"Whim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at his wits' end, but after consultation with one who was learned in strange mysteries, a way was found to satisfy the whim of the Lord Abbot. Which lights were blocked up, so that those which remained added up an even number in every line horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, while the least possible obstruction ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... a client; to-night you are my guest. All who enter here leave their business, with their hats, in the hall. Look; there isn't a law book on those shelves; that table never was defaced by a title deed or parchment. You look puzzled? Well, it was a whim of mine to put my residence and my work-shop under the same roof, yet so distinct that they would never interfere with each other. You know the house above is let out to lodgers. I occupy the first floor with my mother and sister, and this is my parlor. I do my work in that severe room that ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... resulted in a bad caddie service—and an open brook along whose dashing descent a constant stream of shandygaff went merrily bubbling onward to an in-door sea upon which Jupiter exercised his yacht when sailing was the thing to suit his immediate whim. ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... song; Catch the rib-shaking laugh, or from his eye Dash silently the tear of sympathy. Happy old man!—with feelings such as these The seasons all can charm, and trifles please; And hence a sudden thought, a new-born whim, Would shake his cup of pleasure to the brim, Turn scoffs and doubts and obstacles aside, And instant ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... feel out of spirits, my lady, why not invite company! Let the prince give an entertainment here, or have the ombre table brought to you. If the prince and all his court were at my beck and call I would let no whim ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... his cutlet. But as he stood there eating, with his glass in his hand, and looked round the dear old office where they had spent so many pleasant hours, and then thought that they were to lose all this and imbitter their lives for a whim, a sudden burst of passion, the whole situation appeared to him so preposterous that ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... seems to feel—she seems to think that in all your kindness to her and nobleness you deserve a wife who has never fancied another, even in girlhood. She told me that her feeling for me was only the idle whim of a child, and that she pitied me as a weak and stumbling creature. She put it that way, with blazing eyes, and she put it right. I am weak—I've always been weak; and to-day, in trying to win her from you, I did the weakest act of my ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... furtive steals along the dim Bleak street, barren of throngs, this day of June; This day of rest, when all the roses swoon In Attic vales where dryads wait for him? What sylvan this, and what the stranger whim That lured him here this golden afternoon; Ways where the dusk has fallen oversoon In the deep ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... its use as promoting the advancement and clearing up the history of fictile art, and will therefore be preserved, while a larger portion will interest only the few who delve into the records of human caprice and whim. Even these will not particularly care to know or remember what factory-brand was borne by the teapots and saucers of our grandmothers, and what Staffordshire modeller or woodcutter was responsible for the usually atrocious decorations of those utensils. They will smile but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... galloped forward, and he followed through the yellow sunshine, attendant always on her caprice, ready for any sudden whim. So when she wheeled to the left and lifted her mare over a snake-fence, he was ready to follow; and together they tore away across a pasture, up a hill all purple with plumy bunch-grass, and forward to the edge ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... Fouche's police. Fouche saw the absurdity of interfering with trifles. I recollect that immediately after the creation of the Legion of Honour, it being summer, the young men of Paris indulged in the whim of wearing a carnation in a button-hole, which at a distance had rather a deceptive effect. Bonaparte took this very seriously. He sent for Fouche, and desired him to arrest those who presumed thus to turn the new order into ridicule. Fouche merely replied that ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... to approach the conditions of the anecdote, I must have a Mouse; with a Mole, a heavy mass, the removal would perhaps present too much difficulty. To obtain one, I place my friends and neighbours under requisition; they laugh at my whim but none the less proffer their traps. Yet, the moment a very common thing is needed, it becomes rare. Defying decency in his speech, after the manner of his ancestors' Latin, the Provencal says, but even more ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... of these facts, it is scarcely necessary to observe that the Calabar people are extremely cruel, indeed I am informed that they frequently cause their slaves to be put to death for a mere whim; a practice which they endeavour to excuse, by saying, that if the slaves were not thus kept in awe of their masters, they would rise in rebellion: they also plead the necessity of it, for preventing them becoming too numerous. These reasons form also their apology for countenancing ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... seeks to emulate the peewee, commencing and ending his career as a flycatcher by an awkward chase after a beetle or "miller." He is hunting around in the dull grass now, I suspect, with the desire to indulge this favorite whim. There!—the opportunity is afforded him. Away goes a little cream-colored meadow-moth in the most tortuous course he is capable of, and away goes Socialis in pursuit. The contest is quite comical, though I dare say it is serious enough to the moth. The chase continues for a few yards, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... garden, about as wide as the more pretentious lawn, was just now filled with flowers, roses, and dahlias of the choicest kind, and many rare products of the hot-houses, for (another Vilquinard grievance) the elegant little hot-house, a very whim of a hot-house, a hot-house representing dignity and style, belonged to the Chalet, and separated, or if you prefer, united it to the villa Vilquin. Dumay consoled himself for the toils of business in ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... Duke imagines that we do; and for that imaginary pleasure he has bought Genovese. Genovese belongs to him. No theatrical manager can engage that tenor without me, nor have me to sing without him. The Duke brought me up on purpose to gratify that whim; to him I owe my talent, my beauty,—my fortune, no doubt. He will die of an attack of perfect unison. The sense of hearing alone has survived the wreck of his faculties; that is the only thread by which he holds on to life. A vigorous shoot springs from that rotten ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... said Captain Lumley, "so you have joined us at last; better late than never. You're but just in time. I thought you would soon get over that foolish whim of yours, which you mentioned in your letter to me, of leaving the service, just after you had passed, and had such good chance of promotion. What could have put it ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... and they went on again. It was his whim or humour to ride immediately before the chaise, and from this position he constantly turned his head, and looked back. Dolly felt that he looked at her, but she averted her eyes and feared to raise them once, so great was the dread with which he ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... would be sure to take him in, give him a bed, and a stiff tumbler of brandy and water, and send for the farrier in the morning to fresh shoe him unknowingly; for he would make him stoop, put his claws on the ground, and throw a blanket over him, and make the farrier believe that, out of a whim, he was only a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... many, His ways strange, but not for any mortal to question. But I do not know that. They would have me believe my husband dead. Ambrose went forth one day and I have had no word of him since then. And my daughter is lodged within prison walls waiting the whim of Sir Dolphus who holds her ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... my works and read them. Mercury will bring them to you with the first learned ghost that arrives here from Europe. There is instruction for you in them. I tell you of your faults. But it was my whim to commend that little ode, and I never do things by halves. When I give praise, I give it liberally, to show my royal bounty. But I generally blame, to exert all the vigour of my censorian power, and ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... upon the two from the concealing foliage of a near-by bush. He was about to leap forth before them with a terrifying scream, that he might enjoy the spectacle of their terror and their incontinent flight; but of a sudden a new whim seized him. Here was a balu fashioned as he himself was fashioned. Of course this one's skin was black; but what of it? Tarzan had never seen a white man. In so far as he knew, he was the sole representative of that strange form of life ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... one must in moral matters finally rely on the individual's judgment, this in no way implies the breakdown of universal principles. It is neither necessary nor natural that individual judgment should bespeak whim, hasty impulse, or narrow self-interest. The guardian in Plato's Republic was as much an individual as the merchant or the soldier.[5] In a sense he was more an individual than these, since he was not ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... darling!" he said. "This is like you. I took this up as a whim as well as a stubborn belief; but somehow that poor little ignorant fellow, with his rough ways, seems to be rousing warmer feelings towards him, and, please God, we'll make a man of him of whom ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... relation between different odors and different styles of personal beauty or personal traits would be as obvious as is this newly-discovered harmony between perfume and costume; but we fear that the new fashion is due to coquettish art rather than aesthetic taste, and that, like many another whim of the drawing-room, it will die out before the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... malice melt; Then went I home to a restless bed. I, who admired her too, could see His infinite remorse at this Great mystery, that she should be So beautiful, yet not be his, And, pitying, long'd to plead his part; But scarce could tell, so strange my whim, Whether the weight upon my heart Was ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... to search for a built nest, and to cast away its foundling egg there, as it is for other birds to welcome and feed the intruder. It seems so satanically clever a thing to do; such a strange fantastic whim of the Creator to take thought in originating it! It is this whimsicality, the bizarre humour in Nature, that puzzles me more than anything in the world, because it seems like the sport of a child ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... commissioned officers at a table, near the foot of which the two strangers were accommodated with chairs. It had so much the air of a court-martial, despite their bland and reassuring suavity, that Peninnah Penelope Anne, albeit a free lance and serving under no banner but her own whim, had much ado to keep up her courage to face them. Naturally she was disposed to lean upon her grandfather, but he utterly failed her. She had never known him so deaf! He could neither hear the officers nor her familiar voice. He would not even tell his name, although she had so often heard ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... blithely to possible death in open fight, one accomplishes something for his cause; not so, going unwillingly to certain death on an enemy's gallows. It was, too, an exasperating thought that he should die to gratify the vengeful whim of an insolent ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... foreigner, or of foreign extraction. For perhaps it may appear, that the excellence we find in these Horses depends totally on the mechanism of their parts, and not in their blood; and that all the particular distinctions and fashions thereof, depend also on the whim and caprice ...
— A Dissertation on Horses • William Osmer
... believe that I was, the most beautiful girl in the country, and every care was taken that I should not injure my appearance or hurt my complexion by domestic labour or exposure. I was not permitted to assist my mother, who, induced by my father's orders, waited upon me. I was indulged in every whim, and I grew up as selfish and capricious as I was beautiful. Smile not, pacha—time ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... had been strongly objected to by both his associates, neither of whom felt quite disposed to assume even such equality as might seem to follow from joint membership of the committee. That gentleman had, however, sufficient influence at City Hall to secure appointment, a whim which had seized him to pose as a patron of art being his obvious motive; and neither Mr. Hubbard nor Mr. Calvin was prepared to go quite to the length of declining to serve ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... old whim of his about the red shawl, his doting foster-mother made him little crimson frocks; and as he wandered over the downs in his red dress and a white pinafore, his yellow hair flying in the breeze, his chin up, his black eyes wide open, with slate in one hand, his pencil in the other, ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... don't. But I hate to give up my freedom to any one, Sir Redmond. I want to be free—free as the wind that blows here always, and changes and changes, and blows from any point that suits its whim, without being bound ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... in as good condition as I am, and as, I hope you are, M. Morrel, and this day and a half was lost from pure whim, for the pleasure of going ashore, and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the fastening of the collar and secured it. His fur-lined pea-jacket, stained and worn, his loose, travel-stained trousers tucked into his heavy knee boots. These things aggravated his great bulk, and made him a very giant of the world it was his whim to roam. ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... business had he to carry his Quixotism to such an unpleasant length? I tried to read. Eleven o'clock struck; the casino disgorged a stream of people; the Place seemed fuller of life than ever; then slowly it grew empty and quite dark. The whim seized me to go out. It was a still night, very warm, very black. On one of the seats a man and woman sat embraced, on another a girl was sobbing, on a third—strange sight—a priest dozed. I became aware of some one at my side; it ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... be usual but foolish," Rochester answered. "I need no thanks, I deserve none. I yield to a whim, nothing else. I do this thing for my own pleasure. The sum of money which I propose to put into your hands will probably represent to me what a five-shilling piece might to you. This may sound vulgar, but it is true. I think that I need not warn you never to ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... is entirely a matter of whim, and new food-fads sweep through communities. For a few months at a time, everyone, whether in a private house or a country club, will eat nothing but English muffins and jam, then suddenly they like only toasted cheese crackers, or ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... as he passed her towards the opposing bank. The old man lay with his eyes closed. As soon as he knew that he was dying he had closed his eyes, that the dead orbs might not stare into the faces of the living. It had been a whim of his for years. He would leave the house decent when his lease was up. And the will kept pressing down the lids which it would soon have no ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... clouded or a sunny day: That rests with Jove: but what is gone, He will not, cannot turn to nought; Nor cancel, as a thing undone, What once the flying hour has brought." Fortune, who loves her cruel game, Still bent upon some heartless whim, Shifts her caresses, fickle dame, Now kind to me, and now to him: She stays; 'tis well: but let her shake Those wings, her presents I resign, Cloak me in native worth, and take Chaste Poverty undower'd for mine. Though storms around my vessel rave, I will not fall to craven ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... aloof from the prayers, but respects his scruples, and reveres his character. For proof thereof, I did not cease urging on Harry his careless promise, that our union should have our father's blessing on it; and the good pastor falling in with my whim, prevailed on Mr. Truelocke to remarry us very privately in the little church I spoke of, he himself assisting. 'Twas a foolish fancy, I wot, but I was not easy till I had it gratified. And it is now my constant hope that Harry will never put ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... displays, with mock emphasis, of restitution to the downtrodden fairyhood, is an exotic, fair and slight bud, grafted into the sturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon the thing itself, and what is there before us? a whim, a trick of the fancy, tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity—a panic of caps and cloaks. We laugh—we cannot help it—as the pigmy assembly flies a thousand ways at once—grave councillors and all—throwing terrified somersets—hiding under stones, roots—diving ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... him I wanted to see the daughter of an old friend, who was at school there. In telling him that I did not speak falsely—Madaline's mother had been an old friend of mine. Then I told him that my whim was to bring Madaline home and make a companion of her; he allowed me to do just as I pleased, asking no questions about her parents, or anything else. I do not believe it ever occurred to him as strange that the name of ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... much satisfaction. I think that is the way it ought to be. A man ought to love a woman more than she loves him. It ought to be enough for him if she lets him give her everything she wants in the world. He ought to serve her like the old knights—give up his whole life to satisfy some whim of hers; and it's her part, if she likes, to be cold and distant. That's my idea ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... came, and unwilling longer to remain the tenants of others. These were induced to [100] emigrate, with the laudable ambition of acquiring homes, from which they would not be liable to expulsion, at the whim and caprice of some haughty lordling. Upon the attainment of this object, they were generally content; and made but feeble exertions to acquire more land, than that to which they obtained title, by virtue of their settlements. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... induced the dancer to forgive this latest whim of her dear demon and the crime of lese-majeste in which she had made her an accomplice. The idea of treating such a personage so cavalierly! No one else in the world would have done it, no one but her. As for Paul ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... so far mistaken in as to think deserving my affection: that I desired to see him once more, but having now seen my error, desired he would desist his visits for the future. He asked me with the same calmness he had lately behaved with, what whim I had got in my head now, I, who had before determined not to feed my rival's pride by shewing any jealousy of her, only replied, that as amours, such as ours had been, must have an end some time or other,—I thought none could be more proper than the present, because I believed both of us ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... the two courts were subsequently drawn closer by marriage; partly from policy and partly from a whim, Amasis espoused a Cyrenian woman named Ladike, the daughter, according to some, of Arkesilas or of Battos, according to others, of a wealthy private individual named Kritobulos.* The Greeks of Europe and Asia Minor fared no less to their own satisfaction at his hand ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim. ...
— The Yellow Wallpaper • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... explain this whim of Loman's. It may have been his conscience which prompted it. For a mean person nearly always detests an honest one, and the more open and generous the one is, the meaner the other feels in his own heart ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... my father does not know that she is in Dreiberg; and we dare not tell him, for he still believes that she had something to do with my abduction." Then she stopped. She was strangely making this peasant her confidante. What a whim! ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... from the paths and avenues of the Bois, he had almost reached his own house, and still, for he had not yet thrown off the intoxication of grief, or his whim of insincerity, but was ever more and more exhilarated by the false intonation, the artificial sonority of his own voice, he continued to perorate aloud in the silence of the night: "People 'in society' have their failings, as no one knows better than I; but, after all, they are people ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... along a narrow path to an open space, where she and Oswald dismounted. Neither referred to Sir Donald's whim ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... lynx came cautiously forth from his concealment and padded after him, his curiosity still unsatisfied. Kagh had not gone far when some whim caused him to turn about as if to retrace his steps. The lucivee was close behind, but with a motion like the bounding of a rubber ball he quickly vacated the spot and again stood peering from ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... experience of Cynthia's whim of perpetually hinting at a mystery which she did not mean to reveal in the Mr Preston days, and, although she was occasionally piqued into curiosity, Cynthia's allusions at something more in the background fell ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... will always tends to wilfulness. The two are harmonized in humor. Gail Hamilton is a humorist in her wilfulness, and flashes suggestive thought and wisdom even in her most daring caprices and eccentricities of individual whim. She is wild in sentences, heretical in paragraphs, thoroughly orthodox in essays. Her mind is really inclosed by the most rigid maxims of Calvinistic theology, while, within that circle, it frisks and plays in the oddest and wittiest freaks. A grave and religious earnestness is at the foundation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... that it was so worn. Gentlemen, the prisoner, armed, indeed, as has been proved, was absolutely innocent of even the remotest intent to use under any provocation beneath high heaven the pistols—oiled, primed, and duelling type—with which, by chance or for the merest whim of ornament, he had decked his person upon this eventful night. Mr. Rand tells us so, and doubtless he knows ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... a word! If he can stake his all upon the lightest object, I can stake my all upon a greater purpose. Let him go where he will, with the means that my love has secured to him! Does he think to reduce me by long absence? He knows his mother very little if he does. Let him put away his whim now, and he is welcome back. Let him not put her away now, and he never shall come near me, living or dying, while I can raise my hand to make a sign against it, unless, being rid of her for ever, he comes humbly to me and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... in the end, and this requires still more work. These erasers are round or flat or six-sided or wedge-shaped. They are let into the pencil itself, or into a nickel tip, or drawn over the end like a cap, so that any one's special whim may be gratified. Indeed, however hard to please any one may be, he ought to be able to find a pencil to suit his taste, for a single factory in the United States makes more than six hundred kinds of pencils, and makes so ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... these things—I warn you in time—beware of the original of that picture, and never again talk to me of going to see those Percys; for though the girl may be only an unfashioned country beauty, and Georgiana has so many polished advantages, yet there is no knowing what whim a young man might ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... of her in the future. But my native caution made me make a reservation. I would yield to her wishes whenever my self-respect would let me do so. I had a shrewd notion that a person who would cater to every whim of my husband's mother would be little better ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim: Gallant and gay, in Cliveden's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... she had returned to live in the midst of these fishers, through a whim of her father, who had wished to end his days there, and live like a landsman ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... education of his daughters. Their debut the previous autumn had been one of the social events of the Washington season, and the instant popularity the girls had attained proved a source of pride to Colonel McIntyre. His chief pleasure consisted in gratifying their every whim, and Dr. Stone, knowing the family as he did, wondered at the faintly discernible air of constraint in the girl's manner. Usually frank to a sometimes embarrassing degree, she appeared to some disadvantage as she sat gazing moodily at the tips of her patent-leather ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing 360 Through whose heart in such an hour Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, 365 A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then 370 Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... with it as the whim takes me,—now take it on my lap, now touch it with my lips, now keep it by ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... refined and effeminate Peruvian. Intoxicated by the unaccustomed possession of power, and without the least notion of the responsibilities which attached to their situation as masters of the land, they too often abandoned themselves to the indulgence of every whim which cruelty or caprice could dictate. Not unfrequently, says an unsuspicious witness, I have seen the Spaniards, long after the Conquest, amuse themselves by hunting down the natives with bloodhounds for mere sport, or in order to train their ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... that her children's minds were molded before she gave them birth, and that it depended upon the state of mind she was in herself during those nine months, as to what kind of soul her child would be born possessing. It may have been merely a whim on her part, but she held tenaciously to her belief, acted in accordance with it, and no one could dissuade her from it. Robert was her child of song, her sunny offspring, stung into revolt against tyranny ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Pinkethman in impertinence of speech was John Edwin, a comedian who enjoyed great popularity late in the last century. A contemporary critic describes him "as one of those extraordinary productions that would do immortal honour to the sock, if his extravasations of whim could be kept within bounds, and if the comicality of his vein could be restrained by good taste." Reynolds, the dramatist, relates that on one occasion he was sitting in the front row of the balcony-box at the Haymarket, during the performance of O'Keeffe's ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... of his presence the name and the form, for the time, of everything in the place; but it didn't, for the difference, sit in his face, the face so squarely and easily turned to Densher at the earlier season. His presence on the first occasion, not as the result of a summons, but as a friendly whim of his own, had had quite another value; and though our young man could scarce regard that value as recoverable he yet reached out in imagination to a renewal of the old contact. He didn't propose, as he privately and forcibly phrased the matter, to be a hog; but there was something he after ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... his way into one of those fits of uncontrollable fury that had always held his mother in obedience to his slightest whim since the days when he used to lie on the floor and scream himself black in the face and hold his breath till she gave in; and the poor woman, wrought to the highest pitch of excitement already by the tragic events of ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... toilers and moilers there in London, but she never saw them; the very servants lived in an underground world of their own, of which she knew neither the hopes nor the fears; they only seemed to start into existence when some want or whim of their master and mistress needed them. There was a strange unsatisfied vacuum in Margaret's heart and mode of life; and, once when she had dimly hinted this to Edith, the latter, wearied with dancing the night before, languidly stroked Margaret's cheek as she sat by her in the old attitude,—she ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... back to Glory until Precious got over this silly whim. But he had no peace. Glory was constantly tormented by the loving Precious. And when he returned to Precious, the splendor of Glory's voice was with her day and night. He lost his appetite. He could not sleep. So he went off into the woods ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... seems I have a certain interest to present myself at No. 3, Rue Saint-Francois, in Paris, on the 13th of February. I had inquired about it, and could learn nothing, except that this house of very antique appearance, has been shut up for the last hundred and fifty years, through a whim of one of my maternal ancestors, and that it is to be opened on the 13th of this month, in presence of the co-heirs who, if I have any, are quite unknown to me. Not being able to attend myself, I have written ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... steamer 'Columba' to Rothesay, where, on entering the beautiful bay, crowded at this season with pleasure craft, the first object which attracted our attention was the very vessel for which I was bound, the 'Diana,' one of the most magnificent yachts ever built to gratify the whim of a millionaire. Tourists on board our steamer at once took up positions where they could obtain the best view of her, and many were the comments we heard concerning her size and the beauty of her lines as she rode at anchor on ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... the yellow-bearded Thor and the dark-haired Helen. Master Hiero, his round, snub-nosed face red with fussy emotion, gives the bride away; while Salome, dressed in white and looking very pretty and lady-like, does service as bridesmaid,—such is her mistress's whim. She seems in even better spirits than the pale bride, and her black eyes scarcely wander from the ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... me there shone no star that did not pale, No cheering hope of which I was not reft; To the world's whim, changing with every gale, And all its vain caprices, I was left; To nobler art my aspirations soared, Yet I must sink them to ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... or shame, released from the hard bondage of selfhood. For these people, though many, were one. Each spoke to the other as to himself, without reservation or subterfuge. They moved freely each in his personal whim, and they moved also with the unity of one being: for when they shouted to the Mother of the gods they shouted with one voice, and they bowed to her as one man bows. Through the many minds there went also one mind, correcting, commanding, so ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... frieze about the ceiling. Here one notices the flat dado and doors with raised and molded panels as contrasted with the paneled wainscot and bolection-molded, flat-paneled doors of the second-story hall. In this latter, also, some of the pediments are complete, others broken, illustrating another whim of the early American builders. Here the cornice is also Ionic with jig-sawed modillions, and the ensemble is generally more pleasing. In proportion and precision of workmanship this woodwork is hardly excelled in Philadelphia. The simple, carefully ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... idea, apprehension, impression, opinion, notion; caprice, whim, whimsey, fantasy, vagary, maggot, crotchet; inclination, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... to move or to raise a hand in his own defence; scourged on his bare back, with a cowhide, until the blood flows in streams from his quivering flesh? And for what? Often for the most trifling fault; and, as sometimes occurs, because a mere whim or caprice of his brutal overseer demands it. Pale with passion, his eyes flashing and his stalwart frame trembling with rage, like some volcano, just ready to belch forth its fiery contents, and, in all ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... plaguy good he takes of his CHILDREN! He looks after our domestic as well as our public interests! It was a strange whim in old Fritz to offer each of his soldiers one of the factory girls ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... constitution of Nature. We are subject, unquestionably, to certain "laws of thought," which we can neither repeal nor resist, and which impose upon us a logical necessity to conceive, to reason, and to infer, not according to our own whim or caprice, but according to established rules. We are equally subject to certain "conditions of existence,"—arising partly from our own constitution, partly from the constitution of external objects and the relations subsisting between the two,—which lay us under a moral ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... lad, what do ye say to learning my trade, and taking shares with me? I shan't be good for much again this many a day, and I've taken a fancy to you. You've done me a good turn, and I know you're gradely. I'm not a queer chap, though I looks like one. My clothes is only a whim of mine. They've been in the family so long, that I cannot part with 'em. They'll serve out my time, though we've patched and patched the old coat till there's scarce a yard of the old stuff left in him, and he looks for all the world like a map ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... professions of friendship, it would find admittance. No door is latched when scandal knocks. Over here they were very far from home, and it was natural that Elsa should view her conduct leniently. Martha readily appreciated that it was all harmless, to be expressed by a single word, whim. But Martha herself never acted upon impulse; she first questioned what the world would ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... sudden whim of Klaas Verlaan's to make his ward a child of Keizersgracht; but it brought him in more ducats than he cared ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... me, grandfather. You think this a curious whim I have got into my head, and your kindness would tempt you to let me do a silly thing just for the sake of having my way. It is no foolish fancy. It's not for my ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... depend upon the Koran nor any written code, human or divine, beyond the whim and caprice of the chief (assassin) and his gang of desperadoes. The Sultan of Pontiana has, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... trifles. If Simon had started from the little village where he lodged five minutes earlier or later, if he had walked a little faster or slower, if he had happened to be lodging on the other side of Jerusalem, or if the whim had taken him to go in at another gate, or if the centurion's eye had not chanced to alight on him in the crowd, or if the centurion's fancy had picked out somebody else to carry the Cross, then all his life would have been different. And so it is always. You go down one turning rather than ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... in their eyes, Their unkempt locks, their powder horns, and buskins, And the wild attire, in general, of their persons— Many a time have I heard them Tell of these man-effigies Lying prone on the floors of the prairie. And, in my whim for correspondence, And perpetual seeking after identities, I have likened them to the stone sculptures, in cathedrals, Cut by pious hands out of black marble, Memorial resemblances of holy abbots, Of Christian knights, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sovereign his throne. He had a beautiful concubine, for the sake of whose company he neglected the affairs of government. The lady was of a melancholy turn, never being seen to smile. She said she loved the sound of rent silk, and to gratify her whim many fine pieces of silk were torn to shreds. The king offered a thousand ounces of gold to any one who would make her laugh; whereupon his chief minister suggested that the beacon-fires should be lighted to summon the feudal nobles with their armies, as though the royal house were in ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... they who followed him Were bent upon a high and holy aim; Their undertaking was no foolish whim, Nor had they come for honour or for fame. A Jesuitic band, they sought to win Those Indians from a life ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... fine dresses are of joy), and shave their heads (doubtless done to make some difference from every- day times), accompanied with ceremonial purifications (what ancient people has not had some such whim?). 7. The system of Runda or forbidden meats; but every traveller has found this practice in South as in East Africa, and I noticed it among the Somal who, even when starving, will not touch fish nor fowl. Briefly, external ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the impossible and accidental one and which the rational and necessary one?' Perhaps an outsider could not say, but Professor James, if he examined his reasons, could say. He assumes that 'everything else is the same.' But that is just what cannot be. A new factor has been introduced, it may be a whim, a sudden impulse, perhaps even a desire to upset calculation—a something in his character in virtue of which his second choice is different from his first. It is an utter misnomer to call it 'chance.' ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... quoth our civil conducteur, haranguing, handing, and shoving at the same time. The alacrity with which he and his merry little dog Carlin did the honours of the vehicle, and the stout active appearance of the horse (to say nothing of the whim of the moment, and the fine morning), reconciled us to a mode of conveyance no better than that which calves enjoy in a butcher's cart; and for the first few miles we forgot even the want ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... not so very long ago, We drank his health with three-times-three, And we were gay when he was here; And he is gone, and we are gay. Where has he gone? or far or near? Good sooth, 'twere somewhat hard to say. You glance aside, you doubtless think My homily a foolish whim, 'Twill soon be ended, eat and drink, The lights are ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Behar is a heterogeneous collection of thatched huts, apparently set down at random—as indeed it is, for every one erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or wherever he can get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the huts and buildings. Several small orchards of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... said to be a whim of the Tzar Ivan the Terrible to see how many distinct chapels could be erected under one roof in a given space of ground, so that services could be performed at one time ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... Tuttle, sharp and quick, them big eyes of his fairly blazin'. "This is my machine, and I'm going to fly it. I don't care how much money you've got. You've taken a sudden whim that you'd like to fly. It's been the one dream of my life. You've had your yachts and your racing cars. I've never had anything but hard work. My father wore himself out in your stinking old factory. I nearly did the ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... but also approving countenances, when my novel was read to them. Manzoni remarked with a smile, "We literary men have a strange profession indeed—any one can take it up in a day. Here is Massimo: the whim of writing a novel seizes him, and upon my word he does not do ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... draw it back is certainly not a voluntary act, but a purely instinctive phenomenon. Nay more, speech is assuredly subject to the empire of the will, and yet instinct can also dispose of this organ according to its whim, and even of this and of the mind, without consulting beforehand the will, directly a sharp pain, or even an energetic affection, takes us by surprise. Take the most impassible stoic and make him see suddenly something very wonderful, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... observation, their love of ridicule could not withstand such a temptation, and they freely criticised each other to common friends, who, as is usually the case, agreed with both. Still, however, there was a whim and sprightliness even about their mischief, which made it seem rather an exercise of ingenuity than an indulgence of ill nature; and if they had not carried on this intellectual warfare, neither would have liked the other ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... ability was something of which he had much right to be proud, it being well known in the legal profession that one's fees are in direct proportion to his ability to weep. Judge Bradley could always weep at the right time before a Jury, and this facility won him many a case. Through no idle whim had public sentiment, even after the incident of the substitute, confirmed him in his position as ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... killing and being killed. But to deliberately engage in a cold-blooded duel with a man against whom I had no grudge, and to incur the obligation of killing or being killed merely to gratify the whim of a savage monarch, was quite another matter, and one that, to confess the simple truth, I had no fancy for. Yet how to escape the dilemma I knew not, though it was forcibly borne in upon me that it would never do for me to betray the slightest hesitation, for savage kings are kittle cattle ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... him tangled in her toils, A shame, said I, if she adds just him 10 To her nine-and-ninety other spoils, The hundredth for a whim! ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning |
