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Willful   Listen
adjective
Willful  adj.  
1.
Of set purpose; self-determined; voluntary; as, willful murder. "In willful poverty chose to lead his life." "Thou to me Art all things under heaven, all places thou, Who, for my willful crime, art banished hence."
2.
Governed by the will without yielding to reason; obstinate; perverse; inflexible; stubborn; refractory; as, a willful man or horse.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Willful" Quotes from Famous Books



... ink. As she expected, the negress objected at once, bidding her be still, but Nina declared her intention of talking as fast and as loudly as she could, until her wish was gratified. Then Hannah threatened calling Arthur, thereupon the willful little lady rejoined, "I'll scream like murder, if you do, and burst every single blood-vessel I've got, so bring me the paper, please, or shall I got it myself," and she made a motion as if the would leap upon the floor, while ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... dearest love. You have all been good, obedient, and cheerful, and have lightened many a heavy load. If when it pleased Providence to send us into this wilderness, it had been part of my lot to contend with willful and disobedient children; if there had been murmuring and repining at our trials; discontent and quarreling among yourselves, how much more painful would have been our situation. On the contrary, by your good humor and ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... into court. A Mrs. Blany maintained that Doctor Pott had denied her a piece of hog flesh, and that his refusal had caused her to miscarry. The court accepted Mrs. Blany's contention that she believed the denial of the hog flesh caused her distress, but did not hold Pott guilty of willful neglect. ...
— Medicine in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Thomas P. Hughes

... while Lillias possessed the family gift of eloquence and charmed her audience by her witty, forcible and telling speeches. So numerous and so well attended have been these meetings during these and subsequent years, that it is impossible to exonerate men and women from the charge of willful blindness if they still misconstrue the plain facts ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... difficult to name any form of act or submission which may not be the outcome of incipient or limited disease. The practical difficulty is to avoid, on the other hand, treating the fruits of disease as willful offenses; while, on the other, we do not allow the supposition or presumption of disease to be employed as an excuse for wrongdoing. It is, of course, clear that there may be perfect method in such ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... part of the commissioners of the land office. They assumed to contain a statement of facts, evidencing on the part of the commissioners great indiscretion and want of judgment, if not corruption, in the sale of the public lands, and they charged the commissioners with a willful violation of the law. These resolutions, however, excepted Colonel Burr from any participation in the maleconduct complained of, inasmuch as the minutes of the board proved that he was not present at the meetings ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... in her agitation. Men of Lord Dreever's type appeal to the motherly instinct of women. As a man, his lordship was a negligible quantity. He did not count. But as a willful child, to be kept out of trouble, he had a ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... wonders God wrought among themselves and among their enemies, fell and glaringly sinned; not according to the measure of the mere weakness and imperfection of human nature, but they sinned disobediently and in willful contempt of God. Hardened in unbelief unto insensibility, they ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... swaying, was playing upon a violin and making unseemly sweet eyes at the public—the eyes of a man-prostitute. And everything together—this abundance of tiresome electric lights, the exaggeratedly bright toilettes of the ladies, the odours of modish, spicy perfumes, this ringing music, with willful slowings up of the tempo, with voluptuous swoonings in the transitions, with the tempestuous passages screwed up—everything fitted the one to the other, forming a general picture of insane and stupid luxury, a setting for an imitation of ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin

... to imagine the joyful moment when her quest would be crowned with success, when she would see herself face to face with the handsome, willful girl, whom she yet must utterly fail to understand; for it would have been completely impossible for Cecile herself, under any circumstances, to treat her father as Lovedy had treated ...
— The Children's Pilgrimage • L. T. Meade

... certain ermines or furs be placed in a certain position, we style them a judge; and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin we entitle a bishop." In Sartor Resartus Carlyle let himself go. It was willful, uncouth, amorphous, titanic. There was something monstrous in the combination, the hot heart of the Scot married to the transcendental dream of Germany. It was not English, said the reviewers; it was not sense; ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... perhaps she now gave her whole attention to the other." I let the palm leaf slip back, and drew down a fresh one, Phyllis watching me with interest. "The child the fairy left was still a child, for all her womanhood. She was willful and capricious; she rode, she fenced, she hunted; she was as unlike other women as could be. At last the King, who was her guardian, grew weary of her caprices. So he commanded that she marry. But what had the fairy done with the other child, the twin sister ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath

... into a low knot slightly eccentric in shape, and recut a bang. Lavinia's eyes seemed bluer, her delicate flush more elusive; the shape of her face appeared changed, it was more pointed and had a new willful charm. ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... have his neck and heels tied together," it does not seem to have occurred to him to plead that he had never entered into the social compact; nor yet when the same wretched man, ten years later, was by a jury convicted of willful murder, and sentenced to death and executed. Logically, under the social-compact theory, it would have been competent for those dissenting from this compact to enter into another, and set up a competing civil government on the same ground; but what would have been the practical value of this ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... glowing in her rounding cheek, and eyes snapping like splintered sapphires, she rose to her feet, with her pretty shoulders lifted, her small hands and white teeth both tightly clenched, and took a step towards him. Even in her attitude there was a reminiscence of her willful childhood, although still blended with the provincial actress whom he had seen on the stage only an hour ago. Thoroughly alarmed at her threat, in his efforts to conceal his feelings he was not above a weak retaliation. Stepping back, ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... The most willful and damnable lies were brought up against me. Many things which had been said and done in moments of amusement and jocularity were remembered, as though I had said and done those things for wicked purposes. Everything that could be discovered or invented to injure me was laid ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee

... eagerness to find the murderer seemed but throwing dust in their eyes. Not a doubt lingered in the minds of the coroner or his jury, and before sunset that day Sir Everard Kingsland was on his way to Worrel Jail to stand his trial at the coming assizes for the willful murder ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... submarines. The bill readily passed the House and commanded the support of seven-eighths of the Senate; but a dozen pacifists, pro-Germans and professional obstructionists, whom the President denounced as "a little group of willful men," filibustered it to death in the Senate in the last hours of the session. Almost the first act of the President after his inauguration, however, was the preparation to arm the ships ...
— Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements • Frank B. Lord and James William Bryan

... represented the Chicago District continuously from March 4, 1843 to March 4, 1851; and again from March 4, 1853 to March 4, 1855. He was endowed by nature with a mind as strong as his body, and that was of Titanic proportions. He was an ardent partisan in behalf of any cause he espoused; was willful, aggressive, and dominating. He was, at the same time, genial and kindly in many relations of life, not without gifts of both wit and humor, and courageous to the point of absolute fearlessness. He had been well ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... in many cases did not include the Negro children. The law concerning the establishment of Negro schools was abused here and there throughout the entire period. As late as 1876 the State Superintendent complained[21] that in many cases through ignorance of the law and in other cases through willful disobedience of the law, schools for the Negroes had not been established. In the first case, he reported that merely explaining the law had the desired effect and in the other case it was necessary to call the assistance of county clerks and of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... himself down headlong. Before he reached the ground, however, Elijah came and caught him, and reproached him, as he caught him up, with having brought him a distance of four hundred miles to save him from an act of willful self-destruction. The Rabbi told him that it was his poverty which had given to the temptation the power of seduction. Thereupon Elijah gave him a vessel full of ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... prejudice against the foreigner is a serious hindrance to the regeneration of China. "This fact emphasizes the need for using every means possible for the breaking down of such a prejudice. Every careless or willful wound to Chinese susceptibilities, or unnecessary crossing of Chinese superstitions, retards our own work and increases the dead wall of opposition on the part of ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... rather a hard state of things that the very peasants whom he was striving with all his power to serve should, by their insubordination—arising sometimes, it was true, from ignorance, but too often from willful misconduct—do even more than their masters to frustrate his beneficent designs. These troubles went on from time to time, till eventually a deputation of three hundred serfs made their way to St. Petersburg ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... struggle for a common aim. But if that day ever comes, it will be in the far future, and let us hope that then childish energies may be free to find other channels of expression and childish cooeperation be exerted for happier aims. The child of today is often temporarily willful and disobedient, but on the whole he (and more often she) is pathetically patient and long-suffering under all sorts of hardships and injustices, and has no idea of anything like an industrial rebellion. Indeed ...
— The Trade Union Woman • Alice Henry

... and a slow growth. Evils in one age painfully sow the seed that is to come up good in another. The historian, and still more the critical commentator on his own times, needs to be patient, calm, judicial, hopeful. Mr. Carlyle is impatient, fervid, willful, nay, despotic, and he is not hopeful, not hopeful enough. One healthily hopeful, and genuinely faithful, would not be ever betaking him to the past as a refuge from the present; would not tauntingly throw ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... coroner's jury had been summoned, who, after brief deliberation, returned a verdict of willful murder at the hands of some person or persons unknown, while engaged in the commission ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... girded on manhood along with his khaki and his Sam Browne belt and started bravely up out of the pit which his own willful folly ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... met with a situation that no amount of pluck or effort on their part could control. This was the most important experience of their whole lives, for their country was about to be betrayed! Once Barbara stamped her foot in her impatience. How dared Harriet Hamlin be so willful, so headstrong? Bab's face was white with anxiety and suspense. Her lips twitched nervously. Then in a flash her whole expression changed. The color came back to her cheeks, the light to her eyes. At the eleventh hour the ...
— The Automobile Girls At Washington • Laura Dent Crane

... mother should have printed and hung up, so she may read it every time she nurses her child, the following motto: "DON'T OVERFEED BABY." Few, if any, babies die of willful starvation: many die as a result of overfeeding. Mistaken kindness and lack of judgment are responsible for one-half of all the troubles of infancy. Babies require much less than is constantly given them. The stomach of a baby at ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... of orders, Six months' confinement at hard involving willful defiance labor and forfeiture of $10 per of the authority of a month for the same period; for noncommissioned officer in noncommissioned officer, reduction charge of a guard or ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... it was in my power to escape a moral penalty, by willful ignorance, was revealed to me, that I could continue the privilege of sinning with impunity. His answer was complicated, and he quoted several passages from the Scriptures. Presently he began to sing, and I grew lonesome; the life within me seemed ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard

... sacrifices to fashion. The spirit of fashion is not the beautiful, but the willful; not the graceful, but the fantastic; not the superior in the abstract, but the superior in the worst of all concretes,—the ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... as the old story of the two who fought over the shield with a gold side and a silver side; because, as neither could see both sides at once, each considered the statement of the other a willful falsehood. Let us try, at least, to bear in mind that our relationship to this universe has been of long enough duration to permit of the evolution, and establishment of many series of laws which do not, as would seem ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... systems, including formal banking, wire transfers, debit and other stored value cards, online value storage and value transfer systems, the informal hawala system, and cash couriers. Terrorist organizations may be able to take advantage of such financial systems either as the result of willful complicity by financial institutions or as the result of poor oversight and monitoring practices. Domestically, we have hardened our financial systems against terrorist abuse by promulgating effective regulations, requiring financial institutions ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - September 2006 • United States

... besides, of wonderful beauty. It was this that found her favor in Malamalama's sight, for she was without family, and what Kanaka blood she possessed was that of slaves; but the chief must needs have his way, being a man of imperious temper and willful under advice; and so the little out-islander was married to him and elevated to ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... upper right-hand corner of Titian's Peter Martyr. I cannot in any of his works trace the slightest influence of Salvator; and I am not surprised at it, for though Salvator was a man of far higher powers than either Vandevelde or Claude, he was a willful and gross caricaturist. Turner would condescend to be helped by feeble men, but could not be corrupted by false men. Besides, he had never himself seen classical life, and Claude was represented to him as ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... wild swans passed, voyaging north To their nest-places on Himala's breast. Calling in love-notes down their snowy line The bright birds flew, by fond love piloted; And Devadatta, cousin of the Prince, Pointed his bow, and loosed a willful shaft Which found the wide wing of the foremost swan Broad-spread to glide upon the free blue road, So that it fell, the bitter arrow fixed, Bright scarlet blood-gouts staining the pure plumes. Which seeing, Prince Siddartha took the bird Tenderly up, rested it in his lap,— ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... had he wavered in his determination to make this lady his wife. Pride was at the root of his being,—pride and a deep self-will; though because they were so sunken, and because poisonous roots can flower most deceivingly, he neither called himself nor was called of others a proud and willful man. He wished Evelyn for his wife; nay, more, though on May Day he had shown her that he loved her not, though in June he had offered her a love that was only admiring affection, yet in the past month at Westover he had come almost to believe that he loved her truly. That ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston

... me. I had good advice from my little sister, but I was willful. Never mind, Eve, I needn't to blush for loving her; she is ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... Tuttle. You furnished Theodore Robinson with information concerning my movements and, in addition to your burglary at Branchville, you have made yourself accessory to a plot to commit a willful murder." ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele

... words, which an inimitable carelessness made doubly effective, the willful absurdities of government and the palpable wrongs of society, to question which had seemed before almost a heresy. But Lowell's humor was the chrism, snatching together parallels whose apparent inequalities, yet real justice, were powerfully convincing. He ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... inches lower, and I was not killed, I will consecrate my life to taming the willful heart of Blue Beard and to vanquishing my rivals, be they ten, twenty, thirty, one hundred or ten thousand," replied the Gascon, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue

... was a child who was willful, and would not do at her mother wished. For this reason God had no pleasure in her, and let her become ill, and no doctor could do her any good, and in a short time she lay on her death-bed. When she had been lowered into her grave, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... declared that he would go to Denver and consult another physician. When he told his physician what his intentions were, the doctor advised him not to attempt the trip himself, for he was too sick, but to send for the physician. The sick man was willful and forceful, and he was also afraid of the cost; and, being a plucky fellow, he declared that he could go just as well as not and that ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.

... a mouth, and so strange a way of using it—had apparently given up the pursuit. Grom's curiosity burned within him, and he was angry at the woman because she could not speak to him in his own language, or at least in that of the Bow-legs. It seemed to him willful obstinacy on her part to refuse to understand the Bow-legs' tongue. He stooped over her, and roughly examined one of the wounds with his huge fingers. She winced, but made no complaint, only covering her baby with her hair and her arms in terror lest ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... you scream to high heaven that I opened it? And put me on a tape for willful inurbanity? For deliberate intersexual ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... to rain it back on him some day," cried Don Ippolito with willful levity, and the stream leaped into the moonlight and seemed to hang there like a tangled skein of silver. "But how shall I shut it off when you are gone?" asked the young girl, looking ruefully at the ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... but the warmest love was certainly for the child who had the Earle face. She was imperious and willful, generous to a fault, impatient of all control; but her greatest fault, Mrs. Vyvian said, was a constant craving for excitement; a distaste for and dislike of quiet and retirement. She would ride the most restive horse, she would do anything to break the ennui and monotony ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... gradually bringing them,—that its overweening loyalty placed a great country like Canada in s very silly attitude, the attitude of an overgrown, unmanly boy, clinging to the maternal skirts, and though spoilt and willful, without any character of his own. The constant reference of local hopes to that remote centre beyond seas, the test of success by the criterions of a necessarily different civilization, the social and intellectual dependence implied by traits that meet the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... indeed prefer to lean heavily on the shoulders of an all-wise Providence and let it go with the consoling assurance that, as to a solution, "the Lord will provide." But the echoes of recriminations shouted by each side against the other; the cries of foul play; the accusations of willful injustice; the threats of complete annihilation of capital by organized labor, of organized labor by capital—must reach to heaven itself, and Providence might well pause in dismay. Constructive good ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... rebates was in total contempt of all the statutes. Under the laws of the state it was also a distinct violation of certain provisions recently passed by the legislature to prevent railroad trusts. There was no question that he had in his hands evidence sufficient to convict the company of willful, intelligent violation of the law of the commission and the law of the ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... Barbara turned a deaf ear to what she was saying, thinking only of Ethie, gone; Ethie, driven to such strait, that she must either run away or die; Ethie, the little brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked, willful, imperious girl, whom she loved so much for the very willful imperiousness which always went hand in hand with such pretty fits of penitence, and sorrow, and remorse for the misdeed, that not to love her was impossible. Where was she now, and why had she not come at once to the ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... functions of the several parts of the brain there is still very considerable doubt. With disease or willful destruction of the cerebral tissue the personal initiative is affected— the animal becomes more distinctly a mechanism; the cerebellum is probably concerned in the coordination of muscular movements; and the medulla is a centre for the higher and more complicated respiratory ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells

... the bitter opposition of father and friends. The willful young heiress insisted on giving to the handsome officer from St. Mary's the preference over all her other admirers. It may be that a reaction from the strict rules and the severe tenets of her education gave to this young scion of another ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell

... of Habersham, All though the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried, Abide, abide, The willful waterweeds held me thrall, The laving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay, The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide, Here in the hills of Habersham, Here ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... evidence. The police have made an exhaustive search in all places where the razor or other weapon or instrument might by any possibility have been concealed, including the bedclothes, the mattress, the pillow, and the street into which it might have been dropped. But all theories involving the willful concealment of the fatal instrument have to reckon with the fact or probability that death was instantaneous, also with the fact that there was no blood about the floor. Finally, the instrument used was in all likelihood ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill

... or twice, the willful negative was continually upon my lips; doubtless a symptom of what was dormant within—a will perhaps not quite so aggressive as it was obstinate. But she meant only to praise me and please me; and dearly I loved to stay with her in her cozy up-stairs room across the lane, that the sun ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... preliminary examination took place. Ambrose and Silas Meadowcroft were charged before the magistrate with the willful murder of John Jago. I was cited to appear as one of the witnesses; and, at Naomi's own request, I took the poor girl into court, and sat by her during the proceedings. My host also was present in his invalid-chair, with his ...
— The Dead Alive • Wilkie Collins

... home. I had always been obstinate and willful, not to say pigheaded, and being steeped in tales of wrongs done to my house and country, and with the crass assurance of a young sprig fresh from untrammeled university life, I began to give vent to utterances that were not ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves

... and, as he becomes acquainted with them, the savage himself admits this. He admires the superior acquirements of the civilized man, and it is with pride that he will adopt such usages as do not interfere too much with his sloth, his passions, or his prejudices. But as the willful child or the idle schoolboy, who was never taught obedience, and never made to do anything which of his own free will he was not inclined to do, would in most cases obtain neither education nor manners; so it is ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... white men? She was, indeed, ignorant of the peculiar vengeance that they desired to wreak on her husband and all his race; but the malevolent character of the Nausetts had been sufficiently manifested in their repeated and destructive attacks on the settlement, and their willful desecration of the graves of the exiles, to awaken the most poignant fears in her breast. Rodolph, too, was absent, and Brewster was still at the Wampanoge village; and where should she seek for succor or ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... general considerations affecting the validity of destructive criticism. One thing has been clearly proved in the course of the controversy, that the book can have but little historical value when not corroborated. Still there is a wide gap between inaccuracy and willful fabrication. Until the best judges of Italian style are agreed that the 'Chronicle' could not have been written in the second decade of the fourteenth century, the arguments adduced from an examination ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... faces, dispositions, characters,—in all things they were as unlike as the virgins of the parable. One of them was wise, and the other was very foolish. The one was a follower, a learner; he never forgot his second lesson, to follow the white flag. The other followed from the first only his own willful head and feet, and discovered too late that obedience is life. Until the bear found him, I have no doubt he was thinking, in his own dumb, foolish way, that obedience is only for the weak and ignorant, and that government is only an unfair advantage which all the wilderness ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... remember where we are: In France, amongst a fickle wavering nation; If they perceive dissension in our looks And that within ourselves we disagree, How will their grudging stomachs be provoked To willful disobedience, and rebel! Beside, what infamy will there arise When foreign princes shall be certified That for a toy, a thing of no regard, King Henry's peers and chief nobility Destroy'd themselves and lost the realm of France O, think upon the conquest of my father, My tender years; and ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]

... picture of this world into which she had ridden so confidently, yet she was afraid to dwell upon it for fear that its beauty would seem to mock her. For had not nature conspired against her? Yet she knew that she alone was to blame—she, obstinate, willful, heedless. Had not her father warned her? "Wait," he had said, and the words flamed before her eyes—"wait until I go. Wait a month. The West is a new country; anything, everything, can happen to you ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer

... longer Glory prompts thee to applause; No longer Virtue breathing in thy breast, With all her conscious majesty confest, Still bright and brighter wakes the almighty flame, To rouse the feeble, and the willful tame, And where she sees the catching glimpses roll, Spreads the strong blaze, and all involves the soul; But cold restraints thy conscious fancy chill, And formal passions mock thy struggling will; Or, if thy Genius e'er forget ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... half million graves, wherein they had buried their slain, their bravest and best beloved, they forgot all bitterness for joy that peace had come. No people in the world had greater reason for severity than the victors in this strife. War, willful, unprovoked, without the shadow of justification, had been thrust upon them. This had been preceded by a series of usurpations the most unblushing ever endured by a free people. These were a part of the plan of a band of traitors, who had plotted for years to overthrow the ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride

... Joseph Charles Emmanuel Waldstein-Wartenberg, Chamberlain to Her Imperial Majesty, descendant of the great Wallenstein, was the elder of the eleven children of Emmanuel Philibert, Count Waldstein, and Maria Theresa, Princess Liechtenstein. Very egotistic and willful in his youth, careless of his affairs, and an imprudent gambler, at thirty years of age he had not yet settled down. His mother was disconsolated that her son could not separate himself from occupations "so little suited to his spirit ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... delusion, error, of the worst ignorance, medical sciolism, and (alas! too late the plea of error was removed from my eyes) from terror and utter perplexity and infirmity—sinful infirmity, indeed, but yet not a willful sinfulness—that I brought my neck under it. Oh, may the God to whom I look for mercy through Christ, show mercy on the author of the 'Confessions of an Opium-eater,' if, as I have too strong reason to believe, his book ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... He was a likable chap, popular with young and old of both sexes. His good looks came from his mother, together with the equable disposition that promised to be his as he grew older and learned better to control his emotions. When a youngster he had been willful at times and prone to flashes of fiery temper, a heritage, beyond doubt, from his father's chronic irascibility, but the discipline of boarding-school and college had taught him to restrain at least ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... our train, which carries us through the Red Bank Cut to Ellerslie Station, where occurred the first accident of a serious character which has happened on this road for eighteen years, and which was due only to a willful violation of orders by an old and very trusted conductor. At Ellerslie are the Edgemoor Iron-works of Messrs. William Sellers & Co., where every known improvement in the manufacture of iron is being tested and applied. The next curve in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... Miss Thornton," said Annie; "all right, toss it here." Then, as Hester failed to comply, she ran back, knocking her schoolfellows out of place, and, snatching the parcel from Hester's hand, threw it high in the air. This was a piece of not only willful audacity and disobedience, but it even savored of the profane, for Annie's step was on the threshold of the chapel, and the parcel fell with a noisy bang on the floor some ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade

... with all the ardor of a young girl's first love. But when I reflected that I was a slave, and that the laws gave no sanction to the marriage of such, my heart sank within me. My lover wanted to buy me; but I knew that Dr. Flint was too willful and arbitrary a man to consent to that arrangement. From him, I was sure of experiencing all sort of opposition, and I had nothing to hope from my mistress. She would have been delighted to have got rid of me, but not in that way. It would have relieved her mind of a burden if she could have ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)

... Niagara (may the Lord pity such) may still be rewarded by learning that this river is the boundary between the United States and Canada and was therefore the scene of many stirring conflicts between the Mother Country and her young but plucky, wayward, willful child. Nearby, on the Canadian side, are the battlefields of Chippewa, Lundy's Lane and Queenstown Heights. On the steep bank of the river on the top of a well-wooded height stands a graceful Doric shaft erected by the British in memory of their commander, General Brock, who fell ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... Ellis interrupted the plea. The glare with which that employee favored his boss fairly convicted the seamed and graying editor of willful and captious immaturity. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... I cannot help but think of the willful proliferation of idle functionaries, pensioners and other receivers of public funds which today vote for the party which represents their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... neatly clad and clean-faced, and there was nothing perhaps but the long black hair and bright black eyes to remind him of his former apparition. "Are you busy?" she asked; "can you come with me?" and on his signifying his readiness, in her old willful way ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... she yielded, and told me the story of her short, willful life. This, then, was her poor, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... colors of the rainbow were scattered in bright confusion, united to relieve the gloomy splendor of the enormous mantel, deep heavy cornices, and the complicated carvings of the massive woodwork which cumbered the walls. A brisk fire of wood was burning on the hearth, in compliment to the willful prejudice of Miss Plowden, who had maintained, in her most vivacious manner, that sea-coal was "only tolerable for blacksmiths and Englishmen." In addition to the cheerful blaze from the hearth, two waxen lights, in candlesticks of massive silver, were lending their aid to enliven ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting exceedingly to be dabbling in water, insomuch that an historian of the day gravely tells us that many of his townswomen grew to have webbed fingers like unto a duck; but this I look upon to be a mere sport of fancy, or, what is worse, a willful misrepresentation. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... what was called the burning of Rome,—a great conflagration, by which a large part of the city was destroyed. It was very generally believed at the time that this destruction was the work of Nero himself,—the fruit of his reckless and willful depravity. There is, it is true, no very positive proof that the fire was set by Nero's orders, though one of the historians of the time states that confidential servants belonging to Nero's household were seen, when the fire commenced, going from house to house with combustibles ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott

... wrong, and could not deny it, and yet because the parson's sermon fitted him rather close he took the sulks, and vowed he would never hear the good man again. It was his own loss, but he wouldn't listen to reason, but was as willful as a pig. ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... been enriched with a national poetry which was not English but American, would have been a treasure beyond price." With which, as whet and foil, we shall proceed to ventilate more definitely certain no doubt willful opinions. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... were a command, his aspect one of stern resolve, though the intensest longing mingled with the dark look he cast on the approaching pair. The tone, the glance displeased his willful wife, who loved to use her power and exact obedience where she had failed to win affection, often ruling imperiously when a tender word would have made her ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott

... a doughnut that that little fool tricked us by feigning unconsciousness, and has heard every word we uttered. Of course, it's to be regretted, but that doesn't change my plans a particle. I'll be the husband of the willful little heiress in an hour's ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey

... imperfect in some of its details; it may be misunderstood and opposed; it may not always be faithfully applied; its designs may sometimes miscarry through mistake or willful intent; it may sometimes tremble under the assaults of its enemies or languish under the misguided zeal of impracticable friends; but if the people of this country ever submit to the banishment of its underlying principle from the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... unusually disagreeable—gazing wistfully in the direction where, against the sky-line, rose the clump of plane-trees, under which hot-headed, warm-hearted Turnus was resting after his brief life of storms. Then she would think of that unhappy mother who, with every impulse of a willful nature, loved her child so dearly, till she would begin to doubt—it was very wrong of her—if Amata or the match-making gods were most ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... and flying feet whirl their owner about a ballroom without making him conscious of every muscular extension and contraction, but this facility comes only to those who, in the beginning, fix an undivided mind upon what they are doing, and who never fall into willful negligence. ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne

... censure from the records. When Chief Justice Marshall issued a decree against Georgia which did not suit him, Jackson, according to tradition, blurted out that Marshall could go ahead and enforce his own orders. To the end he pursued his willful way, finally even ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... discomfiture of Mrs. Grey, and the vexation of Mr. Grey, who, more vexed at the contest than the defeat, usually said, "Pshaw! you don't know how to manage that child." Thus Pauline, an only child, beautiful, gifted and willful, idolized by both ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... down the hills of Habersham, All through the valleys of Hall, The rushes cried, "Abide, abide," The willful waterweeds held me thrall, The loving laurel turned my tide, The ferns and the fondling grass said, "Stay," The dewberry dipped for to work delay, And the little reeds sighed, "Abide, abide," Here in the hills of Habersham, Here ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... par excellence proud, ambitious, and willful. These words, generally supposed to describe positive vices of the mind, in fact are only the overaction of certain very valuable portions of our nature, since one can conceive all three to raise a man immensely in the scale of moral being, simply by being applied to right objects. He who is ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... responsible to God according to its opportunity and enlightenment. (3) God judges people according to their acts, not according to religious creeds or ceremonies. (4) Though a merciful God, Jehovah will and must finally punish willful and continuous evil doers. (5) Sin is infidelity to God and brings pain to his heart. (6) All punishment is administered to the end that the sinful may repent and be forgiven. (7) Jehovah loves men ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... with Seneca. To both were committed children, heirs apparent to thrones,—willful, cruel, disobedient, and hard to control. In Seneca's pupil the seeds of cruelty remained, to germinate into the awful tyrant; in Fenelon's the evil seemed to be permanently eradicated, and the result was a prince with generous impulses and noble intentions. And this result was ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... not, little Mabel, Whilst thou art in the wood, Of dwarfish, willful brownies, But of the ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... so. He had also proved that a man may be sewn in a sack and drowned in a river without committing willful suicide or being ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... "The Gospel Advocate asserts that 'the judicial law of Moses being still in force, no prince or law ought to save the lives of (inter alios) heretics, willful breakers of the Sabbath, neglecters of the sacrament without just reason.' Well may the historian of the Puritans (Neale) say, 'Both parties agreed in asserting the necessity of a uniformity of public worship, and of using the sword of the magistrate ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... course, was a homicide. It usually was. From Beta, Constabulary Fifteen, Lieutenant George Lunt. Jack Holloway—so old Jack had cut another notch on his gun—Cold Creek Valley, Federation citizen, race Terran human; willful killing of a sapient being, to wit Kurt Borch, Mallorysport, Federation citizen, race Terran human. Complainant, Leonard Kellogg, the same. Attorney of record for the defendant, Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard. The last time Jack Holloway had killed anybody, it ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper

... glumness; the willful making the worst of things (in themselves pretty bad, I admit), that mark the novels of eminent moderns who thrive on their inexpensive pessimism, and have a name as Psychologues! Ohe, les Psychologues! Does anyone ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... different type had no opportunity of coming to the surface. The successful pioneer Democrat was not a pleasant type in many respects, but he was saved from many of the worst aspects of his limited experience and ideas by a certain innocence, generosity, and kindliness of spirit. With all his willful aggressiveness he was a companionable person who meant much better towards his fellows than he ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... wrong turning of the road? No-o.... Awareness carries with it its commands and penalties. A problem must have an answer. Conscious and willful beings beyond his own strength and importance became the only answer open to him at that stage of his mental evolution. And served the important need of bringing order to chaos. Let all things he could not do, and therefore could not understand, be attributed to those higher beings. Without such ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

... responsibility had been disregarded. John Adams attributed all the distresses at this period to "a downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation;" an ignorance not yet dispelled. More truly could he have said that our distresses arose from willful neglect of the principle of accountability in the ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fall, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremist agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one willful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse." (Anglican Difficulties, p. 190.)] The valuation that ignores all natural goods but one is unreal, inhuman, fanatical; it leads when unchecked to the emasculated life of the anaemic mediaeval saint ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... a willful man must have him way; and since you are so qualmish about a little bloodletting, we must try another plan. If I release you—for short as the time is, I can do it—will you promise me to go direct to the king this very night, and inform him of all ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... possession of the girl; she had not given fifteen minutes to downright work, but had dawdled and lounged in a most exasperating manner, and at times exhibited a dullness that was very hard to bear patiently, because Marion felt so certain that it was either feigned or the result of willful inattention. Several times had Marion to speak decidedly to the young ladies in her seat, once or twice directly to Grace herself, and at last, losing all patience with her, ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden

... statutory damages could be raised from $10,000 to $50,000, and in which the minimum recovery could be reduced from $250 to $100. The basic principle underlying this provision is that the courts should be given discretion to increase statutory damages in cases of willful infringement and to lower the minimum where the infringer is innocent. The language of the clause makes clear that in these situations the burden of proving willfulness rests on the copyright owner and that ...
— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... greater than, unless under extreme necessity, I should be willing to intrust to any one man. They are such as, for myself, I could never, unless on occasions of great emergency, consent to exercise. The willful use of such powers, if continued through a period of years, would have endangered the purity of the general administration and the liberties of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... by side with this older and apparently ruder art, in the cabinets of men of real judgment? The reason is precisely the same as in the case of the Tenniel woodcut. This modern line engraving is alloyed gold. Rich in capacity, astonishing in attainment, it nevertheless admits willful fault, and misses what it ought first to have attained. It is therefore, to a certain measure, vile in its perfection; while the older work is noble even in its failure, and classic no less in what it deliberately refuses, than in what it rationally ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin

... disobedience occasions her no particular trouble. The next time, when the transgression is a little more serious, she thinks, very rightly perhaps, that to be shut up half an hour in a dark closet would be a disproportionate punishment. Then, when at length some very willful and grave act of insubordination occurs, she happens to be in particularly good-humor, for some reason, and has not the heart to shut "the poor thing" in the closet; or, perhaps, there is company present, and she does not ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... a bard all in the olden time, When bards were men to whom the world gave ear, And song an art the great gods deemed sublime, Who sought to make his willful lady hear By weaving strange new melodies of rhyme, Which voiced his love, ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... over the word "lover," and changed it, for to her Octavia still seemed a child, and though anxious for the alliance, she forbore to speak openly, lest the girl should turn willful, as she inherited ...
— The Abbot's Ghost, Or Maurice Treherne's Temptation • A. M. Barnard

... Jean was nine years old. He hardly knew how to read; he had been so spoiled, and only did as he saw fit. He was willful, stubborn and quick-tempered. The father always gave in to him and let him have his own way. M. Duretour would always buy him all the toys he wished, and he fed him on cake and candies. Then Celeste would ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... heard to say how much she wished she could have kept Fina always a baby, and, sighing, how difficult she was to manage! She was an exceedingly pretty little girl, with fair skin, fair hair and dark eyes—willful of course, and spoilt of course; the only one in the house who took her in hand to correct being Adelaide. And as she took her in hand too smartly, Mrs. Birkett generally interfered, and the servants combined to screen her; the result being that the little one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... custom-houses; with much more of the like groundless fiction. A foreign prince, who served for a time in the Federal Army, and has since undertaken to write a history of "The Civil War in America"—a history the incomparable blunders of which are redeemed from suspicion of willful misstatement only by the writer's ignorance of the subject—speaks of the Southern representatives as having "kept their seats in Congress in order to be able to paralyze its action, forming, at the same time, a center whence they issued directions ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... always comfort, somehow, when there has been no willful wrong. And there has been ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... substantial difference. 3. They have altogether omitted and kept out the 3d and 4th articles. 4. They have kept out that material and necessary clause in the 5th article, viz., "That justice may be done on the willful opposers thereof," in manner expressed in the preceding article. 5. They have left out all the 6th article, excepting these words: "We shall not give ourselves up to a detestable neutrality and indifference in the cause of God." And ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery

... told ye, she wouldn't o' busted open thataway now. It's nacherl, thar warn't room in the cup fer both the likker an' the ball. That's wastin' likker, Jim, an' my mother told me when I was a boy, 'Willful waste makes woeful want!'" ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough

... sputtered in the ashes a foul ooze; Gall-bladders cracked and spurted up: the fat Melted and fell and left the thigh bones bare. Such are the signs, taught by this lad, I read— As I guide others, so the boy guides me— The frustrate signs of oracles grown dumb. O King, thy willful temper ails the State, For all our shrines and altars are profaned By what has filled the maw of dogs and crows, The flesh of Oedipus' unburied son. Therefore the angry gods abominate Our litanies and our burnt offerings; Therefore no birds trill out ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles

... also crimes against individuals which were punished with the death penalty. Willful murder, poisoning, parricide, were capitally punished. Adultery was punished by banishment, beside a forfeiture of considerable property. [Footnote: D, 48, 5.] Constantine made it a capital offense. The Romans ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... in the rocking-chair at the broad window, there to rehearse the deceptions it was in her mind to practice. But while she watched the threatening shadows gather, the lights on the river flash into life and go drifting aimlessly away, her mind strayed from this purpose, her willful heart throbbed with sweeter feeling—his childish voice, the depths of his eyes, the grateful weight of his head upon her bosom. Why had he loved her? Because she was his mother! A forgotten perception ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan

... really not a naughty boy, but he could be very willful at times. Irish by birth and accustomed to more liberty than the Italian teacher was wont to give his pupils in Hongkong, he did not always submit readily to the rather strict discipline of the school, but aside from this was an exemplary ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman

... in a crimson blossom, torn away From its far moorings, nestled at her ease, Was seen slowly to skim the silver lake; While the huge flower seemed of itself propelled, Save that, by chance, a flushed and saucy face, Peeped from the waves, showing a little imp Who tugged at its stout stem with willful toil. KOLONA's limbs and bosom roseate glowed As the slant moonlight through the crimson flower Bathed her with blushes; but, when on the strand She lightly sprang, flinging her tresses back, A southern maiden would have deemed her pale. Too rich for pallor ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown

... a bough above, screamed in mocking laughter at the dreamer beneath; an old drake, leading his family in a waddling row to the open stream below the little house, solemnly quacked his protest against such a willful waste of time; and a spotted calf thrust its head through the barn-yard fence to gaze ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright

... you could not," Mrs. Mason returned, smiling. "I do not see that the case need be very different with men. Subserviency never won anybody's respect or love either. Neither does willful opposition, any more. Proper self-respect and a fair share of self-love is more sure of winning admiration, from men or women, than too little self-assertion ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... ambuscade in Flanders, and my daughter is dying; her husband, the governor of Roussillon, refused her permission to be present at the triumph of this devil of a Fontanares. How well she spoke when she said that I should repent of my willful blindness! ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac

... Lamont was the disturbing element. That winter he could be seen coming quite openly to the Duke home, and when the weather would permit, Carlia would be riding with him in his automobile. The neighbors talked, but the father could only shake his head and explain that Carlia was a willful girl. ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson

... Suffering with patience many and many a day, When against pain he can no more make head, Yields to his rage, and curses; pain give way, And with it the impetuous wrath is fled, Which moved his ready tongue such ill to say; And he is left his willful rage to rue, But cannot that which he ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... fancy a more impressive and spiritual existence. She clothed her genius in the brightest and gayest colors, sporting above the precipice of feeling, and making of it a background and a relief to heighten the charm of her seemingly willful fancy. Song came at her summons, and disarmed the serious questioner. In the eyes of her country's enemies she was only the improvisatrice—a rarely gifted creature, living in the clouds, and totally regardless of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various

... Spain, Malta, Greece, and Constantinople, giving free rein to his humor for intrigue and adventure in the "lands of the sun," and gathering the material for many of his romances and poems. He became at once the picturesque figure of his day,—a handsome, willful poet, sated with life, with no regret for leaving his native land; the conqueror of hearts and the sport of destiny. The world was speedily full of romances of his recklessness, his intrigues, his diablerie, and his munificence. These grew, upon his return ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... one's will, have one's own way. use one's discretion, exercise one's discretion; take upon oneself, take one's own course, take the law into one's own hands; do of one's own accord, do upon one;s own authority; originate &c. (cause) 153. Adj. voluntary, volitional, willful; free &c. 748; optional; discretional, discretionary; volitient[obs3], volitive[obs3]. minded &c. (willing) 602; prepense &c. (predetermined) 611[obs3]; intended &c. 620; autocratic; unbidden &c. (bid &c. 741); spontaneous; original &c. (casual) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... having betted on his brother's riding, as though he had the Bank of England at his back. Indeed, save that the lad had the hereditary Royallieu instinct of extravagance, and, with a half thoughtless, half willful improvidence, piled debts and difficulties on this rather brainless and boyish head, he had much more to depend on than his elder; old Lord Royallieu doted on him, spoilt him, and denied him nothing, though himself a stern, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... Willful, generous, forgiving, imperious, affectionate, improvident, bewitching, in short—was Laura at this period. Could she have remained there, this history would not need to be written. But Laura had grown to be almost a woman in these few years, to the end of which ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... express purpose of ascertaining the diversity of the Hebrew and Samaritan texts. To suppress now a reading from this copy, which entirely removes his objection, argues a deplorable forgetfulness, or a willful fraud; and it would be a piece of affectation in me to speak of it in milder terms," p. 340. of ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English

... the loneliness of that condition is as nothing compared to the loneliness that is the product of an alienation that has been produced by either irresponsible use of the means of communication or a willful refusal to employ them. ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe

... success in winning her, with the intoxication of it, I began to look upon the strange and unexplained matters which had so perplexed me as trivial illusions beneath the consideration of good sense. However much you may be surprised at my willful blindness, your wonder cannot equal that which I ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child

... Whereupon willful Kitty set off, her dainty little head in the air, at a hand-gallop in the direction of the Band-stand; fully expecting, as she herself afterwards told me, that I should follow her. What was the matter? Nothing, indeed. Either that I was mad or drunk, or that Simla was haunted ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... man has little intuition, but a world of good intentions. Men blunder woefully in their relations with women, not because of innate boorishness in the sex, not because of willful brashness, but because of lack of understanding. They mean well, but their performance is deplorable.... In that moment Bonbright's most valuable possession was a certain intuition, a fineness, a decency, a reserve, a natural modesty. As ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... being required to act as if I had any fear of the results; nor could I comprehend why she should be so much alarmed at being seen walking with me alone, when she knew that in a few days we should be indissolubly united. But I submitted to her wishes. Passion is willful and unreasonable, and takes a wayward pleasure in shutting its eyes, and rushing onward in the dare. I stifled my vexation in the anticipation of the joy that lay before me, which would be victory enough over the impotent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... place to mercy and benevolence as the primary attributes of the divine. The power of God, in Christianity, for example, is still regarded as unlimited, but it is completely expended in the loving salvation of mankind. Where the divinity has ceased to be a willful power and has become instead the God of mercy and loving kindness, it is no longer necessary to placate him by material sacrifice, to win his favor by trivial earthly gifts. Divine favor is sought rather by aspiration after ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman



Words linked to "Willful" :   voluntary, headstrong, self-willed, willful neglect



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