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Wayward   /wˈeɪwərd/   Listen
Wayward

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






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Wayward" Quotes from Famous Books



... talking very seriously to her in regard to the ill-temper she has shown during the past few days," Violet said to herself. "Poor wayward child! I hope she will take the lesson to heart, and give him less ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... cheeks, Wind-play tossed their hair, Creeping things among the grass Stroked them here and there; Meggan piped a merry note, A fitful, wayward lay, While shrill as bird on topmost twig Piped merry May; Honey-smooth ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... confession—as he promptly made It, the day later, writhing in the shade Of the old apple-tree with Johnty and Bud, Noey Bixler, and The Hired Hand— Was quite as funny as the book was not.... O Wonderland of wayward Childhood! what An easy, breezy realm of summer calm And dreamy gleam and gloom and bloom and balm Thou art!—The Lotus-Land the poet sung, It is the Child-World while ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley

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

... advice from Viglius, Egmont, Mansfield, Meghem, De Berlaimont, and others, gave him ample information as to the real state of things, and they thus strove to palliate their having acceded to the convention. The emperor even wrote to his royal nephew, imploring him to treat his wayward subjects with moderation, and offered his mediation between them. Philip, though severely suffering, gave great attention to the details of this correspondence, which he minutely examined, and laid before his council of state, with notes ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... so totally unforeseen was this situation. And then a glimmer of hope came to me that perhaps his mother and Riddle might not be in St. Louis after all. I recalled the conversation in the cabin, and reflected that this wayward pair had stranded on so many beaches, had drifted off again on so many tides, that one place could scarce hold them long. Perchance they had sunk,—who could tell? I turned to Nick, who stood ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... description of that courageous and wayward spirit that literally haunts the footsteps of every great thinker and every great leader; sometimes with the result that it loses all aims, all hopes, and all trust in a definite goal. It is the case of the bravest and most broad-minded ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... sways the earth, And o'er the wayward holds his threatening rod, Who dares molest the gentle maids that keep Their holy vigils here in ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa

... died poor, and, but for merciful judges, would have died upon the gallows. The young peer had great intellectual powers; yet there was an unsound part in his mind. He had naturally a generous and feeling heart: but his temper was wayward and irritable. He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked. Distinguished at once by the strength and by the weakness of his intellect, affectionate yet perverse, a poor lord, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Frenchman hurried out, fastening the tent flap after him and leaving me to reflect on the wild impulses of his wayward nature. Was his strange, unwilling generosity the result of animosity to the big squaw, who seemed to exercise some subtle and commanding influence over him; or of gratitude to me? Was the noble blood that coursed in his veins, directing him in spite of his degenerate tendencies; or had ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... excellence as human imperfection is in modes corresponding with its deficiencies, and the movements of the Divine Mind cannot but correspond with the affections of the Divine Mind. Those movements are not unmeaning, purposeless, wayward. They, too, have their appropriate springs, and proceed by regular process from legitimate causes, the chief of those causes being the infinite perfection of the Divine Nature. Divine Power cannot then, any more than human, be directed by its owner's ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton

... her eyes that looked into my heart through his. And was it not thy prompting, mysterious Nature, that inclined him to me? Was there not a dim revelation, that I was more to him than other men? Else why delighted he in the society of a lone, wayward man like me? Lord God Almighty, no man knoweth the ordinances of heaven, nor can he set the dominion thereof ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... fairer stores possessed; For not alone they touch the village breast, But filled in elder time th' historic page. There Shakespeare's self, with every garland crowned,— [Flew to those fairy climes his fancy sheen!]— In musing hour, his wayward Sisters found, And with their terrors dressed the magic scene. From them he sung, when, 'mid his bold design, Before the Scot afflicted and aghast, The shadowy kings of Banquo's fated line Through the dark cave in gleamy pageant passed. Proceed, nor quit the ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

