"Erratic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... beforehand to be the gratuitous productions of ladies and gentlemen whose circumstances might be called altogether easy, but for an uneasy vanity that happened to have been directed towards authorship. Its importance was that of a polypus, tumour, fungus, or other erratic outgrowth, noxious and disfiguring in its effect on the individual organism which nourishes it. Poor Vorticella might not have been more wearisome on a visit than the majority of her neighbours, ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the threshold, listening and looking up at the sky above the clearing. His hair was white, his figure a little bent, and there was an anxious look upon his face, a permanent expression rather than one caused by any tardy arrival this evening. The man he waited for was too erratic in his goings and comings to make a few hours', or even a day's, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... dinner), I wandered among the Roman remains of the place by the light of a magnificent moon, and gathered an impression which has lost little of its silvery glow. The moon of the evening before had been aqueous and erratic; but if on the present occasion it was guilty of any irregularity, the worst it did was only to linger beyond its time in the heavens, in order to let us look at things comfortably. The effect was admirable; it brought back ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... commemorative of this visitation from the wandering spirit of the erratic Giles. Death has indeed parted them. Giles is cold, but still his love is warm! He loved and won her in life—he hints at a right of possession in death; and this very forgetfulness of what he was, and what he is, is the best essence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... extent of their guilt amounted to two or three kisses, the world already chose to believe the worst of both. Mme. de Bargeton paid the penalty of her sovereignty. Among the various eccentricities of society, have you never noticed its erratic judgments and the unaccountable differences in the standard it requires of this or that man or woman? There are some persons who may do anything; they may behave totally irrationally, anything becomes them, and it is who shall be first to justify their conduct; then, on ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... wildly all about the shed; Bab rattled the cups into her dish-pan with dangerous haste, and Betty raised a cloud of dust "sweeping-up;" while mother seemed to be everywhere at once. Even Sanch, feeling that his fate was at stake, endeavored to help in his own somewhat erratic way,—now frisking about Ben at the risk of getting his tail chopped off, then trotting away to poke his inquisitive nose into every closet and room whither he followed Mrs. Moss in her "flying round" evolutions; next dragging off the mat so Betty could brush the door-steps, ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... bobbing swiftly, its white legs twinkling brightly for a moment. How neat it was in its build, so compact, with pieces of white on its wings. There were several of them. They were so pretty—but they crept like swift, erratic mice, running here ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... good times. And as you can't write a bit of verse, you dear, lovely old Ben, nor a story, I do not believe our tastes will clash. Why shouldn't we agree just as well when we are married as we do now? Even that tremendous, gloomy, erratic Edgar Allan Poe adored not only his wife, but his mother-in-law. To be sure, there was Milton and Byron, and Mrs. Hemans and Bulwer, and a host of them; but Mr. and Mrs. Browning are going on serenely. And 'The Scarlet Letter' hasn't made trouble in Hawthorne's family ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... years. And to Magsie, as they all called her, young Mr. Hoyt had paid some decided attention not many months before. Mrs. Frothingham had seen fit to disapprove these advances then, but she was an extraordinarily erratic and cross-grained old lady, and her silence now had forced her nephew uncomfortably to suspect that she might ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... whizzed by again, in the other direction, but lower and slower. It made a gigantic but erratic circle beyond the sheds and swooped back. It looked nothing like a helicopter. It looked like a Hallowe'en decoration of a woman on a broomstick. As it came nearer, Hanson saw that it was a woman on a broomstick, flying erratically. She straightened ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... confusion were the denizens of this underground colony; their six little legs carrying their curious globular bodies backward and forward over the disturbed area from which the stone had been removed. At first the movements of the ants were extremely erratic and purposeless. Panic and alarm appeared to be the order of the day during the few minutes which elapsed after removal of the stone. But soon the eye could discern movements of purposive kind on ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... than to do so." Probably they knew too much of his past history and his character to think of him as a husband. Both were soon after this time married to men more likely to make them happy than the erratic poet. When they turned a deaf ear to his addresses, he wrote: "My rhetoric seems to have lost all its effect on the lovely half of mankind; I have seen the day, but that is a tale of other years. In my conscience, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... arguments that upon the lips of a man of position and distinction are convincing lose their persuasive power when spoken by an erratic or eccentric, even though they may be exactly as logical, because the element of faith ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... condition of the hillside. Again and again he had to break his stride, to leap some shell-hole. Often he had to encircle such holes. More than once he bounded headlong down into a gaping crater and scrambled up its far side. These erratic moves, and the nine-hundred-yard distance (a distance that was widening at every second) made the sharpshooters' task anything ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... or as the case may be, analyses, are usually made of every sample and their average taken. In the case of erratic differences a ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... archangels, well nigh forgotten; a man who, by pandering to human passions and setting wide as virtue's avenue the flower-tricked gates of vice; should thus, like Lucifer before him, in a comet-like career of victory, sweep the startled firmament of earth, and drag to his erratic orbit the stars of heaven ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... that is the best and most serious thing in the way of friendship, protection and guardianship that I have had during my life. That butterfly acted as my godmother. Do you wonder now at the zigzags, the erratic flights of my mind? Lucky for me that I have clung ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the messages that Liszt was constantly sending to his exiled friend. And we must understand that at this time Liszt had a world-wide reputation as a composer himself, and was the foremost pianist of his time. And Wagner—Wagner was only an obscure dreamer, with a penchant for erratic music! ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... the fact that he was to share the amusements of the Seven at Lake Aubergine—the Lake of the Mad Apple. To get hold of these seven men of repute and position, to be admitted into this good presence!—He had a pious exaltation, but whether it was because he might gather into the fold erratic and agnostical sheep like Charley Steele, or because it pleased his social ambitions, he had occasion to answer in the future. He gaily prepared to go to the Lake of the Mad Apple, where he was fated to eat of the tree ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Qualities in War," Major C.A.L. Yate, of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, dealt with the "intensity" of the war strain, of which he himself had acute experience. "Under such conditions," he wrote, "marksmen may achieve no more than the most erratic shots; the smartest corps may quickly degenerate into a rabble; the easiest tasks will often appear impossible. An army can weather trials such as those just depicted only if it be collectively considered in that healthy ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... came very low, and somewhat piping, too, and broken—an eery sort of voice it was, of brittle and erratic timbre and undulant inflection. Yet it was beautiful. It had the ring of childhood in it, though the ring was not pure golden, and at times fell echoless. The SPIRIT of its utterance was always clear and pure and crisp and cheery as the twitter ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... literary career of Bernard Barton. If it have not left behind it the brilliant track of other poetical comets, it has been less erratic in its course; and if it have not been irradiated by the full blaze of a noonday sun, it has nevertheless been illumined by the silver lustre of the queen of night; and his Parnassian vespers may be said to possess all the mild and soothing beauties ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... elliptical in shape and walled with rough limestone. Moss grew in the crevices of the masonry and about it had been a sod of velvet grass. Black beetles slipped in and out among the stones; dragon-flies hung over the surface of the water and large ants made erratic journeys about the rough bark of the naked palms. Whoever came dipped his goblet deep, for there the water was cold. If he gazed through to the bottom he detected a convection in the sand below. This was not a reservoir, but ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... gravels, and clays, often more or less regularly stratified, but containing erratic blocks, often of large size, and with their edges unworn, derived from considerable distances from the place where they are now found. In these beds it is not at all uncommon to find fossil shells; and these, though of existing species, are generally of an Arctic character, comprising a greater ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... "mob" is worth attention. I saw it at many angles. I followed its first erratic flights through the streets when Salandra resigned and a gaping void opened before the nation. I waited for the poet's arrival at the Roman station, for hours, while the dense throng of men and women pressed ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... from his adventures, leaned against the companion, and with much dramatic gesture began his story. As it proceeded the mate's breath came thick and fast, his color rose, and he became erratic in his steering. Flattered by these symptoms of concern, ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... difference consists in degree. Increase what is commonly called talent in the direction of its manifestation and it would develop into genius. Genius is commonly thought of as something abnormal, in the sense that it is essentially eccentric. A genius is generally spoken of as an eccentric, erratic, unbalanced, person. The eccentricity is then taken as constituting the substance of the quality of genius. This is undoubtedly a mistake. Because some geniuses have been erratic, the popular imagination has formed its picture of all genius as unbalanced. ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... had gone upstairs, she went into the dimly lighted sitting-room and sat down at the piano, touching softly and lightly the notes of a minor melody, an erratic little air rising and falling in a succession ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... character, in comparison with the latitude, I suspected that these islands had been partly stocked by ice-borne seeds during the Glacial epoch. At my request Sir C. Lyell wrote to M. Hartung to inquire whether he had observed erratic boulders on these islands, and he answered that he had found large fragments of granite and other rocks, which do not occur in the archipelago. Hence we may safely infer that icebergs formerly landed their rocky burdens on the shores of these mid-ocean islands, and ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... and not return perhaps for days. His comings and goings were very erratic, and Dick tried to think that if the man were there he would have lent him ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... hearing Em'ly's distracted outcry. It steadily sounded, without perceptible pause for breath, and marked her erratic journey back and forth through stables, lanes, and corrals. The shrill disturbance brought all of us out to see her, and in the hen-house I discovered the new brood making its ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... no father," she answered softly. A plan had sprung full-born from her quick brain. She would win this erratic father back to memory of his former life and her place in it—somewhat as did one Lucy Manette, a favorite heroine of Split's that Sissy had read about and told her of. That would be a fine thing to do—almost as fine, and requiring the center of the stage as much, as ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... longer an individual. He belongs to a class of minds which we are bound to be patient with if their Maker sees fit to indulge them with existence. We must accept the conjuring ultra-ritualist, the dreamy second adventist, the erratic spiritualist, the fantastic homoeopathist, as not unworthy of philosophic study; not more unworthy of it than the squarers of the circle and the inventors of perpetual motion, and the other whimsical visionaries to whom De Morgan has devoted ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... [Asterism] This truly amiable, erratic genius is a portrait of Dickens's own father, "David Copperfield" being Dickens, and "Mrs. Nickleby" (one can hardly believe it) is said to be ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... erratic and vulgar, instituted wholesome reforms in the teaching of languages, and promulgated theories which, under later reformers, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... dear erratic master has managed for years and years to cultivate the farm of La Haye and to bring up my godson in the fear of the Lord and the practice of land surveying is a proof that the late Mr. Matthew Arnold was hopelessly wrong in his categorical ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... has been the mining industry. This sector, mostly on the strength of diamonds, has gone from generating 25% of GDP in 1980 to over 50% in 1989. No other sector has experienced such growth, especially not agriculture, which is plagued by erratic rainfall and poor soils. The unemployment rate remains a problem at 25%. Although diamond production remained level in FY91, substantial gains in coal output and manufacturing helped boost the economy ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... (noun) Humble Scream Agree Conspicuous Indifferent Shrewd Anger Cringe Misfortune Shudder Attempt Difficult Obey Skill Big Disconnect Object (noun) Soft Brute Erratic Object (verb) Splash Business Flash Obligation Success Careless Fragrant Occupied Sweet Climb Gain Oppose Trick Collect Generous Persist Wash Commanding Grim Revise ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... was given him. "That is a very good book," said he; "I assure you it is a very good book." Then all at once addressing Abbe Boileau, "Doctor, do you think that St. Augustin was as clever as Rabelais?" He was ill, however, and began to turn towards eternity his dreamy and erratic thoughts. He had set about composing pious hymns. "The best of thy friends has not a fortnight to live," he wrote to Maucroix; "for two months I have not been out, unless to go to the Academy for amusement. Yesterday, as I was returning, I was seized in the middle of Rue du Chantre with a fit of ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 1858. The whole is too long to quote, but the pith is contained in one paragraph. "There is a considerable body of geological evidence that during the Glacial epoch the whole world was colder; I inferred that,... from erratic boulder phenomena carefully observed by me on both the east and west coast of South America. Now I am so bold as to believe that at the height of the Glacial epoch, AND WHEN ALL TROPICAL PRODUCTIONS MUST HAVE BEEN CONSIDERABLY ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... actor finally triumphed over the erratic dispositions of the man so far as to secure for him a call to that theatrical holy of holies, the stage of the Comedie Francaise. He made his debut at the theatre in the Rue Richelieu in Fredegonde et Brunehaut. The frigid array of respectable and scholarly old men who sit in solemn ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... a sort of young sultan who could throw the handkerchief where he liked) chosen me of all women? I had no charms to recommend me—none of the virtues which men demand of the woman they wish to make their wife. To begin with, I was small, I was erratic and unorthodox, I was nothing but a tomboy—and, cardinal disqualification, I was ugly. Why, then, had he proposed matrimony to me? Was it merely a whim? Was he ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... has had an erratic development. Within the past seven years, however, there has been a rapid increase in new societies until today it is estimated that there are about three thousand with a membership of half a million. In number of societies New York is far behind most of its sister states. ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... with a man like that!" and she had carelessly asked his name of the assiduous Gershom, who appeared to her to exist in innumerable reflections of himself. The next day when she had seen Stephen approaching her in the Square, she had obeyed the same erratic impulse, half in jest and half from the gambler's instinct to grasp at reluctant opportunity. After all, had not experience taught her that one must venture in order to win, that nothing came to those who dared not stake the whole of life on the next turn of fortune? She had ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... had lingered near the house ever since he had parted from Mr. Sherwood, so anxious was he to hear the decision of his erratic "warbler," and he was much relieved when he saw the sleigh drive up to the door at a much earlier hour than ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... the sheaf of papers rather fascinated the watcher outside the window—somehow Jack conceived the idea that there before him was spread all the incriminating evidence needful to bring the erratic career of this amazing man to an abrupt end—to put a stop to the mammoth illegal operations he had so long conducted in secret and by which he had impudently flaunted all the powers in Washington, just as though he had ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... they stepped along beneath the gloom of the trees, which even when not in leaf cast dense shadows around them. It was in truth a weird spot: owls hooted dismally about them, bats flitted here and there in their erratic flight, and sometimes almost brushed the faces of the boys with their clammy wings. The strange noises always to be heard in a wood at night assailed their ears, and mingled with the quick beating ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... that when the unfortunate Black first became clearly conscious of anything again, he heard the gurgle of sliding water close beside his head, and, opening his eyes, caught sight of a smoky lamp that reeled to and fro, in very erratic fashion. Moisture dripped from the beams above him, and there was a sickly smell which seemed familiar. Black, who had been to sea before, decided that he caught the aroma of bilge water. Rows of wooden shelves tenanted by recumbent ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... at the articles he had dropped, and came prancing (no other word describes his erratic run) ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... and indifference about the people who attended the church. There was also a good deal of opposition in the parish, some old sullen seceders who went to a neighbouring proprietary chapel, many more of erratic tastes haunted the places of worship of the numerous sects, who swarmed in the town, and many more were living in a ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thin kid. Harry's warning had been phrased conventionally enough, but the hints his words conveyed had expanded in her mind—fear not only of Clara's laughter, that such a jewel had come from a junk shop, but of her wonder, her questions, her ability of getting out the story of the whole erratic proceeding, even to the strange pantomime between Harry and the blue-eyed Chinaman. Clara ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... made with regard to the administration of justice. The kings in those days seldom resided long in one place, and their courts followed their persons. This erratic justice must have been productive of infinite inconvenience to the litigants. It was now provided that civil suits, called Common Pleas, should be fixed to some certain place. Thus one branch of jurisdiction was separated from the king's court, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... fingers it sang like a bird and growled like a beast. When the piano was done growling Lancelot usually started. He paced up and down the room, swearing audibly. Then he would sit down at the table and cover ruled paper with hieroglyphics for hours together. His movements were erratic to the verge of mystery. He had no fixed hours for anything; to Mary Ann he was hopeless. At any given moment he might be playing on the piano, or writing on the curiously ruled paper, or stamping about the room, or sitting limp with despair in the one easy-chair, or drinking whisky and water, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... woman of genius has sate either on the Scotch or English throne since, except Cromwell, to whom, however, the term 'genius,' in its common sense, seems ludicrously inadequate. James V. had some of the erratic qualities of the poetic tribe, but his claim to the songs—such as the 'Gaberlunzie Man'—which go under his name, is exceedingly doubtful. James VI. was a pedant, without being a scholar—a rhymester, not a poet. Of the rest we need not speak. ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... shorely come their turn. But timid, feverish, locoed people, whose jedgment is bad an' who's prone to feel themse'fs in peril; they're the kind who kills. For myse'f I shuns all sech. I won't say them erratic, quick-to-kill sports don't have courage; only it strikes me—an' I've rode up on a heap of 'em—it's more like a fear-bit f'rocity ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... In the mean time, she has done all in her power to induce her lover to go and fight the battles of his country; so far unsuccessfully, since Mr. John G—— deems it his duty to stay at home and keep things steady, especially billiards, which, as we all know, is an erratic game, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pupil; and though for the first ten minutes or so the course of the ship was a trifle erratic, and steering in a straight line proved to be not quite so simple and easy a matter as she had deemed it, Miss Sibylla soon caught the knack, and at the end of half an hour the Flying Cloud was making as straight a wake again as though the best helmsman ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... artillery, Colonel Williamson, and a private soldier whose name has not been preserved. The accurate Knox himself was not far off, and this is the account given him by Browne that same evening, and seems worthy to hold the field against the innumerable claims that have been set up in the erratic ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the habits of his erratic life; the traditions of his fathers and his passion for the chase are still alive within him. The wild enjoyments which formerly animated him in the woods painfully excite his troubled imagination; and his former privations appear to be less keen, his ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go; As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing, For the drover's life has pleasures that ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... get glimpses of the gardens in Faubourg Ste.-Marie standing in silent wretchedness, so many tearful Lucretias, tattered victims of the storm. Short remnants of the wind now and then came down the narrow street in erratic puffs, heavily laden with odors of broken boughs and torn flowers, skimmed the little pools of rain-water in the deep ruts of the unpaved street, and suddenly went away to nothing, like a juggler's butterflies or a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... grunted a melancholy sigh at every rut. The morning drives were silent; but in the evening, coming home, Jean-Pierre, tipsy, was viciously muttering, and growled at the confounded woman who could not rear children that were like anybody else's. Susan, holding on against the erratic swayings of the cart, pretended not to hear. Once, as they were driving through Ploumar, some obscure and drunken impulse caused him to pull up sharply opposite the church. The moon swam amongst light white clouds. The tombstones gleamed pale under ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... sight until she entered the house. Then he turned and walked like a madman through the hissing rain—walked he knew not whither—his being a mere erratic chaos, a symbol of Nature's prime impulse whirling ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... snobs, or even if I had been one, I should have taken her to Taylor's, and have spent all the money I had on such a luncheon as neither of us had ever eaten before. Whatever else I am, I am not a snob of that sort. I show my colors. I led her into a little cross-street which I had noticed in our erratic morning pilgrimage. We stopped at a German baker's. I bade her sit down at the neat marble table, and I bought two rolls. She declined lager, which I offered her in fun. We took water instead, and we had dined, and had paid two ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... than in that of Ivan. Nathalie carried back with her into the gray Petersburg Institute such a host of flagrant dreams as kept a dozen chums about her through the long twilights of as many afternoons. For the damsel was an erratic priestess of Eros; and, at this dream-age, she and her comrades gave to the technique of forthcoming flirtation a patient analysis that promised adequate devastation among the courtier army ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... of the Sentinel commands all the map-like detail of Pun-nul Bay, with its labyrinthian creeks among a flat density of mangroves, like lustrous, uncertain byways in a sombre field, erratic of shape, magnificent of proportion. Beyond are many islets—dark blue on a lighter plain. In the distance, on the other hand, islands and islets trail away until lost in the vague blending of sea and sky; and for a background is ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... flame was over. New suns and new worlds drifted calmly, with only a few erratic meteors and some settling dust-clouds left to tell of the explosion ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... of the others, I fear they did not prevent me feeling an almost equal tide of affection towards the sleepy acumen and ingrained sense of humour of Ida, the second girl and book-reader for the family: or Violet, a veritably delightful child, with a temper as formless and erratic as her tempest ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... excuse; not in a sullen, weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming. Therefore I would fain do something, but that I cannot tell what is no wonder.' 'Though I be in such a planetary and erratic fortune that I can do nothing constantly,' he confesses later ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... just had a long expected dinner suddenly snatched away from it; but the worse he became the louder M'Allister shrieked with laughter. The latter was now simply rolling about the room—for it could not be termed walking, it was so erratic—holding his sides and laughing, whilst the tears were chasing each other down his cheeks. He kept trying to speak, but had no sooner stuttered out the words, "Heh, mon! heh, mon!" than he was off again into another wild paroxysm of laughter, ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... knew Ike Webb was thinking of what Vogel had told him. Vogel was a gifted but admittedly erratic genius from the metropolis who had come upon us as angels sometimes do—unawares—two weeks before, with cinders in his ears and the grime of a dusty right-of-way upon his collar. He had worked for the sheet two weeks and then, on a Saturday night, ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... and O. steamship Rome, as she was detained by one of the numerous "blocks" in the canal, but finally embarked on her for Malta and Gibraltar. The Rome is a five thousand-ton ship, and the favorite of this company's extensive fleet. Four days' sail, covering about a thousand miles, over the erratic waters of the Mediterranean, now calm and now enraged, brought us in sight of Malta. The city of Valetta lies immediately on the shore; and when we dropped anchor in the snug little harbor, we were surrounded by lofty forts, frowning batteries, and high ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... space of uneven ground crossed and recrossed by the narrow-gauge tracks upon which the sand and grit trucks ran, avoiding one or two localities where steam shot upward from the ground in a witch-like and erratic manner, with short angry hisses and chopping sounds that suggested danger, and finally stood before the door designated "OFFICE" in plain lettering. Joyce looked around at her companion with a perplexed ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... discovery that aroused his curiosity a little. There was a queer sort of light flickering beyond him. He quickly realized that some person must be walking the same way as he was, and carrying one of those useful little hand-electric torches, which he seemed to be moving this way and that in an erratic fashion. ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... such terms. There is no small difference between random and fugitive desires and those more fundamental desires that express truly the nature of a man. Desires organized and harmonized gain great strength, and are enabled to overcome and expel from the mind erratic impulses, the obedience to which may easily be followed by regret. Action taken without a clear foresight of consequences, with an imperfect conception of the relation of means to ends, is blind and ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... reluctance that was itself the expression of the deep love I bore her, "Miss Dodan, I may for some time yet be engaged in this now imperative work. I cannot, you know, now leave it. It is the most marvellous thing the world has ever known. It means so much to me, indeed to us all. These messages are erratic—fitful. I have now waited for weeks for a renewal of these strange communications and there is nothing. But in the midst of this, a distracting love for you seems to unnerve and torment me. I beg you to wait until ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... Darry answered. "It's also what none of us have done. We haven't thanked our very pleasant, even if slightly erratic, host for his entertainment." ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... man, an author, a poet. He had been my dearest friend, when we were boys; and, though I lost sight of him for years,—he led an erratic life,—we were friends when he died. Poor, poor fellow! Well, he ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and George Sand—were on the whole cordial. He had trouble with Sainte-Beuve, however, and often felt that his brother-writers begrudged his success. His constant attacks on contemporary journalists, and his egotistic and erratic manners naturally prejudiced the critics, so that even the marvelous romance entitled 'La Peau de chagrin' (The Magic Skin: 1831),—a work of superb genius,—speedily followed as it was by 'Eugenie Grandet' and 'Le Pere ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... came from the same direction, from the woods across the river, somewhere just above their camp. It was Indian firing. Its character was unmistakable. It was erratic, and many of the shots failed hopelessly to reach the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... sixteen players for the other five positions, and picking them was only guesswork. It seemed to Ken that some of the players showed streaks of fast playing at times, and then as soon as they were opposed to one another in the practice game they became erratic. His own progress was slow. One thing he could do that brought warm praise from the coach—he could line the ball home from deep outfield with wonderful speed ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... no peculiar hardship to our erratic friend, who knew he could spend the time merrily and profitably among his numerous kinsfolk in the groves. To tell the truth, he was not sorry to get away from the court pageantry, as all such ceremonial and pomp of circumstance was an abomination to him, and had ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... verdant and untrampled pastures of ingenious bees; but those are more like the mange of lecherous boars and he-goats. And though a voluptuous temper of mind be naturally erratic and precipitate, yet never any yet sacrificed an ox for joy that he had gained his will of his mistress; nor did any ever wish to die immediately, might he but once satiate himself with the costly ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... agreed with those of Tycho Brahe, and won for Maestlin the professorship of astronomy in the University of Heidelberg. No man had so clearly proved the supralunar position of a comet, or shown so conclusively that its motion was not erratic, but regular. The young astronomer, though Apian's pupil, was an avowed Copernican and the destined master and friend of Kepler. Yet, in the treatise embodying his observations, he felt it necessary to save his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Delhi pandies, who are artillerymen trained by ourselves; here you will see the real genuine native product; and as the manufacture of shell is in its infancy, and as the shot seldom fits the gun within half an inch, or even an inch, you will see something erratic. They may knock holes in the wall, but it will take them a long time to cut enough holes near each other to make a breach. There, do you see? there are another lot of elephants and troops coming from the left. We shall have the whole countryside here before long. Ah! that's just as we expected; ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... mistake of attacking the animal. My friend Mr. Ernest Gibson, of Buenos Ayres, in a communication to the Ibis, describes an encounter he actually witnessed between a carancho and a skunk. Riding home one afternoon, he spied a skunk "shuffling along in the erratic manner usual to that odoriferous quadruped;" following it at a very short distance was an eagle-vulture, evidently bent on mischief. Every time the bird came near the bushy tail rose menacingly; then the carancho would fall behind, and, after a few moments' hesitation, follow ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... son, which would all be blasted if the precocious youth adopted the new religion. The struggles of young William Penn with his ambitious father, were long and bitter. He was beaten and turned out of doors by his angry parent, then taken back by the erratic but kind-hearted father and sent to France to be lured with gayety and dazzled with promises of wealth and distinction; but William Penn had the courage of his convictions and yielded not one whit of his religious ideas. Conscious of being right, he was ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... tastes, the ambitions of a child, and he should be allowed to remain a child. The ends in view are right habits, right ideals, and knowledge facts. In the secondary school the student is an adolescent, with the mind of an adolescent, having peculiar and erratic tastes, changing ambitions, and conflicting emotions. He is neither child nor adult, but passing thru the most dangerous and critical period of his entire life. The ends in view are no longer merely habits, ideals, and knowledge facts, but, added to these, and now more important for emphasis ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... Fred was saying. "The correlation is erratic; it makes no statistical sense. Malone, there are ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... seemed like a beautiful dream. That Poppy Tyrell should be sitting in his cabin and looking to him as her only friend seemed almost incredible. A sudden remembrance of Flower subdued at once the ardour of his gaze, and he sat wondering vaguely as to the whereabouts of that erratic mariner until his meditations were broken by the entrance of the boy with the steaming coffee, followed by Bill bearing a couple ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... eyes upon the best parlor curtains, when Barnes mounted to the box, as robust a stage-driver as ever extricated a coach from a quagmire. The team, playful through long confinement, tugged at the reins, and Sandy, who was at the bits, occasionally shot through space like an erratic meteor. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... the silent river, at this time of the year looking so cold and treacherous in its rippleless flow. The wet grass was stiffening with frost, and the only sounds disturbing the chillier purity of advancing night were the erratic bell at the bridge and the far-off rumble of a train on the mountain-side. Man still afforded the discordant note, and the only heat in the surroundings was that in the burning young heart that raged by ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Spanish naval preparations had been pushed with great vigor. A powerful squadron under Admiral Cervera, which had assembled at the Cape Verde Islands before the outbreak of hostilities, had crossed the ocean, and by its erratic movements in the Caribbean Sea delayed our military plans while baffling the pursuit of our fleets. For a time fears were felt lest the Oregon and Marietta, then nearing home after their long voyage from San Francisco of over 15,000 miles, might be surprised by Admiral Cervera's ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... a large, old-fashioned theatre, on Broadway, between Houston and Bleecker streets. It is devoted to pantomime, and is famous as the headquarters of the erratic genius who calls himself ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... "is something that can be objectively checked by another person than the patient. Lesions, swellings, inflammations, erratic heartbeat, and so on. A symptom is a subjective feeling of the patient, like aches, pains, nausea, dizziness, ...
— Cum Grano Salis • Gordon Randall Garrett
... to ancient streams of lava congealed by the cold, an opinion which has not been generally received. Other astronomers have seen in these inexplicable rays a kind of moraines, ranges of erratic blocks thrown out at the epoch of the ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... England to some town in South Wales, it was very awkward to have to leave your train on the banks of the Severn and make a voyage of more than two miles in a slow ferry-boat before you could take another train on the opposite shore. The Severn tides, too, were so erratic that there was never any knowing when the ferry-boat would be able to start. But that was what people had to put up with forty years ago. So the Great Western Railway Company, in 1871, decided to go under the fickle waters, as they found it so troublesome to ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... me scurvily had she reduced me to such absurd oracles. The phenomena seem so rare and so irregular, the vast majority of mankind having to go through life only afraid of ghosts, but never seeing them, that no general law of posthumous existence could be based on these obscure and erratic accidents. There may be only a survival of the fittest. It is not in the aberrations, but in the constant factors of human life that we must seek for light, and the attitude of these smellers after immortality is precisely that of the mediaevals who sought ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... all," said he, "I can't trust them. Patricia is too erratic and too used to having her own way. Jack will try to break off with her now, of course; but Jack, where women are concerned, is as weak as water. It is not a nice thing to do, but—well! one ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... the second person are derived from the Arte (68). Throughout this section the accent marks are quite erratic. In several places, for example, Collado has snata ...
— Diego Collado's Grammar of the Japanese Language • Diego Collado
... your thoughts from this ball of earth to all those glorious luminaries that adorn the high arch of heaven. The motion and situation of the planets, are they not admirable for use and order? Were those (miscalled ERRATIC) globes once known to stray, in their repeated journeys through the pathless void? Do they not measure areas round the sun ever proportioned to the times? So fixed, so immutable are the laws by which the unseen Author of nature actuates the universe. How ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... too strong for concealment, and yet not strong enough to break through the inherited habit of self-command. The General had broken through, I acknowledged, but then was not the very greatness of the great man the expression of an erratic departure from traditions rather than of the perfect ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... its own way. We have the whole menagerie within us—the tiger, the ape, the peacock, the ass, the goose, the sheep the hyena, and all the rest. And we have been letting these animals rule us. Even our Intellect is erratic, unstable, and like the quicksilver to which the ancient occultists compared it, shifting and uncertain. If you will look around you you will see that those men and women in the world who have really accomplished anything worth while have trained their minds to obedience. They have asserted ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... all-powerful. As has already been seen, he had been able to prevent Judge Folger taking the presidency of the convention, and for a few days he had everything his own way. But he soon proved so erratic a leader that his influence was completely lost, and after a few sessions there was hardly any member with less real power to influence the judgments of ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... the Irishman turned to the right, and followed the stream into the rocks. The course was so winding that he speedily disappeared from sight. The boy, who was compelled to sit still and await his return, at perhaps the most dangerous portion of the road, felt anything but comfortable over the erratic proceeding of his friend. But, fortunately, the latter had been gone but a short time when he reappeared, hurrying forward as if somebody was at ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... legends, bring individuals and tribes together.[25] Work is menial, cheerless, grinding, regular, and requires more precision and accuracy and, because attended with less ease and pleasure and economy of movement, is more liable to produce erratic habits. Antagonistic as the forms often are, it may be that, as Carr says, we may sometimes so suffuse work with the play spirit, and vice versa, that the present distinction between work and play will vanish, the transition will be less tragic and the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... the New York legislature, as head of the metropolitan police force, as federal civil service commissioner under President Harrison, as assistant secretary of the navy under President McKinley, and as governor of the Empire state. Political managers of the old school spoke of him as "brilliant but erratic"; they soon found him equal to the shrewdest in ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... his steps. Had Carlyle done so, he would probably have passed from the growing recognition of a society he was beginning to find on the whole congenial, to the solitude of intellectual ostracism. Scotland may be breezy, but it is not conspicuously free. Erratic opinions when duly veiled are generally allowed; but this concession is of little worth. On the tolerance of those who have no strong belief in anything, Carlyle, thinking possibly of rose-water Hunt and the litterateurs of his tribe, expressed himself with incisive and memorable ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... ancient saws which become almost original every time they are applied, and one of these sayings was "Everything is for the best." She believed in miracles, and had reason, for she received her weekly allowance from her erratic husband with monotonous regularity ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... large a charge simply rekindles the original vortex—still larger—in its original crater. And the activity that must be matched varies so tremendously, in magnitude, maxima, and minima, and the cycle is so erratic—ranging from seconds to hours without discoverable rhyme or reason—that all attempts to do so at any predetermined instant have failed completely. Why, even Kinnison and Cardynge and the Conference of Scientists couldn't solve it, ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... The Avenger was erratic and uncertain in her voyages. She evidently sailed to the principal islands of the South Seas, and did business with them all. From one of these voyages, Henry, her captain, returned with a wife—a dark-haired, dark-eyed, ladylike girl—for whom he built ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... you do come," said Elise cordially, "come right to our house and I know we can put you up. The Farringtons are erratic, but always hospitable; and I hereby invite this whole crowd to visit us in Paris, either jointly or severally, whenever the spirit ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... erratic course so abruptly that he was thrown to the floor. Madeleine already had the door open. She had all the strength of youth and perfect health, and he was worn out and shaken. He was scrambling to his feet. She put ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... and a gamin? She remembered the old tale of the maiden wedded to the beautiful and strange elf-king. Was the legend symbolic of that mysterious thread—call it genius or what you will—that runs its erratic course through humanity's woof, marring yet illuminating the staid design, never straightened with its fellow-threads, never tied, and never to be followed to its source? With the feeling of having for an instant held in her hand the key to the riddle of his nature, Mary went to Stefan ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... for the opinion that every man has his 'moment de peur'. No man is equally firm on all occasions. There are moods of weakness and irresolution in every mind, which is not exactly a machine, which impair its energies, and make its course erratic and uncertain. The truth was known in earlier ages. The old poets ascribed it to supernatural influence. Envious deities interposed between valor and its victim, paralysing the soul of the one and strengthening that of the other. Thus we find even Hector, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... was once a young man quite erratic Who lived all alone in an attic, He wrote magazine verse That made editors curse, But his friends ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... made an eloquent address, setting forth the details of the plans and the purposes of the new temple of art. The undertaking was now fairly inaugurated. The erratic King of Bavaria had from the first been Wagner's steadfast friend and munificent patron; but not to him alone belongs the credit of the colossal project and its remarkable success. When Wagner first made ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... falls is the well-known Cascade des Pelerins[91]) descends from behind the promontory h: its natural or proper course would be to dash straight forward down the line f g, and part of it does so; but erratic branches of it slide away round the promontory, in the lines of escape, k, l, &c. Each row of trees marks, therefore, an old torrent bed, for the torrent always throws heaps of stones up along its banks, on which the pines, growing higher ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... struggles came surging into the mind in quick succession: events of boyhood, of youth, and manhood; perils, travels, scenes, joys, and sorrows; loves and hates; friendships and indifferences. My mind followed the various and rapid transition of my life's passages; it drew the lengthy, erratic, sinuous lines of travel my footsteps had passed over. If I had drawn them on the sandy floor, what enigmatical problems they had been to those around me, and what plain, readable, intelligent histories ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... Temperamental. That is, he got soused on about three, and, while snooted, would deride Victor Herbert, thus proving that he was Brilliant, though Erratic. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... beautiful, and I dwelt upon it with pleasure. I have before observed, and indeed the reader must have gathered from my narative, that Melchior was no common personage. Every day did I become more partial to him, and more pleased with our erratic life. What scruples I had at first, gradually wore away; the time passed quickly, and although I would occasionally call to mind the original object of my setting forth, I would satisfy myself by the reflection, that there was ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... at a word. Drolleries, humours, reputed witticisms, are like odours of roast meats, past with the picking of the joint. Idea is the only vital breath. They have it rarely, or it eludes the chronicler. To say of the great erratic and forsaken Lady A****, after she had accepted the consolations of Bacchus, that her name was properly signified in asterisks 'as she was now nightly an Ariadne in heaven through her God,' sounds to us a roundabout, with wit somewhere and fun nowhere. Sitting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... He died, as you may be aware, five years ago in reduced circumstances, because he preferred to remain honest. An odd erratic choice, was it not?" ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... consonant remained unaffected (e.g., do, food, move, fool). Whatever the upshot, we may be reasonably certain that when the "phonetic law" has run its course, the distribution of "long" and "short" vowels in the old oo-words will not seem quite as erratic as at the present transitional moment.[154] We learn, incidentally, the fundamental fact that phonetic laws do not work with spontaneous automatism, that they are simply a formula for a consummated drift that sets in at a psychologically exposed point and gradually worms its ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... her waist; but Dick kept the engine going full speed and sat at the tiller with his eyes fixed upon the compass. It was not easy to steer by, because the lurching boat was short and the card span in erratic jerks when she began to yaw about, swerving off her course as she rose ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... his companion by the arm and, leaning forward, stared across the level garden into the shadows opposite. Something was moving there, under the trees; the men could see that it was white and formless, and that it pursued an erratic course. ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... shock and rattle they went through sleeping moonlit villages, which must have stirred an instant in their sleep as at the passing of a fugitive earthquake. Sometimes in an outlying house a light in one erratic, unexpected window would give them a nameless hint of the hundred human secrets which they left behind them with their dust. Sometimes even a slouching rustic would be afoot on the road and would look after them, as after a flying phantom. But still MacIan stood ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... of it—for his own; so, when he was constrained to make a choice, he settled himself in the wider, more fertile coulee, which he thereafter called the Flying U. While it is good policy to locate as near as possible to the source of those erratic little creeks which water certain garden spots of the northern range land, it is also well to choose land that will grow plenty of hay. J. G. Whitmore chose the hay land, and trusted that providence would insure the water supply. Through all these years Flying U creek had never ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... not in the patiently marching Una to be a creative thinker, yet she did hunger for self-mastery, and ardently was she following the erratic gibes at civilization with which young Walter showed his delight in having an audience, when the brown, homely Golden family clock ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of life and for the fulfilment of its obligations. They must know themselves and their own powers in order to exercise control and direction on the current of their lives. The complaint made of many women is that they are wanting in self-control, creatures of impulse, erratic, irresponsible, at the mercy of chance influences that assume control of their lives for the moment, subject to "nerves," carried away by emotional enthusiasm beyond all bounds, and using a blind tenacity of will ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... he is deprived of these insignia of opulence, to which he has attached the idea of happiness, finds himself just as unhappy as the needy wretch who has not wherewith to cover his nakedness. The civilized nations of the present day were in their origin savages composed of erratic tribes,—mere wanderers who were occupied with war; employed in, the chace; painfully obliged to seek precarious subsistence by hunting in those woods which the industry of their successors has cleared; which their labour has covered with yellow ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... heard the announcement—he sought to force his way up-stairs—they thrust him from the house, and nothing more of him was known till he arrived at his own door, an hour before Danvers and Maltravers came, in raging frenzy. Perhaps by one of the dim erratic gleams of light which always chequer the darkness of insanity, he retained some faint remembrance of his compact and assignation with Maltravers, which had happily guided his steps ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had at last loosed her hounds and they were hard on winter's traces. In fact, one belated train, after hours spent on the road, had succeeded in pushing through, an evidence that they all would soon be running with their accustomed, if rather erratic regularity, and there was naturally a tremendous excitement and jollification in the camp at this arrival of the first mail bearing news ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... over aquatic, Says he rows 'like a mangle'—what trash! That his swing and his time are erratic; That he puts in his oar with a splash. But these wonderful judges of rowing, If we win will be loud in applause; And declare 'the result was all owing To that excellent stroke, ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... with animals now. Kipling's ocean liner has human interest—a soul. I need not tell you that a boat is human. Its every erratic quality of crankiness, its veritable heroism under stress, its temperament (if you like that word) makes it very human indeed. That is why a man will often let his boat rot rather than ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... "Eh, well, he'll turn up," he said comfortingly. "Jack's erratic, you may say, in his comings and goings. He means nothing by it.... I've known him do the same to me.... Any time, now; you're likely ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... royal family at this time. It was his last visit to England. His company, always earnestly coveted, especially by the Prince, was apt to be bestowed in an erratic fashion characteristic of the man. Some one of the royal children would unexpectedly announce, "Papa, do you know the Baron is in his room," which was the first news of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... relation with humanity; and by teaching us that law and order, and a definite scheme of development, regulate even the strangest and wildest manifestations of individual life, she prepares the student to look for a goal even amidst the erratic wanderings of mankind, and to believe that history offers something more than an entertaining chaos—a journal of ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... time, while the letter Yod appears regularly as j, which Milton must have sounded as y. On the whole, it is quite clear that Milton read his Hebrew with minute precision. To see how just this verdict is, let anyone compare Milton's exactness with the erratic and slovenly transliterations in Edmund Chidmead's English edition of Leon Modena's Riti Ebraici, which was published only two years later than ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... husband, on their voyage to America deeply affected Mrs Browning. "Was she happy in anything?" asks her sorrowing friend. The first person seen on Italian soil when Browning and his wife disembarked at Leghorn was the brilliant and erratic Irish priest, "Father Prout" of Fraser's Magazine, who befriended them with good spirits and a potion of eggs and port wine when Browning was ill in Florence, and chided Mrs Browning as a "bambina" for her needless fears. ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... not travel so far or so long as had been his wont in days gone by. A wife and family, in the village of Salem, exercised an attractive influence, fastening him, as it were, to a fixed point, and converting his former erratic orbit into a circle which, with centripetal force, was always drawing ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... monument—the Lewknor. Near by is the beautiful West Dean Park. Mid-Lavant church is Early English but boasts a Norman window. The name of this village perpetuates a phenomenon which is becoming more rare each year. At one time erratic streams would make their appearance in the chalk combes in the head of the valley and combining, cause serious floods or "lavants." For some unknown reason the flow of water is gradually becoming smaller and of late years it ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... thy mind, "With groves, and dwellings of celestial gods, "And temples richly deck'd with offer'd gold, "Where thou shall pass. Far else;—thy journey lies, "Through ambushes, and savage monsters' forms. "Ev'n shouldst thou lucky not erratic stray, "Yet must thou pass the Bull's opposing horns; "The bow Haemonian, by the Centaur bent; "The Lion's countenance grim; the Scorpion's claws "Bent cruel in a circuit large; the Crab "In lesser compass curving. Hard the task "To rule ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... itself, in the apartments of his friend Cintio Aldobrandino, nephew of the new pope Clement the Eighth, where his hopes now seemed to be raised at once to their highest and most reasonable pitch; but fell ill, and was obliged to go back to Naples for the benefit of the air. A life so strangely erratic to the last (for mortal illness was approaching) is perhaps unique in the history of men of letters, and might be therefore worth recording even in that of a less man than Tasso; but when we recollect that this poet, in spite of all his weaknesses, and notwithstanding the enemies they provoked ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... themselves. This, as I shall explain in another essay, is, to my mind, the proper function of criticism. I shall never forget my first visits to the Caillebotte collection; and in the unforgettable thrill of those first visits M. Mauclair's bad science and erratic judgement counted for something—much perhaps. They put me into a mood of sympathetic expectation; and such a mood is, even for highly sensitive people, often an indispensable preliminary to aesthetic appreciation. There are those who have got to ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... to develop the necessary symbiosis and their growth takes off. On a bed of two-year-old seedlings, many individual trees are head and shoulders above the others. This is not due to superior genetics or erratic soil fertility. These are the individuals with a mycorrhizal ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... these things that everything is still very erratic, and that the men remain badly distributed. Nor is this all. The general command over the whole of the Legation area is now plainly modelled on the Chinese plan—that is, the officer commanding does not interfere with the others, excepting when he can do so with impunity to himself. As I have ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the peaks of the mountains in which the mine lay. It tilted again, and swept onward over the mountaintops, and then tilted once more and went racing up the valley in which the landing-grid was plainly visible. Calhoun swung it on an erratic course, lest ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... too well pleased. The last thing he desired was co-operation from the Rabbit-Hutch and association with the band of erratic, happy-go-lucky Bohemians that peopled it. "You're laying out a good deal of work for yourself," he remarked ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... everything sub specie oeternitatis, but to give a practical religious turn to his master's speculations. His teaching is closely in accordance with that of Tauler, whom he quotes as an authority, and whom he joins in denouncing the followers of the "false light," the erratic mystics of ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... from him. Herschel attributed their brilliancy to currents of lava congealed by the cold; an opinion, however, which has not been generally adopted. Other astronomers have seen in these inexplicable rays a kind of moraines, rows of erratic blocks, which had been thrown up at the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... covered with ice. Great glaciers extended over the whole of Switzerland, and icebergs floated from the mountains of Berkshire in Massachusetts upon a sea which filled the valley of the Connecticut River, dropping erratic blocks of stone, taken from those mountains, in straight lines, parallel with each other, half way across the valley, where they still lie. Similar icebergs floated from Snowdon, in Wales, and Ben Lomond, in Scotland, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke |
