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More "Fickle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whisper to himself for his own consolation, that he had never sworn to be true to Clarissa. And, indeed, he did feel, that though there had been a kiss, the scene on the lawn was being used unfairly to his prejudice. "I am afraid you are very fickle, Mr. Newton, and that your love is ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... experience; how subjects ought to be guided so as best to preserve their fidelity and virtue is not so obvious. (18) All, both rulers and ruled, are men, and prone to follow after their lusts. (19) The fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair, for it is governed solely by emotions, not by reason: it rushes headlong into every enterprise, and is easily corrupted ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza
... creature should not be raised on some self-glorifying pinnacle merely because the fickle variable heart at lasts learns the exercise of Fidelity. Do we not see a very ordinary dog practising this same fidelity as he waits, so eager that he trembles, outside his master's door, having put on one side every desire ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... imperfect story of my somewhat romantic life. I have experienced many ups and downs, but still am stout of heart. The labor of a lifetime has brought me nothing in a pecuniary way. I have worked hard, but fortune, fickle dame, has not smiled upon me. If poverty did not weigh me down as it does, I would not now be toiling by day with my needle, and writing by night, in the plain little room on the fourth floor of No. 14 Carroll Place. And yet I have learned to love the garret-like ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... was a brilliant success with the fickle Parisians, though the Gluckists sneered at it as pretty concert music. The retort was that Gluck had no gift of melody, though they admitted he had the advantage over his rival of making more noise. The poor Italian was so much distressed by the fierce contest that he ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... grief That sinks the bosom of the fallen chief. With all the joy that laurel crowns bestow, A world reconquer'd and a vanquished foe. Thus thro extremes of life, in every state, Shines the clear soul, beyond all fortune great; While smaller minds, the dupes of fickle chance, Slight woes o'erwhelm and sudden joys entrance. So the full sun, thro all the changing sky, Nor blasts nor overpowers the naked eye; Tho transient splendors, borrowed from his light, Glance on the mirror ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... gallery—where a collection of pictures by a celebrated artist was being shown; and prior to the entrance of the lady in the strangely fashioned tiger-skin cloak, the somewhat extraordinary works of art had engaged the interest even of the most fickle, but, from the moment the tiger-lady made her appearance, even the most ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... murmured aloud as she went down, with Jock frisking and barking before her. "What will he think of me when he gets my letter? He will believe me fickle; he will believe that I have another lover. That is certain. Well, I must allow him to believe it. We have parted, and we must now, alas! remain apart for ever. Probably he will seek from my father the truth concerning ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... loved this sort of thing, and she knew he was playing to her and for her. The strains would be now softly romantic, now grandly triumphant, but ever recurring to the main motive, until one seemed fairly to see the fickle ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... proudly. "Wot'll Daddy say w'en I tell 'im? The little rascal's so took with the young loidy. 'Ush up there now, bless 'is 'eart. See, 'e'll go with mammy." She dropped her roses into Gladys's hands, and held out her arms, and the fickle young gentleman, let go his grip on his friend, and leaped upon his mother, crowing and squealing with delight. Helen waved him farewell as she stepped into the canoe, and the baby waved her a fat square paw in return. Gladys ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... that they are animated with a more vigorous spirit by the soil and air of their own country. [163] I do not reckon among the people of Germany those who occupy the Decumate lands, [164] although inhabiting between the Rhine and Danube. Some of the most fickle of the Gauls, rendered daring through indigence, seized upon this district of uncertain property. Afterwards, our boundary line being advanced, and a chain of fortified posts established, it became a skirt of the empire, and part of ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... my love now wax Unconstant, wavering, fickle, unstaid? With nought can she me tax: I ne'er recanted what I once said. I now do see, as nature fades, And all her works decay, So women all, wives, widows, maids, From bad ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Public opinion is fickle. It sways instinctively—not always, but often—to the winning side. Here in Venus we knew we must defeat Tarrano. Destroy him personally and thus put an end to it all forever, since his dominion hung wholly upon the genius of ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... coeur a rire, Thy heart was made for laughter, Moi je l'ai-t a pleurer; My heart 's in tears to-day; J'ai perdu ma maitresse Tears for a fickle mistress, Sans pouvoir la trouver. ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... "rules not only over a fickle, but a gossiping (bavard) people, whom he has prudently forbidden all conversation and writing concerning government of the State. They would soon (accustomed as they are, since the Revolution, to verbal and written debates) be tired of talking about fine weather or about the opera. To occupy them ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... docilely to obey her whispered directions. In a month, there were a thousand young men about town, far above the station of a Gregoriev, who would have given half their prospects for Ivan's present position. But the fickle goddess loves well to show her face to him who has never sought to lift her veil; and to Ivan, whom she had hitherto served so ill, she chose suddenly to shower with all the things that youth desires. The young man found that, many and varied as had been his dreams ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the phantastical folly of our nation (even from the courtier to the carter) is such that no form of apparel liketh us longer than the first garment is in the wearing, if it continue so long, and be not laid aside to receive some other trinket newly devised by the fickle-headed tailors, who covet to have several tricks in cutting, thereby to draw fond customers to more expense of money. For my part, I can tell better how to inveigh against this enormity than describe any certainty of our attire; sithence such is our ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... to determine the export of the produce of the interior." He held the streams that fed Tanganyika to be the ultimate sources of the Nile; and believed that the glory of their discovery would be his. Fortune, however, the most fickle of goddesses, thought fit to deprive him of this ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... this spectacle was, it proved merely the first of a series of calamities which were to overshadow the later years of the Liberator. His grandiose political structure began to crumble, for it was built on the shifting sands of a fickle popularity. The more he urged a general acceptance of the principles of his autocratic constitution, the surer were his followers that he coveted royal honors. In December he imposed his instrument upon Peru. Then he learned that a meeting in Venezuela, presided over by Paez, had declared ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... rejoined Miss Price; 'but men are always fickle, and always were, and always will be; that I ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... heart is so capricious and fickle! You pressed it upon me, I assure you. I own that I was ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... receiving the nomination at Chicago. He felt that it belonged to him. His flatterers had encouraged him in the error that he was the sole creator of the Republican party."—H.B. Stanton, Random Recollections, p. 214. "I hear of so many fickle and timid friends as almost to make me sorry that I have ever attempted to organise a party to save my country." Letter of W.H. Seward to his wife, May 2, 1860.—F.W. Seward, Life of W.H. Seward, Vol. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... terminating a cruise, so formidable in appearance at the onset, without one added deed to sustain the reputation gained by former exploits. Nevertheless, he was not disheartened. He sought to conciliate fortune, not by despondency, but by resolution. And, as if won by his confident bearing, that fickle power suddenly went over to him from the ranks of the enemy—suddenly as plumed Marshal Ney to the stubborn standard of Napoleon from Elba, marching regenerated on Paris. In a word, luck—that's the word—shortly ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... steep ascent, Man the unwearied climber Pauseless and dauntless went. AEons rolled behind him With thunder of far retreat, And still as he strove he conquered And laid his foes at his feet. Inimical powers of nature, Tempest and flood and fire, The spleen of fickle seasons That loved to baulk his desire, The breath of hostile climates, The ravage of blight and dearth, The old unrest that vexes The heart of the moody earth, The genii swift and radiant Sabreing heaven with flame, He, with ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... speak; I sat silent and brooding over the words, the looks, the smiles, the scenes which had promised me a store of future happiness—such as would probably have been the case, as far as we can be happy in this world, had I fixed my affections upon a true and honest, instead of a fickle and vain, woman; had I built my house upon a rock, instead of one upon the sand—which, as pointed out by the Scriptures, had been washed away, and had disappeared forever! Bramble and Bessy in vain attempted to gain from me the cause ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... flickering shadows a graceful and harmonious image. She entertained herself for some moments with talking to the little terrier, as to whom the proposal of an ownership divided with her cousin had been applied as impartially as possible—as impartially as Bunchie's own somewhat fickle and inconstant sympathies would allow. But she was notified for the first time, on this occasion, of the finite character of Bunchie's intellect; hitherto she had been mainly struck with its extent. It seemed ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... principles, people are rarely successful in every undertaking in life. We have been fortunate on our two former expeditions, and we have no great cause to complain should we be disappointed in this one. We cannot always expect to win. Fortune is fickle; and my chief desire now is that we may reach ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... the most celebrated of which was her amour with the handsome "Ser. Gianni," Giovanni Caracciolo, head of an eminent family that has figured prominently in Neapolitan history from the days of Angevin monarchs to those of King Ferdinand. Little good did the fickle Queen's favour do Ser. Gianni, who suffered an ignominious fate for having one day boxed Joanna's ears during a lovers' tiff. Murdered secretly by four assassins, Caracciolo's body was laid to rest in the family chapel in San Giovanni a Carbonara ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... his counsel and direction. His vehement temper prompted him to raise suddenly, to the highest elevation, his flatterers and dependants; and upon the least occasion of displeasure, he threw them down with equal impetuosity and violence. Implacable in his hatred, fickle in his friendships, all men were either regarded as his enemies, or dreaded soon to become such. The whole power of the kingdom was grasped by his insatiable hand; while he both engrossed the entire confidence of his master, and held invested ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... away. She was appreciated at last, and nothing could exceed the kindness of both Mr. and Mrs. Hastings, the latter of whom treated her more like a sister than a servant, while even Eugenia, who came often to Rose Hill, and whose fawning manner had partially restored her to the good opinion of the fickle Ella, tried to treat her with a show of affection, when she saw how much she was respected. Regularly each day Dora went to the handsome library where she recited her lessons to Mr. Hastings, who became ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... entire population protesting with one voice that they would never, never look upon the hated Germans marching through their beloved city. No! when the day arrived they would hide themselves in their houses, or shut their eyes to such a hateful sight. But by the 1st of March a change had come over the fickle Parisians, for at an early hour the sidewalks were jammed with people, and the windows and doors of the houses filled with men, women, and children eager to get a look at the conquerors. Only a few came in the morning, however—an advance-guard ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... to her memory. In some curious, undefined, uncomfortable way she connected them with her sister Hilda. What did they mean? Why was it dreadful to be engaged to be married? Why were some people so fickle, and why were promises broken? Judy had never seen Miss Mills ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... such matters. We are not prudent. Unlike the calm blood of Englishmen, ours rushes swiftly through our veins—it is warm as wine and sunlight, and needs no fictitious stimulant. We love, we desire, we possess; and then? We tire, you say? These southern races are so fickle! All wrong—we are less tired than you deem. And do not Englishmen tire? Have they no secret ennui at times when sitting in the chimney nook of "home, sweet home," with their fat wives and ever-spreading families? Truly, yes! ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... the agitated metropolis. It was the retirement of a philosopher proud of the gloom of his garret. But M. Roland and wife were more powerful now than ever before. The famous letter had placed them in the front ranks of the friends of reform, and enshrined them in the hearts of the ever fickle populace. Even the Jacobins were compelled to swell the universal voice of commendation. M. Roland's apartments were ever thronged. All important plans were discussed and shaped by him and his wife before they were presented ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... convinced that the historian De Thou has drawn of this fickle prince much too charitable a portrait (iii. 337). It seems to be saying too much to affirm that "his merit equalled that of the greatest captains of his age;" and if "he loved justice, and was possessed of uprightness," it must be confessed that his dealings with neither party furnish ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... procedure consciously and definitely set to the task of making more marriages successful even when they have developed difficulty of adjustment, rather than one allowed to act as a means of easy separation of even fickle, selfish, and childish people on grounds of ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... "Memory is a fickle thing," Lilian Rosenberg replied, "and so is woman. Times have changed. I'll leave you at once, unless you promise to do your very utmost to grant ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... herd would wish to reign, Fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain! Vain as the leaf upon the stream, And fickle as a changeful dream. 702 SCOTT: Lady of the Lake, Canto v., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... harm is there in it? Does it make a man's legs crooked? does it spoil his shape? The plague take him who first invented being grieved about such a delusion, linking the honour of the wisest man to anything a fickle woman may do. Since every person is rightly held responsible for his own crimes, how can our honour, in this case, be considered criminal? We are blamed for the actions of other people. If our wives have an intrigue with any man, without ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... and there is no doubt with me if the question were now to be decided, that a majority of the people would be opposed to it. But what will be the state of the parties next August is another question. Many of the people in this State are very fickle and credulous, and much can be done by designing and unprincipled partisans, and that everything which can possibly be done will be done, we cannot but infer from the extraordinary and unwarrantable measures resorted to last winter in the Legislature in getting ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... running, as meseemeth you would do. Remember that we are all women and none of us is child enough not to know how [little] reasonable women are among themselves and how [ill], without some man's guidance, they know how to order themselves. We are fickle, wilful, suspicious, faint-hearted and timorous, for which reasons I misdoubt me sore, an we take not some other guidance than our own, that our company will be far too soon dissolved and with less honour to ourselves than were seemly; ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... unto us—not her—for she sleeps well:[535] The fickle reek of popular breath,[536] the tongue Of hollow counsel, the false oracle, Which from the birth of Monarchy hath rung Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung Nations have armed in madness—the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... gambling is confined to no class of people. Preachers and lawyers, doctors and men of business, are as susceptible to the smiles of the fickle goddess of fortune as well as the ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... and wealthy, seeking there in Nature's wilds To forget a maiden fickle, basking in a ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... pictures that I have seen of the Kaiser that he has gone to the trenches. Probably he is dead. Let us forgive the barber. But let us bear in mind that the futile fancies of youth may be deadly things, and that one of them falling on a fickle mind may so stir its shallows as to urge it to disturb and set in motion the ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... And, coulde she heare, yet is she willfull mad, And therefore will not pittie my distresse. Suppose that she coulde pittie me, what then? What helpe can be expected at her hands Whose foote is standing on a rowling stone And minde more mutable then fickle windes? Why waile I, then, wheres hope of no redresse? O, yes, complaining makes my greefe seeme lesse. My late ambition hath distaind my faith, My breach of faith occaisioned bloudie warres, Those bloudie warres haue spent my treasur[i]e, And with my treasur[i]e my peoples ...
— The Spanish Tragedie • Thomas Kyd
... 1777. DEAR SIR, I love to receive letters very well; much better than I love to write them. I make but a poor figure at composition. My head is much too fickle. My thoughts are running after bird's eggs, play and trifles, till I get vexed with myself. Mamma has a troublesome task to keep me a studying. I own I am ashamed of myself. I have but just entered the third volume of Rollin's History, but designed to have got half ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... bore it all, in order not to give any grounds for any possible complaints from the natives. On the other hand, he set about finding a better port, in order to have it against the occasion already feared by the tokens observed in those fickle people. To this end he sent Captain Juan de la Isla to look for a good port. He and his men went to a bay, where the Indians met them peaceably, and showed signs of a desire to draw blood with them. But our men dared not trust them, as they feared some ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... complacence, or a strut of elevation; but, if these favourites of fortune are carefully watched for a few days, they seldom fail to show the transitoriness of human felicity; the crest falls, the gaiety is ended, and there appear evident tokens of a successful rival, or a fickle patron. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... gift which should prove to them "a scourge and affliction adequate to their offences." It was to convert the tails thus lopped off into vain, noisy, chattering, laughing creatures, whose faces should he like the sky in the Moon of Plants, and whose hearts should be treacherous, fickle, and inconstant; yet, strange to relate, who should be loved above all other things on the earth or in the skies. For them should life often be hazarded—reputation, fame, and virtue, often forfeited—pain and ignominy incurred. They were to be as a burden placed on the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great esteem and respect for her cousin John; and ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of the male students were animated by a wild and reckless spirit, the result of a fickle roving from town to town. The pretext for this course was the necessity of hunting up skilful teachers; but with many it was only love for a career of frolic and idleness. The oldest and strongest scholars, young men of twenty and upwards, ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... returned Miss Mowcher. 'Is he fickle? Oh, for shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... shortening words was very popular in the 17th century, from which period date cit(izen), mob(ile vulgus), the fickle crowd, and, pun(digrion). We often find the fuller mobile used for mob. The origin of pundigrion is uncertain. It may be an illiterate attempt at Ital. puntiglio, which, like Fr. pointe, was used of a verbal quibble or fine distinction. Most ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... lovely boy, who in thy power Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his fickle hour; Who hast by waning grown, and therein show'st Thy lovers withering, as thy sweet self grow'st. If Nature, sovereign mistress over wrack, As thou goest onwards, still will pluck thee back, She keeps thee to this purpose, that her ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... the sad time when the people, who at one time would have made Savonarola their king, turned against him, in the same fickle way that crowds will ever turn. And then the great preacher, who had spent his life trying to help and teach them, and to do them good, was burned in the great square of that city which ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... a little. "It is true," he said, "the goddess of victory is very fickle. The future therefore consoles those who have ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... who know nothing call me fickle, Keen to pursue and loth to keep. Ah, could they see these tears that trickle From eyes erstwhile too proud to weep. Could see me, prone, beneath the sickle, While pain ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... my share of a fickle heart, Mine of a paltry love: Take it or leave it as you will, I ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... granddaughters one is not his son's child. Which? His efforts to read the characters of the children are vain, and when at last he learns the truth, it is to realize that the girl of his own race is fickle and vain while the bastard is generous and devoted. Then his pride knows that good may come out of evil, that honor lies not in blood, but ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... Field, or Chick-lane—was the boldest lad That ever mill'd the cly, or roll'd the leer. [9] And with Nell he kept a lock, to fence, and tuz, And while his flaming mot was on the lay, With rolling kiddies, Dick would dive and buz, And cracking kens concluded ev'ry day; [10] But fortune fickle, ever on the wheel, Turn'd up a rubber, for these ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... were still labourers and craftsmen with weapons in their hands. Yet, ill-armed and ill-drilled as they were, they were still strong robust Englishmen, full of native courage and of religious zeal. The light and fickle Monmouth began to take heart once more at the sight of their sturdy bearing, and at the sound of their hearty cheers. I heard him as I sat my horse beside his staff speak exultantly to those around him, and ask whether these fine fellows could ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mirror of our fickle state, Since man on earth, unparalleled! The rarer thy example stands, By how much from the top of wondrous glory, Strongest of mortal men, To lowest pitch of abject fortune thou ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... blow did not land. Griswold saw it coming and swerved the necessary body-breadth. The result was a demonstration of a simple theorem in dynamics. M'Grath reeled under the impetus of his own unresisted effort, stumbled forward against the low edge-line bulwark, clawed wildly at the fickle air and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... of jilting a fiance confirmed many people in the belief of her heartlessness; but the reason which probably determined her action on this latter occasion was that she had already met the one man, who, she recognised, could enchain her fickle affections for all time. ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... rosebud lips, whose honied wealth the zephyr sips, But bait the lair Where fickle fair, Like Scylla, wreck ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the Virtues" had a pair of searching eyes as clear as Wenham ice; but they were slower to melt than that fickle jewelry. Her features disordered themselves slightly at times in a surface-smile, but never broke loose from their corners and indulged in the riotous tumult of a laugh,—which, I take it, is the mob-law of the features;—and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ambition; but it was not the love of notoriety—the fame he courted was not that which should only render his name conspicuous among men, that he might receive the incense of hypocritical flattery, or be pointed at by the fickle multitude—for such, his contempt was supreme; but it was the desire of his heart, and the struggle of his life, to be embalmed in men's memories as the benefactor of his race, to be remembered for his deeds as the great and the good. This was the spontaneous prompting of his heart, and ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... from home, and blooming as a Hebe. Then his deep anxiety ceased, his pride stung him furiously; he began to think of his own value, and to struggle with all his might against his deep love. Sometimes he would even inveigh against her, and call her a fickle, ungrateful girl, capable of no strong passion but vanity. Many a hard term he applied to her in his sorrowful solitude; but not a word when he had a hearer. He found it hard to rest: he kept dashing up to London and back. He ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... ever to retrace, and sometimes so difficult of belief, in a community of one's own knowing, is the general aesthetic adventure, are the dangers and delusions, the all but fatal accidents and mortal ailments, that Taste has smilingly survived and after which the fickle creature may still quite brazenly look one in the face. Our quarter must have bristled in those years with the very worst of the danger-signals—though indeed they figured but as coarse complacencies; the age of "brown stone" ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... not look for certainty and stability. Our reason is always deceived by fickle shadows; nothing can fix the finite between the two Infinites, which both enclose and fly ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... his troop did not, of Hervey's saying that he wasn't so stuck on eagles, and he was satisfied from the talk that he had had with him that Hervey's erratic and fickle nature had asserted itself in the very moment of high responsibility. He could not help liking Hervey, but he would never again allow the cherished hopes of the troop to rest upon ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... forcible, so confident in his prophecies regarding Negroes and their future temporal condition [132] and proceedings, since it is "accident," and "accident" only, that must determine their fulfilment? Has he so securely bound the fickle divinity to his service as to be certain of its agency in the realization of his forecasts? And if so, where then would be the fortuitousness that is the very essence of occurrences that glide, undesigned, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... was quite sure, what had happened to her? He must despise her to have imagined it. His outburst had filled her with the oddest and most petulant resentment. Were all men self-seeking? Did all men think women shallow and fickle? Could a man and a woman never be honestly and simply friends? If he had made love to her, he could not possibly—and there was the sting of it—feel towards her maiden dignity that romantic respect which ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... diversity of character within gallinaceous limits as exists in the families that care for them. For instance, one hen is a good, persistent layer; another is a patient, brooding mother; a third is fickle, and leaves her nest so often and for such long intervals that the eggs become chilled, and incubation ceases. Some are tame and tractable, others as wild as hawks, and others still are not of much account in any direction, and are like commonplace women, who are merely good to ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... was done, Washington and the Colonel sallied forth, and as they walked along Washington learned what he was to be. He was to be a clerk in a real estate office. Instantly the fickle youth's dreams forsook the magic eye-water and flew back to the Tennessee Land. And the gorgeous possibilities of that great domain straightway began to occupy his imagination to such a degree that he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the forest have the longest existence. Of all the objects which crown the gray earth, the woods preserved unchanged, throughout the greatest reach of time, their native character. The works of man are ever varying their aspect; his towns and his fields alike reflect the unstable opinions, the fickle wills and fancies of each passing generation; but the forests on his borders remain to-day the same as they were ages of years since. Old as the everlasting hills, during thousands of seasons they have put forth and laid ...
— Arbor Day Leaves • N.H. Egleston
... have refrained from waking up Ginger just at that moment. A fickle breath of wind pounced upon an outspread newspaper lying on the grass, fluttered it for a moment, and then, getting fairly under the printed sheet, ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... and even that she had preserved intact her sway over the Duke de Lorraine, in spite of the charms of the fair Beatrice. By the help of the Princess de Phalzbourg he watched every step, and disputed with her, foot to foot, possession of the fickle Charles IV., sometimes the victor, but very often the vanquished in ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... without doubt, albeit he denied it with such steadfast boldness. Would to heaven that fickle hound had never been admitted to our counsels! That was thy ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... idea of a national theater, to be completed regardless of cost, and with appointments permitting it to produce great works in a faultless manner. At first he thought of building it at Munich, but the Munich public proving fickle, he resolved to build it in an inland town, where all his audience would be in the attitude of pilgrims, who would have come from a distance to hear a great work with proper surroundings. The sum required to complete this was about $500,000. It is sufficient ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... is one of even more fickle and changeable a nature than most others; it is, however, one of very great importance to those who are desirous of securing plenty of geranium and other cuttings, for the next summer's work; because, should the month by chance happen to be a dry one, it ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... army, Have her offspring been promoted; Every path may claim her children, Every sphere in life, a foll'wer, Every scroll of fame, a column. Cicero Price became a seaman, Went to cruise upon the waters, Rose to Commodore in service, And sustained his proud position, Through the shifts of fickle fortune. Let each heart enshrine a volume Of our honest, upright brothers; Let the story of Lancaster, Brush aside the dust and ashes, Clear away the clogs and brake-wheels, Come forth as the sun at noonday, With her hearts and hands unsullied, ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... pert, was Kate, and piquant; she presumed upon her youth, upon her age. She was a child when you expected her to be a woman, and a woman where you looked for the child. No dream of romance was romantic enough to hold her fickle soul constant to it—to satisfy the hopes of her heart. Every man she met was a prince; yet was he, too, bare and poor and mean compared with The Man to come. The child in her was gauche and crude, sitting ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... are impudent enough to discharge themselves of this blunder by haying the contradiction at Virgil's door. He, they say, has shown his hero with these inconsistent characters—acknowledging and ungrateful, compassionate and hard- hearted, but at the bottom fickle and self-interested; for Dido had not only received his weather-beaten troops before she saw him, and given them her protection, but had also offered them an equal ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... too, were so erratic that there was never any knowing when the ferry-boat would be able to start. But that was what people had to put up with forty years ago. So the Great Western Railway Company, in 1871, decided to go under the fickle waters, as they found it so troublesome to go over them. A study of the bottom of the river made it clear that the tunnel they intended to make would have to slope downwards considerably from both ends, running level for a short ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... least, they had not been such ten minutes before. They were some of the regular followers of the negro king; and, but a short while ago, carried muskets and formed part of his military array, ready to kill or capture his enemies at his nod, or even his friends if bidden. But fortune is fickle to such heroes, and their more favoured companions had just been directed to capture them and deliver them over to a ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... Doomed for a time to bear The badge which none but fickle lives should wear. How oft the envious tongue creates the dart That cleaves the saintly soul and breaks the heart: How oft the hasty ear full credence gives To words in which no grain of truth survives: Were Juno just, her heart ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... was leaving port. One had a crew long accustomed to habits of strict obedience; the other was manned by men who had just been engaged in mutiny. The Americans were wrong to accuse fortune on this occasion. Fortune was not fickle, she was merely logical. The Shannon captured the Chesapeake on the first of June, 1813, but on the 14th of September, 1806, the day when he took command of his frigate, Captain Broke had begun to prepare the glorious ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... ambition and rises to no high level, but in America he gains distinction in school and success in business. A natural environment of forest or plain may determine the occupation of a whole community; a fickle climate vitally affects its prosperity. Whole races have entered upon a ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... musingly—"public favor, it is light as zephyr, as fickle as the seasons, it passes away like the latter, and when the north wind moves it, it will disappear." [Footnote: Le Normand, vol. i., ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... company with his friend Evelyn, and, in fine, settles for a season in Paris. Here he keeps open table for the banished royalists, as well as for the French wits, till his means are impaired by his liberality. A middling poet, a pitiful politician, a fickle dangler in affairs of love, Waller was an admirable host, and not only gave good dinners and suppers, but flavoured them delicately with compliment and repartee. In Paris he recovered his tone of spirits, and, had his money lasted, might have remained there till ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... the duke and Guibaut. The carriage was surrounded by the royal musketeers. A body of light cavalry followed, and the two companies of the Poitou regiment brought up the rear. Thus the people of Paris were shown that the queen had both the will and the power to punish, and the fickle population, who would the day before have shouted in honour of Beaufort, were delighted at seeing that the royal authority was once again paramount in Paris. The other members of the party of Importants either fled or were ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... number of the AEsir, whom some call the calumniator of the gods, the contriver of all fraud and mischief, and the disgrace of gods and men. His name is Loki or Loptur. He is the son of the giant Farbauti.....Loki is handsome and well made, but of a very fickle mood, and most evil disposition. He surpasses all beings in those arts called Cunning and Perfidy. Many a time has he exposed the gods to very great perils, and often extricated them again ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... captain went back to his ordinary habits and ways, which had been somewhat upset by this incident. Diverted by her Parisian occupations, Clementine appeared to have forgotten Paz. It must not be thought an easy matter to reign a queen over fickle Paris. Does any one suppose that fortunes alone are risked in the great game? The winters are to fashionable women what a campaign once was to the soldiers of the Empire. What works of art and genius are expended on a gown or a garland in which to make a sensation! A fragile, ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... compelled to make her way round by Piacenza and Turin, where she had left Gambier, with Beppo in attendance on him. Georgiana at once assumed all the duties of head-nurse, and the more resolutely because of her brother's evident moral weakness in sighing for the hand of a fickle girl to smooth his pillow. "When he is stronger you can sit beside him a little," she said to Vittoria, who surrendered her post without a struggle, and rarely saw him, though Laura told her that his frequent exclamation was her name, accompanied by a soft look ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 'False and fickle one!' said he. 'One indeed came who set thee free, and he is now near thee again; but how have you used him? Ought he to have had such treatment from thee?' Then he went out and sent away the company, and said the wedding was at an end, for that he was come back to the kingdom. ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... our parts Like wary cunning foxes, And gain'd the common people's hearts By broaching het'rodoxes, - But they're as fickle as the winds, With nothing long agree, And when they change their wav'ring minds, Then ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... frequently than of old), it was at Blackpool that he spent his evenings. He had, it is true, a standing invitation to dinner at Lady Garnett's when that old lady found herself at home; but Portman Square was remote, and evening dress, to a man with one lung in a climate which had so fickle a trick of registering itself either at the extreme top or bottom of the thermometer, presented various discomforts. His den behind the office—a little sitting-room with a bay-window facing Blackpool Reach, a room filled with books that had no relation ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... any court is sure to teach wisdom and indifference to human glories. In our France of the nineteenth century, fickle as it has been, inconstant, fertile in revolutions, recantations, and changes of every sort, this lesson is more impressive than it has been at any period of our history. Never has Providence shown more clearly the nothingness of this world's grandeur and ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... Chamberlain seems, by a sort of quasi- hereditary Birmingham position, to look at him as Bright used to look at Palmerston. This is serious, because Chamberlain is a strong man and does not easily change, unlike the other member of our triumvirate, Cowen, who is as fickle as the wind, one day Hartington, one day you, one day Gladstone, and never seeming to know even ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... "You fickle, changeable, sentimental creature! I wouldn't be a man like you for the world!" And reckless Christal burst into a fit of laughter much louder than seemed warranted by the occasion. Lyle seemed much annoyed; whereupon his friend Miss Rothesay considerately ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... forced his son to marry her. Out of fear, Ucay consented to do as his father bade him. But the beautiful young witch to whom he had already pledged his love became angry with him for his timidity, and so she resolved to change the city into a forest of beautiful trees. Her fickle lover she transformed into a monkey, who should live in the tallest tree, and who should not be able to recover his human shape till five centuries had passed, when a charming girl would live with him ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... swordsman in France. This reputation he had maintained against all comers till he met the man now closeted with him. He envied the King his poetic talent, and would fain have outdone him in the art of poesy. But even with Clement Marot's help he had been utterly unable to woo the fickle muse. He had so stored his mind, however, that his sovereign, the brilliant Marguerite de Nevarre, and the master intellect of that age, Rabelais, all delighted in his society; and on account of his ability ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... very day after the arrival of the new prince, was not entirely forgotten, but was laid away carefully on a back shelf of her heart; and the lady Dewbell never had been so beautiful, so fascinating, so joyous and irresistible. Courts are as fickle as coquettes; and before the month had passed, in a series of brilliant fetes and entertainments, at all of which the prince and princess were the reigning toast, it was regarded as a settled thing that there would, ere the maple leaves grew red in the dying gaze ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... of the ever-fickle mob, hailing him as its deliverer, Louis XII rode triumphantly into Milan on October 6, attended by a little host of princes, including the Prince of Savoy, the Dukes of Montferrat and Ferrara, and the Marquis of Mantua. But the place of honour ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... his pursuits, Godfrey was not less inconstant in his affections; and the graceful person and pleasing manners of Juliet Whitmore had made a deeper impression upon his fickle mind than he thought it prudent to avow; nor was he at all insensible to the pecuniary advantages that would arise from ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... waters The fickle feet may roam, But they find no light so pure and bright As the one fair star of home; The star of tender hearts, lady, That glows in an ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... under the dominion of feeling, less ruled by principle; always better or worse than was anticipated,—now below the level of humanity, now far above; a people so unchangeable in its leading features that it may be recognized by portraits drawn two or three thousand years ago, and yet so fickle in its daily opinions and tastes that it becomes at last a mystery to itself, and is as much astonished as strangers at the sight of what it has done; naturally fond of home and routine, yet, when once driven forth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... is a god are in error. We see man moving by law, growing up, and waxing old, even against his will. Now he rejoiceth, now he grieveth, requiring meat and drink and raiment. Besides he is passionate, envious, lustful, fickle, and full of failings: and he perisheth in many a way, by the elements, by wild beasts, and by the death that ever awaiteth him. So Man cannot be a god, but only the work of God. Great then is the ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... speak heaven's truth, I have precious little to say, inasmuch as I seldom see him, except on a Sunday, when he looks as handsome, cheery, and good-tempered as usual. I have indeed had the advantage of one long conversation since his return from Westmorland, when he poured out his whole warm fickle soul in fondness and admiration of Agnes Walton. Whether he is in love with her or not I can't say; I can only observe that it sounds very like it. He sent us a prodigious quantity of game while he was away—a brace of wild ducks, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... lighter than a feather, And the wind more light than either; But a woman's fickle mind More than a feather, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 235, April 29, 1854 • Various
... of eleven—the princely brothers made so fair a sight that the King, jealous and suspicious of Prince Henry's popularity though he was, looked now upon them both with loving eyes. But how those loving eyes would have grown dim with tears could this fickle, selfish, yet indulgent father have foreseen the sad and bitter fates of ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... not and sleeping little, and in some miraculous way producing wonderful literary creations. The mind of a literary man is supposed to be like a shallow summer brook, that turns a mill. There is no water except when it rains, and the weather being very fickle, it is never known when there will be water. Sometimes, however, there comes a freshet, and then the mill runs night and day, until the water subsides, and another dry time ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... you all the sympathy you stand in need of,—I promise it! My poor, dear Sydney!—don't be so absurd! Do you think that I don't know you? You're the best of friends, and the worst of lovers,—as the one, so true; so fickle as the other. To my certain knowledge, with how many girls have you been in love,—and out again. It is true that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, you have never been in love with me before,—but that's the merest accident. Believe me, my dear, dear Sydney, you'll be in love with someone ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... operated like a factory? Can fickle nature be offset and crops be brought to maturity upon ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... "With us, I think that is true. Luck is more fickle than a woman and we like not the surprise. But our effort is to be prepared ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... "O fickle, terror-stricken fools!" he exclaimed—"O thankless and disloyal people! What!—ye WILL see me now? ... ye WILL hear me? ... Aye! but who shall answer for your obedience to my words! Nay, is it possible that I, your country's chosen Chief Minstrel, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... cried. "It was the Gorbals Die-Hards. There stands the man that done it.... Ye'll no' fickle Thomas Yownie." ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... to New York earlier than usual, worked steadily at my profession and with increasing success, and began to accept opportunities (which I had previously declined) of making myself personally known to the great, impressible, fickle, tyrannical public. One or two of my speeches in the hall of the Cooper Institute, on various occasions—as you may perhaps remember—gave me a good headway with the party, and were the chief cause of my nomination for the State office which I still hold. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... but fickle lady-moon, Why must thy full form ever wane? O love! O friendship! why so soon Must your sweet light recede again? I wake me in the dead of night, And start,—for through the misty gloom Red Hecate stares—a boding sight!— Looks in, but never ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... forecastle, not that of the metal trough with an engine in the middle and mechanics sweating in her depths. When the Atlantic packet was compelled to abdicate, it was the beginning of the end. After all, her master was the fickle wind, for a slashing outward passage might be followed by weeks of beating home to the westward. Steadily forging ahead to the beat of her paddles or the thrash of her screw, the steamer even of that day was far more dependable than the sailing vessel. The Lightning clipper ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... may I reach, At the flash of Death's sharp sickle, Just in deed, of steadfast speech, Not, as now, infirm and fickle. ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... daughter of a Trojan priest. Pandarus, Cressida's uncle, acts as go-between for the lovers. Just as the suit of Troilus is crowned with success, Cressida, from motives of policy, is forced to join her father Calchas, who is in the camp of the besieging Greeks. Here her fickle and sensuous nature reveals itself rapidly. She yields to {173} the love of the Greek commander Diomed and promises to become his mistress. Troilus learns of this, consigns her to oblivion, and attempts, but unsuccessfully, ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... proud, effeminate and carefully adorned like women. They said that the Germans were furious and obscene at their feasts; the Normans vain and boastful; the Poitevins traitors and always adventurers. The Burgundians they considered vulgar and stupid. The Bretons were reputed to be fickle and changeable, and were often reproached for the death of Arthur. The Lombards were called avaricious, vicious and cowardly; the Romans, seditious, turbulent and slanderous; the Sicilians, tyrannical and cruel; ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... court is sure to teach wisdom and indifference to human glories. In our France of the nineteenth century, fickle as it has been, inconstant, fertile in revolutions, recantations, and changes of every sort, this lesson is more impressive than it has been at any period of our history. Never has Providence shown more ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... my heart went out in love to this little book, no change of scene or of custom no allurement of fashion, no demand of mature years, has abated that love. And herein is exemplified the advantage which the love of books has over the other kinds of love. Women are by nature fickle, and so are men; their friendships are liable to dissipation at the merest provocation or ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... Behold how fickle Fortune the great ULYSSES treats, Gives him victories in war-time, in peace heaps up defeats. His Southern laurels linger a coronet of praise; But a friendly Senate ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... demonstrates, the more eager the people are to give support to his undertakings if they are convinced that he has their best welfare as his goal. There is no public confidence equal to that of the American public, once it is obtained. It is fickle, of course, as are all publics, but fickle only toward the man who cannot ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... day was the Sabbath, thirty-six hours of suspense must elapse before we could know whether this was but a passing kindness from the fickle goddess, or the herald ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... sometimes they don't know their own mind—particularly if they are very young; and when they do at last, you clever creatures of men, who have interpreted their ignorance to please yourselves, abuse them for being fickle." She stopped to observe the effect of what she believed a rather clear and significant exposition of Jessie's and George's possible situation. But she was not prepared for the look of blank resignation that seemed to drive the color from ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... for a time to bear The badge which none but fickle lives should wear. How oft the envious tongue creates the dart That cleaves the saintly soul and breaks the heart: How oft the hasty ear full credence gives To words in which no grain of truth survives: Were Juno ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... child was told that the name of Bugbee was thereafter to be appended to those she already bore; and being quite pleased with the notion, she forthwith adopted her new appellative, retaining it for several years, until (such is the fickle nature of women) she took a fancy to change it for another which she liked better still. She was also taught to call her grandparents papa and mamma; and though, while a child, she continued to address Miss Cornelia by the title of "Aunty," this respectful custom, as the relative difference ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Santa Maria del Carmine contains relics dear alike to the romance of democracy and empire. It was from this church that Masaniello harangued the fickle populace in vain; it was here that he was despatched by three bandits in the pay of the Duke of Maddaloni; and here he found an honourable interment during a rapid reflux of popular favour. In this church, too, lies Conradin the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... "The people are always fickle, Jethro, and easily led; and their love and respect for the gods renders it easy for any one who works on that feeling to lash them into fury. All else is as nothing in their eyes in comparison with their religion. It is blind worship, if you will; but ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... of war put La Sabina into my possession, after she had been most gallantly defended: the fickle dame returned her to you, with some of my officers ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... mischief." "Pray, my dear," answered the marechale, "be under no mistake: you might be as much beloved as others are, if you did not monopolize the king's affections; the consequence is, that every woman with even a passable face looks upon you as the usurper of her right, and as the fickle gentlemen who woo these gentle ladies are all ready to transfer their homage to you directly you appear, you must admit that your presence is calculated to produce no inconsiderable degree of confusion." The commencement of a play which formed ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... low and sweet, and the lady's nature was vain and fickle, and the prospect of marrying an English lord was very enticing, and so it came about that at last she yielded, and she told him how she was expecting young Wallace that very night at seven o'clock, and she promised to put a light in the window when ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... liberty in religious beliefs and professions. A melancholy example of the prevailing idea, that it was the duty of the civil authority to inflict penalties upon heresy, is the case of Michael Servetus. A Spaniard by birth, with a remarkable aptitude for natural science and medicine, adventurous and fickle, he had published books in which doctrines received by both the great divisions of the Church, especially the doctrine of the Trinity, were assailed. He escaped out of the hands of the Catholics, and came to Geneva. There ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the book on my thumb and sat there silent and without moving for a long time. I was stunned by the clearness of vision the verse had imparted to me. It was illumination. It was like a bolt of God's lightning in the Pit. They would keep Love, the fickle sprite, the forerunner of young life—young life that is imperative ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... of view of the Church, which is of a more human nature. This is fallible and fickle, but, though perpetually changing, it will last as long as there are weak human beings. The light of cloudless divine revelation is far too pure and radiant for poor, weak man. But the Church interposes as mediator, to soften and moderate, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... French, and is therefore not my immediate business, as they are eminently capable of looking after themselves. I merely drop one word in passing, lest you waste your powerful intellect on such projects. The English may some day forgive you; the French never will. You Teutons are too light and fickle to understand the Latin seriousness. My only concern is to point out that about England, at least, you are invariably ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... all. It is the sort of spectacle that turns a man to serious thinking. Well, but it is a great comfort to reflect that I dealt fairly with every one of them. Several of them treated me most unjustly, too. But that is past and done with: and I bear no malice toward such fickle and short-sighted creatures as could not be contented with one lover, and he the ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... my mistress, fickle she, Yet dear beyond all dearth of speech; Child of the winds of land and sea She charms me with the charm of each— Full soft and sweet she sings and then She sings wild songs ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... enough to keep their Favours secret—But from Romantick Love, Good Heav'n defend me. A Moment's Joy's not worth an Age's Courtship; and when the Nymph's Demure, and Dull and Shy, and Foolish and Freakish, and Fickle, there are Billiards at the Smyrna, Bowles at Marybone, and Dice at the Groom-Porter's—Are ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... Fashionable society was well represented in the gallery—where a collection of pictures by a celebrated artist was being shown; and prior to the entrance of the lady in the strangely fashioned tiger-skin cloak, the somewhat extraordinary works of art had engaged the interest even of the most fickle, but, from the moment the tiger-lady made her appearance, even the most ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... she exclaimed, in feigned surprise, "risen, eh? Upon my word, you are a fickle cavalier. Well, I suppose I must extend my clemency to you. At what price will you be willing ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... chance that the courtier of the king's presence shall pick up a purse of gold, and the next that he shall lie shorter by the head. And philosophers have remarked, saying, "It is incumbent on us to be constantly aware of the fickle dispositions of kings, who will one moment take offence at a salutation, and at another make an honorary dress the return for an act of rudeness; and they have said, That to be over much facetious is the accomplishment of courtiers and blemish of the wise.—Be ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... startling an effect upon the defenders. For a moment they paused, with weapons uplifted, and stared. Where an enemy had been, there was nothing. So doubtful Greeks or Trojans might have paused and stared upon the plains of Ilion when some splenetic and fickle deity burst unannounced and overwhelming into the central clamor of ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... petticoat does remain tender and true, it is hard upon her that her lord should prove false and fickle, given the warm corner our fair 'sisters, cousins, and our aunts,' are content to purr; they shine in society, and have gained what is the very end and aim of ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... Brothers of the Pen, than they have been to a defenceless Woman; for I am not content to write for a Third day only. I value Fame as much as if I had been born a Hero; and if you rob me of that, I can retire from the ungrateful World, and scorn its fickle Favours. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... was the only thing Ed Higgins could find to say. Ed, as fickle as the wind, was once more deeply in love with Rosalie, having switched from Miss Banks immediately after ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... German liberties, and so secured the friendship of the imperial towns and the German princes. The Landgrave of Hesse, the Elector of Treves, and the Duke of Neuburg readily accepted the protection of France. It proved impossible to gain the fickle Duke of Lorraine; it was equally difficult to win over the powerful Elector of Bavaria. Maximilian I of Bavaria had played an important part in the Thirty Years' War, but from June, 1644, he began to enter into periodical negotiations with Mazarin. The cardinal placed no reliance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... cannot tell. We know so little of the Chincas that we have nothing to go upon. Some savages have patience enough to wait for any time to carry out their revenge or slay an enemy; others are fickle, and though they may be fierce in attack, soon tire of waiting, and are eager to return to their homes again. I cannot think that they will speedily leave. They have assembled, many of them perhaps from considerable distances; they have had two days' march up here, and have ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... in her court-yard. To brush her hair while such a confidant looked on and asked questions, was more than Pallas Athene herself could do, though she looked out forever from the windows of her Acropolis over the Blue AEgean. The sea is capricious, fickle, angry, fawning, violent, savage and wanton; it caresses and raves in a breath, and has its moods of silence, but Esther's huge playmate rambled on with its story, in the same steady voice, never shrill or angry, never silent or degraded by a sign of human failings, and yet so frank and sympathetic ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... studios. He was the man born to be king. The attainment of his kingdom alone mattered. The intermediary phases were of no account. It had been a period of struggle, hardship and, as far as the stage itself was concerned, disillusion. After the first year or so, the goddess Fortune, more fickle in Theatreland, perhaps, than anywhere else, passed him by. London had no use for his services, especially when it learned that he aspired to play parts. It even refused him the privilege of walking ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... daughter of a merchant of Baghdad, whom he had hitherto lived on very amicable terms. When she heard that he was arranging for a second marriage, she came to him in a great rage. "How now," said she, "two hands in one glove! two swords in one scabbard! two wives in one house! Go, fickle man! Since the caresses of a young and faithful wife cannot secure your constancy, I am ready to yield my place to my rival and retire to my own family. Repudiate me— return my dowry—and you shall never see me more." "I am glad you have thus anticipated me," answered ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... give up all hope," said Kretschmer; "the people are timid and fickle, and whoever will give them the sweetest words wins them over to his side. Come, let us try our luck elsewhere. Every thing depends upon our being beforehand with this braggart Gotzkowsky, and getting first the ear of the people. You, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... other European powers, looked upon them in a friendly manner. Prussia, indeed, solemnly promised assistance; and in the month of March, 1790, Frederic William even concluded a defensive alliance with Poland. But the friendship of courts is variable, and the favour of monarchs fickle. The King of Prussia had attached himself to the cause of Poland, not from any respect for her rights, but from a spirit of jealousy towards Russia, and in the hopes of obtaining something for himself. He was to have Dantzic and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... September is one of even more fickle and changeable a nature than most others; it is, however, one of very great importance to those who are desirous of securing plenty of geranium and other cuttings, for the next summer's work; because, should the month by chance happen to be ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... of our fickle state, Since man on earth, unparalleled! The rarer thy example stands, By how much from the top of wondrous glory, Strongest of mortal men, To lowest pitch of abject fortune ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... I hear thee coupled with one girl, and then again with another, till I do not know what to think, Leon. I am afraid thou art fickle." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... Friendly Call A Dinner at ——* Sound and Fury Tictocq Tracked to Doom A Snapshot at the President An Unfinished Christmas Story The Unprofitable Servant Aristocracy Versus Hash The Prisoner of Zembla A Strange Story Fickle Fortune, or How Gladys Hustled An Apology Lord Oakhurst's Curse Bexar Scrip No. 2692 Queries and Answers Poems The Pewee Nothing to Say The Murderer Some Postscripts Two Portraits A Contribution The Old Farm Vanity The Lullaby Boy Chanson de Boheme Hard to ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... the ethnography of its tribes, and to determine the export of the produce of the interior." He held the streams that fed Tanganyika to be the ultimate sources of the Nile; and believed that the glory of their discovery would be his. Fortune, however, the most fickle of goddesses, thought fit to deprive him of ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... fevered state of the public mind acting upon them from all directions; so consuming are their labours in the study and in public, pressed and urged upon them by the demands of the time; and, withal, so fickle has the popular mind become under a system that is forever demanding some new and still more exciting measure—some new society—some new monthly or weekly meeting, which perhaps soon grows into a religious holiday—some ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... like injudicious things are said even by some who ought to have more discretion. People talk without thinking, or make such statements to cover their own shortcomings and faults. Why shall they not stand? are they in the keeping of a feeble or fickle Saviour? isn't His grace as strong as sin? is not Jesus always mightier than the devil? and have not millions of the greatest sinners who have found the Lord, stood firm against the snares of the world, and all the devices of the wicked one? "He won't stand," is an old lie, which ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... against them—and Maluco affairs were not failing to give Joan de Esquivel, the master-of-camp, sufficient to do. He was acting as governor there and had but little security from the natives, who, being a Mahometan people, and by nature easily persuaded and fickle, are restless, and ready for disturbances and wars. Daily and in different parts the natives were being incited and aroused to rebellion; and although the master-of-camp and his captains were endeavoring to punish and pacify them, they could not do what was necessary to quiet so many ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... the celebrated Diary of this versatile politician, he had written a "Brief account of George Bubb Doddington, Lord Melcombe," which the noble editor of the "Memoires" has inserted. It describes him, "as his Diary shows, vain, fickle, ambitious, and corrupt,' and very lethargic; but gives him credit for great wit and readiness." Cumberland, in his Memoirs, thus paints him:-"Dodington, lolling in his chair, in perfect apathy and self-command, dozing, and even snoring, at intervals, in his lethargic way, broke out ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... would be better to rent," said Mr. Fairfield. "Suppose my fickle daughter should change her mind, and after a visit in the city decide that she prefers it for ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... they took the ground. This increase of distance was in every way a gain to the party standing on the defensive, and a corresponding loss to the assailants. Saumarez ordered the cables cut and sail made to close once more; but the light and fickle airs both baffled this effort and further embarrassed the British, through the difficulty of keeping their broadsides in position. Here happened the great disaster of the day. One of the outer ships, the Hannibal, tried to pass inside the headmost of the French, not realizing ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... at his old father's trade, And thought he would stick to his wax and the last, But Fortune, the fickle, incontinent jade, A turn to his fortune has given a cast; "A wife with a fortune," which men hunt in packs, To Jack was the fortune that fell to his share; A fortune that often is such a hard tax, That men hurry through it with "nothing to spare," With "nothing to eat," or a house "fit to live ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... distinction 'Twixt good and evil, truth and falsehood, vanish? What then is resolution? What is firmness? What is the faith of man, if in one weak, Unguarded hour, the rules of threescore years Dissolve in air, like woman's fickle favor? ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... comment. There may be reasons for breaking one engagement, but when it comes to the second, Mrs. Grundy makes remarks, and is inclined to blame the girl, either for too great haste to wed, or for being fickle and capricious, ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the dog-star, in valley retired, Shalt thou sing that old song thou canst warble so well, Which tells how one passion Penelope fired, And charmed fickle Circe herself by ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... the nation—every fourth head—as available for war. This process for David's case would have yielded perhaps about 1,100,000 fighting men throughout Palestine. But this unwieldy pospolite was far from meeting David's secret anxieties. He had remarked the fickle and insurrectionary state of the people. Even against himself how easy had it been found to organize a sudden rebellion, and to conceal it so prosperously that he and his whole court saved themselves from capture only by a few hours' start of the enemy, and ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... now, since here I came, the twentieth year, Since left my land, and all I once held dear: But never from that hour has Helen heard From thee a harsh reproach or painful word; But if thy kindred blam'd me, if unkind The queen e'er glanc'd at Helen's fickle mind— (For Priam, still benevolently mild, Look'd on me as a father views his child)— Thy gentle speech, thy gentleness of soul, Would by thine own, their harsher minds control. Hence, with a heart by torturing misery rent, Thee and my ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... which occupied the prophets of Israel, and building up the rule of one God, a Being supremely wise and good, source of all beauty, and the worker of all that is wrought in the universe, in place of the many fickle and weak deities who formerly bore sway. In many ways the schools of Greece were the forerunners of Christianity. As the Jews, carried far from their temple, form a new principle of religious association and learn to meet for the service of God, without any sacrifice, in ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... did not adopt their standards, and shrank always with innate refinement from everything gross. No one thought of shooting her now. She had not only lived down her unpopularity, but, by dint of her natural fearlessness, her cheerful audacity of speech, and quick comprehension, had won back the fickle hearts of the people, who weighed her words again superstitiously, and made much of her. The workmen, with the indolent, inconsequent Irish temperament which makes it irksome to follow up a task continuously, and easier to do anything than the work in hand, would break off to amuse her at any ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... withdrew his gaze, and turned his attention to, the more immediate object of his excursion. After a few moments spent in regulating his hook and line, he strung his angle-rod, and threw out to see whether he could succeed in tempting, at that unfavorable hour, the fickle trout from their watery recesses. But all in vain the attempt. Not a trout was seen stirring the water at the surface, or manifesting his presence around the hook beneath; and all the endeavors which ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... of night While yet the day is full of golden light, We felt steal o'er us. Vivian broke the spell Of dream-fraught silence, throwing down his book: "Young ladies, please allow me to arrange These wraps about your shoulders. I know well The fickle nature of our atmosphere,— Her smile swift followed by a frown or tear,— And go prepared for changes. Now you look, Like—like—oh, where's a pretty simile? Had you a pocket mirror here you'd see How well my native talent is displayed In ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fortunate than rich," says an old proverb, and the correctness of this saying was fully exemplified in the life of Don Rodrigo de Cespedes. Indeed, his whole existence had been a series of mischances and unfortunate results; and he appeared especially reserved as a proper subject on whom the fickle goddess might ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... gave the impression of possessing greater means than she really commanded; this was doubly serious when it came to her taking up with a man who was altogether dependent on his wits, his skill and his invention, and subject to the passing whims of a fickle public taste. She went down to the library, to discuss the ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... the priests of that thought which establishes the foundations of the castle."—"We hear too much of the results of machinery, commerce, and the useful arts. We are a puny and a fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases. The rapid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansion of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; this luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... love me, my dear wife, because I have been so pulled down by illness? You are not so fickle—I am come on purpose for you—my mother and father ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... his pail to the sand as if casting all thought of fickle woman from him and ran off down the beach toward the cabin, deigning not to hear Jean as she ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... this high praise from so imposing a source added, the fickle village turned again, and gave Joan countenance, compliment, and peace. Her mother took her back to her heart, and even her father relented and said he was proud of her. But the time hung heavy on her hands, nevertheless, for the siege of Orleans was begun, the clouds lowered ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... It may be so in your English law—but Scotland makes Love himself the priest. A vow betwixt a fond couple, the blue heaven alone witnessing, will protect a confiding girl against the perjury of a fickle swain, as much as if a Dean had performed the rites in the loftiest cathedral in England. Nay, more; if the child of love be acknowledged by the father at the time when he is baptized—if he present the mother to strangers of ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... the caverns of the mine Are warmer than the breast that holds that faithless heart of thine; Thou art fickle as the sea, thou art wandering as the wind, And the restless ever-mounting flame is not more hard to bind. If the tears I shed were tongues, yet all too few would be To tell of all the treachery that thou hast shown to me. Oh! I could chide thee sharply—but ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... law of logic that it was because they themselves had disillusioned you, and that you had no control over the coming or going of your emotion—but at the end of your peroration they would still reproach you for being a fickle brute, and believe themselves blameless, and ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... go to boarding-school next year, I don't care whether you take the rooms in Twenty-third Street or not," said Fanny sullenly, for, in spite of her fickle temperament, there was a remarkable ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... courtier to the carter) is such that no form of apparel liketh us longer than the first garment is in the wearing, if it continue so long, and be not laid aside to receive some other trinket newly devised by the fickle-headed tailors, who covet to have several tricks in cutting, thereby to draw fond customers to more expense of money. For my part, I can tell better how to inveigh against this enormity than describe any certainty of our attire; sithence such is our ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... extreme. Fortitude is the mean, and that is limited within bonds, and prescribed with circumstance. But above all," and with that he fetched a deep sigh, "beware of love, for it is far more perilous than pleasant, and yet, I tell you, it allureth as ill as the Sirens. O my sons, fancy is a fickle thing, and beauty's paintings are tricked up with time's colors, which, being set to dry in the sun, perish with the same. Venus is a wanton, and though her laws pretend liberty, yet there is nothing but loss and glistering misery. Cupid's wings are plumed with ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... spend our time grieving over some lost love that reason and good judgment tells us would have come to naught under any circumstances. I hope Mrs. Morton is happy and satisfied. Perhaps you'll think me fickle, senyorita, but let me confess to you the fact that I'm not feeling as much like grieving as I ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... from the dismayed vision, leaving us a considerably lower set than we were at first, and glad of our lowness. This is the second lady's own ground, however, and now she comes out—in a way that banishes far from our fickle minds all thoughts of the first lady and her mistaken child—with a medley of singing and dancing, a bit of breakdown, of cancan, of jig, a bit of "Le Sabre de mon Pere," and of all memorable slang songs, given with the most grotesque and clownish spirit that ever ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... to remind ourselves of the terrible evil it would have been to the world if Carthage had overcome Rome. For Carthage was possessed of almost every bad quality which could work ill to the human race. Greed for money was her passion, and in order to obtain wealth she proved herself fickle, short-sighted, lawless, and boundlessly cruel. The government of Rome, which the Eternal City handed on to the countries she conquered, was founded not only on law, but on common-sense. Considering the customs of the world during the thousand years of her greatest glory, she was seldom cruel, and ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... fifty-six years later the second Emperor said so sadly when he was a prisoner in Germany: "In France one must never be unfortunate." What was then left for her to do in that volcano, that land which swallows all greatness and glory, amid that fickle people who change their opinions and passions as an actress changes her dress? Where Napoleon, with all his genius, had made a complete failure, could a young, ignorant woman be reasonably expected to succeed in the face ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... sir?" touching an imaginary cap. "Shall I say that 'Dark and true and tender is the North,' and 'Fierce and false and fickle is the South,' ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... could not, he told us with lively pantomime, endure the torture to an end. Our enamoured countryman was more resolved; he was tattooed from head to foot in the most approved methods of the art: and at last presented himself before his mistress a new man. The fickle fair one could never behold him from that day except with laughter. For my part, I could never see the man without a kind of admiration; of him it might be said, if ever of any, that he had loved not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thee, That this sorrow may escape thee, And this darkened cloud pass over. Hie thee straightway to the Northland, Visit thou the Suomi daughters; Thou wilt find them wise and lovely, Far more beautiful than Aino, Far more worthy of a husband, Not such silly chatter-boxes, As the fickle Lapland maidens. Take for thee a life-companion, From the honest homes of Suomi, One of Northland's honest daughters; She will charm thee with her sweetness, Make thee happy through her goodness, Form perfection, manners easy, Every step and movement graceful, Full of wit and good behavior, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... She said she never expected to marry; that she wanted to give her life to makin' folks happy and doin' for them, folks that had a sorrow—but the Lord hadn't given her any sorrowful folks to do for. It's my opinion that she thought consid'able of that fickle Willy Parks. Then I reasoned with her some, and she come to see that maybe this was the app'inted work for her to do—considerin' you'd set your heart on it so. She said she didn't know but I needed lookin' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... Prince (Government, for as ever they are identical) aims only at authority. Now authority must spring from love or fear. It were best to combine both motives to obedience but you cannot. The Prince must remember that men are fickle, and love at their own pleasure, and that men are fearful and fear at the pleasure of the Prince. Let him therefore depend on what is of himself, not on that which is of others. 'Yet if he win not love he may escape hate, and so it ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... your silence, which, without reason, concealed the understanding between your hearts. If I had known this secret sooner, it might perhaps have spared us both some sad trouble; I might then coldly and justly have refused to listen to the sighs of a fickle lover, and perhaps have sent ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... on! Don't deceive yourself. The people are a mob yet. They are fickle as the flames o' hell. They don't know what they do want, but in the end the man that leads them and stands by them is sure ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... fickle one!' said he. 'One indeed came who set thee free, and he is now near thee again; but how have you used him? Ought he to have had such treatment from thee?' Then he went out and sent away the company, and said the wedding was at an end, ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... any other passion, fired his ambition; but it was not the love of notoriety—the fame he courted was not that which should only render his name conspicuous among men, that he might receive the incense of hypocritical flattery, or be pointed at by the fickle multitude—for such, his contempt was supreme; but it was the desire of his heart, and the struggle of his life, to be embalmed in men's memories as the benefactor of his race, to be remembered for his deeds ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... there in it? Does it make a man's legs crooked? does it spoil his shape? The plague take him who first invented being grieved about such a delusion, linking the honour of the wisest man to anything a fickle woman may do. Since every person is rightly held responsible for his own crimes, how can our honour, in this case, be considered criminal? We are blamed for the actions of other people. If our wives have an intrigue with any man, ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... tried to crawl along to a tree where it could twine itself around and climb, but it was too small, and then the rain came and made it cold and wet, and even the fickle wind did not ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... o'er our frozen minds they pass, Like shadows from the mirror'd glass. Wayward, fickle is our mood, Hovering betwixt bad and good, Happier than brief-dated man, Living twenty times his span; Far less happy, for we have Help nor hope beyond the grave! Man awakes to joy or sorrow; Ours the sleep that knows no morrow. This is all that I can show— This is ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... condemned. Public fasts and prayers were decreed throughout the colony. Judges and juries emulated one another in admitting a misgiving 'that we were sadly deluded and mistaken.' Dr. Mather was less fickle and less repentant. In one of his treatises on the subject, recounting some of the signs and proofs of the actual crime, he declares: 'Nor are these the tenth part of the prodigies that fell out among the inhabitants of New England. Fleshy people may burlesque these things: but when hundreds ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... unrestrained joviality of disposition, which rendered them impatient under the severe discipline of the fanatical preachers; while they were not less naturally discontented with the military despotism of Cromwell's Major-Generals. Secondly, the people were fickle as usual, and the return of the King had novelty in it, and was therefore popular. The side of the Puritans was also deserted at this period by a numerous class of more thinking and prudential persons, who never forsook them till they became unfortunate. These sagacious personages were called in ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... them were the forces of Nature, and they were wholly dependent upon her fickle favor. It might be a day, a week, a month before she would let them through, and, even when the barrier began to yield, another ship, a league distant, might profit by an opening which to them was barred. For a long, dull period the voyagers lay as helpless as if in dry-dock, while wandering ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... her vulgarity and repulsiveness have been circulated; but in making up our estimate of her, the fact that she held Goethe in loyal bonds for eight and twenty years must not be passed over lightly. Fickle as he was in youth, and admiring as he did brilliant women in his manhood, Christine Vulpius must have had charms, and not of a light order, to have held him thus her willing slave. No mere fat and vulgar Frau without mind or sensibility could have done ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... a mover in the intrigues of kings? Lucien at first was fain to be content with the banal answer—the Spanish are a generous race. The Spaniard is generous! even so the Italian is jealous and a poisoner, the Frenchman fickle, the German frank, the Jew ignoble, and the Englishman noble. Reverse these verdicts and you shall arrive within a reasonable distance of the truth! The Jews have monopolized the gold of the world; they compose Robert the Devil, act Phedre, sing William Tell, give commissions for pictures ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... when he had paced thus, confessing, explaining—what you will—but, in the last instance, living—living before me, under his own little cloud, with all his unconscious subtlety which could draw consolation from the very source of sorrow. It was the same mood, the same and different, like a fickle companion that to-day guiding you on the true path, with the same eyes, the same step, the same impulse, to-morrow will lead you hopelessly astray. His tread was assured, his straying, darkened eyes seemed to search the room for something. One of his footfalls somehow sounded louder than the other—the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... acquitted,—his my love alway! Who has my hand, he holds—shall hold—my heart! Truth is my guide,—let sophistry depart! Had Fate been kind, then had Pauline been thine, Heart, faith and duty, linked with bliss divine. In vain had fickle Fortune barred the way, Want had been wealth with thee, my guide, my stay, And poverty had fallen from the wings Of soaring love, who mocks the wealth of kings! Not mine to choose, for he—my father's choice— Must ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... open to grief, To comfort the fair one I turned; "Of fickle ones thou art the chief!" Frowned the Violet, and ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... tournament participated in by Douglas, Calhoun, Lamborn, and Thomas on the part of the Democrats, and Logan, Baker, Browning, and Lincoln on the part of the Whigs. The discussion began with great enthusiasm and with crowded houses, but by the time it came to Lincoln's duty to close the debate the fickle public had tired of the intellectual jousts, and he spoke to a comparatively thin house. But his speech was considered the best of the series, and there was such a demand for it that he wrote it out, and it was printed and circulated in the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... upon the hated Germans marching through their beloved city. No! when the day arrived they would hide themselves in their houses, or shut their eyes to such a hateful sight. But by the 1st of March a change had come over the fickle Parisians, for at an early hour the sidewalks were jammed with people, and the windows and doors of the houses filled with men, women, and children eager to get a look at the conquerors. Only a few came in the morning, however—an advance-guard of perhaps a thousand cavalry and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... something hot, and she had soon found that the young cook could be trusted to finish the work down-stairs. It was her opinion that it is as well to be comfortable when you can, as blessings are fleeting and fickle, especially when they are cooks; so she indulged often both in bed and the glass, notably the glass. She had not been able to go to bed quite as early as she liked that day, for her master had a visitor, and there had ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... into her grandfather's keeping! A cold horror falls upon her. After all these weary years of hated servitude to be undone! It is impossible even fickle fortune should play her such ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... of the thick thronged pikes, Must now depart most lamentably slain By Humber's treacheries and fortune's spites. Cursed be her charms, damned be her cursed charms That doth delude the wayward hearts of men, Of men that trust unto her fickle wheel, Which never leaveth turning upside down. O gods, O heavens, allot me but the place Where I may find her hateful mansion! I'll pass the Alps to watery Meroe, Where fiery Phoebus in his chariot, The wheels whereof are decked with Emeralds, Casts ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... coats, richly emblazoned, rousing forth many a shout and hurrah, as one and another symbol was recognised to be the badge of some favourite chief; but more than all, was the young Stanley's escutcheon favoured by the fickle breath of popular opinion, which made it needful that a double guard should be mounted near his dwelling,—a precaution, moreover, rendered needful by the many tumults among the different partisans and retainers, not always ending without bloodshed. The arrival of the king, however, soon changed ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... ten times rather have heard what they said than to listen to the cheers of the multitude; for he knew that love and friendship endure, while the admiration of the crowd is as fickle as the weather, praising one day and on ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... an idea of faithlessness in it, nevertheless," said Maria Consuelo, thoughtfully. "Or if it is not faithless, it is fickle. It is not the same to oneself to love ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... letters be seized; he therefore directs his agent to take certain measures in his behalf, "for one cannot trust in friars." He recounts the proceedings in the residencia of Vargas, in which there are many false witnesses. He thinks that the Spaniards of Manila are more fickle than any others, and regards that colony as "a little edition of hell." He is eager to get away from the islands, and urges his friend to secure for him permission to do so, and to make arrangements so that he may not be needlessly detained in the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... It was nine o'clock on the next day, 22nd October, and we were on deck waiting for the arrival of the steamer from Norddeich. There was no change in the weather—still the same stringent cold, with a high barometer, and only fickle flaws of air; but the morning was gloriously clear, except for a wreath or two of mist curling like smoke from the sea, and an attenuated belt of opaque fog on the northern horizon. The harbour lay open before us, and very commodious and civilized it looked, ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... was quickly followed by disgrace, and the end of his career was near at hand. He was of the true soldierly temperament, stirring, ambitious, not content to rest and rust, and as a result his credit with the fickle Athenians quickly disappeared. His head seems to have been turned by his success, and he soon after asked for a fleet of seventy ships of war, to be placed under his command. He did not say where he proposed to go, but stated only that whoever should come with ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Son of Man rode into Jerusalem. A vast multitude of people thronged the streets and cast their garments and palm branches before Him, and with unbounded enthusiasm cried "Hosanna in the highest!" But only a few days later that same multitude, as cruel as they were fickle, followed the Son of Man with the fiendish cry "Crucify him! crucify him!" ceasing not until he hung on the cross, and then they taunted him with ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 3, March, 1896 • Various
... he interrupted. "That's only a tag. The people whose business it is to decide these things—DIE HERREN DICHTER—are not agreed to this day whet it's man who's fickle or woman. In this mood it's one, in that, the other; and the silly world bleats ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... No fickle Sun-God holds the flocks That graze its shores in keeping; No icy kiss of Dian mocks The youth beside it sleeping: Our Christian river loveth most The beautiful and human; The heathen streams of Naiads boast, But ours of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... last bolt. "I believe I'm fickle, Janet. There'll be a sair heart for the lass that marries me. I wouldna wonder if I ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... from the fickle and the frail With gather'd power, yet the same Pierces the keen seraphic flame From orb to orb, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... I know, the odds were in our favour and success seemed assured. Our opponents then presented their case, and still we felt no doubt; but Fortune is a fickle jade and at the last she left us in the lurch. On the eighth day of the proceedings the Chairman announced: "The Committee are of opinion that it is not expedient to proceed with the Bill." This was the coup de grace. No reasons are ever given by a ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... will find, I had before I'd him to some been kind, Then how he'd call me arrant Bitch and Whore, And Swear some Stallion had been there before; Then leave me, Wherefore I will single Live, And my Invention to decoying give, For as I was by fickle Man betray'd, So Men by me too shall be Bubbles made, Till the dull Sots clandestine Means do take, In robbing Masters,for a Strumpets sake, For which if they shou'd at the Gallows Swing, Their End I'd ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... their boards you trod, Received you almost as a demi-god; Rushed to the teeming rows in frantic swarms, And rained applauses not in showers but storms. But should you now their fickle welcome ask, Faint shouts would greet the veteran of the mask; And ah! what anguish would it be to search For your old play-house in a bastard church! To find the dome wherein your hour you strutted, Altered and maimed ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... she told Lois, "because blue is true. I tie all Jack's letters in blue. Yellow means fickle—" She paused. "Well, there is a boy," she proceeded reluctantly, "down home, who used to like me until he met a cousin of mine, and she just naturally cut me out; so I tie his letters with yellow ribbon. This here green," she took up two letters ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... hand upon the door-post, and with the other he sought to brush this monstrous illusion from his fickle eyes. But Mauburn and the details of his deadly British breakfast became only more distinct. The appalled observer groaned and rushed for the sideboard, whence a decanter, a bowl of cracked ice, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... feel at home, when he cares to, in the mimic universe of Lichfield and Fairhaven, where gay ribbons perpetually flutter, and where eyes and hands perpetually invite, and where love runs a deft, dainty, fickle course in all weathers. ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... not, being well garrisoned, they would be able to defend for a time, and that, in the interim, some event would occur for their relief, as had been the case during the former wars which the Florentines had carried on against them. Their only apprehension arose from the fickle minds of the plebeians, who, becoming weary of the siege, would have more consideration of their own danger than of other's liberty, and would thus compel them to submit to some disgraceful and ruinous capitulation. In ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... was in the habit of making his decisions rapidly. This habit sometimes led him into embarrassing mistakes, and once in a great while resulted in humiliating reversals of opinion, so that people who did not know him thought he was fickle and changeable. In the present case, Philip acted with his customary quickness, and knew very well that his ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... Flanders, Lord of Friesland, and the like, while the whole power of government was lodged with the states. They whispered that it was time to take measures for the incorporation of the Netherlands into France, and they persuaded the false and fickle Anjou that there would never be any hope of his royal brother's assistance, except upon the understanding that the blood and treasure of Frenchmen were to be spent to increase the power, not of upstart and independent provinces, but of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hardly attribute this statement seriously to one who knew as well as did Green how fickle are the winds, and how utterly different are the conditions between the still air of a room and those of the open sky. His insight into the difficulties of the problem cannot have been less than that of his successor, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... Anne was at home all the old glee and enjoyment of life returned. There was, moreover, the curate, "bonnie, pleasant, light-hearted, good-tempered, generous, careless, crafty, fickle, and unclerical," to add piquancy to the situation. "He sits opposite to Anne at church, sighing softly, and looking out of the corners of his eyes—and she is so quiet, her look so downcast; they are a picture," says merry Charlotte. This first curate at Haworth was exempted ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... ordered to retire, he said: "I am reluctant to say anything of my countrymen that may seem disparaging. I do not, however, come to accuse them of any crime actually committed by them, but to see to it that they do not commit one. The minds of our people are far more fickle than I could wish. We have learned that by many disasters; seeing that we are still preserved, not through our own merits, but thanks to your forbearance. There is now here a great multitude of Volscians; the games are going on: the city will be ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... aside the edge of popular fury, Isabella proceeded with her retinue to the royal residence in the city, attended by the fickle multitude, whom she again addressed on arriving there, admonishing them to return to their vocations, as this was no time for calm inquiry; and promising, that, if they would send three or four of their number to her on the morrow to report the extent of their grievances, she ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... never broke with me. She shed tears in abundance, and wounded my heart a thousand times by the sight of her grief and her distress. For her sake I was often fain to bid farewell to her fickle lover, proud monarch though he was. But by breaking with him I should not have reestablished La Valliere. The prince's violent passion had changed to mere friendship, blended with esteem. To try and resuscitate attachments of this ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
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