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

... vigorous from exercise and unembarrassed by care. She affected no concealment of her own condition, of her wants, or her comforts. She laid no stress upon misfortunes, but contrived to deduce some beneficial consequence to herself, and some motive for gratitude to Heaven, from every wayward incident ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... hands to haul courses up and stand by to work ship. We hauled sharp up to windward, and, as we drew on, we saw what was the matter, and the sight caused our Old Man to dive below to his charts, cursing his wayward chronometer. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... 'That soft and rounded rhyme suits ill with Sappho's fitful and wayward agonies. She should burst out at once into wild passionate life-weariness, and disgust at that universe, with whose beauty she has filled her eyes in vain, to find it always a dead picture, unsatisfying, unloving—as I ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... where I understand the news that Mr. Montagu is this last night come to the King with news, that he left the Queen and fleet in the Bay of Biscay, coming this wayward; and that he believes she is now at the Isle of Scilly. So at noon to my Lord Crew's and there dined, and after dinner Sir Thos. Crew and I talked together, and among other instances of the simple light discourse that sometimes is in the Parliament House, he told me how in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... I answered, following the wayward lead my wit had opened. "The gods of birth were careless, and I was mislaid in a far land and nursed by an alien people. I am Korean, and now, at last, I have come ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... perusal of this cold-hearted, ungrateful letter, the love I had felt for this woman—already much shaken by her wayward and perverse temper—vanished from my heart, never to return. But as an honest man, my conscience was terribly stung. Could it be possible that I had unknowingly deceived her,—that our marriage was not legal? When I recovered from the stun which was the first effect of her ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... it was with a radiant face, indeed, that he went into the full kirk, holding the hand of his cousin Hugh. Some in the kirk remembered him, others guessed who he might be; and many a doubtful glance was sent back to the days of his wayward youth, and many an anxious thought was stirred as to whether his coming home was to be for good or ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson

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

... I impatiently, and jogged his elbow to make him move. For he was ever a prey to strange and wayward fancies which hitherto I had only smiled at. But now, somehow—perhaps because there might have been some excuse for this one—perhaps because what a man rescues he will not willingly leave to another—even such a poor young thing as this plaything ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... a tempest of wrath and wild emotion, had it in his mind to compel her into reason, to shake her, as one shakes a wayward child. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy

... those practised by his elderly sisters. I submitted and lived a life of slavery to his whims and his cruelty for five years. He had agreed to let me have Tibbetts for my maid, as he deemed her a staid old woman who would not encourage me in wayward desires. Nor did she. But she realized my thraldom, my lonely, unhappy life, and knew that I was pining away for want of the simple innocent pleasures that my youth and light-hearted nature craved. I used to beg and plead ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells

... wellnigh smiled as he watched the maiden's wrath, but the old man was grieved that the stranger should see the wayward behaviour of his foster-child, and he reproved her for her anger. The old ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... Antonio's manner, and so wayward seemed his speech, that I was half inclined to think his religious enthusiasm fairly had landed him in religious madness; which thought must have found utterance in my look of doubtfulness, for he smiled kindly at me, and in a ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... faint under your tribulations? Is it a seducing world—a wandering, wayward heart? "Consider Him that endured!" Listen to your adorable Redeemer, stooping from His Throne, and saying, "I have overcome the world." He came forth unscathed from its snares. With the same heavenly weapon He bids you ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... often croaked for that reason!" and Reay pushed from his forehead a wayward tuft of hair which threatened to drop over his eye in a thick silvery brown curl—"But it's wonderful how little a fellow can live upon in the way of what is called food. I know all sorts of dodges wherewith to satisfy the greedy ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... and the great heart against which she was so fondly pressed was warm with kindred blood? Grandpa, too, had fondled and caressed her idolized mother, and even his wandering faculties had detected her lineage, so that he had clung to her for some better reason than an impulsive and wayward fancy! ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... rosy-tinted cheeks Concealed a heart torn by the pangs of love. Is it within the range of wayward chance That the fair Princess Eboli should sigh Unheard—unanswered? Love is only known By him who hopelessly persists ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... and a spirit in armour. Maria could not provoke her (and she tried); nor could any other temptations or difficulties, that she could see, shake a certain steady gentleness with which Matilda went through them. Matilda was never a passionate child, but she had been pleasure-loving and wayward. That was changing now; and Matilda was giving earnest care to ...
— What She Could • Susan Warner

... what ages have we not toiled to the conviction that people should not be burnt for their opinions. The lightest word about dignities, the slightest claim to freedom of thought or speech upon those matters which, perhaps, angelic natures would hardly venture to pronounce upon, even the wayward play of morbid imagination, were not unlikely in former times to lead to signal punishments. A man might almost in his sleep commit treason, or heresy, or witchcraft. The most cautious, official-spoken ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... Francesco," says Aurelia in a twitter, "I am glad to see you again." She was tremulous, beautiful; she had her old wayward, ardent ways, her childish bloom and roundness had not left her, nor her sumptuousness, nor her allure—and yet I could look calmly into her face and know that she had no ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... me to bear his uncle's wayward temper patiently, I did, though every day I was taunted with idle and inhuman questions, such as, "How long do you think that I will support you? What is to become of you in a prison? What business have beggars to marry?" With many ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... Sibley's place of recruiting and assembly has been ill chosen! The animals, crowded on the bare plains, suffer for lack of forage. Recruits are discouraged by the dreary surroundings. The effective strength has not visibly increased in three months. The Texans are wayward. A strong column, well organized, in the rich interior of Texas, full of the early ardor of secession might have pushed on and reached the Gila. But here is only a chafing body of undisciplined men. They are united ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... the strings beneath his finger-tips Sing harmonies divine. No more his lips, Touched with a living coal from sacred fires, Lead the sweet chorus of the golden wires. The voice is raucous and the phrases squeak; They labor, they complain, they sweat, they reek! The more the wayward, disobedient song Errs from the right to celebrate the wrong, More diligently still the singer strums, To drown the horrid sound, with all his thumbs. Gods, what a spectacle! The angels lean Out of high Heaven to view the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... of the lash of Mr Farmer, the first-lieutenant, as I could. With him I could take the liberty if I found him in a good humour, though I dared not with the captain; for, though the latter had some attachment for me, it was a dreadfully wayward and capricious feeling. ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

