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More "Inconstant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when sober Evening sheds Her dusky mantle o'er the grassy meads: Nor yet the pale stars trembled thro' the trees, Nor sparkling quiver'd on the inconstant seas; Nor yet the moon illumed the solemn scene: The fields were silent, and the heavens serene. The sheep had sought the fold; nor yet arose Night's listless bird from her dull day's repose. When in a vale with shadowy firs replete, Whose broad boughs rustled thro' the dark retreat, Beneath ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... inconstant in its course, The tempest varies with uncertain force. Like doleful wailings on the lonely waste, Solemn and dreary sounds the weaning blast. Exhausted gusts recoiling growl away, And, wak'd anew, return with feebler sway; Save ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... man's nature. I will not allow it to be more man's nature than woman's to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... they created in me disturbed my peace and bewildered my senses. I wanted letters more cold, and now they bring on me the chill of death. The fear of being no more loved by Josephine—the thought of having her inconstant—of seeing her ... But I martyrize myself with anguish! There is enough in the reality, without imagining any more! You cannot have inspired me with this immeasurable love without sharing it; and with such a soul, such thoughts, ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... in common human relations was true in a far more wonderful way of the friendship of Jesus. We have only to recall the story of his three years with his disciples. They gave him at the best a very feeble return for his great love for them. They were inconstant, weak, foolish, untrustful. They showed personal ambition, striving for first places, even at the Last Supper. They displayed jealousy, envy, narrowness, ingratitude, unbelief, cowardice. As these unlovely things appeared in the men Jesus had chosen, his friendship ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... frequent occurrence, and usually of about a week's duration. Mr. Vernon, my late client, a man—I'll not deny it—of inconstant affections (you understand me, Inspector?), did not greatly concern himself with his wife's movements. She belonged to a smart Bohemian set, and—to use a popular figure of speech—burnt the candle at both ends; late dances, night clubs, bridge parties, and other feverish ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... Madness and Folly, Alone I lie, Toss, tumble, and cry, What a happy Creature is Polly! Was e'er such a Wretch as I! With rage I redden like Scarlet, That my dear inconstant Varlet, Stark blind to my Charms, Is lost in the Arms Of that Jilt, that inveigling Harlot! Stark blind to my Charms, Is lost in the Arms Of that Jilt, that inveigling Harlot! This, this ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... full of insinuation and address; inexhaustible in his resources; active and enterprising. But these splendid accomplishments were attended with such defects as rendered them pernicious to his country, and even ruinous to himself: he was volatile, inconstant, faithless, revengeful, malicious; restrained by no principle or duty; insatiable in his pretensions: and whether successful or unfortunate in one enterprise he immediately undertook another, in which he was never deterred from employing ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Badhamia hyalina (Pers.) Berk., Rost., Mon., p. 139; but Rostafinski himself admits that the two species, here united, as he defined them, are very much alike, having "the same spores and capillitium", differing in the form of the sporangium, an inconstant feature. Bulliard's name has precedence; his descriptions of this and ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature. Sec. 23. This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... executed in the same precious stones, "Vous me faites oublier les heures," once adorned the slender waist of some dainty dame,—a nuptial gift. The silvery sound of its bell often reminded her of the flight of Time, and her caro sposo of the effects of it on his inconstant heart, long before her mirror told her of the ravages of the tyrant. The flacon so tastefully ornamented, has been held to delicate nostrils when the megrim—that malady peculiar to refined organisations and susceptible ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... modern poets, and many I do not name because they are so many, has been continuous with their work, and my pleasure in it not inconstant if not equal. I have spoken before of Longfellow as one of my first passions, and I have never ceased to delight in him; but some of the very newest and youngest of our poets have given me thrills of happiness, for which life ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sure by good works. Therefore, it comes about that, as Paul says, they run uncertainly, beating the air. Their hearts are unstable and wavering before God, and they are changeable and fickle in all their ways, James 1, 8. Since they are aimless and inconstant at heart, this will appear likewise as inconstancy in regard to works and doctrines. They undertake now this and now that; they cannot be quiet nor refrain from factional strife. Thus they miss their aim or ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... will be found sufficiently true to themselves to be true to an old idea. It is no proof of an inconstant mind, but exactly the opposite, when the idea will not bear close comparison with the reality, and the contrast is a fatal shock to it. Such was Clennam's case. In his youth he had ardently loved this woman, and had heaped upon her all the locked-up wealth of his affection and imagination. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... is not vanity in his illusion, nor night in his blindness. The poet sees most clearly what his ideal is; he suffers no illusion in the expression of his own soul. His political utopias, his belief in the power of love, and his cryingly subjective and inconstant way of judging people are one side of the picture; the other is his lyrical power, wealth, and ecstasy. If he had understood universal nature, he would not have so glorified in his own. And his own nature was worth glorifying; it was, I think, the purest, tenderest, richest, most rational nature ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... unconsciously retains the old custom. Thus we call weather good and bad, the wind mad (pazzo) or furious, the sea treacherous, the waters insidious; a stone is obstinate, if we cannot easily move it, and we inveigh against all kinds of material obstacles as if they could hear us. We call the season inconstant or deceitful, the sun melancholy and unwilling to shine, and we say that the sky threatens snow. We say that some plants are consumed by heat, that some soils are indomitable, that well cultivated ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... his passions. He acts not from conscience but from fear; he is moved not by reasons but by impressions; a friend of novelties and spectacles, he acts to the tune of the various impressions which he receives. Naturally he is inconstant and flighty, desiring one thing and another, now liking what he formerly disliked, without firmness nor stability in anything, without knowing many times what to like, nor what befits him. Such is ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... Mentall Discourse, is of two sorts. The first is Unguided, Without Designee, and inconstant; Wherein there is no Passionate Thought, to govern and direct those that follow, to it self, as the end and scope of some desire, or other passion: In which case the thoughts are said to wander, and seem impertinent one to another, as in a Dream. Such are Commonly the thoughts ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... like Justice, with a pair of scales to weigh this or that. I do not ask why I love you; the knowledge is all I need. And you are not selfish, inconstant, and God knows that you are worth loving. As I ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... (says story) I lov'd you, For which you call me most inconstant now; Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man; For I am not the same that I was then; No flesh is now the ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Rysbroek had become a lean, neat hypochondriac, highly cultivated, with fine instincts and excruciating aversions, bored by his leisure, yet incapable of action, and inconstant in every aspiration except this love of his. Whenever she refused him he sailed away, after threatening to plunge into some wild, dramatic waste, but always compromising on the easiest, beaten path. He returned sadder and sallower than ever, having contracted in his imagination some new, obscure ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... over for good and all; you can have no hopes of getting her for a mistress; and she is too proud, too inconstant, too affected and too witty, and too handsome ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... of her that, during her absence, she hardly wrote to us. She is of far too hasty and impetuous a nature to take kindly to the task of letter-writing; her moods are too inconstant; her thoughts, her fancies, supersede one another too rapidly. Anyhow, beyond the telegram we had made her promise to send, announcing her safe arrival, the most favoured of us got nothing more than an occasional ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without—our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... rain are over: calm is the noon of day. The clouds are divided in heaven. Over the green hills flies the inconstant sun. Red through the stony vale comes down the stream of the hill. Sweet are thy murmurs, O stream! but more sweet is the voice I hear. It is the voice of Alpin the son of the song, mourning for the dead. Bent is his head of age, and red his tearful eye. Alpin, ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... long remain, whether the manner in which the negroes were brought into touch with civilization resulted in the greater blessing or the greater curse. That manner was determined in part at least by the nature of the typical negroes themselves. Impulsive and inconstant, sociable and amorous, voluble, dilatory, and negligent, but robust, amiable, obedient and contented, they have been the world's premium slaves. Prehistoric Pharaohs, mediaeval Pashas and the grandees of Elizabethan England esteemed them as such; and so great a connoisseur ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... on reaching home found domestic trouble—a wife had proved inconstant and married another man. As the men had generally more wives than one, Livingstone comforted them by saying that they still had as ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... could do what she pleased with him, even to passing her hand over his back and taking him by the tail, holding him in her hands, or putting him in her apron—caresses of a kind that parrots do not usually permit. Nothing astonished him or offended him. He proved very inconstant toward her, and now, while better disposed toward the other girl, he is furious against this one. A third miss has come to capture his affection; and when he has been left asleep, or resting in his cage, he has always the same word, but ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... seith / who that is inconsta[n]te A waueryng eye / glydyng sodeynly [Sidenote: an inconstant man with a wavering eye and a wandering foot] Fro place to place / & a foot varia[n]te 108 That in no place / abydeth stably These ben [th]^e signes / the wiseman seith sikerly Of suche a wight / as is vnmanerly nyce And is ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... that his position was perfectly indefensible. It would have been better for him not to have alluded to any reasons, but to have remained firm to his assertion that he loved another woman. He must have acknowledged himself to be false, perjured, inconstant, and very base. A fault that may be venial to those who do not suffer, is damnable, deserving of an eternity of tortures, in the eyes of the sufferer. He must have submitted to be told that he was a fiend, and might have had to endure whatever of punishment a lady in her wrath could ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... additional value on that material in the estimation of those who are engaged in manufacturing that product, the ratio of that accumulated value, at any stage of the process, to the value of the finished product is extremely inconstant, and often small; while, to other persons, the value of the unfinished product may be nothing, or even a minus quantity. A house-timber merchant, for example, might consider that wood which had been worked into the ribs of a ship was ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... that these thoughts should have occurred so clearly at this moment to the excited mind of the young noble; and he felt that it was strange himself; and would have banished the ideas, but they would not away; and he continued musing on the inconstant turbulence of the plebeians, and the unerring doom which had overtaken every one of their idols, from the hands of their own partizans, until his companions at length rode slowly up the street ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... resolution, he formed another, which was to go abroad, under pretence of recovering his health, but in reality to avoid the temptation, as well as the suspicion of being inconstant; and in this design he was confirmed by his physician, who actually thought him in the first stage of a consumption, and therefore advised him to repair to the south of France. He communicated his design, with the doctor's opinion, to the lady, who agreed ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... apparent intention of coming down, the signal was made for a general chace. The weather being squally, and blowing very fresh, the Ca-Ira of eighty guns, formerly the Couronne, was discovered to be without it's topmasts; which afforded Captain Freemantle, of the Inconstant frigate, who was far advanced in the chace, an opportunity of shewing a good proof of British enterprise, by attacking, raking, and harassing that ship, till the coming up of Captain Nelson, in the Agamemnon, by whom it was ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... you some worldly wealth, but that may be taken from you. I would leave you my counsel, of which no man can deprive you. There are three rules I would give you, which, if you follow them, will carry you with firmness and comfort through this inconstant world. Now listen to me. Let nothing in this world tempt you to wrong your conscience; so you will keep peace at home, which will be a feast to you in the day of trouble. Secondly, whatever you design to do, lay ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... "I will give thee good counsel," said he. "All my Earldom will I place in thy possession, if thou wilt dwell with me." "That will I not, by Heaven," she said, "yonder man was the first to whom my faith was ever pledged; and shall I prove inconstant to him?" "Thou art in the wrong," said the Earl; "if I slay the man yonder, I can keep thee with me as long as I choose; and when thou no longer pleasest me, I can turn thee away. But if thou goest with me by thy own good will, ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 2 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... us, where it will be found, that to ring all the changes that can be produced on twelve bells only, would occupy a space of more than ninety-one years. The element of fire is visibly more active and more inconstant than that of earth. This is more solid and ponderous than fire, air, or water. According to the quantity of these elements, which enter the composition of bodies, these must act diversely, and their motion must in some measure partake the motion peculiar to each of their constituent parts. ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... prostitution, which causes their disappearance. This is perhaps one of the causes which have strengthened by selection the will power in women. Man is impulsive and violent as regards his will power, but often inconstant and irresolute, yielding as soon as he has to strive persistently for a certain object. From these facts it naturally results that, on the average, it is the man in the family who provides the ideas and impulses, but the woman ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... varied gleam, Is our inconstant shape, Who now like knight and lady seem, And now like ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... host as surety, first placed in Donaldson's hands the means by which he became afterward best known. Fearless as he undoubtedly was, an ascension was undertaken with the misgivings which usually preface an initial stepping from terra firma to the inconstant air. Once aloft, however, with the widespreading splendor and endless immensity of the earth's surface unrolling beneath him, and an exquisite physical exhilaration thrilling along his nerves, Donaldson became ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... came to the palace whither the host conducted her, a very different effect was produced to what the kind host intended; for there, to her heart's sorrow, she beheld her lover, the inconstant Proteus, serenading the Lady Silvia with music, and addressing discourse of love and admiration to her. And Julia overheard Silvia from a window talk with Proteus, and reproach him for forsaking his own true lady, and for his ingratitude to his friend Valentine; and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... effacing the arms and initials of Napoleon. Meantime the Allied Princes appointed military governors of Paris, were visible daily at processions and festivals, and received, night after night, in the theatres, the tumultuous applause of the most inconstant ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... of the Holy Spirit is vouchsafed, man will surely be convinced by such argument; for is it not equivalent to making God inconstant and changeable, to maintain that he will completely destroy his creature? Yet God gives Noah the revelation that he will make an end of flesh and earth, not in part, but of all flesh and all the earth. Would it not be awful enough to partition the earth into ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... from his sacred niche in Palace street, and was subsequently triumphantly replaced by the grateful citizens,—rejuvenated, repainted, revarnished, with the best materials Halifax could furnish, the "General" having been brought there by the youngsters of the "Inconstant" frigate, Captain Pring, from Quebec. It would appear the roystering middies, having sacrificed copiously to the rosy god, after rising from a masonic dinner in the Albion Hotel, in Palace street, had noticed the "General" by the pale moonlight, looking very seedy, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... that slept Beneath the dark inconstant waves The wind gave songs in memory Of men true-hearted, pure ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... dated 19th September, 1901, and written the very day before his death. We purposed to forward that letter, but the following day the bag was retaken. Not only was it taken, but also the gun, while 20 burghers were captured and one—Myburgh—was killed. We were again surprised. Inconstant are the ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... ceased to imitate him, his book was for a long time continuously read, and it was reprinted again and again even in the reign of Charles I. It was translated into Dutch in the same century,[101] and was modernized in the following, under the title: "The false friend and the inconstant mistress: an instructive novel ... displaying the artifices of the female sex in their amours."[102] High praise is rendered by the editor to Lyly, who "was a great refiner of the English tongue in those days." The book appeared not very long before Richardson's ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... que de tous les sens, l'oeil etait le plus superficiel; l'oreille, le plus orgueilleux; l'odorat, le plus voluptueux; le gout, le plus superstitieux et le plus inconstant; le toucher, le plus profond et ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... your hair round your mamma's neck, and give me one good long kiss, and I won't talk any more in that way about your lover. After all, some young men are not so fickle as others; but even if he's the ficklest, there is consolation. The love of an inconstant man is ten times more ardent than that of a faithful man—that is, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... and subjects are thus combined the summation of these inconstant retardations presents sharply differentiated terms and a curve uninverted at ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... out, flashing and scintillating with a splendour indescribable. At times the whole heavens seemed aglow with their fickle, inconstant beauty, and then various portions of the sky were illumined in succession by their ever-changing bars, or columns of coloured light. Man's mightiest pyrotechnic displays dwarfed into insignificance in the presence ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... power over the feeble intellect and the inconstant will of her son. Terrified less by the prospect of a Huguenot supremacy which she held forth, than by the menace of her withdrawal and that of Anjou, Charles, who was but too well acquainted with their cunning and ambition, ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... authority in Germany. Thus the advocates of intervention in Russia, whether direct or indirect, are at perpetual cross-purposes with themselves. They do not know what they want; or, rather, they want what they cannot help seeing to be incompatibles. This is one of the reasons why their policy is so inconstant and so ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... mind among Quaker Hill folk is the Ideo-Emotional; for these folk are a gentle, social sort of persons, ready of affection, imaginative and analogical in mental process, weak and complacent in emotionality, with motor reaction rather inconstant, and of slow response. Of ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... chaplain accepts the most menial tasks, compared with whom the sporting priest of Beira is at least pleasantly independent; and there are the luxurious hermit, the dissipated village priest who never prayed the hours, the inconstant monk who had been carrier and carpenter and now wishes to be unfrocked in order to join more freely in dance and pilgrimage, the mad friar Frei Martinho persecuted by dogs and Lisbon gamins, the ambitious preacher who glosses over men's sins. If the priests fared well in this life the satirists ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... myelogenic leukaemia, disregarding the almost constant increase of the white blood corpuscles, has a varied, highly inconstant character. This arises from the ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... is a pernicious thing; an inconstant, evil spirit; that never continues in peace, but is always in discord. Wherefore refrain thyself from it, and keep peace ever more ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... out of Thom. Walsi. Hypod. pag. 161.] In this yeare Roger of Walden departed this life; who hauing bene tossed vp and downe with sundrie changes of fortune, tried in a short time how inconstant, vncerteine variable, wandering, vnstable, and flitting she is; which when she is thought firmelie to stand, she slipperinglie falleth; and with a dissembling looke counterfaiteth false ioies. [Sidenote: ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... religious observances are merely the formality of lip service; if she be petulant to her friends, pert and disrespectful to her parents, overbearing to her inferiors; if pride, vanity, and affectation be her characteristics; if she be inconstant in her friendships; gaudy and slovenly, rather than neat and scrupulously clean, in attire and personal habits: then we counsel the gentleman to retire as speedily but as politely as possible from the pursuit of an object quite unworthy of his admiration and love; nor ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... and light, or cold and darkness? Is he sympathetic? Does he lessen the grief of any one? Does he lead any one to remorse for evil deeds? Does he assist love in the hearts of Ferdinand and Miranda? Do you think Prospero always treats him fairly? Does he seem so light and inconstant that he needs some discipline? What will he do when he is released from Prospero's control? Finally, does Ariel seem lovable to you, would you like him as a friend and companion as well as a ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... what is to be expected - as far as it does not hang by that inconstant quantity, my want of health. Remember me to Madam with the best thanks and wishes; and ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... water from it after sunset, for fear of the spirit that dwelt unquietly within. The tradition was always current in people's mouths; and three centuries after, a young man of the neighbourhood, who had been jilted and mocked by an inconstant mistress, determined to bear his ills no longer, so he rushed to the Puits, and took the fatal leap. The result was not what he anticipated: he did not, it is true, jump into a courtly assembly of knights and gallants, but he could not find water enough in it to drown him; while his mistress, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... the sword of the assassins, who cut off his head and hands, and carried them to Antony, whose wife, Julia, gloated with inhuman delight upon the pallid features, and in petty spite pierced with a needle the once eloquent tongue. Cicero had numerous faults; he was vain, vacillating, inconstant, timid, and the victim of morbid sensibility; but he was candid, truthful, just, generous, pure-minded, and warm-hearted. Gentle, sympathizing, and affectionate, he lived as a patriot ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... neck shows one to have a long and slender foot, and that the person is stiff and inflexible either to good or evil. A short neck shows one to be witty and ingenious, but deceitful and inconstant, well skilled in the use of arms, and yet cares not to use them, but is a great lover ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... Nature was so vast; she was so insignificant; changes in its motionless inorganic life were imperceptible save through the telescopes of years; but she, like the wind, the water, and the clouds, was variable, inconstant. Was there any real relation between the vast, imperturbable earth, its seas, its forests, its mountains and its plains, its life of tree and plant and flower and the men and women dotted on its surface? Did they belong to each other, or were mankind ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Chaboulon, landed in Elba, and informed him of the hatching of a plot by military malcontents, under the lead of Fouche, for the overthrow of Louis XVIII.[463] Napoleon at once despatched his informant to Naples, and ordered his brig, "L'Inconstant," to be painted like an English vessel. Most fortunately for him, Campbell on the 16th set sail for Tuscany—"for his health and on private affairs"—on the small war-vessel, "Partridge," to which the British Government had intrusted the supervision ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... rhodomontade. He took no thought for the morrow: he treated the Court as if the King were already a prisoner in his hands: he built on the favour of the multitude, as if that favour were not proverbially inconstant. The signs of the coming reaction were discerned by men of far less sagacity than his, and scared from his side men more consistent than he had ever pretended to be. But on him they were lost. The counsel of Achitophel, that counsel which was as if a man had inquired ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... reliefe, most gracious Queene, was commonly brought us by this Lady Pocahontas, notwithstanding all these passages when inconstant Fortune turned our peace to war, this tender Virgin would still not spare to dare to visit us, and by her our jars have beene oft appeased, and our wants still supplyed; were it the policie of her father ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Metals have not such fixt bodies, for their pores are open, and far extenuated, therefore the Tincture Spirit can the more abundantly pass thorough and possess them. But because the bodies of the other Metals are inconstant, the Tincture cannot remain with those inconstant bodies, but must depart. And whereas the Tincture of Gold is found in none more plentiful than in Mars and Venus, as Man and Wife, their bodies therefore are destroyed, and the tinging Spirit taken out of them, ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... time the relative popularity of painters shifts strangely, but no matter what inconstant fashion may dictate, or what may be the cult of the hour, certain paintings never lose their prestige, but annually attract as many ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... plainer, than that he who towers to the fifth story, is whirled through more space by every circumrotation, than another that grovels upon the ground-floor. The nations between the topicks are known to be fiery, inconstant, inventive, and fanciful; because, living at the utmost length of the earth's diameter, they are carried about with more swiftness than those whom nature has placed nearer to the poles; and therefore, as it becomes a wise man ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... ballet-master, shines in demi-caractere, her talents, in the different parts in which she is placed, are above all panegyric. As NOVERRE has said somewhere of a famous dancer, "she is always tender, always graceful, sometimes a butterfly, sometimes a zephyr, at one moment inconstant, at another faithful; always animated by a new sentiment, she represents with voluptuousness all the shades of love." To sum up her merits, she is really in her art the female Proteus of the lyric scene. Mademoiselle CLOTILDE is a ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... occasioned his sudden disappearance with his infant daughter. Some said he died abroad. Others, that he had appeared again for a brief space at the hall. But all now concurred in a belief of his decease. Of his child nothing was known. His inconstant wife, after enduring for some years the agonies of remorse, abandoned by Sir Reginald, and neglected by her own relatives, put an end to her existence by poison. This is all that could be gathered of the story, or the misfortunes of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... have a respect for honest indignation, righteous anger, such as the O'Mollys have ever been capable of. And all the O'Molly blood in my veins has been stirred by the contemptuous manner in which some men have spoken of woman. 'Weak woman,—inconstant woman;' they have made the wind a type of her fickleness. In this they are right; for it has been proved that the seasons in their return, day and night, are not more sure than the wind. Such fickleness ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... deprived the slave of his right to the produce of his own labour robs the woman of her right to herself. Love becomes an article of merchandise, sold in order to appease hunger and to cover nakedness, bought in order to gratify inconstant desires. You think I hold that to be unnatural because it is immoral? On the contrary, I hold it to be immoral because it is contrary to nature. That, your highness, is what I would impress upon you. A better acquaintance with this ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... as ye change? When ye are in a good temper, ye think he loves you; when it is not so ye cannot believe but he is angry, and hates you. Is not this to speak quite contrary to the word, that he is a God that changes—that he is not in one mind, but now in one, and then in another, as oft as the inconstant wind of a soul's self pleasing humour turns about? Here is your rest and confidence, if you will be established, not within yourselves,—not upon marks and signs within you, which ebb and flow as the sea, and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... Jews were calculated to prevent their imbibing the customs and habits of other nations. But it is universally admitted, that Gypsies did not bring any particular religion with them from their native country, by which they could be distinguished among other people; being as inconstant and unsettled respecting religion, as they are ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... and shapeless suspicions which Ethel had caught from Leonora took a misty form and substance, only to be immediately dispelled in that inconstant mind by the sudden refreshing sound of Milly's voice: 'We've called to take Ethel home, papa—oh, ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... in the first place instruction in what is necessary, and then in what is changing and inconstant. The youth is introduced to nature, and the sway of laws is everywhere pointed out to him; followed by an explanation of the laws of ordinary society. Even at this early stage the question will arise: was it absolutely necessary that this should have been so? He gradually comes to need history ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... handsomest, the richest, and the most inconstant cavalier in Venice! Hadst thou been here a thousand times thou ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... mortal: and I cannot write Aught that may foil the fatal wing of Time. Silent, I look at Fame: I cannot climb To where her Temple is—Not mine the might:— I have some glimmering of what is sublime— But, ah! it is a most inconstant light." ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... strongly arm'd to brook my overthrow, As commonly men bear with a hard year. I will not blame the cause on 't; but do think The necessity of my malevolent star Procures this, not her humour. O, the inconstant And rotten ground of service! You may see, 'Tis even like him, that in a winter night, Takes a long slumber o'er a dying fire, A-loth to part from 't; yet parts thence as cold As when he ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... neither right, nor order, nor equity, nor justice; that we give the bridle to all naughtiness, and provoke the people to all licentiousness and lust; that we labour and seek to overthrow the state of monarchies and kingdoms, and to bring all things under the rule of the rash inconstant people and unlearned multitude; that we have seditiously fallen from the Catholic Church, and by a wicked schism and division have shaken the whole world, and troubled the common peace and universal quiet of the Church; and that, as Dathan and ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... In his 'inconstant mind' and his 'false heart,' it was easy to recognise the insincerity and treachery that somehow seem inseparable from the artistic nature, as in his love of praise that desire for immediate recognition that characterises all actors. ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... I think. At any rate he wooed and won. Nanca begged the young foreigner to divorce her, which he did. The Seminole divorce custom is lenient when the marriage is childless. The artist, I fancy, was merely a wild, reckless, inconstant sort of chap who did not regard the simple Seminole marriage tie as binding. After the birth of his daughter, a tiny little elf whom Nanca has named "Red-winged Blackbird," he tried to run away, and ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... put a good gloss upon his failings, and oftentimes verily believed he was really the man which he affected to be only in appearance. He was a man of bright parts, but no conduct, being violent and inconstant in his intrigues of love as well as those of politics, and so indiscreet as to boast of his successful amours with certain ladies whom he ought not to have named. He affected pomp and splendour, though his profession ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... things exist, created that inconstant things may exist. Such constants are the ordained changes in the rising and setting of sun, moon and stars; their obscurations by interpositions called eclipses; the heat and light from them; the seasons ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... Inconstant man, that loved all he saw, And lusted after all that he did love; Ne would his looser life be tide to law, But joyd weak wemens hearts to tempt and prove, If from their loyall loves he might them move; 230 Which lewdnesse fild ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... been said, we understand what is meant by the terms Hope, Fear, Confidence, Despair, Joy, and Disappointment.[5] Hope is nothing else but an inconstant pleasure, arising from the image of something future or past, whereof we do not yet know the issue. Fear, on the other hand, is an inconstant pain also arising from the image of something concerning which we are in doubt. If the element of doubt be removed from these emotions, ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... tells how first he met Beatrice and loved her; but how he feigned that it was another lady he loved, making a defence of her and others still that his real passion might not be known; how Beatrice would not salute him, believing him false and inconstant with these ladies, her friends; how being at a banquet where she was, he was so visibly stricken with love that some of the ladies derided him; how Beatrice's father died, and how Dante himself fell ill; how Beatrice quitted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... that will content the Mogul above all, the picture of Tamberlane, from whence he derives himself." At last, then, the coveted firman "for kind usage of the English, free trade, and so forth," was gained, Edwards remaining in Agra as "lieger" or ambassador, "which will be needful among this inconstant people." ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... certainly impressive; but the road was in that part very securely walled in; the mule went steadily forward; and I was astonished to perceive the paleness of terror in the face of my companion. The voice of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower as if in weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones; momentary freshets seemed to swell its volume, sweeping down the gorge, raving and booming against the barrier walls; and I observed it was at each of these accessions ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... longer white or black or brown or gray: color is not an essential quality, so it has dropped out; size is no longer essential except within very broad limits; shagginess or smoothness of coat is a very inconstant quality, so this is dropped; form varies so much from the fat pug to the slender hound that it is discarded, except within broad limits; good nature, playfulness, friendliness, and a dozen other qualities are likewise found not to belong in common to all dogs, and so have ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... darken'd, heaved the sigh Thinking of distant home; as down my cheek At the fond thought slow stealing on, would speak The silent eloquence of the full eye. Dim are the long past days, yet still they please As thy soft sounds half heard, borne on the inconstant breeze. ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... merely saying, as he closed the volume, "Well, Wilberforce does not speak of me as he spoke to me, I am sorry to say." Of Wilberforce, no one can desire to doubt the general honesty; but that he was singularly trifling and inconstant, was evidently the opinion of his contemporaries in the House. The following anecdote is given from the author's notes on this point. "Lord Sidmouth told us, that one morning, at a cabinet meeting, after an important ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... POLONIA. This inconstant sea, This Babel of wild waves that seeks heaven's gate, So great its fury, and its rage so great, Driven by a drought accursed, (Who would have thought that waves themselves could thirst?) Has swallowed in the depths of its dread womb, But now, a numerous company, to whom It consecrates ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the liberation and frequent weighing of his wings; till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... whose lives are wretched, he begins to speculate whether, after all, he ought not to rejoice rather than mourn over his son's death. "Certes he is rid of this miserable life of danger and difficulty, vain, sorrowful, brief, and inconstant; these times in which the major part of the good things of the world fall to the trickster's share, and all may be enjoyed by those who are backed up by wealth or power or favour. Power is good when it is in ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... From the end of March to the middle of June inconstant easterly winds (N.E.E. and S.E.) prevail, with a very heavy sea on the east coast. May is usually calm; but in May and June there are frequent thunderstorms, introducing the south-west monsoon, which though it extends through the months of July, August, and September, is not so constant as ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... plague is love! I cannot bear it, She will inconstant prove, I greatly fear it; It so torments my mind, That my heart faileth, She wavers with the wind, As a ship saileth; Please her the best I may, She looks another way; Alack and well a-day! Phillida ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... silent, shady green, The souls of lovers oft are seen, Who, in their life's unhappy space, Were murder'd by some perjur'd face. All these th' enchanted streams frequent, To drown their cares, and discontent, That th' inconstant, cruel sex Might not in death their spirits vex. And here our souls, big with delight Of their new state, will cease their flight: And now the last thoughts will appear, They'll have of us, or any here; But on those flow'ry banks will stay, And drink all sense and cares away. So they ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... What terrible colds, and roaring seas doth he not undergo, through an intemperate desire that he hath to be with his nittebritch'd Peggy? How often doth he hazard his Owners Ship, the Merchants Goods, and his own life, for an inconstant draggle-tail; that perhaps before he has been three daies at Sea, hath drawn her affection from him, and given promise to another? Yet nevertheless, tho the raging Waves run upon the Ship, and fly over his head, he withstands it all. Nor is the main Ocean, or blustering ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... Los Flores, Cuecuhilas. There is a range traversing from north to south for the space of forty leagues in that territory, which contains also a multitude of veins which have not been explored. In all these minerals abound, but the irregular and inconstant labor of some of the mines does not permit us to consider them as ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... she said. "The girl was faithless, and tyrannous, and proud, and coquettish, and unworthy, and false, and inconstant. She was black as hell and dark as night in both her person and her living. You were not niggardly ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... But unto the broken-hearted, When they call him, brings release! Yet Death passes by the wretched, Shuts his ear and slumbers deep; Will not heed the cry of anguish, Will not close the eyes that weep. For, while yet inconstant Fortune Poured her gifts and all was bright, Death's dark hour had all but whelmed me In the gloom of endless night. Now, because misfortune's shadow Hath o'erclouded that false face, Cruel Life still halts and lingers, Though I loathe his weary race. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... beauty fly my own. Were you not still my hunger's rarest food, And water ever to my wildest thirst, I would desert you—think not but I would!— And seek another as I sought you first. But you are mobile as the veering air, And all your charms more changeful than the tide, Wherefore to be inconstant is no care: I have but to continue at your side. So wanton, light and false, my love, are you, I am most faithless ...
— A Few Figs from Thistles • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... breast, leane and pale-faced, rough and huf-shouldered, hauing flatte and short noses, long and sharpe chinnes, their vpper iawes are low and declining, their teeth long and thinne, their eyebrowes extending from their fore-heads downe to their noses, their eies inconstant and blacke, their countenances writhen and terrible, their extreame ioynts strong with bones and sinewes, hauing thicke and great thighes, and short legs, and yet being equall vnto vs in stature: for that length which is wanting in their legs is supplied ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... The fantastic and inconstant outline of the Corbiere, as we were hurried swiftly past it, was a subject of surprise and admiration. When first seen through the haze of morning, it resembled a huge elephant supporting an embattled tower; a little after, it assumed the similitude of a gigantic warrior in a recumbent posture, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... development the crystal will begin to cloud over, first becoming dull, then suffused with milky clouds, among which sparkle a large number of little specks of light like gold dust in the sunlight. The focus of the eyes is inconstant, the pupil rapidly expanding and contracting, the crystal at times disappearing entirely in a haze or film which seems to pass before the eyes. Then the haze will disappear, and the crystal will loom up into full view again, ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... physical power, for it is one of the principal secrets of its efficiency. In a profession in which there is an unceasing contest with the wild and fickle winds, and in which human efforts are to be manifested in the control of a delicate and fearful machinery on an inconstant element, this governing principle becomes of the last importance. Where 'delay may so easily be death,' it soon gets to be a word that is expunged from the language; and there is perhaps no truth more ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... on the mare's neck trembled suddenly. She dropped her head before all the eyes in the wide circle formed round the generous, the terrible, the inconstant Capataz ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Frank Milvey, comforting Sloppy, expounded to him how the best of us were more or less remiss in our turnings at our respective Mangles—some of us very much so—and how we were all a halting, failing, feeble, and inconstant crew. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Athenians were remarkable for the ardor and vivacity of their temperament,—that they were liable to sudden gusts of passion,—that they were inconstant in their affections, intolerant of dictation, impatient of control, and hasty to resent every assumption of superiority,—that they were pleased with flattery, and too ready to lend a willing ear to the adulation of the demagogue,—and that they were impetuous ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... crops. Timber is obtainable in magnificent assortment and unrealisable quantities. Poultry and pigs multiply extraordinarily. Apart from bananas the fruit trade is shifty and treacherous. The markets are far away and inconstant, the means of transport not yet perfect. Many assert that not half the pine-apples and oranges, and not one-hundredth part of the mangoes produced in North Queensland are consumed. That the quantity grown is trivial in comparison with what would ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... be not so inconstant in your love, But let the young Arabian [149] live in hope, After your rescue to enjoy his choice. You see, though first the king of Persia, Being a shepherd, seem'd to love you much, Now, in his majesty, he leaves those looks, Those words of favour, and those comfortings, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... it convenient to remove, and imprisoning and banishing others. They also sent to Agis, the Lacedaemonian king, at Decelea, to say that they desired to make peace, and that he might reasonably be more disposed to treat now that he had them to deal with instead of the inconstant commons. ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... More inconstant than the May, She cares nothing for our pain, Nor will hear the birds complain In their ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... a certain nimbleness in nature, you women have, to be first inconstant; but if you had not made the more haste, the wind was veering too upon my weathercock: The best on't is, Florimel is ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... enthusiasm that he should be First Consul for ten years, and he replied to the vote of confidence that "Fortune had smiled upon the Republic; but Fortune was inconstant; how many men," said he, "upon whom she has heaped her favours have lived too long by some years, and that the interest of his glory and happiness seemed to have marked the period of his public life, at the moment when the peace ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... think, You stand upon the rivage, and behold A city on the inconstant billows dancing; For so appears this fleet majestical, Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow! Grapple your minds to sternage of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... gives a brief account of the life of these Brethren 'without obedience'. In his preface he expresses his difficulty in gathering the truth about them: 'for they are as inconstant as the moon, and the practices alleged against them in the past are denied by them to-day.' But he concludes honestly that though their faith is 'abhominable' to true Christians, their life is good enough. His good sense is further shown by his refusal ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... object, is his empire, and appears none other than the empire of Love, the rule of Love and its own rule; the impression of Love which appears in the substance of my heart, is then no other impression than its own, and therefore after having said "Noble face," replies "Inconstant Love."[A] ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... of the senate, by re-appointing their magistrates, you yourselves also wish it to be violated, lest ye should yield to the populace in rashness; as if to possess greater power in the state consisted in having more of inconstancy and irregularity; for it is certainly more inconstant and greater folly, to do away with one's own decrees and resolutions, than those of others. Imitate, conscript fathers, the inconsiderate multitude; and ye, who should be an example to others, transgress by the example of others, rather than others should ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... nor had the banished family any warmer supporter than that kind lady of Castlewood, in whose house Esmond was brought up. She influenced her husband, very much more perhaps than my lord knew, who admired his wife prodigiously though he might be inconstant to her, and who, adverse to the trouble of thinking himself, gladly enough adopted the opinions which she chose for him. To one of her simple and faithful heart, allegiance to any sovereign but the one was impossible. To serve King William for interest's sake would have been a monstrous ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... can differ in nature, in so far as they are assailed by those emotions, which are passions, or passive states; and to this extent one and the same man is variable and inconstant. ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... of ornament. They shaved the beard on the chin; that on the upper lip was suffered to remain, and grow to an extraordinary length, to favor the martial appearance, in which they placed their glory. They were in their natural temper not unlike the Gauls, impatient, fiery, inconstant, ostentatious, boastful, fond of novelty,—and like all barbarians, fierce, treacherous, and cruel. Their arms were short javelins, small shields of a slight texture, and great cutting swords with a blunt point, after the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... less unscrupulously inconstant, there is, however, no doubt that Marie de Medicis, from the strict propriety of her conduct to the last, and under every provocation, would ultimately have become an attached and devoted wife. Her ambition was satisfied, and her heart ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... will therefore admit of being separately handled—if, indeed, that can be correctly said to have a history where we can perceive no progressive development, but mere standing still, or even retrograding, and an inconstant fluctuation in all directions. However, the English, under Charles II. and Queen Anne, and down to the middle of the eighteenth century, had a series of comic writers, who may be all considered as belonging to one common class; for the only considerable diversity ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... preliminary forms were arranged,—jointure and pin money liberally fixed,—some legal objections as to a covenant of forfeiture overcame, a suitable establishment provided. The happy day was fixed, when—"mark inconstant fickle woman"—the evening previous to completion (to the surprise of all the town), she changed her mind; she had reconsidered the subject!—The man was wealthy, and attractive in person; but then— insupportable objection—he was a mere plebeian, a common esquire, and ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the day when another family committee met and sat upon her case. They were sitting on it now, up-stairs with Brodrick in his study. She knew infallibly what their judgment would be. Just as she had seemed to them so long a creature of uncertain health, she must seem now inconstant, insincere, the incarnation of heartlessness, egotism and caprice. She said to herself that it was all very well for Nina to talk. This insight was a curse. It was terrible to know what people were thinking, to feel what they were feeling. And they were seven to one, ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... with an amazing air of detached insistence. The machine-guns strike in battle quite a note of their own. Shells, screeching and roaring in their frenzy, give an impression of passion, of untameable wrath. Rifle-fire is as inconstant in volume as piano music; there is something of human effort to be heard in the "tap ... tap ... tap ... tap-tap-trrrrapp" of its crescendos and diminuendoes. But the machine-gun is different from these. It strikes a higher note, and can be heard above the roar of the bursting ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... other English statesmen is this, that, through a long public life, and through frequent and violent revolutions of public feeling, he almost invariably took that view of the great questions of his time which history has finally adopted. He was called inconstant, because the relative position in which he stood to the contending factions was perpetually varying. As well might the pole star be called inconstant because it is sometimes to the east and sometimes to the west of the pointers. To have defended the ancient and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "I was inconstant, cruel, I cannot excuse myself. But, O Silvestre, in the name of the love you once bore me, have pity on us! Reform, abjure your evil courses! Do not, I implore you, condemn my husband to this abyss of depravity, do not wreck my married life!" Now I understood what had procured ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... give To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails, Borne with the invisible and creeping wind Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think You stand upon the rivage and behold A city on the inconstant billows dancing! For so appears this fleet majestical, Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow: Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy, And leave your England, as dead midnight still, Guarded with grandsires, babies and old women, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... government might be of their naval superiority, the officers had no such feeling; and after manoeuvring for a day in sight of the English fleet, they suffered themselves to be chased. One of their ships, the CA IRA, of eighty-four guns, carried away her main and fore top-masts. The INCONSTANT frigate fired at the disabled ship, but received so many shot that she was obliged to leave her. Soon afterwards a French frigate took the CA IRA in tow; and the SANS-CULOTTES, one hundred and twenty, and the JEAN BARRAS, seventy-four, kept about gunshot distance ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... mandate of a freedman declared the separation; the most tender of human connections was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure. According to the various conditions of life, both sexes alternately felt the disgrace and injury; an inconstant spouse transferred her wealth to a new family, abandoning a numerous, perhaps a spurious progeny to the paternal authority and care of her late husband; a beautiful virgin might be dismissed to the world, old, indigent, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... On the hillside opposite was a field of young hemp stretching westward—soon to be a low sea of rippling green. Beyond this field was the sunset; over it flashed the evening star; and for the past few days beside the star had hung the inconstant, ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... on a galloping horse; and nothing is plainer, than that he who towers to the fifth story, is whirled through more space by every circumrotation, than another that grovels upon the ground-floor. The nations between the topicks are known to be fiery, inconstant, inventive, and fanciful; because, living at the utmost length of the earth's diameter, they are carried about with more swiftness than those whom nature has placed nearer to the poles; and therefore, as it becomes a wise man to struggle with the inconveniencies of his country, whenever ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... e'en give her over for good and all; you can have no hopes of getting her for a mistress; and she is too proud, too inconstant, too affected and too witty, and too handsome ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... has gathered together an assembly of the people of Rome; he advances gravely towards them, and thus does he speak: "I, who never yet feared anything that was human, have, amongst such as were divine, always had, a dread of fortune as faithless and inconstant; and, for the very reason that in this war she had been as a favourable gale in all my affairs, I still expected some change and reflux of things. In one day I passed the Ionian Sea, and reached Corcyra from Brundisium; thence in five more I sacrificed at Delphi, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... walked together, When June was breezy and blue, I watch in the gray autumnal weather The leaves fall inconstant as you. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... 1869.—In the name of heaven, who art thou? what wilt thou—wavering inconstant creature? What future lies before thee? What duty or what hope ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... give me one good long kiss, and I won't talk any more in that way about your lover. After all, some young men are not so fickle as others; but even if he's the ficklest, there is consolation. The love of an inconstant man is ten times more ardent than that of a faithful man—that is, while ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... upon her case. They were sitting on it now, up-stairs with Brodrick in his study. She knew infallibly what their judgment would be. Just as she had seemed to them so long a creature of uncertain health, she must seem now inconstant, insincere, the incarnation of heartlessness, egotism and caprice. She said to herself that it was all very well for Nina to talk. This insight was a curse. It was terrible to know what people were thinking, to feel what they were feeling. And they were seven ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... this (for that were wrong) opine That you should cease to love; for you, without A lover, like uncultivated vine, Would be, that has no prop to wind about. But the first down I pray you to decline, To fly the volatile, inconstant rout; To make your choice the riper fruits among, Nor yet to gather ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... benighted, runs out of his life, and loses his time as men do their ways in the dark: and as blind men are led by their dogs, so he is governed by some mean servant or other that relates to his pleasures. He is as inconstant as the moon which he lives under; and although he does nothing but advise with his pillow all day, he is as great a stranger to himself as he is to the rest of the world. His mind entertains all things that come and go; but like guests and strangers, they are not welcome if they stay long. This ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... is Monsieur. Whether he be not apt to work on the disadvantage of your estate, he is to be judged by his will and power: his will to be as full of light ambition as is possible, besides the French disposition and his own education, his inconstant temper against his brother, his thrusting himself into the Low Country matters, his sometimes seeking the king of Spain's daughter, sometimes your majesty, are evident testimonies of his being carried away ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... my sonne (quoth she) and then she fround, Those brattish elues, that dally on the ground? They scorne my kingdome, and neglect my minde, Contemne me as inconstant as the winde. Then shoot (quoth she) and strike them so in loue, As nought but death, their loue-dart may remoue. At this he lookt, the boy was loth to shoot, Yet strucke them both so neere the hearts sweet root, As that he made them both at ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... with which he was invested has descended to our time under two different aspects. The Nixa of the Germans is one of those fascinating and lovely fays whom the ancients termed Naiads; and unless her pride is insulted or her jealousy awakened by an inconstant lover, her temper is generally mild and her actions beneficent. The Old Nick known in England is an equally genuine descendant of the northern sea-god, and possesses a larger portion of his powers and terrors The British sailor, who fears nothing else, confesses his terror for ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... meeting is a pleasure, But parting is grief, An inconstant lover Is worse than a thief; For a thief at the worst Will take all that I have; But an inconstant lover ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... after the visible symbol of Isis and Osiris in the Golden Calf. No definite creed succeeded in gaining a permanent hold upon the wandering minds and shallow feelings of a race whose deepest instincts reveal the fleeting fancies and inconstant ideas indigenous to a sea-faring stock, imbued with the spirit of change and unrest. A magical charm broods over the mysterious Temple, the materialised dream of a mighty past rescued from the sylvan sepulchre of equatorial vegetation, and restored to a vivid reality beside which the paintings ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... be sure, offered herself a sacrifice to the whims of the sick girl, whose worst whim was having no wish that could be ascertained, and who now, after two days of her mother's devotion, was cast upon her own resources by the inconstant barometer. ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... offence with dignity, merely saying, as he closed the volume, "Well, Wilberforce does not speak of me as he spoke to me, I am sorry to say." Of Wilberforce, no one can desire to doubt the general honesty; but that he was singularly trifling and inconstant, was evidently the opinion of his contemporaries in the House. The following anecdote is given from the author's notes on this point. "Lord Sidmouth told us, that one morning, at a cabinet meeting, after an important debate in the House of Commons, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... talkative—only persons of inconstant ideas and unstable judgment are prone to verbosity. His profound moral sense made him sparing of words in the disputes in which the men of the day are prone to engage on any and every subject, but in polite conversation he displayed an eloquence ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... woman, which loves are crossed, first by the belief that they are brother and sister, and secondly by the vicaire having taken orders under this delusion. La Derniere Fee is the queerest possible cross between an actual fairy story a la Nordier and a history of the fantastic and inconstant loves of a great English lady, the Duchess of "Sommerset" (a piece of actual scandalum magnatum nearly as bad as Balzac's cool use in his acknowledged work of the title "Lord Dudley"). This book begins so well that one expects it to ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... suppuration, and when that of desiccation is about to commence, which ordinarily happens towards the ninth or tenth day of the eruption. The desiccation and the desquamation occupy an exceedingly variable length of time; and so, indeed, do all the different periods of the disease. What is the least inconstant, is the duration of the serous eruption, which is about four days, if it has been distinctly produced and guarded from all friction. If the general character of the pustules is considered, it will be observed, that, while some of them are in a state of serous secretion, others will ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... mind readily and passively imbibes, stores up, and accumulates (and it is from them that all the rest flow) are false, confused, and overhastily abstracted from the facts; nor are the secondary and subsequent notions less arbitrary and inconstant; whence it follows that the entire fabric of human reason which we employ in the inquisition of nature, is badly put together and built up, and like some magnificent structure without any foundation. For while men are occupied in admiring and applauding ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... And inspiration would seem to be a confluence of forces outside of the individual consciousness or will, focused at the instant into desire, which becomes the urge to creation. "The mind in creation," says Shelley, "is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power rises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure." The ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... imagination. So, also, at an earlier period, it was termed (according to Cloquet) by Cardano. Cloquet frequently insisted on the qualities of odors which cause them to appeal to the imagination; on their irregular and inconstant character; on their power of intoxicating the mind on some occasions; on the curious individual and racial preferences in the matter of odors. He remarked on the fact that the Persians employed asafoetida as a seasoning, while valerian was accounted a perfume in antiquity. (Cloquet, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... arose, and the rudiments of regular performance began. Every variation in the way of law and order added itself to this nucleus, which inevitably grew more considerable as history went on; while the aberrant and inconstant variations, not being similarly preserved, disappeared from being, wandered off as unrelated vagrants, or else remained so imperfectly connected with the part of the world that had grown regular as only to manifest their existence by occasional lawless intrusions, like those which "psychic" ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... his German treatise on Gipsies, says:—"They are lively, uncommonly loquacious and chattering, fickle in the extreme, consequently inconstant in their pursuits, faithless to everybody, even their own kith and kin, void of the least emotion of gratitude, frequently rewarding benefits with the most insidious malice. Fear makes them slavishly compliant when under subjection, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... shepherds and dogs; the toils of agriculture, harvesting, gardening. And among all this variety of representations there was neither man nor boy to be seen—not so much as a little winged Cupid; so highly had the princess been incensed against her inconstant husband as not to show the least favor to ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... human relations was true in a far more wonderful way of the friendship of Jesus. We have only to recall the story of his three years with his disciples. They gave him at the best a very feeble return for his great love for them. They were inconstant, weak, foolish, untrustful. They showed personal ambition, striving for first places, even at the Last Supper. They displayed jealousy, envy, narrowness, ingratitude, unbelief, cowardice. As these unlovely things appeared in the men Jesus had chosen, his friendship did not slacken or unloose its ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... Henry, having reason to expect an attack, kept awake the whole night. In company with a group of his officers, he gazed over the dark valley within which lay Mayenne's army. The silence was profound. Afar off could be seen a long line of lights, so flickering and inconstant that the observers were puzzled to decide if they were ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... might perceive his eye in her eye lost, His ear to drink her sweet tongue's utterance; And changing passion, like inconstant clouds, That, rackt upon the carriage of the winds, Increase, and die, in his disturbed cheeks. Lo, when she blushed, even then did he look pale; As if her cheeks by some enchanted power Attracted had the cherry ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of "The Inconstant," when Bisarre is first addressed by Mirabel and Duretete, Miss Farren, playing Bisarre, held a book in her hand, which she affected to have been reading before she spoke. Mrs. Jordan, we are told, who afterwards assumed the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... urge us at present to pursue with all zeal and perseverance the great cause we have now in hand. And we feel this to be the more necessary, because we cannot but be sensible that light, unstable, variable, capricious, inconstant, fastidious minds soon tire in any pursuit that requires strength, steadiness, and perseverance. Such persons, who we trust are but few, and who certainly do not resemble your Lordships nor us, begin already to say, How long is this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... thought he cared for Billy all these years; and now, at this late day, to wake up and find that he cared for Alice! A pretty mess he had made of things! Was he so inconstant then, so fickle? Did he not know his own mind five minutes at a time? What would Alice Greggory think, even if he found the courage to tell her? What could she think? What could ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... Love is all Madness and Folly, Alone I lie, Toss, tumble, and cry, What a happy Creature is Polly! Was e'er such a Wretch as I! With rage I redden like Scarlet, That my dear inconstant Varlet, Stark blind to my Charms, Is lost in the Arms Of that Jilt, that inveigling Harlot! Stark blind to my Charms, Is lost in the Arms Of that Jilt, that inveigling Harlot! This, this my ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... were the joys that are past! Oh! dear were the joys that are past! Inconstant thou art, as the dew of the morn, Or a cloud of the night ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... with this lady lasted not long; for, as we have before observed, he was the most inconstant of all human race. Mrs. Trent's passion was not however of that kind which leads to any very deep resentment of such fickleness. Her passion, indeed, was principally founded upon interest; so that foundation served to support another ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man: as freedom of nature is, to be under no other restraint but the law of nature. Sec. 23. This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man's preservation, that ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... qualities developed among civilized men no more belong to them in a savage state, than the properties of wine exist in the grape. Society begins with families. In the beginning, the old savage has a great wish to rule his children, but has no capacity for government. He is inconstant and violent in his desires, and incapable of any steady conduct. What at first keeps men together is not so much reverence for the father, as the common danger from wild beasts. The traditions of antiquity are full of the prowess of heroes in killing dragons and monsters. ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... friends and living in accord, do not immediately pronounce anything upon their friendship, though they should affirm it with an oath, though they should declare, "For us to live apart in a thing impossible!" For the heart of a bad man is faithless, unprincipled, inconstant: now overpowered by one impression, now by another. Ask not the usual questions, Were they born of the same parents, reared together, and under the same tutor; but ask this only, in what they place their real interest—whether ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... every side to pictures of scenery and life. The difference between the dry fact and the poem is as great as that between reading the shipping news and seeing the actual coming and going of the crowd of stately ships,—"the city on the inconstant billows dancing,"—as there is between ten minutes of happiness and ten minutes by the clock. Everybody remembers the story of the little Montague who was stolen and sold to the chimney-sweep: how he could dimly remember lying in a beautiful chamber; how he carried ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... 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 magnificence. Never has the saying ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... only surmise. He had determined to save this young fool in spite of his madness, and never had he failed to bring his enterprises to their fore-arranged end. And there was sentiment between all this, sentiment he would not have been ashamed to avow. Upon chance, then, fickle inconstant chance, depended the success of the seven years' labor. If by this time the wine had not loosened their tongues, or ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... but think, You stand upon the rivage, and behold A city on the inconstant billows dancing; For so appears this fleet majestical, Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow! Grapple your minds to sternage ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Vingolf even here beneath the clouds. O come, let's haste away, each spoken word A moment shorter makes our waiting joy. Come, all's prepared! Ellide stretches now Her shadowy eagle wings for eager flight,— And freshly blowing winds now guide the way Henceforth from this inconstant ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... chosen his time, Napoleon kept the secret of his expedition until the last moment; and means were found to privately make the requisite preparations. A portion of the soldiers was embarked in a brig called the 'Inconstant' and the remainder in six small craft. It was not till they were all on board that the troops first conceived a suspicion of the Emperor's purpose: 1000 or 1200 men had sailed to regain possession of an Empire containing ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... instruct her better, She's as inconstant as the Seas and Winds, Which ne'er are calm ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... unstable, unsteadfast, reversible, alterable, revocable, mobile, convertible, transmutable, commutable, kaleidoscopic, transformable, impermanent; volatile, fickle, mercurial, protean, irresolute, capricious, vacillating, fitful, inconstant, erratic, eccentric, crotchety; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... performing her duties; if her religious observances are merely the formality of lip service; if she be petulant to her friends, pert and disrespectful to her parents, overbearing to her inferiors; if pride, vanity, and affectation be her characteristics; if she be inconstant in her friendships; gaudy and slovenly, rather than neat and scrupulously clean, in attire and personal habits: then we counsel the gentleman to retire as speedily but as politely as possible from the pursuit of an object quite unworthy ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... accompanied their descent. The scene was certainly impressive; but the road was in that part very securely walled in; the mule went steadily forward; and I was astonished to perceive the paleness of terror in the face of my companion. The voice of that wild river was inconstant, now sinking lower as if in weariness, now doubling its hoarse tones; momentary freshets seemed to swell its volume, sweeping down the gorge, raving and booming against the barrier walls; and I observed it was at each of these accessions to the clamour that my driver more particularly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... British waters anchovies are either thrown away or sent to the market fresh with the sprats. If salted in the proper way, they would doubtless be in all respects equal to Dutch anchovies, if not to those imported from Italy. The supply, however, is small and inconstant, and for this reason English fish-curers have not learnt the proper way of preparing them. The so-called "Norwegian anchovies'' imported into England in little wooden kegs are nothing but sprats pickled in brine with bay-leaves and whole pepper. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is shallow; it has no deep root, and is like an inconstant friend. But a perennial spring, one whose ways are appointed, whose foundation is established, what a profound and beautiful symbol! In fact, there is no more large and universal symbol in nature than the spring, if there is any other capable of ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... taking my likeness, or rather has begun to do so. I thought, dear H——, that you would like to have this sketch, and I was in hopes that the first letter you received in Ireland from me would contain it; but, alas! Dick is as inconstant and capricious as a genius need be, and there lies my fac-simile in a state of non-conclusion; they all tell me it is very like, but it does appear to me so pretty that I am divided between satisfaction and incredulity. My father, I lament to say, left ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... darkness? Is he sympathetic? Does he lessen the grief of any one? Does he lead any one to remorse for evil deeds? Does he assist love in the hearts of Ferdinand and Miranda? Do you think Prospero always treats him fairly? Does he seem so light and inconstant that he needs some discipline? What will he do when he is released from Prospero's control? Finally, does Ariel seem lovable to you, would you like him as a friend and companion as well ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... prince solely on lofty political lines were hardly likely to remember how largely he bulked in the humbler relations of trade; but there was more than one Calcutta establishment, Mr. Kauffer declared, that would be obliged to put up its shutters without this inconstant and difficult, but liberal customer. I waited with impatience. I could not for the life of me see Armour's connection with the native prince, who is seldom a patron of the ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... out for a lover as soon as she's married, as part of her equipage, without which she could not be genteel; and the first article of the treaty is establishing the pension, which remains to the lady though the gallant should prove inconstant; and this chargeable point of honour I look upon as the real foundation of so many wonderful instances of constancy. I really know several women of the first quality, whose pensions are as well known as their annual rents, and yet nobody esteems them ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... up th' opposing hills, with tortoise foot, they creep. 105 Here half a village shines, in gold array'd, Bright as the moon, half hides itself in shade. From the dark sylvan roofs the restless spire Inconstant glancing, mounts like springing fire. There, all unshaded, blazing forests throw no 110 Rich golden verdure on the waves below. Slow glides the sail along th' illumin'd shore, And steals into the shade the lazy oar. Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... excellent and well-matched pair. Of course they had their disagreements. Newts are by nature fickle and inconstant. ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... not only was that final victory thus won by Him, but He arrived at it by a path full of the conflicts which threaten faith. He "endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself" (ver. 3). Year by year, day by day, from the Pharisee, from the worldling, from the leaders of religion, from the inconstant crowd, He had "contradiction" to endure—sometimes even from "the men of His own household." He was challenged to prove His claims; He was insulted over His assertion of them, or over His silence about them. In every way, at every turn, they spoke against Him to His face, as He slowly advanced, ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... the diagnostic mark of his unitegminous and bitegminous groups is simply that of the absence or presence of an indusium, not a character of great value elsewhere, and, as we know, the number of the ovular coats is inconstant within the same family. At the same time the groups based upon the integuments are of much the same extent as the Polypetalae and Gamopetalae of other systems. We do not yet know the significance of this correlation, which, however, is not an invariable one, between number ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... his talk was rhodomontade. He took no thought for the morrow: he treated the Court as if the King were already a prisoner in his hands: he built on the favour of the multitude, as if that favour were not proverbially inconstant. The signs of the coming reaction were discerned by men of far less sagacity than his, and scared from his side men more consistent than he had ever pretended to be. But on him they were lost. The counsel of Achitophel, that counsel which was as if ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... be the same! How do you know how long a minute is to me? More than that, time is not constant even in the same individual. How many hours are shorter to you than others? How many days have been almost interminable? No, instead of being constant, there is nothing more inconstant than time." ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... prevent their imbibing the customs and habits of other nations. But it is universally admitted, that Gypsies did not bring any particular religion with them from their native country, by which they could be distinguished among other people; being as inconstant and unsettled respecting religion, as they are ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... was an address by "The Publisher to the Purchaser.... The conductors of this paper, being a kind of whimsical and negligent gentry of easy habits and inconstant disposition, its continuation will not so much depend upon the patronage that may be given to it as upon their own humours and caprices. It is, as Johnson says of its title—'Trangram—an odd, intricately-contrived thing,' and, therefore, in its ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... analysis of it, it is true, might have great speculative interest; but a moral system would not be needed as it is for a great practical purpose. The law, as we all know, has arisen because of transgressions, and the moralist has to meddle with human nature mainly because it is inconstant and corrupted. It is a wild horse that has not so much to be broken, once for all, as to be driven and reined in perpetually. And the art of the moralist is, by opening the mind's eye to the true end ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... the palace whither the host conducted a very different effect was produced to what the kind host intended; for there, to her heart's sorrow, she beheld her lover, the inconstant Proteus, serenading the Lady Silvia with music, and addressing discourse of love and admiration to her. And Julia overheard Silvia from a window talk with Proteus, and reproach him for forsaking his own true lady, and for his ingratitude his friend Valentine; and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that she was not done with sorrow, and that the cup of bitterness was not drained to the dregs. While every one about her contemplated the future with serene confidence, she reflected on the extreme mobility of the French character, and still distrusted inconstant fortune. The morrow of the birth of the Duke of Bordeaux one of her household said ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Ladies, if at night Ye wake to feel your beauty going. It was a web of frail delight, Inconstant as ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... in Shelley's Defence of Poetry. He says: "A man cannot say 'I will compose poetry'—the greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is like a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakes to transitory brightness. The power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our nature are unprophetic either of its approach or its ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hand of his queen, gallantly bending over his saddle-bow, and the next moment he was by the side of a younger if not a fairer lady, to whom he was devoting the momentary worship of his inconstant heart. Elizabeth's eyes shot an angry gleam as she beheld her faithless lord thus engaged; but so accustomed to conceal and control the natural jealousy that it never betrayed itself to the court or to her husband, she ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the rain are over the clouds are divided in heaven over the green hill flies the inconstant sun. 2. The epic poem recites the exploits of a hero tragedy represents a disastrous event comedy ridicules the vices and follies of mankind pastoral poetry describes rural life and elegy displays the tender emotions of the heart. 3. Wealth may seek us but wisdom must ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... Or even when an action, as sometimes happens, cannot be particularly accounted for, either by the person himself or by others; we know, in general, that the characters of men are, to a certain degree, inconstant and irregular. This is, in a manner, the constant character of human nature; though it be applicable, in a more particular manner, to some persons who have no fixed rule for their conduct, but proceed in a continued course of caprice and inconstancy. The internal ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... or Mentall Discourse, is of two sorts. The first is Unguided, Without Designee, and inconstant; Wherein there is no Passionate Thought, to govern and direct those that follow, to it self, as the end and scope of some desire, or other passion: In which case the thoughts are said to wander, and seem impertinent one to another, as in a Dream. Such are Commonly the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... and desolate, that the beautiful past is all he has to live upon. Remember this handsome prince in silence, bid him farewell when he departs to his native country, but beware of hoping to see him again. The Persians are fickle and inconstant, lovers of everything new and foreign. The prince has been fascinated by thy sweetness and grace. He loves thee ardently now, but remember, he is young and handsome, courted by every one, and a Persian. Give him up that he may ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... me,' cried she hastily, 'and let the act appear wholly your own?'—'I will,' replied he, after a pause, 'difficult as it is to do so, and irresolute and inconstant as it will make me seem.' 'That,' said she, 'will be an action truly deserving my esteem; and in return, know I am much more your friend in refusing your addresses, than either my parents in encouraging, or your own mistaken wishes in ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... leaves, and the soft evening breeze fanning his temples, was far more delightful, than to recline in his soft-cushioned box at the Opera, listening even to the delicious notes of a Pico, with bright jewels, and still brighter eyes flashing around him, and his cheek kissed by the inconstant air wafted from the coquettish fan in the hands of smiling beauty. And, moreover, that the book of human nature, to be studied in the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... vessel is located. The form or position of the clavicle in the depressed condition of the shoulder, as seen in Plate 8, is invariable; whereas that of the trapezius and sterno-mastoid muscles is inconstant, these muscles being found to stand at unequal intervals from each other in several bodies. The space between the insertions of both these muscles is indefinite, and may vary in degrees of width from the whole length of ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... brought back into the way the Indians everywhere, who were turning aside to their madness and their idols. He reestablished Christian customs, baptized children and adults, made stable their fickle and inconstant marriages, and did many more things of the same kind—which, though unwritten, are understood. The following event should not lack a pen. A man entangled by lewd delights, but moved by the fact that he had no example among the repentant ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... kindled with despair, Inconstant hope is often drown'd in fears; What folly hurts not, fortune can repair, And misery doth swim in seas of tears. Long use of life is but a living foe, As gentle death is only ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... become the prey of prostitution, which causes their disappearance. This is perhaps one of the causes which have strengthened by selection the will power in women. Man is impulsive and violent as regards his will power, but often inconstant and irresolute, yielding as soon as he has to strive persistently for a certain object. From these facts it naturally results that, on the average, it is the man in the family who provides the ideas and impulses, but ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... is no optimist either in regard to French character or the progress of public affairs," said Lafayette, bitingly. "But I can assure him that if the French are inconstant, ignorant, and immoral, they are also energetic, lively, and easily aroused by noble examples. Moreover, the public mind has been instructed lately to an astonishing point by the political pamphlets issued in such numbers, and 'tis my opinion that these facts will ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... "that was, then, your reason for coming here. I love you as I never yet loved you. Thanks, Louise, for this devotion; but measures must be taken to place you beyond all insult, to shield you from every lure. Louise, a maid of honor in the court of a young princess in these days of free manners and inconstant affections—-a maid of honor is placed as an object of attack without having any means of defence afforded her; this state of things cannot continue, you must be married in order ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a grotto in your dreams, is a sign of incomplete and inconstant friendships. Change from comfortable and simple plenty will ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... that neither; because there must be an end of our correspondence — I wish he may forget me, for the sake of his own peace; and yet if he should, he must be a barbarous — But it is impossible — poor Wilson cannot be false and inconstant: I beseech him not to write to me, nor attempt to see me for some time; for, considering the resentment and passionate temper of my brother Jery, such an attempt might be attended with consequences which would make us all miserable for life — let ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... his difficulties were beginning. I beg that it may be understood that Crosbie was not altogether a villain. He could not sit down and write a letter as coming from his heart, of which as he wrote it he knew the words to be false. He was an ungenerous, worldly, inconstant man, very prone to think well of himself, and to give himself credit for virtues which he did not possess; but he could not be false with premeditated cruelty to a woman he had sworn to love. He could not write an affectionate, warm-hearted letter ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... have violated a decree of the senate, by re-appointing their magistrates, you yourselves also wish it to be violated, lest ye should yield to the populace in rashness; as if to possess greater power in the state consisted in having more of inconstancy and irregularity; for it is certainly more inconstant and greater folly, to do away with one's own decrees and resolutions, than those of others. Imitate, conscript fathers, the inconsiderate multitude; and ye, who should be an example to others, transgress by the example of others, rather than others should ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... host of difficulties. Still the snow fell; and my heart sank, as my fire declined, and the flakes sputtered on the blackening embers; my little puppy, who had gambolled all day amongst the drifting white pellets, now whined, and crouched under my thick woollen cloak; the inconstant searching wind drifted the snow into the tent, whose roof so bagged in with the accumulation that I had to support it with sticks, and dreaded being smothered, if the weight should cause it to sink upon my bed during my sleep. The increasing cold drove me, however, to my blankets, and taking ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... must have driven him quite mad, I think. At any rate he wooed and won. Nanca begged the young foreigner to divorce her, which he did. The Seminole divorce custom is lenient when the marriage is childless. The artist, I fancy, was merely a wild, reckless, inconstant sort of chap who did not regard the simple Seminole marriage tie as binding. After the birth of his daughter, a tiny little elf whom Nanca has named "Red-winged Blackbird," he tried to run away, and the Indians ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... soul, With roving hearts that spurn control. Brooding on sin and quickly changed, In one short hour their love estranged. Not glorious deed or lineage fair, Not knowledge, gift, or tender care In chains of lasting love can bind A woman's light inconstant mind. But those good dames who still maintain What right, truth, Scripture, rule ordain— No holy thing in their pure eyes With one beloved husband vies. Nor let thy lord my son, condemned To exile, be by thee ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... as her sister, though in another style, began by awakening my curiosity—a weakness which usually renders the profligate man inconstant. If all women were to have the same features, the same disposition, and the same manners, men would not only never be inconstant, but would never be in love. Under that state of things one would choose a wife by instinct and keep to her till death, but our world would ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... journey in a night of storm, Lighted by flashes of inconstant faith, Goaded by multitudes of vague desires, And mocked ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... courageously submitted to the sword of the assassins, who cut off his head and hands, and carried them to Antony, whose wife, Julia, gloated with inhuman delight upon the pallid features, and in petty spite pierced with a needle the once eloquent tongue. Cicero had numerous faults; he was vain, vacillating, inconstant, timid, and the victim of morbid sensibility; but he was candid, truthful, just, generous, pure-minded, and warm-hearted. Gentle, sympathizing, and affectionate, he lived as a patriot and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... with enthusiasm that he should be First Consul for ten years, and he replied to the vote of confidence that "Fortune had smiled upon the Republic; but Fortune was inconstant; how many men," said he, "upon whom she has heaped her favours have lived too long by some years, and that the interest of his glory and happiness seemed to have marked the period of his public life, at the moment when the peace of the world is proclaimed." Then with one of those spasmodic impulses ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... quickened with sudden transitions into glows yet deeper, until a belt of broad flame bounded the water, diffusing itself more faintly towards the zenith, where it melted into the pearl-colored sky, or played on the fantastic volumes of a few light clouds with inconstant glimmering. While these beautiful transitions were still before the eyes of the youthful admirers of their beauties, a voice was heard above them, crying as if ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... spite of the inconstant character of the emanation tube there are many reasons for preferring its use to the use of the radium tube. Chief of these is the fact that we can keep the precious radium safely locked up in the laboratory and not exposed to the thousand-and-one risks of the hospital. Then, secondly, ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... to overthrow them straight? Accurs'd thy wreak[116], thy wrath, thy bale, thy weal, That mak'st me sigh the sorrows that I feel! Untrodden paths my feet shall rather trace, Than wrest my succours from inconstant hands: Rebounding rocks shall rather ring my ruth, Than these Campanian piles, where terrors bide: And nature, that hath lift my throne so high, Shall witness Marius' triumphs, if he die. But she, that gave ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... a dependance, of Genoa. Now, from their small population, a single deputy represents them in the departmental council, while Ajaccio sends twenty-nine and Bastia twenty-five members. The Bonifacians despise their masters. “The French are inconstant,” said an inhabitant, high in office, with whom I was talking politics; “they have tant de petitesses; they have no national character: we have, and you;—our very quarrels, which are deep and lasting, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... narrow, ravelled valley, wearing down the farmer's soil, The Patuxent flows inconstant, with a hue of clay and oil, From the terraces of mill-dams and the temperate slopes of wheat, To the bottoms of tobacco, watched ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... energetically for-the-sake-of the new young world. 5. Almost a year they were happy, but these seasons were too diverse, and could not long remain friends. 6. The brilliant summer wept and reproached the tired autumn. 7. The autumn preferred to rest, and disliked the muddy weather of the inconstant spring. 8. The quiet winter concealed itself beneath the frost and soft white snow, and wished to sleep. 9. The longer they kept the world among them, the more they quarreled. 10. Soon the autumn made the proposition, "We will divide the world." 11. Immediately ...
— A Complete Grammar of Esperanto • Ivy Kellerman
... books of Spanish literature,—complained of his pen having caught up a hair, and forthwith begins, with more eloquence than common sense, an affectionate expostulation with that useful implement, upbraiding it with being the quill of a goose,—a bird inconstant by nature, as frequenting the three elements of water, earth, and air indifferently, and being, of course, 'to one thing constant never.' Now I protest to thee, gentle reader, that I entirely dissent ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... perfectly we understand the causes of present events, the more plainly are they seen to be the consequences of physical conditions, and therefore the results of law. To allude to one example out of many that might be considered, the winds, how proverbially inconstant, who can tell whence they come or whither they go! If any thing bears the fitful character of arbitrary volition, surely it is these. But we deceive ourselves in imagining that atmospheric events are fortuitous. Where shall ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... of Sir John. As she has a fixed idea that her husband is inconstant, she is always asking the servants, "Where is Sir John?" "Is Sir John returned?" "Which way did Sir John go?" "Has Sir John received any letters?" "Who has called?" etc.; and, whatever the answer, it is to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Indra. Thus the primitive Heaven personified recedes, and his place is taken by a more individualised god. But generally Mother Earth remains a constant quantity. Earth was nearer man and was more unchanging than the inconstant sky, while as the producer of the fruits of the earth, she was regarded as the source of all things, and frequently remained as an important divinity when a crowd of other divinities became prominent. This is especially true of agricultural ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... who by the distribution of alms held in pay the rabble of cities and starving peasants on the lands of impoverished nobles. Montmorency, Conde, and Navarre leaned towards the Reform,—doubtful and inconstant chiefs, whose faith weighed light against their interests. Yet, amid vacillation, selfishness, weakness, treachery, one great man was like a tower of trust, and this was ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Nicholas, in lat. 16 deg. 16' N. We here watered on the 7th of May, and setting sail on the 9th, fell in with St Jago. The 9th June we got sight of Brazil, in lat. 7 deg. S, not being able to double Cape St Augustine; for, being near the equator, we had very inconstant weather and bad winds; in which desperate case we shaped our course for the island of Fernando Noronho, in lat. 4 deg. S. where on the 15th June we anchored on the north side in eighteen fathoms. In this island ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... supporter than that kind lady of Castlewood, in whose house Esmond was brought up. She influenced her husband, very much more perhaps than my lord knew, who admired his wife prodigiously though he might be inconstant to her, and who, adverse to the trouble of thinking himself, gladly enough adopted the opinions which she chose for him. To one of her simple and faithful heart, allegiance to any sovereign but the one was impossible. To serve King William for interest's sake would have been a monstrous ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and therefore no more can enter into its body than is just requisite; but the other Metals have not such fixt bodies, for their pores are open, and far extenuated, therefore the Tincture Spirit can the more abundantly pass thorough and possess them. But because the bodies of the other Metals are inconstant, the Tincture cannot remain with those inconstant bodies, but must depart. And whereas the Tincture of Gold is found in none more plentiful than in Mars and Venus, as Man and Wife, their bodies therefore are destroyed, and the tinging Spirit taken out of them, which makes Gold ...
— Of Natural and Supernatural Things • Basilius Valentinus
... know soon what is to be expected - as far as it does not hang by that inconstant quantity, my want of health. Remember me to Madam with the best thanks and wishes; ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... happy family, three husbands and three wives, each husband close beside his wife. They bloom together, they wither together; not one of them is inconstant. This is the bliss of flowers. These are ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... whence they have no will to invade her. But this can be attributed to no other cause than her prudence, which will appear to be greater, as we look nearer; for the effects that proceed from fortune, if there be any such thing, are like their cause, inconstant. But there never happened to any other commonwealth so undisturbed and constant a tranquillity and peace in herself as are in that of Venice; wherefore this must proceed from some other cause than chance. And we see that ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... me, for I do not love distance or ceremony; there is more of love and tenderness in the name of mother than in all the complimentary titles in the world... You complain that you are unstable and inconstant in the ways of virtue. Alas! what Christian is not so too? I am sure that I, above all others, am most unfit to advise in such a case: yet since I love you as my own soul, I will endeavour to do as well ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... stages of development the crystal will begin to cloud over, first becoming dull, then suffused with milky clouds, among which sparkle a large number of little specks of light like gold dust in the sunlight. The focus of the eyes is inconstant, the pupil rapidly expanding and contracting, the crystal at times disappearing entirely in a haze or film which seems to pass before the eyes. Then the haze will disappear, and the crystal will loom up into full view again, accompanied by a lapse of the seer into full consciousness. This may ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... fact that the queen was his enemy. He had reasons to hope for success. The armies of Charles had invaded Italy and threatened Rome, and the papal minister, Giberti, enchanted with the zeal of the great English cardinal, wished that he had him at the Vatican in the place of the tremulous and inconstant Clement. Spain was the enemy; England was the ally. It was probable that the Pope would do what he could in the interest of England, to keep up its enmity with Spain. The case was a difficult one, not to be decided on evidence. Something would remain uncertain, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... attempting to reduce these various facts to any rule or law. The inconstant number of the additional digits—their irregular attachment to either the inner or outer margin of the hand—the gradation which can be traced from a mere loose rudiment of a single digit to a completely double hand—the occasional appearance of additional digits in the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... was courting her, it is true, and favouring her already with marked respect; but Francoise d'Aubigne,—thoughtful and meditative as I knew her to be, could certainly not have failed to appreciate the voluptuous and inconstant character of the monarch. She had seen several notorious friendships collapse in succession; and it is not at the age of forty-six or forty-seven that one can build castles in Spain to dwell ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... depreciating the merits of Julian, they acknowledged, and even exaggerated, his popular fame, superior talents, and important services. But they darkly insinuated, that the virtues of the Caesar might instantly be converted into the most dangerous crimes, if the inconstant multitude should prefer their inclinations to their duty; or if the general of a victorious army should be tempted from his allegiance by the hopes of revenge and independent greatness. The personal fears of Constantius were interpreted by his council as a laudable anxiety for the public ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... giddy course did guide, The inconstant turns of every changing hour.—Pierce Gaveston, by ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... A man's heart may be someway seen in his countenance as a face in the water. Others(1335) thus: As a face in the water is various and changeable to him that looketh upon it, so is the heart of man inconstant to a friend that trusteth in him. Others(1336) thus: As a man seeth his own face in the water, so he may see himself in his own heart or conscience. Others(1337) thus: As face answereth face in the water, so he that looketh for a friendly affection from others, ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... alone which will fix the degree of its importance. Thus value varies, and the law of value is unchangeable: further, if value is susceptible of variation, it is because it is governed by a law whose principle is essentially inconstant,—namely, labor ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... will need no further illustration than the commonest book of arithmetic furnishes us, where it will be found, that to ring all the changes that can be produced on twelve bells only, would occupy a space of more than ninety-one years. The element of fire is visibly more active and more inconstant than that of earth. This is more solid and ponderous than fire, air, or water. According to the quantity of these elements, which enter the composition of bodies, these must act diversely, and their motion must in some measure partake the motion peculiar to each of their ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... water, covered with sea-weed, and encircled by a shoal of fish, who, finding sustenance from the animalculae collected, follow the floating pieces of wood up and down, as their adopted parent, wherever they may be swept by the inconstant winds and tides. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... something too delightful was going to happen to me the week that Brilliant was bought and sent home, looking like an angel in a horse's skin? That reminds me I never go to see him now; I hope I am not inconstant to my old friends. And what was it but a presentiment that made my heart beat and my knees knock together when I entered my own room to-day before luncheon and saw a brown paper parcel on the table, addressed, evidently by the shop people, to "Miss Coventry, ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... evil, earth or jeweled heaven— The olden, owlish argument of doubt. Ah, he alone is wise who ever stands Armed cap-a-pie with God's eternal truth. Where Grex is Rex God help the hapless land. The yelping curs that bay the rising moon Are not more clamorous, and the fitful winds Not more inconstant. List the croaking frogs That raise their heads in fen or stagnant pool, Shouting at eve their wisdom from the mud. Beside the braying, bleating, bellowing mob, Their jarring discords are sweet harmony. The headless ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... animated with the soul of a lion. The coward and runaway, afraid where no fear is, may be likened to the timid deer. He who is sunk in ignorance and stupidity lives like a dull ass. He who is light and inconstant, never holding long to one thing, is for all the world like a bird. He who wallows in foul and unclean lusts is sunk in the pleasures of a filthy hog. So it comes to pass that he who by forsaking righteousness ceases to be ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise As to pierce the dome of gold ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... in each courtly art That can please and win a woman's heart; And many a girl of lineage high Had looked on his wooing with fav'ring eye: Inconstant to all, in hall or in bower, What chance of escape had ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... breeze—all about us, and swung slantwise, light as a bladder, elastic as a basket, into the next furrow. Then the sun found us, struck the wet gray bows to living, leaping opal, the colourless deep to hard sapphire, the many sails to pearl, and the little steam-plume of our escape to an inconstant rainbow. ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... pleases. The coal-heavers in London exercise a trade which, in hardship, dirtiness, and disagreeableness, almost equals that of colliers; and, from the unavoidable irregularity in the arrivals of coal-ships, the employment of the greater part of them is necessarily very inconstant. If colliers, therefore, commonly earn double and triple the wages of common labour, it ought not to seem unreasonable that coal-heavers should sometimes earn four and five times those wages. In the inquiry made into their condition a few years ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... I behold thee flippant, vain, Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies; Without that modest softening that enhances The downcast eye, repentant of the pain That its mild light creates to heal again: E'en then, elate, my spirit leaps, and prances, E'en then my soul with exultation ...
— Poems 1817 • John Keats
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