"Capriciously" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... courtyard, the tricolour flag of the Netherlands stirred slightly for the first time since it had been hoisted that morning on the arrival of the man-of-war boats. With a faint rustle of trees the breeze came down in light puffs, playing capriciously for a time with this emblem of Lakamba's power, that was also the mark of his servitude; then the breeze freshened in a sharp gust of wind, and the flag flew out straight and steady above the trees. A dark ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... the promoters of good through the generations. The people you would benefit are treated with that insolent arrogance which only a cheap man in office can assume. Causes you have labored to establish, and which no one denies are benefits, are capriciously overthrown. And there is one remedy and one only: for you to cast your vote—for you to have your say as you sit in your city council, on your county board, or in your ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... same regions. But their appearance and their degree of visibility vary greatly, for all of them, from one opposition to another, and even from one week to another, and these variations do not take place simultaneously and according to the same laws for all, but in most cases happen apparently capriciously, or at least according to laws not sufficiently simple for us to be able to unravel. Often one or more become indistinct, or even wholly invisible, whilst others in their vicinity increase to the point of becoming conspicuous ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... adventurers as suited his own narrow and arbitrary views: he refused to sanction any sort of representative government in the colony, and vested all power in a council appointed by himself.[299] Virginia was, about that time, divided somewhat capriciously into two parts: the southern portion was givens to a merchant company of London, the northern to a merchant company of ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... whose abilities we revere, are of opinion that the trivial names of plants, which are or should be a kind of abridgment of the specific character, ought very rarely or never to be changed: we are not for altering them capriciously on every trivial occasion, but in such a case as the present, where the science is manifestly advanced by the alteration, it would surely have been criminal to have preferred a name, barely expressive, to one ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. 3 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... reputation depends on my adherence to my first determination; justice to yourself and to Beauman also demand it. After what has passed, I should be considered as acting capriciously and inconsistently, should I depart from it. Beauman will ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... retrospection or consolation lacking. If the main themes, mindful of their former pre-eminence, seemed inclined to widen the bed of their stream, they were appeased and forced back into their original channel by artistic and capriciously alternating means. Once all three themes flowed along together, gaining strength apparently through their union, rose to a wonderful fugue, and seemed to be just on the point of gaining the victory when the ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... a lively finish, rose capriciously, took up the flowers she had laid on the spinet earlier in the evening, put them in her corsage, and made to readjust the bracelet on her right arm. In this attempt, she accidentally dropped the bracelet to the floor. Peyton ran to pick it up. But she quickly ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Children, where their own interests are concerned, soon distinguish between these two classes of evils; they submit patiently when they know that it would be in vain to struggle; they murmur and rebel, if they dare, whenever they feel the hand of power press upon them capriciously. We should not invent trials of temper for our pupils; if they can bear with good humour the common course of events, we should ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... a master as it was good for the little boys to be under. He did not punish capriciously, nor terrify them by anything worse than his strictness. Very strict he was; and he thus caused them some fear every day: for Holt was backward, and not very clever: and Hugh was still much less able to learn than most other boys. But all felt that Mr Crabbe was not unreasonable, and they ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... choose a comet, the next question is, What comet? There cannot here be much room for hesitation. Those splendid comets which appear so capriciously may be at once excluded. They are visitors apparently coming for the first time, and retreating without any distinct promise that mankind shall ever see them again. A comet of this kind moves in a parabolic path, sweeps once around the sun, and thence retreats into ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... pretending if necessary not to be yet in full possession of his faculties, and meanwhile listening to find out what was going on. Yet he could not overcome his sense of repugnance. After sipping a dozen spoonfuls of tea, he suddenly released his head, pushed the spoon away capriciously, and sank back on the pillow. There were actually real pillows under his head now, down pillows in clean cases, he observed that, too, and took ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... how much more is to be hoped from frequency and perseverance, than from violent efforts and sudden desires; efforts which are soon remitted when they encounter difficulty, and desires, which, if they are indulged too often, will shake off the authority of reason, and range capriciously from one object ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... and expression: but apparently expression is more easily caught than delicacy and grace, and the grandeur and pathos of the attitude and grouping easily copied—for I think the best casts of the Niobe are accurate counterparts of the original; and at the first glance I was capriciously disappointed, because the statue did not surpass my expectations. It should be contemplated from a distance. It is supposed that the whole group once ornamented the pediment of a temple—probably the temple of Diana or Latona. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... Warburton, whose heart was warm with his legacy, and tender by the recent separation," apologised for Pope. The irregular conduct which Bolingbroke stigmatised as a breach of trust, was attributed to a desire of perpetuating the work of his friend, who might have capriciously destroyed it. Our poet could have no selfish motive; he could not gratify his vanity by publishing the work as his own, nor his avarice by its sale, which could never have taken place till the death of its author; a circumstance not likely to occur ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... thing which nobody worked at from morning to night; it was taken up and put down; it was in the chair, on the floor, across the hand-rail, under the bed, kicked here, kicked there, rolled away in the closet, brought out again, and so on more capriciously perhaps than any other home-made article. Nobody was expected to finish a rug within a calculable period, and the wools of the beginning became faded and historical before the end was reached. A sense of this inherent nature of worsted-work rather than idleness led ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... revolution, in the vain hope that we may thus better their condition. Then, in negotiation, let us avoid the same meddling policy—shall I falsely call it?—the same restless disposition to serve one State at another's expense; showing favour and dislike capriciously and alternately, guided by mere individual and personal feelings, whether towards States or statesmen, displaying groundless likings for some and groundless hatred for others; one day supporting this Power in its aggression upon that, and when defeated, justly and signally defeated, like ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... hue of copper, listen to the means by which protection may be secured. Those means consist of the employment of spies and servants, giving them their just dues without haughtiness, the realisation of taxes with considerateness, never taking anything (from the subject) capriciously and without cause, O Yudhishthira, the selection of honest men (for the discharge of administrative functions), heroism, skill, and cleverness (in the transaction of business), truth, seeking the good of the people, producing discord and disunion ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... that it may be considered, how many ways ministers and professors, in this time of tentation and tribulation, have been guilty of breach of these holy covenants; particularly by consenting unto, subscribing, swearing, and taking any of the new multiplied, mischievously contrived, capriciously conceived, and tyrannically imposed oaths, tests, or bonds, in matters of religion, since the overturning of the covenanted reformation and establishment of prelacy; and by persuading people to take them, and forbearing ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... the houses in the town are in ruins, and Seobuksh has the reputation of being a reckless and improvident landholder. He is said not only to take from his tenants higher rates of rent than he ought, but to extort from them very often a property tax, highly and capriciously rated. This is what the people call the bhalmansae, of which they have a very great abhorrence. "You are a bhala manus" (a gentleman, or man of substance), he says to his tenant, "and must have property worth at least a thousand ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... life in town and country differed even more widely than they do with us. The average Roman, moreover, was a lover of variety in respect of his habitation. We find in a somewhat later epigrammatist that one grandee keeps up four town houses in Rome itself, and moves capriciously from one to the other, so that you never know where you will find him. At different seasons or in different moods he might prefer this or that situation or aspect. As for country seats of various degrees of magnificence, a man might—like many modern nobles or royalties—possess three, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... as their brown habit; though he had heard only the echoes of their chanted liturgies,—he had gathered from those walls and from these chants faint indications that seemed to justify his fragile hope. Slight as the auguries thus capriciously awakened might be, no human passion was ever more violently roused than the curiosity of this French general. To the heart there are no insignificant events; it magnifies all things; it puts in the same balance the fall of an empire and the fall of a woman's glove,—and oftentimes the glove ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... caused him to prosper exceedingly, gifting him with supernatural power until his fame was noised abroad, and he was venerated as the saintly Siva Bhaia or great brother to all women, being himself unable to marry. But in his old age the goddess capriciously wished him to marry and have issue, but he refused and was slain and buried at Pohur in Berar. A temple was erected over him and his kinsmen became priests of it, and hither large numbers are attracted ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... valley are of extraordinary size, and a rich contour of growth. Scattered capriciously among the groves are no less than ten hamlets, all attached to Bocagnono. It is a wild and romantic neighbourhood; and the principal village, though surrounded with verdure, has a most desolate aspect, the houses being ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... the "Terror" of Cromwell, it was of a nobler type than the Terror of France. He never struck uselessly or capriciously, or stooped to the meaner victims of the guillotine. His blows were effective just because he chose his victims from among the noblest and the best. If he struck at the Church, it was through the Carthusians, the holiest and the most renowned of English ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... capricious, just a trifle wayward, I will confess. But then that trifling waywardness gave just the spice that was wanting to this grand young lily. The white lilies are never more beautiful than when they wave capriciously in the summer wind; and if Laura Dunbar was a little passionate when you tried to thwart her; and if her great blue eyes at such times had a trick of lighting up with sudden fire in them, like a burst of lurid sunlight through a summer storm-cloud, ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... clergy, assigned them small stipends, and permitted them to preach in such deserted churches as should be assigned to them by the Scottish Privy Council. This "indulgence," though clogged with harsh conditions and frequently renewed or capriciously recalled, was still an acceptable boon to the wiser and better part of the presbyterian clergy, who considered it as an opening to the exercise of their ministry under the lawful authority, which they continued to acknowledge. But ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... relationships, but in reality he is entering into a wider brotherhood; and, in virtue of his ministry of love, is being knit in bonds stronger than those of earthly kinship, with a great and increasing community of souls which owe to him their lives.[26] The promise is no arbitrary gift or bribe capriciously bestowed; it is the natural fruition of moral endeavour. For there is nothing so productive as sacrifice. What the man who yields himself to the service of Christ actually gives is life; and what he gets back, increased an hundredfold, is just life again, his own life, repeated ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... quaintly-shaped rocks, some drenched with the fulness of the glorious bath, others catching now and again a sprinkling shower. On each side of the river the sea, clear to its depths where alternate sand and rock made a tangle of capriciously mingled light and shade; its surface, here blue as the still waters of the Grotta Azzurra, there green as the olive, here again red-brown as Carthaginian marble, lay waveless, as with a sense that the beauty was too perfect to ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator's mind; it stood in his memory, as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end of a long and dark vista: then came the poet, embodying outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in: stroke upon stroke, the drama proceeded: the light deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to the riveted gaze of the spectator: until at last, when the final words were spoken, ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... des Acadiens as his thatched hut, which day by day sat so silent between the edges of the dark forest and the darker stream, looking out beyond the farther bank, and far over the green waste of rushes with its swarms of blackbirds sweeping capriciously now this way and now that, and the phantom cloud-shadows passing slowly across from one far line of cypress wood to another. But since that night when the hut's solitary occupant could not sleep for the winds and for thought of Claude, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... on the night between the 21st and 22nd of June, he endeavoured to find out some explanation of it. The day had been particularly stormy, the wind had freshened, and it did not appear at all likely that the sea would fall at night, lashed so capriciously as it had been for so ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... could almost smile at her fond belief that she really loves him, for I see my own work, no tender passion as she imagines; and to break off all intercourse with him appears comparative torture. I have already convinced her of her father's injustice and cruelty in acting thus capriciously towards one so well known and so universally honoured, and merely from a mysterious and unsatisfactory letter from a boy who knows nothing about the matter. I hinted very broadly that it was only because her parents ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... clothed in black and masked by a vizor of polished steel, soldered to a helmet of the same nature, which altogether enveloped the whole of his head. The fire of the heavens cast red reflections on the polished surface, and these reflections, flying off capriciously, seemed to be angry looks launched by the unfortunate, instead of imprecations. In the middle of the gallery, the prisoner stopped for a moment, to contemplate the infinite horizon, to respire the sulphurous perfumes of the tempest, to drink in thirstily the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and usurers. He even had handsome antiquities which no one could claim. Near the door was a pair of amphorae, drawn up by fishermen's nets—whitish earthern jars with pointed bases, indurated by the sea and capriciously decorated by Nature with garlands of adhering shells. In the center of the table, between the periwinkles, was another gift from Tio Ventolera, a terra cotta female head with a strange round tiara crowning her braided hair. The grayish clay was dotted with little, hard spherical concretions ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... is equivalent to a merely selfish "Down tools if you feel like it." Now so far from Bergson really giving any countenance to capricious behaviour, or mere impulse, he expressly condemns such action. Although the future is being made, he does not admit that it will be merely CAPRICIOUSLY made, and he condemns the man of mere impulse along with the dreamer, in a fine passage where he speaks of the value of an intelligent memory in practical life.[Footnote: See p. 48 of the present work.] When the Syndicalists ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... "feature." Mary Boyne and her husband, in quest of a country place in one of the southern or southwestern counties, had, on their arrival in England, carried their problem straight to Alida Stair, who had successfully solved it in her own case; but it was not until they had rejected, almost capriciously, several practical and judicious suggestions that she threw it out: "Well, there's Lyng, in Dorsetshire. It belongs to Hugo's cousins, and you can ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... were standing near the door of the inn as my lady said this. Phoebe stared wonderingly at her patroness. She had expected that Lady Audley would be in a hurry to return home after settling this business which she had capriciously taken upon herself; but it was not so; my lady stood leaning against the inn door and staring into vacancy, and again Mrs. Marks began to fear that trouble had ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... from the refined and half-melancholy irony of the "House of Fame" to the ready wit of the sagacious uncle of Cressid, the burlesque fun of the inimitable "Nun's Priest's Tale," and the very gross salt of the "Reeve," the "Miller," and one or two others. The springs of humour often capriciously refuse to allow themselves to be discovered; nor is the satire of which the direct intention is transparent invariably the most effective species of satire. Concerning, however, Chaucer's use of the power which he in so large a measure possessed, viz. that of covering with ridicule the palpable ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... significant details of the farm, the threshing-floor, and the full granary, and stands beside the woman baking bread at the oven. With these fancies are connected certain simple rites, the half-understood local observance and the half-believed local legend reacting capriciously on each other. They leave her a fragment of bread and a morsel of meat at the crossroads to take on her journey; and perhaps some real Demeter carries them away, as she wanders through the country. The incidents of their yearly labour become to them acts of worship; they seek her blessing through ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... transmit their colour truly, or most capriciously. Many annuals come true: thus I purchased German seeds of thirty-four named sub-varieties of one race of ten-week stocks (Matthiola annua), and raised a hundred and forty plants, all of which, with the exception of a single ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... to watch anything, Stephen, I should have religiously done it,' she capriciously went on, as soon as she ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... repelled, a little piqued; and a little relieved when the man on her other side spoke to her, and she recognized Mr. Reginald Farwell, the architect. The table capriciously swung that way. She did not feel prepared to talk to Mr. Chiltern. And before entering upon her explorations she was in need of a guide. She could have found none more charming, none more impersonal, none more subtly aware of her wants (which had once been his) than Mr. Farwell. With his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... her wildest seizures of iridescent humour. Danvers attributed the fun to her mistress's gladness in not having pursued her bent to quit the country. Redworth saw deeper, and was nevertheless amazed by the airy hawk-poise and pounce-down of her wit, as she ranged high and low, now capriciously generalizing, now dropping bolt upon things of passage—the postillion jogging from rum to gin, the rustics baconly agape, the horse-kneed ostlers. She touched them to the life in similes and phrases; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... follow from this capacity as an almost necessary consequence. We can here consider only a few cases. In regard to {384} fish, I believe that the same species never occur in the fresh waters of distant continents. But on the same continent the species often range widely and almost capriciously; for two river-systems will have some fish in common and some different. A few facts seem to favour the possibility of their occasional transport by accidental means; like that of the live fish not rarely dropped by whirlwinds in India, and the vitality of their ova when removed from the water. ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... of domestic cares; in fact, they know very little upon any subject, though they are often intelligent and highly inquisitive. They love dainties, play, and mischief. They are apt to be greatly beloved, and are themselves capriciously affectionate. They are little people, and can only do little things. When they are idle and mischievous, they are called Boggarts, and are a curse to the house they live in. When they are useful and considerate, they ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... books that would do her mischief. For those, Alice's wish was enough; she never opened them. Furthermore, Alice insisted that when Ellen had only fairly begun a book she should go through with it; not capriciously leave it for another, nor have half-a-dozen about at one time. But when Ellen had read it once she commonly wanted to go over it again, and seldom laid it aside until she had sucked the sweetness ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... wooing Liliokani, and chiefs renowned in war; and with others came Tatatao, that was a mighty hunter of hares and had compassed famous hardships. For those men that delight in adventure and battle are most pleasantly minded to gentle women, for thus capriciously hath Atua, the all-god, ordained. But Liliokani had no ear to the wooing of these men, and the fisherman's daughter was a ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... at table, came to me on the veranda, attired in the demurest of walking costumes, saying not a word. "He" was evidently "not about." We went slowly up the road that led to the Old Mill. She was apparently not strong and at times took my arm, relinquishing it and taking it again rather capriciously, I thought. Her mood, or rather her succession of moods, was as mutable as skylight in a rippling sea. She jested as if she had never heard of such a thing as death, and laughed on the lightest incitement, and directly ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... Dreading the world's remarks malign, Was that which we are wont to call A fop, in dress pedantical. Three mortal hours per diem he Would loiter by the looking-glass, And from his dressing-room would pass Like Venus when, capriciously, The goddess would a masquerade Attend ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... notice here is the intellectualist logic. Both sides treat it as authoritative, but they do so capriciously: the absolutists smashing the world of sense by its means, the empiricists smashing the absolute—for the absolute, they say, is the quintessence of all logical contradictions. Neither side attains consistency. The Hegelians ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... storm, behaved capriciously. There was a partial thaw which threatened to flood everything,—then a hard freeze. The whole country glittered with an icy crust, and people went about on a platform of frozen snow, quite above the level of ordinary life. Claude got out ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... courts; and in this same valley some of our wealthy citizens, such as Howard Ogilvy and Leonard Dickinson, had bought "farms," week-end playthings for spring and autumn. Hambleton Durrett had started the fashion. Capriciously, as he did everything else, he had become the owner of several hundred acres of pasture, woodland and orchard, acquired some seventy-five head of blooded stock, and proceeded to house them in model barns ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... nasty a place: and so glad was I to be at the bottom of it, that I thought comparatively little of the river, which was close at hand waiting to be crossed. From the top of the terrace I had surveyed it carefully as it lay beneath, wandering capriciously in the wasteful shingle-bed, and looking like a maze of tangled silver ribbons. I calculated how to cut off one stream after another, but I could not shirk the main stream, dodge it how I might; and when on the level of the river, I lost all my landmarks in the ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... the other Horatian metres, if a more difficult, is a less important one. The most pressing case is that of the metre known as the second Asclepiad, the "Sic te diva potens Cypri." With this, I fear, I shall be thought to have dealt rather capriciously, having rendered it by four different measures, three of them, however, varieties of the same general type. It so happens that the first Ode which I translated was the celebrated Amoebean Poem, the dialogue between ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... in simple amazement. Marry him—what was all this sudden change in the household when a man could no sooner appear than some girl began to talk of marriage? Alix had always rather fancied the idea that all girls had an opportunity of capriciously choosing from a dozen eligible swains, but Cherry had quickly anchored herself to the first strange man that appeared, and here was Anne dimpling and looking demure over a small, neat youth just out of law school. Certainly the little person of Justin Little was a strange harbour for all Anne's ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... of the measure the sound was broken capriciously, the book had been thrown down, and the singer herself stood balancing in the doorway between the rooms, a hand on either side,—still lightly trilling her scales, smiling, beaming, blue-eyed, rosy. The sunbeam that entered behind the shade swinging in the wind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of Liberty. And prospects were held out to him, quasi-offers made, of a really magnificent nature,—undeniable, though obscure. Herr Ranke has been among the Archives again; and comes out with fractional snatches of a very strange "Paper from England;" capriciously hiding all details about it, all intelligible explanation: so that you in vain ask, "Where, When, How, By whom?"—and can only guess to yourself that Carteret was somehow at the bottom of the thing; AUT CARTERETUS AUT DIABOLUS. "What would your Majesty think ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... the plant itself, irrespective of all accidental feeling, is indeed so beautiful in all its ways—so delicately strong in the spring of its leafage, so modestly wonderful in the formation of its fruit, and so pure in choice of its haunts, not capriciously or unfamiliarly, but growing in luxuriance through all the healthiest and sweetest seclusion of mountain territory throughout Europe,—that I think I may without any sharp remonstrance be permitted to express for this once only, personal feeling in my nomenclature, calling ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... the supernatural powers of control attributed by credulous pilgrims to Madame Wagner do not exist. Prima donnas and tenors are as unmanageable at Bayreuth as anywhere else. Casts are capriciously changed; stage business is insufficiently rehearsed; the public are compelled to listen to a Brynhild or Siegfried of fifty when they have carefully arranged to see one of twenty-five, much as in any ordinary opera house. Even the conductors upset the ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... amidst the grove around. Caught by the murmur of an unseen brook, she tracked it through the trees, as its sound grew louder and louder on her ear, till at length it stole upon her sight. The sun, only winning through the trees at intervals, played capriciously upon the cold and dark waters as they glided on, and gave to her, as the same effect has done to a thousand poets, ample matter for a simile ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... said; and Dolly, from her seat on the sward, saw him leap from her and wing away in powerful flight. He made straight for the crest; she saw him, flitting up there, a little white confetti in the eddy of a breeze. Rising, falling, darting capriciously, he gradually slid off down the range, and ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... back of Margarita's neck! That tender nape with its soft, nearly blonde locks that curled short about it below the heavy waves of what she called her "real hair." That was chestnut, dark brown at night. Nature had given her long dark lashes with perfect verisimilitude, but had at the last moment capriciously decided against man's peace and hidden behind them, set deep behind them under flexible Italian brows, those curious slate-blue eyes that fixed her face in your mind inalterably. You could not forget her. I know, because I have been trying for ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... conversation became fragmentary, veering as capriciously as the purple wind-flaws that spread across the shoals. But always to her question or comment she found in his response the charm of freshness, of quick intelligence, or of a humourous and idle ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... and peace, but of fate. Remember, I have wealth more than wit can number; I have had power more than kings could emcompass; yet the world seems a desert; all nature appears an afflictive spectacle of warring passions. This blind fatality, that capriciously sports with the rules and lives of mortals, tells me that the mountains will never again send forth the water of their springs to my thirst. Oh, that I might be freed and set at liberty from wretchedness! But I fear, I ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an insatiable desire to immortalize his name, and acquire a reputation which should last through all succeeding ages; but it was capriciously directed. He therefore (381) took from several things and places their former appellations, and gave them new names derived from his own. He called the month of April, Neroneus, and designed changing the name of Rome ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... believer finds mysterious properties and potencies everywhere. To his mind every object is endued with occult power, moved by a vague volition, actuated by shadowy motive ranging capriciously from malevolence to benevolence; in his lax estimation some objects are more potent or more mysterious than others, the strong, the sharp, the hard, and the swift-moving rising superior to the feeble, the ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... be assumed that this was not done capriciously, as the modern parvenue makes for himself a heraldric device. The simple and devout intellect of the primitive man imagined a real connection between the god and the symbol. Were this questioned, yet the wonderful unanimity with which the same ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... a sympathetic public. Literature, properly so called, draws its sap from the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies, the gathered leaf-mould of countless generations ([Greek: oiae per phullon geneae]), and not from any top-dressing capriciously scattered over the surface at some master's bidding.[277] England had long been growing more truly insular in language and political ideas when the Reformation came to precipitate her national consciousness by secluding ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... tell me that, so far as you know, your husband capriciously struck you out of his will, without assignable reason or motive for doing so, and without other obvious explanation of his conduct than that he acted in this matter entirely under the influence of Mrs. Lecount, I will immediately take Counsel's opinion ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... might have appeared peculiar to many young exquisites. Her rich black hair rose roughly erect above her forehead, streamed back like a rushing wave, and flowed over her head and neck like an inky sea, tossing and bubbling capriciously. It was very thick and inconvenient to arrange. However, she twisted it as tightly as possible into coils as thick as a child's fist, which she wound together at the back of her head. She had little time to devote to her toilette, but this huge chignon, hastily ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Chance had capriciously ruled that the hand that had dislocated the Abbe's arm should set it again, and the dead sailor lying on the sticky, tarred hatch-cover had helped. The "patron" of the boat, for he it was whose head had been smashed by the ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... cause. In one instance, the subject suffered thus for eleven years, and then became a mother, and has ever asserted that her periodic suffering was far more intense than the pain experienced during her confinement. These neuralgic pains fly along the tracks of nerves to different organs, and capriciously dart from point to point with marvelous celerity, producing ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... it was just, but it disappointed them, and while the father lived, Alexis had been encouraged to look to getting to the University and Holy Orders. He has a good voice, and the young curate at the Kennel patronised him, perhaps a little capriciously, but I am not quite sure. All this was unknown to me till the Merrifield children came, and Gillian, discovering these Whites, flew upon them in the true enthusiastic Lily-fashion, added to the independence of the modern maiden mistrustful of old cats of aunts. Like ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more capriciously than ever. She would be sullen and silent, or she would draw back fiercely at some harmless word or gesture, or she would look at him with her eyes narrowed in such a strange way and with such a wicked light in them that Dick swore to himself they were too much for him, and ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the space betwixt us. She looked amiable. Why could I not live and end my days thus? 'Just Disposer of our joys and sorrows!' cried I, 'why could not a man sit down in the lap of content here, and dance, and sing, and say his prayers, and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid?' Capriciously did she bend her head on one side, and dance up insidious. 'Then 'tis time to dance off,' ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... finely rounded limbs half buried in billowy cushions; the attitude is the very poetry of repose, languid it may be, but glowing life thrills beneath that flower-soft exterior, from the varying cheek and flashing eye, to the henna-dyed taper fingers, that capriciously play with her rosary of beads. The blaze of sunshine is round her kiosk, but she sits in the softened shadow so dear to the painter's eye. And so she dreams away the warm hours in such a calm of thought within, and sight or sound without, that she ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... on the necessity of a compromise between the executive power and the people, it seems to me, sir, that, in doubting my patriotism, you reason very capriciously, and that your judgments are exceedingly rash. You, sir, ostensibly defending government and property, are allowed to be a republican, reformer, phalansterian, any thing you wish; I, on the contrary, demanding distinctly enough a slight reform in public economy, am foreordained a conservative, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... further from the sidewalk as their builders fancied, and the elms that met in a low arch above the street had an illusive symmetry in the perspective; they were really set at uneven intervals, and in a line that wavered capriciously in and out. The street itself lounged and curved along, widening and contracting like a river, and then suddenly lost itself over the brow of an upland which formed a natural boundary of the village. Beyond this ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... what endless other troubles, monsieur! her teeth fell out; she became deaf, then dumb; and then, after six months of absolute dumbness, utter deafness, speech and hearing have returned to her! She recovered, just as capriciously as she had lost, the use of her hands. But her feet have continued in the same hapless condition for the last seven years. She has shown marked and well-characterized symptoms of hydrophobia. Not only ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... as unceremonious, and still shorter. Lord Chelford would have written at once to remonstrate with Mark on the unseemliness of putting off his marriage so capriciously, or, at all events, so mysteriously—Miss Brandon not being considered, nor her friends consulted. But Mark had a decided objection to many letters: he had no fancy to be worried, when he had made up his mind, by prosy remonstrances; and he shut out ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... night her tears fell, and she told herself that they were all for the man whose last thought was for her and her babies; she told herself over and over again that her tears were all for him. After this the autumn began to hurry on, and the snow fell capriciously, days of biting cold giving place to retrospective glances at summer. The last of the vegetables were taken out of the garden and buried in the cellar; and a few tons of coal—dear almost as diamonds—were brought out to provide against the severest weather. Ordinarily buffalo chips ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... pleasant season in this part of the country—really pleasanter perhaps, though one is reluctant to allow it, than the lovely, fascinating, capriciously joyous spring—and it is a Friday. Jacinth and Frances Mildmay are walking home from school, carrying their little bag of books. For Saturday is a whole holiday—no going to school that is to say—so, naturally, some lessons must be learnt ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... pines,—the young trees, with lightsome green foliage,—as sapling oaks, maples and poplars,—then the old, decayed trunks, that are seen lying here and there, all mouldered, so that the foot would sink into them. The sunshine, falling capriciously on a casual branch considerably within the forest verge, while it leaves nearer trees in shadow, leads the imagination into the depths. But it soon becomes bewildered there. Rocks strewn about, half hidden in the fallen leaves, must ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... first visit to that house, I forgave her her stifled laugh; but I hastily made an imperious sign which abashed her and inspired respect for her neighbor. She sat down beside me. The old man did not choose to leave the charming creature, to whom he clung capriciously with the silent and apparently causeless obstinacy to which very old persons are subject, and which makes them resemble children. In order to sit down beside the young lady he needed a folding-chair. His slightest movements were ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... can do even less than painting could to bring this window-scene at Promontogno before another eye. The casement just frames it. In the foreground are meadow slopes, thinly, capriciously planted with chestnut trees and walnuts, each standing with its shadow cast upon the sward. A little farther falls the torrent, foaming down between black jaws of rain-stained granite, with the wooden buildings of a rustic mill ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... other countries, there is a system of partnership, with limited responsibility, known by the name of 'Partnership in Commandite.' Even with us, limited responsibility is by no means unknown. It is, however, granted capriciously and unsystematically, without those checks and regulations which, if there were a general system, would be adopted to make it safe and effective. 'I wish,' said Mr Duncan, a solicitor, when examined before the Select Committee on the Law of Partnership, 'to ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... why should he trouble her by being continually about when she did not care for him? Why had he been so eager, even from the first day when he met her at the Big House? What had he to do with her coming to the Big House? Why did her mother now leave her with him, and, then again, capriciously call her away from him? And why should she herself avoid him, dismiss him, and then wonder ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... who had been made a duke, was at once reinstated in his own lands, with a handsome additional slice as a recompense for his services. A certain number of other great proprietors and lords of the Pale, a list of whom was rather capriciously made out, were also immediately reinstated. For the rest, more tardy and less satisfactory justice was ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... voices for Tira, the voice of a fainting hope and the voice of fear. The days grew so capriciously lovely that her heart tried a few notes in answer, and she would stand at her door and look off over the mountain, fancying herself back there on the other side with the spirit of girlhood in her, drawing her, in spite of dreary circumstances, to ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... for her whom he could not name kept him from answering. And in the drift of his silence the vision capriciously failed him. He looked at Julia. He looked back at the wall. It was nothing but a funny old picture which hung there confronting them. The commonplaceness, beside it, of Julia's long-drawn expression made him snicker, until, as a result of this ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... somewhat lacking in design, the colouring alone being meritorious. He succeeded much better afterwards in some other paintings in fresco in the chapel of the Bardi, and in some stories of St Louis in the same church. He worked capriciously, sometimes with great care and sometimes with little. Thus in S. Spirito at Florence, where he did the inside of a door leading from the piazza to the convent, and above another door a Madonna and child, with St Augustine and St Nicholas, all in fresco—they are all so well done ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... order of the universe. I adopt, unreservedly, the doctrine that "nothing is that errs from law." The phenomena which we call supernatural and those which we call natural, I view as alike the expression of the Divine Will: a Will which acts not capriciously, nor, as the phrase is, arbitrarily, but by law, "attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia." And so the theologians identify the Divine Will with the Divine Reason. Thus St. Augustine, "Lex aeterna est ratio divina vel voluntas Dei,"[48] ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... tired of her sweet role and of its object (Ronayne) and everything, she turns capriciously aside, and, motioning away the men with her hand and a small frown, sits down at Hermia Herrick's feet and plucks idly at ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... winged creatures, with harmony of motion, but rising without unity, and filling the vale with discordant sounds. Nowhere could these sable birds have appeared more unearthly than in the "dark valley," as it was called by the natives, where the mists moved capriciously, yet remained persistently within the circumference of this natural cauldron, now falling like a pall and again hovering in mid air. Suddenly the uncanny birds vanished among the trees as quickly as they had arisen, and there was something mysterious about their unwarranted disappearance ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... George turned again to the wall, humiliated. It seemed wrong that the conductor should have included him with the knot of common omnibus-travellers and late workers. The conductor ought to have differentiated.... He put out a hand. The rain had capriciously ceased! He departed gaily and triumphantly. He was re-endowed with ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... enormously underestimated. And the authority of a personal perception of right is also most unbecomingly depreciated. UNIVERSAL ORDER is the expression of the purposes of God, not as arbitrarily chosen by his will and capriciously revealed in a book, but as necessitated by his nature and embodied in his works. The true basis of morality is universal order. The true end of morality is life, the sum of moral laws being identical with the sum of the conditions in accordance with ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... shocked at seeing a man younger than I was wish, at all events, to govern me like a child; disgusted with his facility in promising, and his negligence in performing; weary of so many appointments given by himself, and capriciously broken, while new ones were again given only to be again broken; displeased at uselessly waiting for him three or four times a month on the days he had assigned, and in dining alone at night after having gone to Saint Denis to meet him, and waited the whole day ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... his twentieth year, meeting with Socrates, was easily dissuaded from this pursuit, and remained for ten years his scholar, until the death of Socrates. He then went to Megara; accepted the invitations of Dion and of Dionysius, to the court of Sicily; and went thither three times, though very capriciously treated. He traveled into Italy; then into Egypt, where he stayed a long time; some say three,—some say thirteen years. It is said, he went farther, into Babylonia: this is uncertain. Returning to Athens, he gave lessons, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... transfigured, and stand forth in a certain splendour of reality from the dull circle of surroundings; so that we see it "with a child's first pleasure," as Wordsworth saw the daffodils by the lake side. And if this falls out capriciously with the healthy, how much more so with the invalid. Some day he will find his first violet, and be lost in pleasant wonder, by what alchemy the cold earth of the clods, and the vapid air and rain, can be transmuted into colour so rich and odour so touchingly ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the vowels, which are so capriciously pronounced, and so differently modified, by accident or affectation, not only in every province, but in every mouth, that to them, as is well known to etymologists, little regard is to be shewn in the deduction of ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... fine that it gave her the fragility of things bordering upon the supernal—of rare exotics, of sunset and moonbeam effects. No, he had been under no spell of illusion as to her beauty. It was a reality—the more fascinating because it waxed and waned not with regularity of period but capriciously. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... of the original edifice which were still extant, were the oldest part of the town. Nothing else was saved from the dreadful fire which destroyed the city in the fourteenth century. It was more like a fortress than a mansion. There were a few narrow windows fitted with stone columns, scattered capriciously over the facade, a bare stone wall blackened by time, with several square holes like ventilators near the roof, and a large door in the middle studded with heavy nails. Inside it was immense, and more cheerful. The courtyard was broader than ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... you any more. I will, however, do it just this time, but I shall not again, you may depend;" or, to borrow money in some sudden emergency out of the fund which a child has accumulated for a special purpose, and then to forget or neglect to repay it—to manage loosely and capriciously in any such ways as these will be sure to make the attempt a total failure; that is to say, such management will be sure to be a failure in respect to teaching the boy to act on right principles in the management of money, and training him to habits of exactness and faithfulness in the fulfillment ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... seems to meditate, starts on its course again, shoots like an arrow from one end of the vessel to the other, whirls around, slips away, dodges, rears, bangs, crashes, kills, exterminates. It is a battering ram capriciously assaulting a wall. Add to this the fact that the ram is of metal, the wall ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... arms crossed on his breast, and his elbows held in either hand, stood with his head pathetically fallen forward, looking down at the dead face. Those who knew how his memory was a mere blank, with faint gleams of recognition capriciously coming and going in it, must have felt that he was struggling to remember who it was lay there before him; and for me the electly simple words confessing his failure will always be pathetic with his remembered aspect: "The gentleman ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his wife came to the entrance to the Jewish quarter, the soldiers, as one could see through the open windows, lay on the wooden bench inside the watch-house, while out before the door in the sunshine sat the drummer beating capriciously on his large drum. He was a heavy, fat fellow, wearing a jerkin and hose of fiery yellow, greatly puffed out at his arms and thighs, and profusely dotted with small red tufts, sewed on, which looked as if innumerable tongues were protruding from him. His breast and back were ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... tales of frustration. Rudin is destroyed by his own temperament. The heroes of "A House of Gentlefolk" and "Torrents of Spring" are ruined by the malign machinations of satanic women. Bazarov is snuffed out by a capriciously evil destiny. Insarov's splendid mind and noble aspirations accomplish nothing, because his lungs are weak. He falls back on the sofa, and Elena, thinking he has fainted, calls for help. A grotesque little Italian doctor, with wig and spectacles, ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... form, change their shape, are often met in a mist, which shrouds them save from the right person; they appear and disappear at will. For the rest they have the mental and physical characteristics of the kings and queens they protect or persecute so capriciously. They can be seen by making a magic sign and looking through a witch's arm held akimbo. They are no good comates for men or women, and to meddle with a goddess or nymph or giantess was to ensure evil or death for a man. The god's loves ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... large glass vases, ornamented by the polite art of potichomanie, have long appealed to my fancy, wherein they capriciously allied themselves to the history of aging single women in lonely New England village houses,—pathetic sisters lingering upon the neutral ground between the faded hopes of marriage and the yet unrisen prospects of consumption. The work implies an imperfect yet real love of ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... garrisons in distant and barbarous countries is necessarily connected the right of making peace and war in those countries. The joint-stock companies, which have had the one right, have constantly exercised the other, and have frequently had it expressly conferred upon them. How unjustly, how capriciously, how cruelly, they have commonly exercised it, is too well known from ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... confuses aesthetic with practical activity, or introduces the laws of the second into the first. That science is theory and art practice has been many times affirmed. Those who make this statement, and look upon the aesthetic fact as a practical fact, do not do so capriciously or because they are groping in the void; but because they have their eye on something which is really practical. But the practical which they are looking at is not Aesthetic, nor within Aesthetic; it is outside and beside it; and although they are often found united, they are not necessarily united, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... singing and making verses and wrote excellent well; so that El Mutawekkil fell passionately in love with her and could not endure from her a single hour. When she saw this, she presumed upon his favour to use him haughtily and capriciously, so that he waxed exceeding wroth with her and forsook her, forbidding the people of the palace to ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... our lives so strangely and capriciously, that we are ever doing things, which in after moments surprise ourselves those unplanned, unplotted, spontaneous deeds of ours that spring from the natural source of action, directly as it is influenced by some passing circumstance of moment! These are where the true character is betrayed, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... among the rocks of Surgham soon began to fire at the regiment, and we sheltered among the mounds of sand, while a couple of troops replied with their carbines. Then the heliograph in the zeriba began to talk in flashes of light that opened and shut capriciously. The actual order is important. 'Advance,' said the helio, 'and clear the left flank, and use every effort to prevent the enemy re-entering Omdurman.' That was all, but it was sufficient. In the distance the enemy could be seen re-entering ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... one! Whose harshest idea Will to melody run, O! is it thy will On the breezes to toss? Or, capriciously still, Like the lone Albatross, [23] Incumbent on night (As she on the air) To keep watch with delight On ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... a vast depth below up into the very sky. Dim and soundless lay the mass of waters— breaking, no doubt, as for ages past, against the rocky precipice below; but not so as to be heard upon the steep. If might have appeared dead, but that a ray from some quarter of the heaven, capriciously touching its surface, showed that it was heaving as was its wont. Eastwards, at the point of junction of sea and sky, a dusky yellow light shone through the haze of morning, as behind a curtain, and told that the sun was on his way. As their eyes became ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... all events, it was never more seen by his castaway companions; who, dropping the oars in sorrowful despair, allowed the boat to drift away from the fatal spot—in whatever direction the soft-sighing breeze might capriciously carry it. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... the thousand dots of light with which the ground was strewn, and which, displaced by their progress as they cantered along, rose and covered them with flowery patterns from the chests of the horses to the blue veil of the lady rider. They came along slowly, capriciously, and the two young people, who had drawn back into the copse, could see pass close by them, with a clinking of bits proudly shaken and white with foam as though after a furious gallop, two splendid animals carrying a pair of human beings brought very near together by the narrowing of the path; he, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... countrymen. In several paths of literature, he has essayed his steps and made good a footing; in not one has he continuously persevered, but, although cheered by applause, has quickly struck into another track, which, in its turn, has been capriciously deserted. His "Studies of Roman history" give him an honourable claim to the title of historian; his "Notes of Archaeological Rambles" are greatly esteemed; he has written plays; and his prose fictions, whether middle-age romance or novel of modern society, rank with the best of their class. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... cheapest novelettes, is saturated with the romance of mesalliance. And even when the specific man has appeared, the adventurous is still not shut out of a woman's career. A man's affections may wander capriciously and leave him but a little poorer or a little better placed; for the women they wander from, however, the issue is an infinitely graver one, and the serious wandering of a woman's fancy may mean the beginning of a new world for her. At ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... regarded the scene of the poet's fantasy. Did they make her a part of it,—did they seem to the man the fantasy's intangible medium, its imagery? Threads of gold, threads of melody! He saw the former, heard the latter. They rose and fell wilfully, capriciously, with many an airy and fanciful turn. The man leaned his head on his hand; a clear strain died like a filament of purest metal gently broken. She breathed a little quicker; leaned farther forward; now her slender ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... kept constantly stopping his brothers to ask the why and the wherefore of everything: why the bees dived into the fragrant flower-cups? why the swallows skimmed along the rivers? why the butterflies zigzagged capriciously along the fields? To all these questions Peter only answered with a burst of stupid laughter; while the surly Paul shrugged his shoulders, and crossly bade the little Thumbling hold his tongue, telling him he was ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... decisions, is she thus exposed. Friends may induce the receipt of attentions, where her heart cannot follow the assent of her lips. Perhaps her prospects have but assumed some certainty, when the promised hand is capriciously withdrawn. I have read the record of one, who, in the agony of a grief thus awakened, pursued the object of her regard into scenes of trouble, released him from prison, by her generous gifts, and attended him, when driven, by his guilty courses, ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... 1822.—This was revised by Chamisso in manuscript, who added a preface to it; but the translation was afterwards capriciously altered by the ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... easily displeased, and allowed himself to be capriciously resentful. He would sometimes leave Lord Oxford silently, no one could tell why, and was to be courted back by more letters and messages than the footmen were willing to carry. The table was indeed infested by Lady Mary Wortley, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... dancer, nude save for the pearly glistening veil that was carelessly cast about her dainty limbs, her white arms and delicate ankles being adorned with circlets of tiny, golden bells, which kept up a melodious jingle- jangle as she moved. And now began the strangest music,—music that seemed to hover capriciously between luscious melody and harsh discord,—a wild and curious medley of fantastic, minor suggestions in which the imaginative soul might discover hints of tears and folly, love and madness. To this uncertain yet ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... recondite subject need Fresh signs to make it clear to those who read, A power of issuing terms till now unused, If claimed with modesty, is ne'er refused. New words will find acceptance, if they flow Forth from the Greek, with just a twist or so. But why should Rome capriciously forbid Our bards from doing what their fathers did? Or why should Plautus and Caecilius gain What Virgil or what Varius asks in vain? Nay, I myself, if with my scanty wit I coin a word or two, why grudge me it, When Ennius ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... twenty other women who were her sister's intimates and whom she herself had seen in London, in Grosvenor Place, and even under the motherly old beeches at Mellows. But she thought it unpleasant and base in Selina to go abroad that way, like a commercial traveller, capriciously, clandestinely, without giving notice, when she had left her to understand that she was simply spending three or four days in town. It was bad taste and bad form, it was cabotin and had the mark of Selina's complete, irremediable ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... as keep him waiting any longer for it. This story the Doctor related with great glee, and it furnishes a very good sample of what the Southerners are fond of exhibiting, the degree of licence to which they capriciously permit their favourite slaves occasionally to carry their familiarity. They seem to consider it as an undeniable proof of the general kindness with which their dependents are treated. It is as good a proof of it as the maudlin tenderness of ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... attending to the satisfaction of our desires, for we kill without remorse, as well the ox that labours for us, as the sheep that clothes us, and disregarding all the natural wealth of the fields, and the delicacies of the garden, we capriciously destroy creatures who are no doubt sent into the world to enjoy life as well as ourselves. But you who contend that you are born with an inclination to such food, why object to kill what you would eat? do it, however, with your own hands, and without the aid of a knife; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20, Issue 558, July 21, 1832 • Various
... in the half-year for direct and wilful breaches of rules. This cannot go on. They are doing no good to themselves or others, and now they are getting up in the School, and have influence. They seem to think that rules are made capriciously, and for the pleasure of the masters; but this is not so. They are made for the good of the whole School, and must and shall be obeyed. Those who thoughtlessly or wilfully break them will not be allowed to stay at the School. He should be sorry if they had to leave, as the School ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... accomplished. The native name of the confederacy is here for the first time mentioned. In the guttural and rather irregular orthography of the Book it is spelt Kanonghsyonny. The Roman Catholic missionaries, neglecting the aspirate, which in the Iroquois pronunciation appears and disappears as capriciously as in the spoken dialects of the south of England, write the word Kanonsionni. It is usually rendered by interpreters the "Long House," but this is not precisely its meaning. The ordinary word for "long house" is kanonses or kanonsis,—the termination es or is being the adjective ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... Stevenson being mostly mere pornography—could hardly have managed such a piece as "Le Sot Chevalier"—a riotously "improper" but excessively funny example—without running the risk of losing that recommendation of being "a lady's book" with which Johnson rather capriciously tempered his more general undervaluation. Sometimes, on the other hand, the joke is trivial enough, as in the English-French word-play of anel for agnel (or -neau), which substitutes "donkey" for "lamb"; or, in the other, on the comparison of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... prognathous race does not stop at proving that subordination to the white race is its normal condition. It goes further, and proves that social and political equality is abnormal to it, whether educated or not. Neither negroes nor mulattoes know how to use power when given to them. They always use it capriciously and tyrannically. Tschudi, a Swiss naturalist, [see Tschudi's Travels in Peru, London, 1848,] says, "that in Lima and Peru generally, the free negroes are a plague to society. Dishonesty seems to be a part of their very nature. Free born negroes, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... dialect would afford an agreeable variety by no means unmusical. In conversation with a very learned Grecian on this subject, he seemed to consider because the learned are constantly, and sometimes very capriciously, introducing new words into our language, that such words as en might be introduced for similar reasons, namely, mere fancy or caprice; on this subject I greatly differ from him: our aboriginal Saxon ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... back; but the great flood is steadily coming in. A person who looked on the waters only for a moment might fancy that they were retiring. A person who looked on them only for five minutes might fancy that they were rushing capriciously to and fro. But when he keeps his eye on them for a quarter of an hour, and sees one seamark disappear after another, it is impossible for him to doubt of the general direction in which the ocean is moved. Just ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to pieces in such circumstances, and no effort or skilfulness on the part of the crew would save the vessel should the owner venture to attempt the descent. The only channel at all available for transit runs from the village of Aesha on the Arabian side, winds capriciously from one bank to another, and emerges into calm water a little above Nakhiet Wady Haifa. During certain days in August and September the natives trust themselves to this stream, but only with boats lightly laden; even then their escape is problematical, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... This constant "box-hauling" of the yards was no trifling matter, accomplished as it had to be under the fierce rays of a blazing sun; and as it often happened that after laboriously trimming the yards and sheets to woo a wandering zephyr, it either expired before reaching the brig, or capriciously turned in another direction, passing her by without causing so much as a single flap of her canvas, it is not to be wondered at that the grumbling among all hands was both loud ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... to adduce a tittle of evidence. It was uncolored by the remotest possibility. It was truly and simply the suggestion of my vagrant fancy, which had mysteriously settled itself into a conviction; and having thus capriciously identified the stranger with Lieschen's murderer, I now, upon evidence quite as preposterous, identified Bourgonef ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... together is also, no doubt, a fruitful source of the difficulty; for I am now sure I could not have invented the Carol at the commencement of the Chuzzlewit, or gone to a new book from the Chimes. But this is certain. I am sick, giddy, and capriciously despondent. I have bad nights; am full of disquietude and anxiety; and am constantly haunted by the idea that I am wasting the marrow of the larger book, and ought to be at rest. One letter that I wrote you before this, I have torn up. In that the Christmas book was wholly ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... him only with a vague gesture and went away from the door. The fact was that disease played with us capriciously very much as the winds did. It would go from one man to another with a lighter or heavier touch, which always left its mark behind, staggering some, knocking others over for a time, leaving this one, returning to another, so that all of them had now an invalidish aspect and a hunted, ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... the captain had several friendly disputes, and exchanged bets, as to which was which. Then, too, the curious milky colour of the water (in strange contrast to the jewel-like clearness of the outer sea) makes it hard to keep clear of the coral shoals that shelve out capriciously from every island. In the daylight, the deeper water is seen in a bluish track (something like the "bluing" used in laundry work), edged on either side by "the white water." One has to keep a sharp lookout every foot of the way, and many ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... was dissipated by Theodosius and his favorites in wasteful and profuse luxury, which was disguised by the name of imperial magnificence or Christian charity. The immediate supplies had been exhausted by the unforeseen necessity of military preparations. A personal contribution, rigorously but capriciously imposed on the members of the senatorian order, was the only expedient that could disarm, without loss of time, the impatient avarice of Attila; and the poverty of the nobles compelled them to adopt the scandalous ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... suddenly, capriciously even, Laura, an inexplicable spirit of inconsistency besetting her, was a very different woman from the one who an instant before had spoken so gravely of the seriousness of marriage. She hesitated a moment before answering Jadwin, her head on one side, looking at the rose leaf between her fingers. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... moral and intellectual genius of the man. The impulsiveness which has been ascribed to him is a wrong expression, for it is usually interpreted to mean the action of sudden motives waywardly, capriciously, or at least intermittingly working; whereas the character which Shelley so constantly displayed was an overbearing strength of conviction and feeling, a species of audacious, but chivalrous readiness to act upon conviction ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... The light gleamed capriciously upon the bauble of the fool, which he still carried, though now it hung downward from his saddle, foolishly enough. "A most merry fool," said the Lord of Content to himself. "I was wise to insist upon his accompanying this wayward ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... lay down no dogmatic statements as to the efficacy of vocal prayers. What I do say is, that all I know of God as revealed in nature and law forbids me to entertain the notion that the order he has seen fit to establish is to be capriciously altered at the request of any of his creatures. It is not irreverence, but a sense of reverence which prohibits me from believing that the Being whose presence and power are revealed in the least as in the greatest of the phenomena of nature, is open ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan |
