"Fickleness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sighs: Near him his work-mate mended broken vows With dangerous gold, or strung soft rhymes together Upon a lady's tress.... And one there was alone, Who with wet downcast eyelids threw aside The remnants of a broken heart, and looked Into my face and bid me 'ware of love, Of fickleness, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... occupied with disagreeable reflections. Perhaps both the girls at last understood him, and had been comparing notes, to his infinite disadvantage. His fickleness and the dilemma he was in may have become a jest between them. What could he do? Resentment, except against himself, was impossible. If Amy understood him, in what other way could she meet any approach to sentiment on his part than by a laughing scorn? ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... the noblest impulses, he was equally capable of the basest actions. Extremely accessible to praise, he indiscriminately entertained every form of flattery; but his fickleness was such that no courtier could cajole him long. Among his favorite women was the beautiful Princess Tongoo Soopia, sister to the unfortunate Sultan Mahmoud, ex-rajah of Pahang. Falling fiercely in love with her on her presentation at his court, he procured ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... others; and it is rarely, except in a few dark and morose and gloomy natures, which are exceptions to the rule and standard of human nature, that man learns to be distrustful and suspicious of his kind, even after experience of fickleness and falsehood may have in some sort justified suspicions, until ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... easy the deed was; how soon it would be over; and how the action of one short night would give to all their nights and days to come sovereign sway and royalty! Then she threw contempt on his change of purpose, and accused him of fickleness and cowardice; and declared that she had given suck, and knew how tender it was to love the babe that milked her; but she would, while it was smiling in her face, have plucked it from her breast, and dashed its brains out, if she had so sworn to do it, as he had sworn to perform ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... incident as a glimpse of glory before His sufferings. Alas! it was but a glimpse. What a picture of the fickleness and treachery of the heart!—That excited populace who are now shouting their hosannahs, are ere long to be raising the cry, "Crucify Him, crucify Him!" Four days hence we shall find the palm branches lying withered on the Bethany road, and the blazing torches of an assassin-band ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... you touch a more difficult subject, but here, too, time and skill have wrought wonderful changes. In our histories we read of the time when the weather was chiefly noted for its fickleness, and when some parts of our globe were mere desert wastes, where rain was unknown and no life could exist. And in the inhabited portions one section would often be deluged with too much rain while another would have none, both conditions leading to a failure in agriculture and much consequent ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... has no direct historical reference. He calls it "An Old Story," because in all ages men have experienced this unjust reversal of public approval. The poem is merely an imaginative, dramatic representation of the fickleness of popular favor. ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... have admired your sister Sarah," said Christopher; "she was so delightfully feminine. And as for the red-headed swain, I have no patience with him. His fickleness was intolerable." ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... rank were invited, the females of whom are charged with being fond of showing themselves, and are usually to be seen in the front of plantations. Hitherto they had despised the fickleness of fashion, and had never modernized their dress enough to seem thinly clad even in the winter, and now they could not reconcile themselves to such a change, which, in fact, did them honour, though a few ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... Hydrangea Vain glory. Ice Plant Your looks freeze me. Ivy Friendship. Iris, German Flame. Iris, Common Garden A message for thee. Jonquil Affection returned. Jessamine, White Amiability. Jessamine, Yellow Gracefulness. Larkspur Fickleness. Lantana Rigor. Laurel Words though sweet may deceive. Lavender Mistrust. Lemon Blossom Discretion. Lady Slipper Capricious beauty. Lily of the Valley Return of happiness. Lilac, White Youth. " Blue First emotions of love. Lily, ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... the most pitiful experience of all, child," she replied. "She married. Shortly after you were born, she died, fortunately spared all knowledge of your father's faithless fickleness. Adnah, he, too, married again! You, Adnah, was too young to protect yourself from a stepmother, but we came to your rescue. Your great uncle, Peter, had just died and left us this fine estate, and here we are, trying to shield you from the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... suffered, and all might have gone well. Gradually the idea gained upon him, that it was not impossible to repair the past. His conduct had been unpardonable, no doubt; yet, perhaps it might be forgiven. But even if Elinor could forget his inexcusable fickleness, would her friends ever consent to risk her future peace with one who had so recklessly trifled with her already? Mr. Wyllys had been deeply indignant at his conduct; his whole manner had changed, there had been a cold ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... that every Man is full of Complaints, and constantly uttering Sentences against the Fickleness of Fortune, when People generally bring upon themselves all the Calamities they fall into, and are constantly heaping up Matter for their own Sorrow and Disappointment. That which produces the greatest Part of the [Delusions ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... they might be as much as they pleased in each other's company without being particular; but as soon as her eyes gave him some encouragement, he entertained no other thoughts than how to please her, without considering her fickleness, or the obstacles he ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... almost finished when the Ministers sent to tell him[243] that they would willingly receive him, but not as Ambassador from Sweden, because that kingdom was of a different persuasion. "I am surprised (he writes to his brother) at the fickleness of people, who invite the Lutherans to partake with them, and say they cannot receive me in quality of Ambassador from Sweden, on account of their differing in opinion from that kingdom." To go to sermon as a ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... preparing to devour you; and the wind is only one shade more respectable—nay, perchance the worse of the two; for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit, apparently inherent in human nature—and for which Father Adam be thanked—may very possibly lay the blame of their fickleness upon it, and bring a host of witnesses into court to testify to their general good behaviour—their calmness, and amenity, and inoffensiveness, till exposed to the evil influence of AEolus's unruly troop—the most wholesale agitators going, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... suite overlooked the barred den of lions from which, the prince thought, there could be no escape, his puzzlement was only increased. Though he searched about the room for some clue to the whereabouts of its former occupants he did not discover the niche behind the hangings. With the fickleness of insanity he quickly tired of the search, and, turning to the soldiers who had accompanied him from the floor below, ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Kinraid was married, her heart had still more strongly turned to Philip; she thought that he had judged rightly in what he had given as the excuse for his double dealing; she was even more indignant at Kinraid's fickleness than she had any reason to be; and she began to learn the value of such enduring love as Philip's had been—lasting ever since the days when she first began to fancy what a man's love for a woman should be, when she had first shrunk from the tone of tenderness he put into his especial term ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... animation in her countenance than on the previous days; but still the crowd passed on unnoticed. Even the learned brahmins, who stood immovable in rows on each side of her throne, became impatient: they talked about the fickleness of the sex, the impossibility of inducing them to make up their minds; they whispered wise saws and sayings from Ferdistan and others, about the caprice of women, and the instability of their natures, and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... JIMMY. The fickleness of women is notorious. It is exceeded only by their mendacity. But Angels have up to this time stood in good repute. Your conduct, sir, is scandalous. I am ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... difficulties, nor, because little progress may be made in our own time, abandon the enterprise as hopeless, and charge upon the obstinacy and bigotry of the nations the failure occasioned by our own fickleness in not pursuing steadily the only line of conduct on which any hope of success can be reasonably founded. We should make the same allowances for the Hindus as for other nations and consider how slow the progress of improvement has been ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... but leaves open to both, at any future period, an opportunity of retiring from the position of courtship taken up on the one side, and of receiving addresses on the other, without laying either party open to the accusation of fickleness or jilting. ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... semi-dependent position, and might have been expected to welcome the Romans. One of these, Abgarus, prince of Osrhoene, or the tract east of the Euphrates about the city of Edessa, had been received into the Roman alliance by Pompey, but, with the fickleness common among Orientals, he now readily changed sides, and undertook to play a double part for the advantage of the Parthians. Another, Alchaudonius, an Arab sheikh of these parts, had made his submission to Rome even earlier; ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... the snow of spring-time, nor night-old ice; The serpent when he sleepeth, nor girl's advice; The mind of changeful woman not long abideth, And fickleness of ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... "The fickleness is all on her ladyship's part,—not on mine," said Lord George; whereupon Lady Eustace walked out of the room and was not ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... design and its frustration were almost simultaneous. Her brain was still in a hideous tumult. Weakened by suffering, the shock of Helena's fickleness and injustice, the sudden perception that her sacrifice had been useless, if not absurd, had disturbed her mental balance for a few seconds, and left her at the mercy of passions hitherto in-existent to her consciousness. ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the greatest warrior of the age—conqueror of Italy—humbler of Germany—terror of the North—saw him account all his matchless victories poor, compared with the triumph you are now in a condition to win—saw him contemn the fickleness of fortune, while, in despite of her, he could pronounce his memorable boast, 'I shall go down to posterity with the ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... anybody else could have analysed their composition. He was apt to be the more moody and irritable because his resentments clothed themselves spontaneously in the language of some nobler emotion. If his friends are cold, he bewails the fickleness of humanity; if they are successful, it is not envy that prompts his irritation, but the rarity of the correspondence between merit and reward. Such a man is more faithful to his dead than to his living friends. The dead cannot change; they always come back to his memory in their old colours; ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... of fixed principles," he would say, "should express them in the looks of his house. New York changes its domestic architecture too rapidly. It is like divorce. It is not dignified. I don't like it. Extravagance and fickleness are advertised in most of these new houses. I wish to be known for different qualities. Dignity and prudence are the things that people trust. Every one knows that I can afford to live in the house that suits me. It is a guarantee ...
— The Mansion • Henry Van Dyke
... was forever having a "crush" on some girl or other, getting suddenly over it, and seeking another affinity with bewildering fickleness. Eva Larry had been proclaimed her dearest friend for a longer term than most who ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... there is any one desirous of the like fame, how will he guess what it is I have omitted,[1] so as to wish to hand down that same to posterity; since each man has a turn of thinking of his own, and a tone peculiar to himself. It was not, therefore, {any} fickleness, but assured grounds, that set me upon writing {again}. Wherefore, Particulo,[2] as you are amused by Fables (which I will style "Aesopian," not "those of Aesop;" for whereas he published but few, I have brought out a great many, employing the old style, but with modern subjects), now at your ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... period began, England was a Commonwealth. Charles I., by obstinate insistence upon absolutism, by fickleness and faithlessness, had increased and strengthened his enemies. Parliament had seized the reins of government in 1642, had completely established its authority at Naseby in 1645, and had beheaded the king ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... setting down company at the nearest possible point of access to your venerable gateway. Besides, even you have too much regard to the land of Kit North, to entertain any desire to see its most attractive shrine of pilgrimage too suddenly eclipsed; and why should you court such an exposure of popular fickleness, when about to become yourself "the comet of a season," and to go through that brilliant perihelion, in which, reversing the feat of Horace with his lofty head, you will sweep away all other stars with a swinge of your luminous caudality? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... which desires that all be happy as far as it is possible. I will say as much of the fourth section, where there is mention of the source of wrong elections, which are error or ignorance, negligence, fickleness in changing too readily, stubbornness in not changing in time, and bad habits; finally there is the importunity of the appetites, which often drive us inopportunely towards external things. The fifth section ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... set of the wind, or the rates of pay on various lines, or stowage, or freights, or rigs, or currents, or the characters of various skippers and mates, or the liveliness or sulkiness or homeliness or fickleness of this or that kind of cargo, they would revert extra-professionally to Uncle Tibe: of whom the old stories would be repeated over and over, with long pauses, chuckles, slow appreciations—'Ay, Tibe! . . . He was a ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... danger of delay from calms in the tropical latitudes, through which we should have to pass—from storms off Cape Horn, renowned among mariners for the fickleness of its wind—other obstacles might be encountered, and the voyage protracted far beyond the period ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... the sly twist he gave her hair as he passed her desk on his way to the spelling class. As for Miss Lucy, who saw herself displaced, she wrote to Philemon Ward, and told him of her jilting, and railed at the fickleness and ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... such a hold over Marie Antoinette that they begin to furnish some topics for her letters to her mother, one of which shows that she had already formed that opinion of French fickleness which she had afterward too abundant cause to maintain. "I do hope," she says, "that the good intelligence between our two nations will last. One good thing in this country is, that if ill-natured feelings are quick to arise, ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... loses, as he is almost sure to do, it is because he is playing against more expert hands than himself. This is what is called a "square game." Everything is open and fair, and the bank relies on the fickleness of the cards and the superior skill of its dealer. In the second-class houses, however, the visitor is literally fleeced. Every advantage is taken of him, and it is morally certain that he will lose every cent he risks. In first-class ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... seldom art thou found Without annoyance in this earthly state! For, haply, thou dost feed some rankling wound, Or on thy youth pale poverty doth wait, Till years, on heavy wing, have rolled away; Or where thou most didst hope firm faith to see, Thou meetest fickleness estranged and cold; Or if some true and tender heart there be, On which, through every change, thy soul might trust, Death comes with his fell dart, and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... It has many heroines, but only one hero, and this comes no doubt from the peculiar purpose of the writer to portray different varieties and shades of female characters at once, as is shadowed in Chapter II, and also to display the intense fickleness and selfishness of man. ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... priests shall not go without an answer, that will, I am sure, induce them to place a great confidence in the benefit arising from Christians, who damn themselves every hour of the day. For while they speak of the vainness and fickleness of oaths, as an objection against our project, they little consider that this fickleness and vainness is the common practice among all the people of this sublunary world; and that consequently, instead of being ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... shall I say of Julia, constant against the fickleness of a lover who is a mere wicked child?—of Helena, against the petulance and insult of a careless youth?—of the patience of Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the calmly devoted wisdom of the "unlessoned girl," who appears among ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... British. "Had they destroyed it, we were most certainly all lost; however, we joined the main body." Colonel Smith now had his force together, and had done all that could be done, yet for two hours more he, by futile marchings and countermarchings, "discovered great Fickleness[68] and Inconstancy of Mind." The delay was serious; he had earlier sent to Gage for reinforcements, and he ought now to have considered that every minute was bringing more Americans to the line of his retreat. When, about ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... so that Diogenes's messengers, being sufficiently mocked and derided, were forced to return to their master. King Demetrius himself also sent a ship, wherein Aratus was to be brought to him in chains. And the Athenians, exceeding all possible fickleness of flattery to the Macedonians, crowned themselves with garlands upon the first news of his death. And so in anger he went at once and invaded Attica, and penetrated as far as the Academy, but then suffering himself to be pacified, he did no further act of hostility. And the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... me. Sit down again, for I have a long story to tell. I have not changed my mind, nor am I guilty of any special fickleness. But circumstances have arisen which make it impossible for me to keep my engagement. Captain Bertram sees this as plainly as I do. He is ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... she fix on me her wayward fickleness, My heart will be grateful for the good she does me; Does she wish to show elsewhere her benevolence, I give her back her gifts without pain—without regret. Filled with strongest virtue, I will espouse Poverty, If for dower she brings me ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... to Avignon, &c. you shall not change that intention or mode of travelling, without first satisfying the fermiers for two posts further than the place you repent at—and 'tis founded, continued he, upon this, that the Revenues are not to fall short through your fickleness— ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... present: 'The men who framed the Constitution had studied thoroughly all former attempts at Republican government. History was strewn with the wrecks of unsuccessful democracies. Sometimes the usurpation of the executive power, sometimes the fickleness and unbridled license of the people, had brought popular governments to destruction. To guard against these dangers, they placed their chief hope in the Senate. The Senate which was organized in 1789, ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... upon the fickleness of popular favor that the time was so short before these universal favorites dropped out ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... did determine,—and did take and pursue his resolution. In all the tottering imbecility of a new government, and with Parliament totally unmanageable, he persevered. He persevered to expel the fears of his people by his fortitude, to steady their fickleness by his constancy, to expand their narrow prudence by his enlarged wisdom, to sink their factious temper in his public spirit. In spite of his people, he resolved to make them great and glorious,—to make England, inclined to shrink ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... mankind. When Sirius[2] o'er the welkin rages, Our kindly help his fire assuages; But woman is a cursed inflamer, No parish ducking-stool can tame her: To kindle strife, dame Nature taught her; Like fireworks, she can burn in water. For fickleness how durst you blame us, Who for our constancy are famous? You'll see a cloud in gentle weather Keep the same face an hour together; While women, if it could be reckon'd, Change every feature every second. Observe our figure in a morning, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... astrologer, enters and not only announces that Chrysa is dead, but tells the equally grateful news that Octavia, Nero's wife, has been condemned to die. Nero himself now appears upon the scene, and a duet follows in which Poppoea reproaches him for his fickleness and he seeks to console her with flattery. At its close the death of Octavia is announced, and Poppoea is appeased by the prospect of sharing the throne. Meanwhile Chrysa has fallen into the custody of Agrippina, Nero's mother, who keeps close charge of her ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... directness, and determination in the Duke of Wellington. Next came an evening paper, of high character for Conservative honesty and ability, which (having all along justified the past policy of vigilant neutrality) could not be supposed to acknowledge any fickleness in ministers: the time for moderation and indulgence, according to this journal, had now passed away: the season had arrived for law to display its terrors. Not in the Government, but in the conspirators had occurred the change: and so far—to the extent, namely, of taxing these conspirators ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... formidable, especially when supported by a powerful king, nobly descended, and legally invested with the crown. A natural sympathy, too, had been awakened for the emperor, as numbed with cold he besought the pity of the Pontiff; and, with proverbial fickleness, men, in ascribing humility to the king, imputed arrogance to the Pope. Owing to these causes, it was not long before Henry found himself stronger than ever. Inflamed with new ardor, he loudly lamented his submission at Canossa, and cursing ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... entangled he was sitting upon the turf, and eight or ten men—the night was dark, and he was rather too confused to count—standing round him, apparently waiting for him to recover. He mournfully assumed that he was captured, and would probably have made some philosophical reflections on the fickleness of fortune, had not his internal ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the fickleness of untried youth! Henry seemed to promise his country freedom and he gave it tyranny. Francis promised his people glory—that is, honor and splendor. In the end he brought them shame and suffering. Charles V of Germany, youngest of this mighty trio, seemed by his wisdom to promise his subjects ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... But in a little while, Eumolpus, mouthpiece of the distressed and author of the present good understanding, fearing that the general good humor might flag for lack of amusement, began to indulge in sneers at the fickleness of women: how easily they fell in love; how readily they forgot even their own sons! No woman could be so chaste but that she could be roused to madness by a chance passion! Nor had he need to quote from old tragedies, or to ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... with the steamer, in company with twenty to thirty English men and women. Next day the number of English increased to fifty. If I ever marry, it must be an English woman." Some years later, however, with the fickleness of genius, he writes about Ernestine, the daughter of a rich Bohemian Baron, "a delightfully innocent, childish soul, tender and pensive, attached to me and to everything artistic by the most sincere love, extremely ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... majesty to believe I would not have come from so remote a country as I have done, the name of which perhaps may be unknown in your dominions, if I had not been certain of the cure I propose. What would not the world say of my fickleness, if, after such great fatigues and so many dangers as I have undergone in the pursuit, I should abandon this generous enterprise? Even your majesty would lose that esteem you have conceived for me. If ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the accession of Charles X. to his own fall, M. de Villele not only made no stand against the inconsiderate fickleness of the King, but even profited by it to strengthen himself against his various enemies. Too clear-sighted to hope that Charles X. would persevere in the voluntary course of premeditated and steady moderation which Louis XVIII. had followed, he ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of my early character was plasticity and fickleness. I was mortified by this exposure of my ignorance, and disgusted with my former course of reading. I now set myself violently to the study of history. With my turn of mind, and with the preposterous habits which I had been daily acquiring, I could not fail ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a rapidity that astonished him, and instead of trying to forget, he found himself trying to remember. He had not foreseen this turn of affairs, and was not prepared for it. He was disgusted with himself, surprised at his own fickleness, and full of a queer mixture of disappointment and relief that he could recover from such a tremendous blow so soon. He carefully stirred up the embers of his lost love, but they refused to burst into a blaze. There was only a comfortable glow that warmed and did him good without putting him into ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... came nearer to the normal type of the men of the early Renaissance. It may be added parenthetically, that even in respect to his moral character he will not be fairly judged, if we listen solely to the complaints of the German Church, which his fickleness helped to balk of the Council ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Egyptian"—individualized and placed before us. Her mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's wit and woman's wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of irregular grandeur, her bursts of ungovernable temper, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her magnificent spirit, her royal pride, the gorgeous eastern coloring of the character; all these contradictory elements has Shakspeare seized, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Sciagurato!" A circumstance which tended to embitter a good deal the close of Weber's life was the arrival in London of Rossini, to whom and to whose works the public immediately transferred its demonstrations of passionate admiration with even more, than its accustomed fickleness. Disparaging comparisons and contrasts to Weber's disadvantage were drawn between the two great composers in the public prints; the enthusiastic adulation of society and the great world not unnaturally followed the brilliant, joyous, sparkling, witty Italian, who was a far better subject for ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... its sons and daughters skillful, you see that it is this line more than any other. "The people in their wisdom"—this is the kind of wisdom most needed by the people. Democracy is on its trial, and no one knows how it will stand the ordeal. Abounding about us are pessimistic prophets. Fickleness and violence used to be, but are no longer, the vices which they charge to democracy. What its critics now affirm is that its preferences are inveterately for the inferior. So it was in the beginning, they ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... nothing else. "I swear to you," wrote Moultou, "that I could not understand him the least in the world; he is a marvellous actor; I could have sworn that he loved you."[130] And there really was no acting in it. The serious Genevese did not see that he was dealing with "one all fire and fickleness, a child." ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... whatever cares and labors, turn to the time when thought shall people their solitude as with the presence of angels. They hear heavenly voices asking, Why stay ye on the earth, unless to grow? Vanity, frivolity, and fickleness die within them; and they grow to be humble and courageous, disinterested and laborious, strong and persevering. The cultivation of their higher nature becomes the law of their life; and the sense of duty, "stern daughter of the voice of God," which of all motives that sway the ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... different persons, and in the same person at different times. These fluids, and particularly the saliva, assist in the formation and change of taste. This accounts not only for the different tastes of different persons, but also for the varying taste of the same persons, and for that fickleness of taste which is so common in sickness, when the fluids of the mouth, in a disordered and deranged state, mix with the food, and produce the disagreeable taste so often complained of at such times, and which, moreover, occasionally ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... to Windsor, and thither on the Friday—the 6th of September—came Alvarez de Quadra to seek the definite answer which the Queen had promised him on the subject of the Spanish marriage. What he had seen that night at Whitehall, coupled with his mistrust of her promises and experience of her fickleness, had rendered him uneasy. Either she was trifling with him, or else she was behaving in a manner utterly unbecoming the future wife of the Archduke. In either case some explanation was necessary. De Quadra must ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... the person possessed of it, or such as incapacitates him for business and action, it is instantly blamed, and ranked among his faults and imperfections. Indolence, negligence, want of order and method, obstinacy, fickleness, rashness, credulity; these qualities were never esteemed by any one indifferent to a character; much less, extolled as accomplishments or virtues. The prejudice, resulting from them, immediately strikes our eye, and gives us the sentiment ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... afterwards, the wind, true to its proverbial character of fickleness, died away, and we were left without any guide by which to steer our course across the trackless deep. Still we pulled on, I fancied, in the direction of the coast. We should have been wise had we laid on our oars, and gone to sleep. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... at last, after long years of delusion and endurance, the scales drop from the eyes of the wife, and revenge or despair drives her into a hostile position towards her lord and master, she is an inhuman criminal, and the hue and cry against the fickleness of women and the falsity of their nature is endless. Oh, the injustice of society and the injustice of cruel man. Is there no relief for helpless women that are bound by the ties of marriage to men who ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... that the mother of his new pupil might be induced to defray the expenses of this Review, but he did not wish to move too rapidly lest he should frighten the lady away; he intended to prepare the way gently. Unfortunately, Madame de Barancy, on account of her very fickleness of nature, was difficult to reach. She would continually change the conversation just at the important point, because she found it ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... band to bind me willingly To heaven and to thee. At noon-day, when the tumult and The din of life is heard, When in life's battle each heart is With various passions stirred, I turn me from the blazonry, The fickleness of life, And think of thee in earnest thought, My dearest one-my wife! When the daylight hath departed, And shadows of the night Bring forth the stars, as beacons fair For angels in their flight, I think of thee as ever mine, Of thee as ever ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... my work, said good bye to my acquaintances, and went on board. Fifteen minutes before the steamer sailed I had my luggage tumbled from her deck back on to the wharf, and came ashore, swearing at myself for a fool, and knowing that I would be well laughed at and quizzed for my fickleness by every one ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... that the whole sea was always as calm as was then the portion they beheld. Storms, if less frequent, are certainly not less violent than in other portions of the world. We certainly very frequently experienced the fickleness of the elements. As we were about to haul up to the northward, the wind suddenly shifted round to that very quarter, and then shifted somewhat to the eastward. We stood away on the starboard-tack, but were evidently making a great deal of lee-way. ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... President Grant my heart-history has been allowed to drag like a lazy funeral train. Before, all was bright and luminous, with beautiful aspirations; but from that time suspense has coiled around me, hope has flared up, blinked, and almost died out. I did not understand it then. It seemed to me that fickleness was in the heart of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... cannot help remarking that this circuit of the wind from SW. by W. to NW. or N., from our insular position, imparts to our climate its fickleness and inconstancy. How often will our brightest sky become suffused by the blackest vapours on the slightest breach of SW. wind, and the clouds will then disappear as speedily as they formed, when ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... chief bridesmaid's mother shook her head at him, and called him fickle, but then his fickleness was of so open and boyish an order that it could hardly be regarded as a fault, especially since no one—with the exception of the chief bridesmaid—ever took him seriously. And to her at least young Noel Wyndham was always tenderly faithful ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... (1) The dangers of fickleness (1:6; 4:9; 15:16). (2) The methods of false teachers: (a) Their chief method is to attack men prominent in the movement, (b) They usually put forward some one else for leader; They would supplant Paul with Peter, (c) One may well ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... him with a pang about her heart. From which side of the house had come this fickleness, this instability and love of change in Oliver's character? she asked herself—a new interest every day—all the traditions of his forefathers violated. How could she overcome it in him? how make him more practical? Years before, ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... his characters had taken the matter into their own hands, against his will. Or is it art, and art of the subtlest order, which in Kjartan Olafsson, the glorious hero, still leaves something of lightness, of fickleness, as compared both with the intensity of the passion of Gudrun and the dogged resolution of Bolli? There is another Saga in which a hero of the likeness of Kjartan is contrasted with a dark, malevolent, ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... other emotions, strengthening and supporting him, was a secret bitterness towards Kate—a certain contempt of her fickleness, her lightness, her shallow love, her readiness to be off with the old love and on with the new. There was a sort of pride in his own higher type of devotion, his sterner passion. Pete invited him to the wedding, but he would not go, ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... victorious Esperantists, at present in possession of the field, poke fun at these new-fangled schemes. A parody in Esperanto verse, entitled Lingvo de Molenaar, and sung to the tune of the American song Riding down from Bangor, narrates the fickleness of Pan-Roman and how it changed into Universal. It is said that a group of Continental Esperantists, at a convivial sitting, burnt the apostate Idiom Neutral in effigy by making a bonfire of Neutral literature. On the other side amenities are not wanting. It ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... any of that severity which would break my heart, none of that fickleness of manner which would be worse than death ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... But it was not so much that Barabbas was loved as that Jesus was hated, and it was not the multitude so much as the rulers that hated him. Many of those now shrieking 'Crucify Him!' had shouted 'Hosanna!' a day or two before till they were hoarse. The populace was guilty of fickleness, blindness, rashness, too easy credence of the crafty calumnies of the rulers. But a far deeper stain rests on these rulers who had resisted the light, and were now animated by the basest self-interest in the garb of keen regard for the honour of God. There were very different ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... this proof of the rapidity of feminine fickleness, I began to congratulate her effusively on having obtained such an excellent substitute for my worthless self, and to wish the happy couple all earthly felicities, when she explained that he was not a fiance, but merely a sort of friend, and Mrs MANKLETOW severely added that they had come to ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... can be possible, as it appears to me, without the co-operation of the leading commercial nations. Even with that co-operation its accomplishment and permanence may not be absolutely certain, unless the late transcendent fickleness of the supply and demand subsides, or unless the ratio of value can be adjusted with more consummate accuracy than has hitherto been found by any single nation to be practicable. One-tenth of one per cent. difference ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... mortification to one in whose bosom pride still rested. She would not have thus tormented herself with turning and twisting Mary's information into such ideas, had she not felt assured that he had penetrated her weakness, and despised her. Fickleness was no part of St. Eval's character, of that she was convinced; but it was natural he should cease to love, when he had ceased to esteem, and in the society and charms of Louisa Manvers endeavour to ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... this information, and then made his farewells. Edna's good wishes were couched in a spirit of frigid magnanimity. She had too much self-respect to let him perceive that she resented his fickleness. ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... public life in 1851, as one of the three representatives for Melbourne in Victoria's first Parliament. But, doubtful perhaps, with his anti-radical temperament as to the fickleness of large town populations, as well, possibly, as the dread of his liability to get compromised by the over-zeal of supporters, he changed the venue to the small semi-Irish town of Kilmore, where his seat was always secure, until, in his advancing years, ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... Eyebright had expected, and she had a little sore feeling at her heart, as if the others cared less about losing her than she should have cared had she been in their place. This idea cost her some private tears; she comforted herself by a poem which she called "Fickleness," and which began: ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... aspersions, as their friends, perhaps however willing, may at that distance of time be incapable of removing." With this author, Mr. Masters, Cole had quarrelled so often, that Masters writes, "I am well acquainted with the fickleness of his disposition for more than forty ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... sisters, daughters—have you not watched those dear to you in the many moods of which a feminine heart is capable; have you not seen them affectionate, tender, and impulsive? Would you love them so dearly but for the fickleness of their moods? Have you not worshipped them in your hearts, for those sublime impulses which put all man's plans and calculations to shame? Look on the accused, citizens. She loves the Republic, the people of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... red," of startling if somewhat factitious beauty. To say that the plot now thickens would be to use too coarse a word; it becomes slightly tinged with incident, inasmuch as Euphues falls in love with Lucilla, the destined bride of Philautus. She reciprocates his passion, and the double fickleness of mistress and friend forms an excellent opportunity, which Lyly does not fail to seize, for infinite moralizings in euphuistic strains. Philautus is naturally indignant at the turn affairs have taken, and the former friends exchange ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... imperial aristocracy. Even in the first steps of his enterprise he was made to feel the need of caution, and it was by statute, after all, not by decree, that the whole matter was finally regulated. So curious is popular fickleness that an Emperor who could boldly tyrannize in almost any other direction felt that he dared not take the risk of constituting himself a fountain of honor, such as ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... respectful gratitude. Yet avoiding all allusion to the past, guarding himself scrupulously from confidential converse, and observing a frigid politeness to Mademoiselle Marie, there remained doubt in his mind that, the fickleness of the fair sex aiding him, the young mother of the girl would renounce her chimerical project. His error was great: and it may be here remarked that a hard and scornful scepticism may in this world engender as many false judgments and erroneous calculations as candor ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... amuse all cricketers, and while from the male point of view it may serve as a good illustration of the fickleness of woman and the impossibility of forecasting what course she will take, the fair sex will find in it an equally shining proof of the colossal vanity ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... usurped the government, and Shawer applied to the King of Jerusalem, Amalric, for assistance. Amalric in turn attempted usurpation, and again the officers of Noureddin came to the aid of Shawer. The vizier paid the penalty of his fickleness by losing his head, and his post was occupied by Chyrkouh, who, while ruling Egypt as a vizier of the Fatimite caliph, was in ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... it is no mere change of opinions. It is not a perpetual leaping from one position to another like that of Mr. George Moore. It is a quite continuous advance along a quite solid road in a quite definable direction. But the chief proof that it is not a piece of fickleness and vanity is the fact that it has been upon the whole in advance from more startling opinions to more humdrum opinions. It has been even in some sense an advance from unconventional opinions to conventional opinions. This fact fixes Mr. Wells's honesty and proves him ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... they have affinities, and form a new union or partnership. In many chemical changes the atoms divorce themselves, each forsaking its mate or mates, and seeking some newer affinity in the shape of a more congenial atom. The atoms manifest a fickleness and will always desert a lesser attraction for a greater one. This is no mere bit of imagery, or scientific poetry. It is a scientific statement of the action of atoms along the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... Iron Cross'—a generous supply of these decorations being carried in a basket by one of his orderlies, following him about as he walked along. Meantime the King, leaving Napoleon in the chateau to ruminate on the fickleness of fortune, drove off to see his own victorious soldiers, who greeted him with huzzas that rent the air, and must have added to the pangs of the ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... Majesty, his crown and dignity," and condemn the said forgery to be burnt on the 8th at Westminster, and three days later at the Exchange? How could they sentence King to less than six months of Newgate and a fine of L50, though, in their gentleness or fickleness, they ultimately released him from some of the former and all the latter penalty? Happy those who possess this political curiosity, and can compare it with the speech which the King really did make on the same day, and which, perhaps, ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... earned. He had never seemed stirred by the popular odium, he never seemed to prize the popular praise, which he received; it was not for praise that he had worked, but for simple duty; and his experience of the fickleness of public favour might make him something scornful of it. To the honours which his Sovereign delighted to shower on him—honours perhaps never before bestowed on a subject by a monarch—he was sensitive. The Queen to him was the noblest personification of the country whose good had ever been, ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... beautiful as an interview of first love, went on our first meeting with this Northern river. But water, the feminine element, is so mobile and impressible that it must protect itself by much that seems caprice and fickleness. We might be sure that the Penobscot would not always flow so gently, nor all the way from forests to the sea conduct our bark without one shiver of panic, where rapids broke noisy and foaming over rocks that showed their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... so, Elsie on her side did not attempt to break through these little restraints that had fallen around them. It was natural that she should be glad to escape from the gloom which surrounded Elizabeth, and in this respect the fickleness of her character was fortunate; from her lack of concentrativeness, the girl was able to throw off any trouble the moment its actual danger ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... round hole. Moreover, we are to insist on the essential and increasing individuality of women, which is to a large extent a recent phenomenon. The cynical commonplace is "All women are alike"—and then follows the specific accusation—"in fickleness", "in extravagance", "in unreasonableness", in this trick or that. The chief effort of conservatism is to make them alike, to fit each one for the same life by the same training in ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... turn the great events in the life of man! If I had received a cool letter from my intended wife; if I had only heard a rumour of any thing from which fickleness in her might have been inferred; if I had found in her any, even the smallest, abatement of affection; if she had but let go any one of the hundred strings by which she held my heart: if any of these, never ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... the Union from the disobedience of the States, the States from the exaggerated claims of the Union, the public interest against private interests and the conservative spirit of stability against the fickleness of the democracy." The contrast between these observations and the disheartened words in which Jay declined renomination to the chief justiceship in 1801 gives perhaps a fair measure ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... the English captain, had imposed a heavy fine upon the Kohong (a company of merchants possessing the monopoly of the European trade,) although the members of this body could have no concern in the transaction." Capt. K. is decidedly of opinion, that nothing but resolute conduct will overcome the fickleness and knavery of the Chinese. He pays a high compliment to our countrymen, especially Mr Drummond, president of the factory, who interfered in his behalf when at Whampoa, and with effect, when they could easily have thwarted his plan, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... there had been a strong and indeed unreasonable feeling against Hastings. At the close of the trial there was a feeling equally strong and equally unreasonable in his favour. One cause of the change was, no doubt, what is commonly called the fickleness of the multitude, but what seems to us to be merely the general law of human nature. Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had as one of their gods, Yahveh, whom they endowed with their qualities; qualities inherent in a primitive people: jealousy and might, trickery and fickleness. They evolved a worship that contained in a modified form many of the ceremonials that they witnessed when they came into contact with the Babylonians and Phoenicians. Their Bible they maintained to be a collection ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... not, constancy is not. This perspicuous proverb from the Persian (which I made up myself for the occasion) is cited in mitigation of the Tyro's regrettable fickleness, he—to his shame be it chronicled—having practically forgotten the woe-begone damsel's very existence within eighteen short hours after his adventure in knight-errantry. Her tear-ravaged and untidy plainness had, in that brief time, been exorcised ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... internal discord, was not less so in 1848. The history of the court was one of scandal, and of the government one of weakness, fickleness, and incapacity. The year 1847 closed by a change of ministry, when the infamous Narvaez was in the ascendant, and his creatures were gathered around him in the guise of a cabinet. The queen-mother, it was declared, had been married in December, 1833, to her ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... not,[II-E] dreamed once upon a night, that the figure of Proserpina, whom he had long worshipped, visited his slumbers with an angry and vindictive countenance, and menaced him with vengeance, in resentment of his having neglected her altars, with the usual fickleness of a polytheist, for those of some more fashionable divinity. Not that goddess of the infernal regions herself could assume a more haughty or more displeased countenance than that with which Lady Binks looked from time to time upon ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... and depressed, for she was a faithful little soul, and was true to all her likes and dislikes; fickleness to her friends was not in her nature; if she liked a person she ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... some are slaves to them; some even find rivals in them. Some are prevented from forming friendships, by tyranny on one side or by insubordination on the other; by selfishness there or by heartlessness here. Envy, vanity, fickleness, spite, festering incompatibilities of character, often prove fatal in these veiled and intimate relations. But when the characters of mother and daughter are happy accords, or accurate counterparts, rich, lofty, ardent, and disinterested, the solidly ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... representatives, according to population. There were, in fact, fifteen members. The first election passed off quietly in the autumn of the same year. Dr. Carson, the father of Home Rule, stood for St. John's, and Mr Justice Prowse has usefully noted that he was defeated. The fickleness and ingratitude of the people were never more dramatically illustrated. "He had been the pioneer of the new movement, had suffered in the people's cause, and yet the public, 'that many-headed monster thing—the mob,' were the ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... altogether. Rightly or wrongly, I have the reputation of fickleness in regard to women, and Aniela must have heard remarks about it; maybe it is for that very reason the dear girl shows such unbounded confidence in me. I understand, and can almost hear the pure soul saying: "They wrong you,—you ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... For ease of illustration, I have joined together the details of so delicate a scrutiny by a thread of fiction. The outward body of it matters little. The essential point is to remember that such things were not caused, as they try to persuade us, by human fickleness, by the inconstancy of our fallen nature, by the chance persuasions of desire. There was needed the deadly pressure of an age of iron, of cruel needs: it was needful that Hell itself should seem a shelter, an asylum, by contrast ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... attempting to describe the fashions of his countrymen, gave up the effort in sheer despair over the variety and fickleness of costume, and drew a naked man with a pair of shears in one hand and a piece of cloth in the other, to the end that he should shape his apparel as he himself liked; and this he called an Englishman. Even the gentle Harrison, who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... life, they had played together as children; more than this, though now he would have been quite willing to forget the whole episode and even more than willing that she should forget it, there had been a time when he had moped in wretched melancholy because of what he had then considered her utter fickleness. Shortly after this he had been sent East to college and had borne the separation with a fortitude that had rather surprised him when he recalled how bitter a thing ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... ruminations upon the advisability of discarding her, and the difficulty he experienced in devising a plan whereby this could be done easily and gracefully. He only thought of himself as the blameless victim of a woman's fickleness. The bitter things he had read and heard of the sex's inconstancy rose in his mind, as acrid bile sometimes ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy |
