of his mistress; as notably in the parts of Boyet and Mercutio: and indeed there is a bright vein of mere wordy wilfulness running throughout the golden youth of the two plays which connects Love's Labour's Lost with Romeo and Juliet as by a thread of floss silk not always "most excellently ravelled," nor often unspotted or unentangled. In the second period this gaiety ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... In the old days we punished drastically and killed quickly. We did it because we so desired, because of whim, if you so please. But we were not hypocrites. We did not call upon press, and pulpit, and university to sanction us in our wilfulness of savagery. What we wanted to do we went and did, on our legs upstanding, and we faced all reproof and censure on our legs upstanding, and did not hide behind the skirts of classical economists and bourgeois philosophers, nor behind the skirts of ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Brandon, quickly, but with an affectionate tone of wilfulness; "and now, as I feel very much fatigued with my journey, you must allow me to ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to continue. The history that he gleaned from Cindy's disordered monologue was an old one, of illusion, wilfulness, disaster, cruelty and pride. Standing out from the blurred panorama of her gabble were little clear pictures—an ideal home in the far South; a quickly repented marriage; an unhappy season, full of ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... system, or any given part of it,—or by a determined act of wilfulness, you may, even though perceiving a ray of light, reject it in anger and disgust:—but this I will say,—that if you once master it, or any part of it, you cannot hesitate to acknowledge it as the truth. You cannot be sceptical ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... master would I never be, For he, in sooth, is blind, and may not see, And knows not when he hurts and when he heals; Within this court full seldom truth avails, So diverse in his wilfulness is he." ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... it is clear that Plato's judgment was true; the wise alone are able to do what they would, while the wicked follow their own hearts' lust, but can not accomplish what they would. For they go on in their wilfulness fancying they will attain what they wish for in the paths of delight; but they are very far from its attainment, since shameful deeds lead ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... avoided. Each considered the other the prey of the devil, but in secret each esteemed in the other a manly worth. Again and again they fell into dissension, even in writing, but again and again Luther prayed warmly for his neighbor's soul. The reckless wilfulness of Henry VIII. of England, on the other hand, offended the German reformer to the depths of his soul; he reviled him horribly and without cessation; and even in his last years he treated the hot-headed Henry of Brunswick like a naughty school-boy. "Clown" was the mildest ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... wedding day had been Christmas Eve. When she had announced her choice of a day, they had chidden her. But with girlish wilfulness she had clung to ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... kind words almost break my heart," said Yolanda, placing her kerchief to her eyes. "I wish you would not forgive me for having brought you into this hard case. I wish you would upbraid me. I will pray to the Blessed Virgin night and day to protect you from this trouble my wilfulness has brought upon you. Never again will I be wilful, dear uncle, never again—with you. At Strasburg I will make an offering to ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... whose knowledge of other women has been mainly immoral, her innocence and wilfulness, and her instinctive dislike of him, serve as a strong attraction. Though he becomes her husband by means of a cruel fraud, he never fully gains her trust, and the estrangement so tragically sealed in the last chapter of the novel comes almost as a relief to the sympathetic reader of her sad history. ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... We learn by our own experience, that God is all- forgiving love; that His peace shines bright upon the soul which casts itself utterly on Jesus Christ the Lord for pardon, strength, and safety; that God's Spirit is ready and able to raise us out of all our sin, and sottishness, and weakness, and wilfulness, and selfishness, and renew us into quite new men, different characters from what we used to be; and so, by having hope for ourselves, we learn step by step and year by year to have hope for our friends, for our neighbours, and ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... is true of nations is true of individuals, of each separate human brother of the Son of man. Is there one young life ruined by its own folly—one young heart broken by its own wilfulness—or one older life fast losing the finer instincts, the nobler aims of youth, in the restlessness of covetousness, of fashion, of ambition? Is there one such poor soul over whom Christ does not grieve? One to whom, at some supreme crisis of their lives, ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... glad to hear that, Godfrey. Not that it makes any actual matter now, but because, after the warning I had given you to avoid the society of any people holding extreme opinions, it seemed to me you must have showed an incredible amount of wilfulness and folly in getting yourself mixed up with these desperate conspirators. I am heartily glad to find that I was mistaken, and that, except as regards that foolish business at the theatre, you have really not been to blame in the matter, and have been ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... Tusher never permitted his mind to stray out of the prescribed University path, accepted the Thirty-nine Articles with all his heart, and would have signed and sworn to other nine-and-thirty with entire obedience. Harry's wilfulness in this matter, and disorderly thoughts and conversation, so shocked and afflicted his senior, that there grew up a coldness and estrangement between them, so that they became scarce more than mere acquaintances, from having been intimate friends when they came to college first. Politics ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... before an inquisition on a charge of wilfulness, you will be unable to defend yourself from ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... of Lord Pembroke's company, and, perhaps in the open yard of the Red Bull Tavern, played the part of King Edward's delicate minion. On Marlowe's death, he seems to have returned to Shakespeare, who, whatever his fellow-partners may have thought of the matter, was not slow to forgive the wilfulness and treachery ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... at some rash Muse's earnest call, To try her strength among harmonious words; [e] And to book-notions and the rules of art 370 Did knowingly conform itself; there came Among the simple shapes of human life A wilfulness of fancy and conceit; [e] And Nature and her objects beautified These fictions, as in some sort, in their turn, 375 They burnished her. From touch of this new power Nothing was safe: the elder-tree that grew Beside the well-known charnel-house had then ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... she outwitted held Elizabeth to be little more than a frivolous woman, or that Philip of Spain wondered how "a wanton" could hold in check the policy of the Escurial. But the Elizabeth whom they saw was far from being all of Elizabeth. Wilfulness and triviality played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper purely intellectual, the very type of reason untouched by imagination or passion. Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, the young Queen lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her vanity and caprice ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... an original character, drawn only as a woman could draw her, who had looked deeply into the mysterious recesses of the feminine heart. She is a creation totally beyond the scope of a man's pen, unless it were the pen of Shakespeare. Her beauty, her wilfulness, her caprice, her love, and her sorrow, are depicted with marvellous skill, and invested with an interest of which the reader never becomes weary. Miss Broughton, in this work, has made an immense advance on her other stories, clever as ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... strong and victorious expression. "I have gotten a man from the Lord," she says to herself; and each outburst of his manliness, his vigor, his self-confidence, his superb vitality, fills her with a strange, wondering pleasure, and she has a secret tenderness and pride even in his wilfulness and waywardness. "What a creature he is!" she says, when he flouts at sober argument and pitches all received opinions hither and thither in the wild capriciousness of youthful paradox. She looks grave and reproving; but he reads the concealed triumph in her eyes,—he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... herself first on my cousin's neck and then on mine and then on my uncle's; he indeed stood as though deeply offended, as likewise did my good godfather Christian. Yet they would not speak, that they might not mar our joy, albeit Uncle Pfinzing growled forth that our plan was sheer youthful folly, wilfulness, and the like. "At any rate it is an unlaid egg, so long as my wife has not added mustard to the peppered broth," Uncle Conrad declared, and he departed to carry tidings to my aunt of what mad folly these women's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the thought of this; For I did fright thee when I fleck'd a kiss With too much heat. I should have bow'd to thee, And left unsaid the word, deception-free, Which, like a flash, illumed the love within, My wilfulness was much to blame therein; But thou wilt shrive me, Sweet! of mine offence If passion-pangs be deem'd so ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... him, Leaving his body as a paradise To envelope and contain celestial spirits. Never was such a sudden scholar made; Never came reformation in a flood With such a heady currance, scouring faults; Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness So soon did lose his seat, and all at once, ...
— The Life of King Henry V • William Shakespeare [Tudor edition]
... fulfils this solemn obligation of which I have told you—and he must be honourable, dear Mrs Varden, or he is no son of mine—a fortune within his reach. He is of most expensive, ruinously expensive habits; and if, in a moment of caprice and wilfulness, he were to marry this young lady, and so deprive himself of the means of gratifying the tastes to which he has been so long accustomed, he would—my dear madam, he would break the gentle creature's ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... direct way in which the sculptor looks at the ideal, the type, not only distinguish them among contemporary works, which are so largely personal expressions, but give them an eminent individuality as well. Like the Greek sculpture, they are plainly the production of culture, which in restraining wilfulness, however happily inspired, and imposing measure and poise, nevertheless acutely stimulates and develops the faculties themselves. The skeptic who may very plausibly inquire the distinction between that vague entity, "the ideal," and the personal idea of the artist concerned with it, can be ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... not out of mere wilfulness that she spoke, it was bitter necessity, that forced her to utter the words. To-day, at any rate, she must not miss going to the papyrus factory, for the week's wages for her work and Arsinoe's were to be paid. Besides, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... themselves but just time to dress); so that she simply possessed herself of her own note and ascended to her room. As she did so she felt that all the while she had known it would be there, and was conscious of a kind of treachery, an unfriendly wilfulness, in not being more prepared for it. If she could roll about New York the whole afternoon and forget that there might be difficulties ahead, that didn't alter the fact that there were difficulties, and that they might even become considerable—might ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... 'There was pride and wilfulness in it too,' said she; 'and look what a rebuke Heaven gives me! it is not I that rescue Andrew; it is ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... intended to illustrate these opinions. It is the story of a blind heart—nay, of blind hearts—blind through their own perversity—blind to their own interests—their own joys, hopes, and proper sources of delight. In narrating my own fortunes, I depict theirs; and the old leaven of wilfulness, which belongs to our nature, has, in greater or less degree, a place in every ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... of this hope without an object was so great that Rose was afraid to look a man in the face lest he should perceive in her eyes the feelings that filled her soul. By a wilfulness, which was perhaps only the continuation of her earlier methods, though she felt herself attracted toward the men who might still suit her, she was so afraid of being accused of folly that she treated them ungraciously. Most persons in her society, ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... her lips without a sound being heard, and fainted dead away. In all her life she had never done so before, and when she came round she was not like herself; in all probability the persistence and wilfulness she, who was usually so meek and docile, showed during the next twenty-four hours, was the consequence of fever. She resolved to be present at the wedding; numbers were going; she would be unseen, unnoticed in the crowd; but whatever befell, go she would, and neither ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... on the subject of her beauty; and he resolved to go aside from his direct path, and take Charlemont in the route of his return. Not that he himself needed a second glance to convince him of that loveliness which, in his wilfulness, he yet denied. He was free to acknowledge to himself that Margaret Cooper was one of the noblest and most impressive beauties he had ever seen. The very scorn that spoke in all her features, the imperious fires that kindled ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... an inaccessible distance, and chained in icy fetters on untrodden mountain-peaks, where the vulture ever devours his fair heart, which sympathises continually with the follies and the sorrows of mankind? Of what punishment, then, must not those be worthy, who by their own wilfulness and self-confidence bind again to Caucasus the fair Titan, ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... the stubborn wilfulness and unfeeling carelessness of consequences that characterized his temper, he plunged into all manner of vicious indulgences; but what seemed to attract him the most irresistibly, and fix him the most firmly, was a fondness for gambling. The ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... appears to refer to the massacre of the Shechemites; the second is interpreted by the Jerusalem Targum, "In their wilfulness they sold Joseph their brother, who is likened to an ox." And in the blessing of Joseph it is said that his "branches (margin, daughters), run over the wall." Some translators have rendered this, "The daughters walk upon the bull," "wall" and "bull" being only distinguishable ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... assisted to wash and dress the children of a morning; she took a turn at cooking in the middle of the day; she helped to detain Master Ward at the tea-table, and to keep his wig and knee-buckles from too early an appearance and too thorough a soaking of his self-conceit and wilfulness at his tavern; and she heard the lads their lessons, while she darned their ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... religion and reason demanded. Jeanie had sense enough to see that a sudden and severe curb upon her sister's hitherto unrestrained freedom might be rather productive of harm than good, and that Effie, in the headstrong wilfulness of youth, was likely to make what might be overstrained in her father's precepts an excuse to herself for neglecting them altogether. In the higher classes, a damsel, however giddy, is still under the dominion of etiquette, and subject to the surveillance ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... knowledge, obstinacy, superstition, strange devotion, stupidity, confidence, stiff defence of their tenets, mutual love and hate of other sects, belief of incredibilities, impossibilities. or Particular. Of heretics, pride, contumacy, contempt of others, wilfulness, vainglory, singularity, prodigious paradoxes. In superstitious blind zeal, obedience, strange works, fasting, sacrifices, oblations, prayers, vows, pseudomartyrdom, mad and ridiculous customs, ceremonies, observations. In pseudoprophets, visions, revelations, dreams, prophecies, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... allegiances belonging to the conduct of what was and still remains the most scrupulously cultivated of our periodicals. When Clemens began to write for it he came willingly under its rules, for with all his wilfulness there never was a more biddable man in things you could show him a reason for. He never made the least of that trouble which so abounds for the hapless editor from narrower-minded contributors. If you wanted a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was almost shaken by the girl's firmness,—by that, and by her own true affection for the sinner. In her bosom, what remained of the softness of womanhood was struggling with the hardness of the religious martinet, and with the wilfulness of the domestic tyrant. She had promised to Steinmarc that she would be very stern. Steinmarc had pointed out to her that nothing but the hardest severity could be of avail. He, in telling his story, had taken it for granted that Linda had expected her lover, had remained at home on purpose that ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... somewhat unwillingly on my part, for though I thought my apprehensions might be cowardly and ignorant, yet D. was but a child, and had the attractive wilfulness of childhood, and she was, I saw, determined to get back to her husband, and the devotion and affection of the young wife were so pleasant to see, that I had not the heart to offer serious opposition to ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... had previously known (from Methley, I think, who had travelled in Persia) that this notion, so conducive to the safety of our countrymen, is generally prevalent amongst Orientals. It owes its origin, partly to the strong wilfulness of the English gentleman (which not being backed by any visible authority, either civil or military, seems perfectly superhuman to the soft Asiatic), but partly too to the magic of the banking system, by force of which the wealthy traveller will make all his journeys without carrying a handful of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... experimental knowledge, Creative and Progressive Civilization. The first great outbreak of the spirit of this civilization was in republican Greece; the martyrdom of Socrates, the fearless Utopianism of Plato, the ambitious encyclopaedism of Aristotle, mark the dawn of a new courage and a new wilfulness in human affairs. The fear of set limitations, of punitive and restrictive laws imposed by Fate upon human life was visibly fading in human minds. These names mark the first clear realization that ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... "Wilfulness is called pride by some; and stubbornness. But you know, as well as I do, that yours is resentment, anger, indignation. Yes, you have pride, but it has not been brought into this affair. Pride is that within which prevents ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... with hesitation, almost with fear, that I began with Gwen; but even had I been able to foresee the endless series of exasperations through which she was destined to conduct me, still would I have undertaken my task. For the child, with all her wilfulness, her tempers and her pride, made me, as she did ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... please. I ought to punish your wilfulness by some dreadful doom. Do not cry out again. I will not hear you. My decision is fixed. Mardonius shall bestow you in marriage to a man who is not even a Persian by birth, who one year since was a disobedient rebel against my power, who even now contemns ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... Desdemona's handkerchief gave Iago his opportunity, so the casual allotting of the seven gates brings the two brothers into conflict. But behind it was the working of an inherited curse; yet Aeschylus is careful to point out that the curse need never have existed at all but for the wilfulness of Laius; he was the origin of all the mischief, obstinately refusing to listen to a warning thrice given him by Apollo. Another secret of dramatic excellence has been discovered by the poet, that ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... false that he had intended to surprise divers of their towns, and deliver them to the King of Spain. All such untruths contained matter so improbable, that it was most, strange that any person; having any sense, could imagine them correct. Having thus slightly animadverted upon their wilfulness, unthankfulness, and bad government, and having, in very plain English, given them the lie, eight distinct and separate times upon a single page, she proceeded to inform them that she had recalled her cousin Leicester, having great cause to use his services in England, and not seeing ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... remember that to every man they have to make a woman only the other name for truth and constancy. God only knows the number of young men who have received their first downward bent from what to a young girl, in the wilfulness of her high spirits and her ignorance of life, has been only a bit of fun, but which to the young man has been the first fatal break in his faith in woman—that faith which in his soul dwells so hard by his faith in the Divine that in making shipwreck of the one is only too likely to make shipwreck ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... is hardly a man. The self-conscious fuss of their pedagogy is half-redeemed by the unconscious grace which called a school not a seed-plot of citizens, but merely a garden of children. All the first and best forest-spirit is infancy, its wonder, its wilfulness, even its still innocent fear. Carlyle marks exactly the moment when the German child becomes the spoilt child. The wonder turns to mere mysticism; and mere mysticism always turns to mere immoralism. The wilfulness is no longer liked, but is actually obeyed. The fear becomes a philosophy. ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... their woes, he might have regarded the scene as presenting but a reasonable retribution upon a stolid obstinacy in the most direful and needless self-inflictions. "Why could they not have been content to cling to the comforts of Old England, and to restrain their wilfulness of spirit?" The question is answered now differently from what it would have been then. We have used one wrong word about those exiles, in speaking of them as cowering under their woes. They did ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... silken summer dress, So simply flower'd in white and gold, She scorns to let our eyes behold, But hides through very wilfulness: ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... respectful and impartial consideration to the arguments of brethren, and especially of seniors. If a single mind remains unmoved, its dissent is decisive. But it would be the gravest dereliction of duty to persist from wilfulness, obstinacy, or pride, in adhesion to a view perhaps hastily expressed in opposition to authority and argument. The debate to which my speech gave rise lasted for two hours. Each speaker spoke but a few terse expressive sentences; ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... not able to perform—if he had not introduced me to Folly, whom I encouraged, although I despised her—the explosion would never have taken place, I should have suffered no shame and loss. I am willing to bear the consequences of my own wilfulness and presumption. I should blush to wear the crown of Success, which I feel that I do not merit. Let me see it on your brow, dear Nelly; its proper place is there. Next to the pleasure of winning it myself, is that of knowing ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... that she was living between two alternatives that seemed almost equally terrible, and of which she must choose the one or the other within two months. She must either marry Contarini and never see Zorzi again, or she must refuse to be married and face the tremendous consequences of her unheard-of wilfulness, her father's anger, the just resentment of all the Contarini family, the humiliation which her brothers would heap upon her, because, in the code of those days, she would have brought shame on them and theirs. In those times such results were very real and inevitable ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... and title of a novel by Smollett (1751). Peregrine Pickle is a savage, ungrateful spendthrift, fond of practical jokes, and suffering with evil temper the misfortunes brought on himself by his own wilfulness. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to possess many weaknesses that are charged to the sex, and very few of its commendable qualities: she was now in peaceable possession of the whole kingdom, except the county of Kent, where William d'Ypres pretended to keep up a small party for the King; when by her pride, wilfulness, indiscretion, and a disobliging behaviour, she soon turned the hearts of all men against her, and in a short time lost the fruits of that victory and success which had been so hardly gained by the prudence and valour of her excellent brother. The first ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... came John Daniel, in the service at one time of Lord Northampton, who, not being in parliament, was excluded from the more private consultations, but heard much of the general talk; "how they, with great wilfulness, as might be perceived by their behaviour, did sore mislike such Catholic proceedings as they saw the queen went about, and did intend to resist such matters as should be spoken of in the Parliament House other than ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... be allowed, a little rough; but he had been so thoroughly annoyed, after having, as he thought, with unparalleled cunning and discretion detected the difficulty and provided a remedy, to find his plans thwarted by an obstinate wilfulness, that he could not help boiling over a little: his kind feelings however soon got the ascendency; the deep contrition of the poor father touched his heart, and the lovely girl who had only increased his interest in her by making good his words, received from him the most attentive care; nor could ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... am I not, Mother?" said Missy, with a faint smile. "I've had a hard life—but an honest one, Mother. When I went away I was almost mad with the disgrace my wilfulness had brought on you and Father and myself. I went as far as I could get away from you, and I got work in a factory. I've worked there ever since, just making enough to keep body and soul together. Oh, I've ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lust of uncleanness is to live just like an unreasoning beast—according to mere sense and every kind of lust. So everything is ordered by the Pope, ordered as it has pleased him, and all must subserve their wilfulness and tyranny; and they have warped and explained all just as it has pleased them, and thereupon said, "the holy See at Rome cannot err," while there is not one who has preached anything of faith ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... Margaret was in her way equally charming, she was not of such a heavenly gravity as her little comrade. On the contrary, at this time her spirits overflowed in a bewitching and mischievous wilfulness, which made her the more irresistible. She was conscious that she was soon to be wedded, and this knowledge gave her a sense of importance together with mysterious heart throbbings and perturbations, a wild curiosity to know what manner of man her future ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... found not among them all a father. On the contrary, every one of my companions had a man whom he reverenced as his parent, and who taught him to steal; but I was called by the whole tribe the mother-son, and was honest from my first year out of mere wilfulness; at least, if I stole anything, it was always from our own people. Many were the quarrels I occasioned, since, presuming on my mother's love and power, I never called mischief a scrape; but acting just as my fancy took me, I left those who suffered by my conduct to apologise for my ill-behaviour. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... did not himself comprehend it much more clearly. Some strange freak of wilfulness impelled him to pursue this unintelligible persecution. "I've said nothing about any offense," he declared, in a hard, deliberate voice. "It is your own word. All the same—I mention the name of a lady—a lady, mind you, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... wilful man. Follow me. Or, let me lay my hand on your bridle. The crowd gathers fast. It may be that your horse, if I keep by it, will enable me to push my way through. But blame me not if you come by a broken head through your wilfulness." ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... did work," observed Anne. "One feels as though one could forgive her all her sins after the success she made of her booth. It is a shame that so much ability and cleverness is choked and crowded out by wilfulness ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... of shame and decency which belong to the steady learning of a clean child from the days of the nursery have strongly impressed on the young soul that such regions are real, but that they must not be approached by curiosity or self-seeking wilfulness. This instinct itself brought something of ideal value, of respect and even of reverence into the most trivial life, however often it became ruined by foul companionship. To strengthen this instinctive emotion of mysterious respect, which ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Neptune, whose arms are about him to encourage the development of a wanton eccentricity. Certain weeds of the human bosom are prompt to flourish where safeness would seem to be guaranteed. Men, for instance, of stoutly independent incomes are prone to the same sort of wilfulness as Bull's, the salve abject submission to it which we behold in his tidal bodies of supporters. Neptune has done something. One thinks he has done much, at a rumour of his inefficiency to do the utmost. Spy you insecurity?—a possibility of invasion? ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was immediately sobered by the catastrophe, which he felt had been occasioned by his own wilfulness, ran aft to the taffrail; and when he saw the poor sailor struggling in the waves, impelled by his really fine nature, he darted overboard to save him; but he was not by any means a powerful swimmer, and, encumbered with his apparel, it was soon evident ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... and his beautiful body next to lifeless, though with his purpose unattained, owing to the thickness of his skull. Surely no person in hell was ever more unhappy than O'olo, and it is with grief one tells of him, for he was like a child, who, on being refused a mango throws away his banana in wilfulness—and with him, his banana was right conduct, and the respect of others, and the laws of God, leaving him nothing save ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... the politician, again, with a double reference in his thoughts, it would almost seem, to an erring State or an absent child, "one may break away in wilfulness or ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... to me," replied her mother. "I will manage him into it. Never tell a man anything, my dove, if thou wouldst have him do it. Men are such obstinate, perverse creatures, that as often as not they will just go the other way out of sheer wilfulness. Thou must always contrive to ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... accustomed to have her own way; for when she found her aunt was resolved her throat should be protected, she turned round, and in a moment tore the silk into halves. "Now, dear aunt, neither of our throats will suffer," she exclaimed; while Sarah Bond did not know whether she ought to combat her wilfulness or applaud the tender care of herself. It was soon talked of throughout the village, how wonderfully Sarah Bond was changed; how cheerful and even gay she had become. Instead of avoiding society, how willingly, yet how awkwardly, she entered into it; how eagerly ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... originalities?" Of course I didn't say that aloud, but just thought it to myself. And really I do wonder sometimes that your excellent father, when he taught you Latin, should have permitted you to take such liberties with our good mother tongue. But after all it is only another sign of your right Southern wilfulness. Do you not take even greater ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then, when it was so long from one Midsummer to another; what he felt when his school fellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays, when he didn't know how to amuse himself, and fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... arm elevated, and holding by a shroud; Captain Ahab stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship's ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate unsurrenderable .. wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... in spite of her wilfulness, and when she ended her little speech, by tucking her hand through the Judge's arm, and looking up at him mischievously, the ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... was effected later, the old cordial relations were never restored. There were times when the Prince called on Beethoven and was not received, when the latter was not in the mood for seeing him. Through his wilfulness, Beethoven lost the annuity which the Prince had settled on him on his coming to Vienna. The initiative in this matter was probably taken by Beethoven himself, as may be inferred from a letter he writes ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... from one to other of us with his old, whimsical look. "Praise God I do see again two souls, the most wilful and unruly in all this world, yet here stand ye that should be most thoroughly dead (what with the peril consequent upon wilfulness) but for a most especial Providence—there stand ye fuller of life and the joy o' ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... tri-nitro-toluol. Realizing that people could not be expected to use such a mouthful of a word, the chemists have suggested various pretty nicknames, trotyl, tritol, trinol, tolite and trilit, but the public, with the wilfulness it always shows in the matter of names, persists in calling it TNT, as though it were an author like G.B.S., or G.K.C, or F.P.A. TNT is the latest of these high explosives and in some ways the best of them. Picric acid ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... to Thy mercy, that Thou hast melted away my sins as it were ice. To Thy grace I ascribe also whatsoever I have not done of evil; for what might I not have done, who even loved a sin for its own sake? Yea, all I confess to have been forgiven me; both what evils I committed by my own wilfulness, and what by Thy guidance I committed not. What man is he, who, weighing his own infirmity, dares to ascribe his purity and innocency to his own strength; that so he should love Thee the less, as if he had less needed Thy mercy, whereby Thou remittest sins to those that turn to Thee? ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... true. The world as it now is cannot grow old. But a nation may grow old, may decay, and die. And the youth of a nation—its young people—carry with them its destinies. If there is in these more of wilfulness, of selfishness, of slothful and luxurious bias—less of energy, of gentleness, of kindness, of manliness, of purity—than there was in those who were young twenty—thirty years ago, then decrepitude is growing upon the nation. It is ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... slightest touch of prudery she has the true as well as the technical chastity; and she is really the victim of inauspicious stars, and of the misconduct of other people—the questionable wisdom of her own father; the folly of Nelvil's; the wilfulness in the bad sense, and the weakness of will in the good, of her lover; the sour virtue and borne temperament of Lady Edgermond. Almost all her faults and not a few of her misfortunes are due to the "sensibility" of her time, or the time a little ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... uncharitable expressions and uncomely reflections tossed to and fro as look like the effects of settled prejudice and resolved animosity, though we are much rather willing to account them the product of weakness than wilfulness: however, we must needs say, that, come whence they will, they have a tendency to make such a gap as we fear, if not timely prevented, will let out peace and order, and let in confusion and ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Sylvia's mother had let herself get stout—which seemed a dangerous mark of confidence in the male animal. But the major was fifteen years older than his wife, and she had a weak heart with which to intimidate him. Now and then the wilfulness of Castleman Lysle would become unendurable in the house, and his father would seize him and turn him over his knee. His screams would bring "Miss Margaret" flying to the rescue: "Major Castleman, how dare you spank one of my children?" And she ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... country, ma'am, don't understand what style is, or they would see the merits of our young one," he said to Mrs. Pendennis. "I call him ours, ma'am, for I bred him; and I am as proud of him as you are; and, bating a little wilfulness, and a little selfishness, and a little dandification, I don't know a more honest, or loyal, or gentle creature. His pen is wicked sometimes, but he is as kind as a young lady—as Miss Laura here—and I believe he would not ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Thus they flourish, the quacks of the day, the impostors of the multitude, and, perhaps, the dupes of themselves! But if Reason, that plain and simple attribute, in its uncontrouled state, unfettered either by prejudice or wilfulness, can be brought to bear on the question between them and mankind, how little will their claims appear! Reason, in the exertion of a capable authority, is taught to discriminate fairly, and test candidly, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... to do it so much the faster. Christ can crowd the work of years into hours. He did it with the dying thief. If the man who has set out early may take his time, it certainly cannot be so with us who have lost our time. If we have lost God's bright and happy presence by our wilfulness, what then? Unrelieved sadness? Nay, brethren, calmness, purity, may have gone from our heart; but all is not gone yet. Just as sweetness comes from the bark of the cinnamon when it is bruised, so can the spirit of the Cross of ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... first see what the earl intended doing—whether he would keep his force together or discharge his fleet. Sigurd Syr said, "It is for thee, king, to command; but," he adds, "I fear, from thy disposition and wilfulness, that thou wilt some day be betrayed by trusting to those great people, for they are accustomed of old to bid defiance to their sovereigns." There was no attack made, for it was soon seen that the earl's fleet was dispersing. Then King ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... man is the child of truth, begotten by virtue and kindness; when Nature in the temper of the spirit made even the balance of indifference. His eye is clear from blindness and his hand from bribery, his will from wilfulness and his heart from wickedness; his word and deed are all one; his life shows the nature of his love, his care is the charge of his conscience, and his comfort the assurance of his salvation. In the seat of justice he ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... uncle lost all patience, shook himself clear of Rosalie, who fell fainting to the ground, knocked each of his adversaries down in turn, and walked home to his quarters, very much disgusted with the world in general, and the wilfulness of French young ladies in particular. Of course he knew perfectly well it was not to end here. He sent for Grape, then a brother subaltern, and placed his ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... grateful look, an embrace of ardent affection, then, laying her cheek to his, "You dear, dear papa, you have made me feel very happy," she said, "and I'm sure I am much happier than I should be if you had let me go on indulging my bad temper and wilfulness. Oh, it's so nice to be able to run to my dear father whenever I want to, and always to be so kindly received that I can't feel any doubt that he loves me dearly. Ah, how I pity poor Maxie that he can't see you ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... be caused, in the end Louisiana was certain to fall into the grasp of the United States. [Footnote: Livingston to Madison, Sept. 1, 1802. Later Livingston himself became uneasy, fearing lest Napoleon's wilfulness might plunge him into an undertaking which, though certain to end disastrously to the French, might meanwhile cause great trouble ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... thought to their costume and think only of the audience; a few act as those who have mastered the secrets of a serious art, with deliberate subordination of themselves to the great end and motive of the play, spending themselves like good servants, indulging no wilfulness, obtruding no eccentricity, lending heart and tone and gesture to the perfect progress of the action. These have "found themselves," and have all the ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... the same thing in the conduct of public affairs, where they have been managed with rashness or wilfulness, corruption, ignorance or injustice; barely to relate the facts, at least, while they are fresh in memory, will as much reflect upon the persons concerned, as if we had told their names ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... law may be due to ignorance, to indifference or to wilfulness and viciousness. The effects will always ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... that was in the person of the last descendant, Jean. She bore the name of the Rutherfords, but she was the daughter of their trembling wives. At the first she was not wholly without charm. Neighbours recalled in her, as a child, a strain of elfin wilfulness, gentle little mutinies, sad little gaieties, even a morning gleam of beauty that was not to be fulfilled. She withered in the growing, and (whether it was the sins of her sires or the sorrows of her mothers) came to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sources of worry and vexation were on the increase; and, to make matters worse, patience was assuredly on the decline. Little things, once scarcely observed, now give sharp annoyance, there being rarely any discrimination and whether they were of accident, neglect, or wilfulness. ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... necessarily carry any unfavorable sense, but as absolute power in human hands is always abused, the unfavorable meaning predominates. Autocratic power knows no limits outside the ruler's self; arbitrary power, none outside the ruler's will or judgment, arbitrary carrying the implication of wilfulness and capriciousness. Despotic is commonly applied to a masterful or severe use of power, which is expressed more decidedly by tyrannical. Arbitrary may be used in a good sense; as, the pronunciation of proper names ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... father; and she, therefore, looked very red when she began her story. But she got courage as she went on, and told it all, just as it is related in the last chapter; only she passed slightly over the wilfulness which her brother had shown in opening the cage door. She finished by saying, that as they had given away their suppers, they had agreed together not to eat another; "and we settled not to tell our reasons till the things ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... upon his most ancient and dearest friend, but we are united by a tie that has the interest of a singular and solemn mystery. My reason tells me that I am punished for much early and wanton pride and wilfulness, in being the parent of a child that few men in any condition of life could wish to claim, while my heart would fain flatter me with being the father of a son of whom an emperor alight be proud! Thou art, and thou art not, of my blood. Without these proofs of Maso's, and the testimony of the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... their style; it has also been to render them sometimes defective in structure and sometimes obscure in meaning. If they are not glib, neither are they always clean-cut or direct. Along with her generous intelligence she has a good deal of the stubborn wilfulness of genius, and she has never achieved a quite satisfactory fusion of the two qualities. She wears something like the sibyl's robes and speaks with something like the sibyl's strong accents, but the cool, hard discipline ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... understood. This attack of his on the established had seemed to her just so much wilfulness of opinion. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... looks double as old as papa, do you?" said grandmamma. "Ah, it is trouble that has aged her. You would not wonder at all those lines and wrinkles if you knew all the sorrow and grief her own poor boys have given her through their sin and wilfulness!" ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... behind me. Being quite dispirited with toil, and wholly overcome by grief and despair, I lay down between two ridges, and heartily wished I might there end my days. I bemoaned my desolate widow and fatherless children. I lamented my own folly and wilfulness, in attempting a second voyage, against the advice of all my friends and relations. In this terrible agitation of mind, I could not forbear thinking of Lilliput, whose inhabitants looked upon me as the greatest prodigy that ever appeared in the world; where I was able to draw ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... she had the garden turned up from end to end, despite Bovary's remonstrances. However, he was glad to see her at last manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger she displayed more wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel Mere Rollet, the nurse, who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better off for teeth than a cannibal. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... confession be public, that warning may be taken from my example; and may the sincerity with which I acknowledge my offence, and the tears which I have shed, efface it from the accumulated records of the wilfulness ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... encounter any hindrance from without. There is very little action or intrigue. The dialogue, witty, brilliant, and ingenious, is all-important, and the denouement often depends upon a misunderstanding, so easy to explain that one sometimes wonders at the wilfulness of the characters in failing to set the matter right until the end.[105] As in all of his plays, marriage follows closely upon the solution of the difficulty; it has been said that his lovers "s'aiment le plus tard ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... what we call "the soul" wherever the soul exists, feels no sort of shock or surprise when we appeal to its own "conscience," or when it appeals to the "conscience" of its child or its dog or even of its cat, or when it displays anger with its trees or its flowers for their apparent wilfulness and errancy. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... grew more crowded; the talk more furious. Lord Glaramara insisted, with the wilfulness of the man who can do as he pleases, that Constance Bledlow—whoever else came and went—should stay ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... extremely salutary personal intercourse with men of scientific leading which my Father had enjoyed at the British Museum and at the Royal Society came to an end. His next act was to burn his ships down to the last beam and log out of which a raft could have been made. By a strange act of wilfulness, he closed the doors ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... walk though standing still. There was a defiant light in her deep brown eyes, that sort of "I don't care" disposition which our grandmothers used to say would take us to the gallows. Defiance, wilfulness, rebellion, was expressed in the very way she stood on the bank, a little higher than they were, and able to look over ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... and for the possession of the good which alone can remove it. It is certainly not the case in this world, that bad men are always disposed to repent and turn to God in proportion as they suffer from their own wilfulness, and become poor from idleness, broken in health from dissipation, alienated from human hearts by their selfishness, or pass, with a constantly increasing anguish, through all the stages of outcasts from the family; dwellers among the profligate; companions in crime; occupiers ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... thou hast placed the governance of thy Kingdom in the hands of inexperienced youth and hast neglected the elders and hast dissipated thy moneys and the moneys of the monarchy, and thou hast lavished all thy treasure upon wilfulness and carnal pleasuring." Zayn al-Asnam, awaking from the slumber of negligence, forthright accepted his mother's counsel and, faring forth at once to the Diwan,[FN15] he entrusted the management of the monarchy ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... or else her mind was full of other things; for after a dignified silence of a few minutes she left Rose and went to her own quarters. Perhaps the slight antagonistic spirit which was raised by Rose's talk came in aid of her wavering inclinations, or brought back her mind to its old tone of wilfulness; for she decided at once that she would go and see Winifred. She had a further reason for going, she said to herself, in the matter of the money which she wished to convey to Winthrop's hands. She did not want to send Clam with it; she did not ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... I thought, as we passed on—the very embodiment of a certain kind of wilfulness. She would not resist or chafe at authority, but, with an easy, good-natured, don't-care expression, would do as she pleased, "though the heavens fell." A little later there was a heavy rumble of thunder in the west, and we met again the young woman whose ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... how wicked she was. She knew, now, the wilfulness of her sins, and the merciful interposition of the river's inviolable strength. Her sight of the mission boat had awakened in her soul the knowledge that she must go out and talk to the good man on board, confess her naughtiness, and beg the Prophet for instruction. ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... paler. She had struggled in a blind child-fashion to maintain a religion that would embrace her manifold life, but now it appeared that, after all, Ephraim endorsed the general view; his refusal to comply openly with it came of wilfulness, not unbelief. The stronghold of her peace was gone. "My papa never spoke to me about religion in that way, but I don't ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... daughter's guardians, and had been so from the first moment of her widowhood, the truth being that she was jealous of their legal powers over Aileen's fortune and destiny, and determined, notwithstanding, to have her own way with her own child. The wilfulness and caprice of the father, which had taken such strange and desperate forms in Rose Delaney, appeared shorn of all its attraction and romance in the smaller, more conventional, and meaner egotisms ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward |