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

... (his father and elder brother having died), enjoyed the soundest health. There is no better aid to life than a certain knowledge that our demise would confer a benefit on some fellow-creature. M. de Beauseant was one of those ironical and wayward beings who, like holders of life-annuities, wake with an additional sense of relish every morning to a consciousness of good health. For the rest, he was a man of the world, somewhat methodical and ceremonious, and a calculator of consequences, ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac

... scale. His virtues were heroic, his faults were conspicuous. No man despised hypocrisy more than he did, and no one would have asked any sooner to be painted as he was, without concealment. During the latter part of his life, many people knew him principally by his faults. Few knew what the wayward Prince Hal of the evening had been to King Henry in the morning hour. Like Webster and Clay, he was made up of human frailty. As his intimate friend, Samuel Barnett, said of him: "In spite of splendid physique, a man of blood and passion, he was not only a model of domestic ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... the law, Monsieur Mouillard. I have studied Fabien. His temperament is somewhat wayward. With special training he might have become an artist. Lacking that early moulding into shape, he never will be anything more ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin

... 153. "What!" a wayward youth might perhaps answer, incredulously, "no one ever gets wiser by doing wrong? Shall I not know the world best by trying the wrong of it, and repenting? Have I not, even as it is, learned much by many of my errors?" Indeed, the effort by which partially you ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... the children of the street from the lonely window of the Red Tower. They might spit all day on the harled masonry at the foot of the wall for aught I cared. I no longer desired their society. Had I not that of a real Princess, and if my companion was inclined to be a little wayward and domineering—why, was not that the very birthright ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... coast. No two of the many abrupt elevations resemble each other. All are peculiar; some like Alpine cathedrals rear their fretted spires far heavenward, where they echo the hoarse anthems played by the winter's storms. One would think that Nature in a wayward mood had tried her hand sportively at architecture, sculpture, and castle-building, constructing now a high monumental column or a mounted warrior, and now a Gothic fane amid regions strange, lonely, and savage. There are grand mountains and glaciers in Switzerland and other ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... pass. I hear a nation's voice Raised to defend the absent, wronged child; My hopes and aims were high, albeit my choice Was fixed on one who felt not for my wild And wayward nature; one who never smiled On imperfection. From my home of light Unscathed, I see life's blackening billows piled, Ready to sweep the daring soul from sight, Sinking his name and ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... in wayward whirls, Went winding in and winding out, Lay shells, that wore the look of pearls Without their pride, ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... coming from the wayward world, That powerful world in which ye dwell, Come, Spirits of the Mind! and try, To-night, beneath the moonlight sky, What may be done with ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... had, when Vicar of St. Wulstan's, been the guide and helper of Ferdinand Travis's time of trial and disappointment, as well as the spiritual father of Clement Underwood; he had known and dealt with Angela in her wayward girlhood, and aided her bitter repentance; and in these later days in Australia had been her true fatherly friend, counsellor and comforter in the trials and perplexities that had befallen her. Bernard read, in her lifted head and brightened eye, that ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... the wayward demon Chance intervened. Had St. Just risen but two minutes earlier, had his active mind suggested the desired excuse more readily, who knows what unspeakable sorrow, what heartrending misery, what terrible shame might have been spared both him and those for whom he cared? Those ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... professorship of Icelandic quite as well as I, and he may have grudged my settled position in Oxford, my independence and my freedom. Whenever we did work together, I always found him pleasant at first, but very soon he would become wayward and sensitive, do what I would, and I had to let him go his own way, as I ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... and smiled. Perhaps he felt as the really religious do about God, that the Hohenzollerns are so high up that criticism can't harm them, but I doubt it; or perhaps he regards Kloster indulgently, as a gifted and wayward child, but I doubt that too. He happens to be intelligent, and is not to be persuaded that a spade is anything but a spade, however much it may be got up to look like the Ark of the Covenant or anything else archaic and ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley

... exceedingly pretty young girl. This afternoon her face showed a promise of the unusual beauty that was to come to her later in life, when she had learned many things. There was a hint of tragedy in her charming, wayward nature. The friends who loved her knew that her path through life would not follow an easy and untroubled road. She could never do anything in a half-way fashion, whether it were to love or to hate, to be happy or to ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... clear brown cheek bearing it usual pink tinges but faintly. The figure curled down upon the moss was rather tall, of a slight build; the features were not just regular; the hair of invisible brown lay in very wayward silky curls; and the eyes, as soon could be seen, were to match, both as to colour and waywardness. The mouth was a very woman's mouth, though the girlish arch lines had hardly yet learned their own powers whether of feeling or ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner

... up to bed early. She was full of caprices as a wayward child. Of a remarkably chilly nature—as is the case, sometimes, where the constitution is delicate—she would have a fire in her dressing-room night and morning all the year round, even in the heat of summer. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... strange and a wayward thing: We heard the bells of the Temples ring, The married children, in passing, sing. The month of marriage, the month of spring, Was full of the breath of sunburnt flowers That bloom in a fiercer light than ours, ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

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

... thinking to change times and laws." Your unrighteous thrusts, to put down and destroy God's honest children, who are endeavoring to live by every word of God, seems to be in perfect keeping with your wayward, backslidden course. It is you, sir, that have been practising things in secret, which are a shame, and a disgrace, and a stigma upon the cause which you profess. Now lay off that apostolic cloak which you have taken to cover your deformed and deceptive arts. The ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates

... they agreed none the worse. Lydgate was abrupt but not irritable, taking little notice of megrims in healthy people; and Ladislaw did not usually throw away his susceptibilities on those who took no notice of them. With Rosamond, on the other hand, he pouted and was wayward—nay, often uncomplimentary, much to her inward surprise; nevertheless he was gradually becoming necessary to her entertainment by his companionship in her music, his varied talk, and his freedom from the grave preoccupation which, with all her husband's tenderness and indulgence, often made ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... or not, she looked, at any rate, a completed product; she looked distinguished and worth while; she looked alive, alert: one in whom the blood coursed swiftly, the spirit burned vigorously; one who would love her pleasure, who could be wayward and provoking, but who could also be generous and loyal; she looked high-bred, one in whom there was race, as well as ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... being not good to us sinners. And this state of things which we see, fair and excellent in itself, is very likely (for the very reason that it is seen, and because the spiritual and future world is not seen) to seduce our wayward hearts from our true and eternal good. As the traveller on serious business may be tempted to linger, while he gazes on the beauty of the prospect which opens on his way, so this well-ordered and divinely-governed world, with all its blessings of sense and knowledge, ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... possess, Where thoughts and feelings dwell; And very hard I find the task Of governing it well. For passion tempts and troubles me, A wayward will misleads, And selfishness its shadow casts On ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... fixed his calm blue eyes upon the monster's burning orbs. There was neither fear, nor excitement, nor irresolution in that steadfast gaze—it was like the clear, straightforward glance of a father checking a wayward child—even the habitual sadness lingered in the deep azure, and the features only changed to be cast in more placid mold. It was the struggle of a brave and tranquil soul with the ferocious instincts of the brute. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... wilful spirit wakes in me, at the very sound of his voice (always gentle and restrained, and echoing of past sadness); under his mild, tender look; at the every fresh sign of his perpetual watchful anxiety—I give him wayward answers, frowning greetings, sighs, pouts; I feel at times a savage desire to wound, to anger him, and as far as I dare venture I have ventured, yet could not rouse in him one spark, ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... see the necessity," Stephen protested. He was wilful and wayward; he adopted a privileged air, and she scolded him. In their dispute they laughed so imprudently that Sister Ann Frances turned her draped head to look back at them. Then they quickened their steps and ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... waves of the sea when the moon lay upon them; and sometimes as if they appeared suddenly in the streets of the city after the people had passed by and the houses had gone to sleep. They were as light as thistle-down, as unsubstantial as mists upon the mountain, as wayward and flickering as will-o'-the-wisps. But there was something immortal about them, and the man knew that the world would be nothing to him without their presence ...
— The Unruly Sprite - The Unknown Quantity, A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke

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

... all night had not been forthcoming. But mere assumptions would not serve him; he had walked in darkness too long not to crave the full light. The pathos of this girl's loyalty had touched him; her chance in life had been the slightest, she had been wayward and had erred deeply, and yet there were fastnesses of honor in her soul that ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... not fate which overtook me, Rather a wayward, wilful wind That blew hot for awhile And then, as the even shadows came, blew cold. What pity it is that a man grown old in life's dreaming Should stop, e'en for a moment, to look into a woman's eyes. And I forgot! ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson

... responsible for some acts which were forbidden, but that most youth were legally minors until the age of fifteen. Until the early period of the eighteenth century it was still possible for a parent to legally sell his children, "a girl up to fourteen, a boy under seven." And after that period a wayward or troublesome son or daughter, or any of the offspring, when the parents could be proved financially incapable of their care, could be sent ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer

... truth he was a strange and wayward wight, Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene. In darkness, and in storm, he found delight: Nor less, than when on ocean-wave serene The southern sun diffused his dazzling shene. Even sad vicissitude amused his soul: And if a sigh would sometimes intervene, And ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... difficulties began. The tale is almost too trivial for repetition, but is nevertheless characteristic. Master Enger's servants were taking some corn to market, when they met "a faire black sowe" grazing. The wayward beast began turning round "as readily as a Windmill sail at worke; and as sodainly their horses fell to starting and drawing some one way, some another." They started off with the cart of corn, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

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

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

... away that opaque barrier, that many young polished gentlemen, have built up before the eyes of their day acquaintances; we would have to call forth tears of bitter bitter anguish, from trusting sorrowing mothers, who are at this same moment praying God on bended knees, to save their wild wayward boys. We would pierce the hearts of many pure confiding girls, who are buried in dreams of future happiness, and who would not dare suspect the awful truths that are born of the midnight hours. There are, therefore, too many innocent ones interested; too many mothers to wail; too many ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... demonstrations before, and borne them with comparative patience, knowing how well worth the trouble of winning, how true and tender after all, if only it could be reached under these disguising caprices, was the wayward little heart that had tested my love and tried my temper all these years. From her very cradle she provoked me, from the frills of her baby cap she mocked me; and, grown into the ranks of little girlhood, systematically aggravated me by artful preference of all the little boys I most hated, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... smile, that held the merest ghost of merriment, passed across the face of Minks, leaping, unobserved by his chief, from one eye to the other. There was pity and admiration in it; a hint of pathos visited those wayward lips. For the suggestion revealed the weakness the secretary had long ago divined—that the practical root of the matter did not really lie in him at all, and Henry Rogers forever dreamed of 'Schemes' he was ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... two days before with spasms after drinking some spirits and water. Peters had expressed to us his opinion that this man had been poisoned by the mate, and for this belief he had reasons, so he said, which were incontrovertible, but which he could not be prevailed upon to explain to us—this wayward refusal being only in keeping with other points of his singular character. But whether or not he had any better grounds for suspecting the mate than we had ourselves, we were easily led to fall in with his suspicion, and determined ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

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

... otherwise be. Don't tremble so, Minny; I never have felt towards you as a mistress would to a slave. When I look back, I remember you were the only playmate I ever had, the closest and best companion of my wayward girlhood; and I feel that I have always loved you, always respected you, and, Minny, I always shall. I am certain, Minn, that though there may be black blood circling round it, there never was a purer heart, a nobler soul, than yours. Were ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa

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

... than can be said of all. They have inspired many a man with a disrelish for his home; have made many a young wife water her couch with tears; and kept many a widowed mother walking her parlours in lonely anguish till after midnight, awaiting the return of her wayward son from the card-table. Does it become a community, who would guard their homes as they do their altars, because they know their altars will not long be worth guarding if their homes are desecrated ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur

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

... was thinking of Bernard, and grieving for his wayward humours; and Bernard was thinking that Lucilla was not half such good company as Ralph the stable-boy, or even as Miss Evans or Stephen; and yet he had some sort of love for Lucilla, though he did not like her company. He was, ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... Life, and Strength, and Vigour; nor is it possible for the Mind to perform its Offices without their Assistance: These Motions are given us with our Being, they are little Spirits that are born and dye with us; to some they are mild, easie, and gentle, to others wayward and unruly, yet never too strong for the Reins of Reason and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... thy sunny face—what he could see of it. Sweet little Fanny! And thy proud, beautiful sister, Jane—sitting beside me, and near thee; well did that gleaming light reveal her noble outline of face and form contrasting so finely with thine. Nor did those wayward shadows spare our dear mother, but daguerreotyped all manner of merry-andrews on her sober satin dress, as she sat over on a lounge, quietly talking with my dear, sweet Edgar, who employed his leisure moments in throwing sundry loving glances over at me. Nor did these weird shadows spare our ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... accomplished corrector of the University Press, as his indignant pencil hung over "incanting" and "reverizing" and "cose." Yet closer examination always shows that she, too, has studied grammar and dictionary, algebra and the Greek alphabet; and her most daring verbal feats are never vague or wayward, for there is always an eager and accurate brain behind them. She dares too much to escape blunders, yet, after all, commits fewer in proportion than those who dare less. The basis of all good writing is truth in details; and her lavish wealth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... attributes, with the bloody footstep, and whose sudden disappearance became a myth, under the idea that the Devil carried him away. Yet, on the whole, this wild tradition, doubtless becoming wilder in Sibyl's wayward and morbid fancy, had the effect to give him a sense of the fantasticalness of his present pursuit, and that in adopting it, he had strayed into a region long abandoned to superstition, and where the shadows of forgotten dreams go when ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... been balm for ever; but she had not resolution for the effort, and the days slid away till the worst fears were fulfilled. Nay, were they the worst fears? Was there not an unavowed sense that it was safer that she should die, while innocent of all but wayward folly, than be left to perils which she was ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... doors are baleful to my eyes, Fill'd and dam'd up with gaping creditors, Watchful as fowlers when their game will spring. I've now not fifty ducats in the world, Yet still I am in love, and pleas'd with ruin. Oh! Belvidera! Oh! she is my wife— And we will bear our wayward fate together, But ne'er ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway

... pleasure. For yf that place which is ordeined to make amendes for all fautes and so to renew loue, be polluted, eyther with strife or grugynges, then fayre wel al hope of loue daies, or atonementes, yet there be some beastes so wayward and mischeuous, that when theyr husbandes hath them in their arms a bed, they scholde & chyde making that same plesure their lewd condicions (that expelseth all displeasures oute of their husbandes ...
— A Merry Dialogue Declaringe the Properties of Shrowde Shrews and Honest Wives • Desiderius Erasmus

... of her valuable minutes in making a scarlet flag and mounting it on a wooden knitting-pin, whilst Dick and Amy busily ornamented its base with fan shells. Dick was the king, with Alick for his knight—rather a top-heavy knight, with wayward legs—and Susie and Amy were the besieging army, fighting with desperate courage as long as they ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow

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

... simple yet poetical home, that to me the character of Edgar Poe appeared in its most beautiful light. Playful, affectionate, witty, alternately docile and wayward as a petted child-for his young, gentle, and idolized wife, and for all who came, he had, even in the midst of his most harassing literary duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention. At his desk, beneath the romantic picture of his loved and lost Lenore, he ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... her to memory. He remembered her tight black dress, her fur cloak, the warm collar of which had caressed him as he was covering her neck with kisses. He remembered that she wore no jewellery, except sparkling blue sapphire eardrops. He remembered the wayward blonde hair escaping from under the dark green otter hat. Holding his hands to his nostrils he sniffed again the sweet and distant odour, cinnamon lost among stronger perfumes, which he had caught from the contact of her long, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... possession of the comparatively small property he inherited from his father. The estate on which his mother lived was her own; and her income gave her the means of indulging or controlling him, after he had grown to man's estate, as her wayward disposition and her love of power ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

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

... wayward and peculiar in such an affaire du coeur, and none of these things might have weighed with Louise had she not discovered that Diana Von Taer was in love with Arthur and intended to win him. That aroused the girl's fighting instincts, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne

... said Toussaint, "I have to ask you to be generous to me. I need and implore your pardon, Moyse. While you were yet weak and wayward, I neglected the necessary watch over you. Too prone to ease and satisfaction, for my child's sake and my own, I too soon concluded you a man, and imposed upon you the duties of a man. Your failure is my condemnation. I have cut short your ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... die! Let my woman's heart of flesh die! Saviour, let my heart die. And save my child. Let my heart die from the world and from the flesh. Oh, destroy my heart that is so wayward. Let my heart of pride ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence

... days no more remembered, Ages nearer the beginning, When the heavens were closer to us, And the gods were more familiar, In the Northland lived a hunter, With ten young and comely daughters, Tall and lithe as wands of willow; Only Oweenee, the youngest, She the wilful and the wayward, She the silent, dreamy maiden, Was the fairest of the sisters. 'All these women married warriors, Married brave and haughty husbands; Only Oweenee, the youngest, Laughed and flouted all her lovers, All her young and handsome suitors, And then married old Osseo, Old Osseo, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... hawthorn blossom, free As air to shed her pleasures, My mute, melodious MAY shall be The soul of wayward measures. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various

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

... word, of this vivid, high-spirited girl seemed to be an echo of her impetuous, wayward temper. Even a concern as natural as that excited by her cousin's present plight, was charged with an intensity which made me wonder what the effect might be if her feelings were ever deeply or ruthlessly stirred. While her affections ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk

... lets himself go in a very revelry of artistic abandon. He does not think of style—that fetich of barren minds—and style comes to him; for style is a coquette that flies the suppliant wooer to kiss the feet of him who worships a goddess; a submissive handmaiden, a wayward and moody mistress. But along with delicacy of diction, force and felicity of expression, pregnancy of phrase and pliancy of language, what knowledge there is of men—the passions that sway, the impulses that ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... impression that she was the same as, and yet different from, the lady whom I had seen in the balcony. Soon, however, this impression wore off. Under the circumstances, could I regard it as any thing but a mere caprice, a lover's wayward fancy? I dismissed it from my mind; it ceased to affect me, until to-day, when I first discovered that it was a warning which I had most unhappily disregarded; that a terrible error had been committed, for which no one of us was ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... heart had no secrets, and she was his all in all: when he poured his hopes and pleasures, his childish griefs, vanities, triumphs into her willing and tender embrace; when her home was his nest still; and before fate, selfishness, nature, had driven him forth on wayward wings—to range on his own flight—to sing his own song—and to seek his own home and his own mate. Watching this devouring care and racking disappointment in her friend, Laura once said to Helen, "If Pen had loved me as ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray

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

... "Alice, this is wilful, wayward, unjust," cried Middleton, with a flushed cheek. "I have not told you—yet you know well—the deep and real importance which this subject has for me. We have been together as friends, yet, the instant when there comes up an occasion when the slightest friendly ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... was thronged with seamen whom the cessation of war had cast on shore without employment, when as I was strolling along the quays of Liverpool with my hands in my pockets, in rather a disconsolate mood, wondering in what direction my wayward fate would carry me, I ran bolt up against a post near which a gentleman was standing, and somehow or other ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... vainly he wished that his boy might have done as well; and how through his small grey eye, the labouring tear-drops oozed, as he called fresh to mind again all that he had promised himself at the birth of his unhappy prodigal! What would he not give to recover and reform the wayward boy? The thought occurred to him, and he dallied with it for his pleasure. "If I could but settle him with this young Allcraft! Why should it not be done? I will give him all I have at once, if necessary, and live in a garret, if it will save my poor Augustus. I will ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... persecuted sect. In the land which Catholics had opened for Protestants, the Catholic inhabitant was the sole victim to Anglican intolerance. Mass might not be said publicly. No Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice of persuasion. No Catholic might teach the young. If the wayward child of a Papist would but become an apostate, the law wrested for him from his parents a share of their property. The disfranchisement of the proprietary related to his creed, not to his family. Such were the methods adopted 'to ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... conversation with her father been so pleasant as to make her anxious to renew it until his temper should be more composed; for with an excellent disposition, and much love to his daughter, age and misfortunes, which of late came thicker and thicker, had given to the good knight's passions a wayward irritability unknown to his better days. His daughter, and one or two attached servants, who still followed his decayed fortunes, soothed his frailty as much as possible, and pitied him even while they suffered ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... odd characters formed in Nature's wayward moods. Sneek also possessed a giant named Lange Jacob, who was eight feet tall and the husband of Korte Jannetje (Little Jenny), who was just half that height. People came from great distances to see this couple. And at Sneek, in the church of St. Martin, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... sigh of relief came to her lips. If Clarence had wooed and won her he had not willfully deceived her. "Oh, how I would like to see him. I was wayward and young when I left him in anger. Oh, if I have sinned I have suffered; but I think that I could die content if I could only see him once more." Annette related the strange sad story to her physician, who decided that it was safe and desirable that there should be an interview between them. ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... people of its carnal weakness, and that the young manhood of the nation had been spiritualized and made austere. Yes, it was true. War had captured the souls and bodies of men, and under her discipline of blood and agony men's wayward fancies, the seductions of the flesh, the truancies of the heart ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs

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

... When the light flickered over the crucifix she felt as if she could spend her life in passionate adoration at its foot; but when she did not see it, and the wind, coming in from the desert through the tent door, where she heard the movement of Androvsky, stirred in her hair, she felt reckless, wayward, savage—and something more. A cry rose in her that was like the cry of a stranger, who yet was of her and in her, and from whom she ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... the pastimes of the glad, Full oft is pleased a wayward dart to throw, Sending sad shadows after things not sad, Peopling the harmless fields with sighs of wo. Beneath her sway, a simple forest cry Becomes an echo of man's misery. What wonder? at her bidding ancient ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various

... sometimes again we catch glimpses of a lyric strain, sustained perhaps but for a line or two at a time, and making the reader regret its sudden cessation. But the main quality of these poems is that of extraordinary grasp and insight, uttered with an uneven vigor sometimes exasperating, seemingly wayward, but really unsought and inevitable. After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. As Ruskin wrote in his earlier and better days, "No weight nor mass nor beauty of execution can outweigh one ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson

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

... strange name of Demogorgon has probably its origin in the clerical error of some mediaeval copyist, fumbling with the scholia of an anonymous grammarian. One can conceive that it appealed to Shelley's wayward fancy because it suggested none of the traditional theologies; and certainly it has a mysterious and venerable sound. Shelley can describe It only as Godwin describes his principle by a series ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford

... his wayward habits were a care to her; but he was sincerely ashamed of himself, and the discovery of the development of character in the pretty girl whom he had left six years before roused his manhood. To her joy he began to take an interest in the faith which had ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham

... Sylvie's disappearance, he had been alternately gay and tranquil. All morning he had mended his boat, and in the afternoon he had cleaned his gun; and whenever he could cajole Bella into being his audience, he had talked. His talk was all of Sylvie, of her pretty childishness, her sweet, wayward ways, of her shyness, her timidity; and later, when supper was cleared away and he had throned himself in the center of that familiar circle of firelight, he had dropped his beautiful voice to a lower key and had boasted ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt

... of exhaustion. This time they went farther than Amalia really intended, and had left the paths immediately about the cabin, and climbed higher up the mountain. Here there was no trail and the way was rough indeed, but Madam Manovska was in one of her most wayward moods and insisted on going ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... wayward will, And discontent attend him still, Nor quit him while he lives; At sea care follows in the wind, At land it mounts the pad behind, Or with ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... childhood as other children grow, a daily miracle to see. Only for him incessant care watched and waited; unwearied as the angel that looked from him to the face of God, so to gather ever fresh strength and guidance for the wayward child, his mother's tender eyes overlooked him all day, followed his tottering steps from room to room, kept far away from him all fear and pain, shone upon him in the depths of night, woke and wept for him always. Never could he know the hardy self-reliance of those whom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... Paris, I had no regularity in my wanderings, no method in my sight-seeing, following a perhaps wayward fancy, and enjoying myself the better ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... and went up stairs immediately—went up to do what all women have done, from the time of the first mother; to do what Eve did when Cain was wayward in his infancy, and cried at her breast—in short, went up to coax ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins

... distinguished men were not deterred by the self-denying ordinance so generally accepted, that it is not becoming in any one to speak frankly of himself or his own convictions. We have no longer any of the strong, wayward egotists,—the St. Augustines, the Montaignes, the Rousseaus, the Mirabeaus, the Byrons; even the Cobbetts have died out. But the Carlyles and the Emersons preserve amongst us still the evidences of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

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

... spectators. For example, a certain Selig release was entitled "Through Another Man's Eyes." Before the next to the last scene, which showed the ne'er-do-well lover peering in at the window, while his former friend bends over to kiss his wife—who might have been the wife of the wayward young man, had he been made of ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

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

... vigor and promise in her acting. To-night there was not only vigor, but tenderness— there was a passion in her voice which arose now and then to power. She was so completely in sympathy with her part that she ceased to be Priscilla: she was the Prince who must win this wayward Princess or die. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

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

... which I labored. I was especially afraid of some sudden paroxysm of mania, under the influence of which I might do myself unpremeditated injury. I never feared any settled purpose of self-injury, but I had become nervously apprehensive of possible wayward and maniacal impulses which might result in acts ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... musician that Nietzsche dreamed of,[169] he seems "to hear ringing in his ears the prelude of a deeper, stronger music, perhaps a more wayward and mysterious music; a music that is super-German, which, unlike other music, would not die away, nor pale, nor grow dull beside the blue and wanton sea and the clear Mediterranean sky; a music super-European, which would hold its own even by the dark sunsets of the desert; a music whose soul ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... young orator instantly caught the attention of the people, who always listened to him with favor; and it was not long before his constant participation in public affairs developed the splendid talents which he possessed. Wayward and affected in little things, Pitt attacked the great problems of government with the bold confidence of a master spirit, impressing the clear genius of his leadership upon the yearning heart of England in every emergency of peace ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... a mere outline or silhouette. As such, it should be clear and simple and pleasing, capable of being grasped as a whole irrespective of detail. Michelangelo demanded that every statue be capable of being put inside of some simple geometrical figure, like a pyramid or a cube; that there be no wayward arms or legs, but close attachment to the body, so close that the statue might be rolled down hill without any part being broken off. This last is perhaps too rigorous a requirement, but the best work of all periods exhibits visual clarity and concentration.[Footnote: Compare Adolf Hildebrand, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... and bent his bow, "Just watch this famous shot; See that old willow by the brook— I'll hit the middle knot." Swift flew the arrow through the air, Madge watched it eager-eyed; But, oh! for Harry's gallant vaunt, The wayward dart flew wide. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... guide our feet. He is no sedulous governess restraining and correcting the wayward steps of men. If you would fly into the air, there is no God to bank your aeroplane correctly for you or keep an ill-tended engine going; if you would cross a glacier, no God nor angel guides your steps amidst the slippery ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... of honest money and marry some nice girl and have horses and dogs and a bully home and kids. Look here, as Wayward says, you're not the devilish sort you pretend to be. You're too young for one thing. I never knew you to do ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers



Words linked to "Wayward" :   disobedient



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