"Wilful" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out-and-out wilful old girl as you are, Mary!" ejaculated Lynde, scarlet with mortification. "I ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in his will had declared in so many words that he owed more than mere reparation to the neglected but unforgotten son born to him and his beloved but long dead wife, Laura Gwynne),—even though Striker knew all this, it was evident that he looked upon this son as the natural protector of the wilful girl, notwithstanding the feud between step-mother ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... an easy fair gale of wind, as in a storm, if they have no pilot, or the pilot be ignorant or unwary; and disasters of that nature happen as frequently as any others, and are as fatal. When rocks are apparent, and the pilot, bold and wilful, runs directly upon them, without fear or wit, we know the fate of the ship—it must perish, and all that are in it will inevitably be lost; but in a smooth sea, a bold shore, an easy gale, the unseen rocks or shoals are the ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... weighty things in the world beside. And, therefore, I marvel much at those people which be the maintainers of uses without knowledge, having no other word in their mouth but this use, use, custom, custom. Such men, more wilful than wise, beside other discommodities, take all place and occasion from all amendment. And this I speak ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... wife cannot bear the sound of his name when she is weak from fasting, so we call him 'IT' at this time of the year. He carried off our eldest daughter last summer. She was proud and wilful, and would not stay by her mother's side.... She had ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... she was very young she was all for the world, and pleasure, and dress, and company. Indeed we were all very ignorant, and thought if we took care for this life, and wronged nobody, we should be sure to go to heaven at last. My daughters were both wilful, and, like ourselves, strangers to the ways of God and the word of his grace. But the eldest of them went out to service, and some years ago she heard a sermon, preached at —- church by a gentleman that was going to —- as chaplain to the colony, and ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... relaxed his hold. He doated on this obstinate, pretty, wilful child of his—the only girl, and whose temper was the ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... "They call us hi Merionethshire the wilful Wynnes. You will find me a good friend if you don't want the things I want, I am like most younger brothers, inclined to want things. I thank you all for a pleasant hour. It is like home, or better." With this he bowed low to my mother's curtsey, and went away, chatting ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... ground equally familiar to the writer and to his readers. If there be no such common ground, they will certainly not come into full accord. There have been recusants who, by a certain acuteness of their own, have partly done so,—wilful recusants; but they have been recusants, not to the extent of discarding grammar,—which no writer could do and not be altogether in the dark,—but so far as to have created for themselves a phraseology which ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... life in these last days seemed to be of a sacrificial nature. She was sweet and gentle with every one,—with me in particular, I may say,—and there was something positively humble in her attitude of self-abnegation. Where she had once been wilful and ironic, she was now gentle and considerate. Nor was I the only one to note these subtle changes in her. I doubt, however, if the others were less puzzled than I. In fact, Mrs. Titus was palpably perplexed, ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... to Isabel Temple's grave in the remote shore field of his farm. Isabel Temple had lived and died eighty years ago. She had been very lovely, very wilful, very fond of playing with the hearts of men. She had married William Temple, the brother of his great-grandfather, and as she stood in her white dress beside her bridegroom, at the conclusion of the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... cases the fault is man's, in others it is woman's. Perhaps in all cases both are somewhat at fault; yet the responsibility rests on woman to make home a delight. When she fails she must take the consequences. Failure with her is often a mistake. She knows no better. Ignorance, in some, is wilful, but in more it is educational. Their mothers, through ill-judged kindness, mistaken notions of life, or careless neglect, suffered them to grow up without the necessary practical training; or else they failed before ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... main features of redemption, but, if such a word is allowable, His minute loving kindness. Kindness—such a tender regard for the comfort and peace of the soul. Oh, the spiritual sorrows are far more from ourselves, our own wilful work, than from Him whose language is, "I the Lord do keep it, lest any ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... "A wilful man will have his way." That this is a true proverb is almost universally admitted; indeed, there is reason to believe that it is equally true of women as of men; nevertheless, Captain Blathers did not believe it although he was himself a living ...
— Lost in the Forest - Wandering Will's Adventures in South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... none the less so. I am a frondeur, an anti-cardinalist. In a word, I am a gentleman and a Frenchman. An interloping foreigner, miserly, mean-souled, and Jesuitical, springs up, wins himself into the graces of a foolish, impetuous, wilful queen, and climbs the ladder which she holds for him to the highest position in France. I allude to Mazarin; this Cardinal who is not a priest; this minister of France who is not a Frenchman; this belittler of nobles who ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... form, is the spectacle presented to us by the educated intellect of England, France, and Germany! Lovers of their country and of their race, religious men, external to the Catholic Church, have attempted various expedients to arrest fierce wilful human nature in its onward course, and to bring it into subjection. The necessity of some form of religion for the interests of humanity, has been generally acknowledged: but where was the concrete representative of things invisible, which would have the force and the toughness necessary to be a ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... of the long neglect, wilful vandalism and ill-judged restoration which the Alhambra has endured, it remains the most perfect example of Moorish art in its final European development, —freed from the direct Byzantine influences which can be traced in the cathedral of Cordova, more elaborate and fantastic than ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... say, of her own knowledge and observation, that this humble, hard-working, mortified Irish priest, William MacDonald, practised in a high, a very high, degree, every virtue which we venerate in the saints of God. I never met a holier soul. I could not imagine him guilty of the smallest, wilful fault. I feel more inclined to pray to him than for him; it seems incredible that he should have anything to expiate in purgatory. May his successors walk in his footsteps, and his children never forget the lessons he taught them more by example than by ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... indeed, that she could make clear to him? And yet more than ever she felt the need of having him securely on her side. Once his word was pledged, he was safe: otherwise there was no limit to his capacity for wilful harmfulness. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... cause; but such cases as those of Byron and Girard should teach those who have the charge of youth the crime it is to permit such defects to be the subject of remark. Girard also early lost his mother, an event which soon brought him under the sway of a step-mother. Doubtless he was a wilful, arbitrary, and irascible boy, since we know that he was a wilful, arbitrary, and irascible man. Before he was fourteen, having chosen the profession of his father, he left home, with his father's consent, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... from attending to the needs of the growing plants, and the verdict in such cases was to rest with the minister and the deacons of the church. But should this beloved Evelina love and wed, or should she let, through any wilful neglect, that garden perish in the season of flowers, all that goodly property would she forfeit to a person unknown, whose name, enclosed in a sealed envelope, was to be held meantime in the hands of the executor, who had also drawn up the ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... late actor. Nothing could be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr. Emery; this told excellently in his Tyke, and characters of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage business, and wilful blindness and oblivion of everything before the curtain into his comedy, it produced a harsh and dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with the rest of the Personae Dramatis. There was as little link between him and them as betwixt himself and the audience. He was ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... driven like dust before the wind. "By the reporte of the common people, in this kynge's time (William Rufus)," says Rastel, "divers great wonders were sene—and therefore the king was told by divers of his familiars, that God was not content with his lyvyng, but he was so wilful and proude of minde, that he regarded little their saying." There can be no hesitation now in giving credence to such narrations as these, since similar facts have passed under the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Osseo! "Once, in days no more remembered, Ages nearer the beginning, When the heavens were closer to us, And the Gods were more familiar, In the North-land lived a hunter, With ten young and comely daughters, Tall and lithe as wands of willow; Only Oweenee, the youngest, She the wilful and the wayward, She the silent, dreamy maiden, Was the fairest of the sisters. "All these women married warriors, Married brave and haughty husbands; Only Oweenee, the youngest, Laughed and flouted all her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... consolingly, "mother's often threatened and never done it before, and Elsie's a wilful child, with a spirit and temper that must needs be broken. But ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... had not been the mother of Beatrice, Mrs. Lansell would probably have gone back to her room, and continued to bide her time; but the mother of Beatrice had learned a few things about the ways of a wilful girl. She went in, and closed the door carefully behind her. She did not wish to keep the whole house awake. Then she went straight to the bed, laid hand upon a white shoulder that gleamed in the moonlight, and ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... do what they bid you, always treat them lovingly, and take care of them when they are sick and grown old. I never yet knew a boy who trampled on the wishes of his parents who turned out well. God never blesses a wilful boy. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... see,' said Traddles, looking among the papers on the table. 'Having counted our funds, and reduced to order a great mass of unintentional confusion in the first place, and of wilful confusion and falsification in the second, we take it to be clear that Mr. Wickfield might now wind up his business, and his agency-trust, and exhibit ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... tasted the sweets of dominion, and had been rendered wilful and capricious by constant indulgence at home, and admiration abroad. She was conscious of her power over Eugene, and delighted in exercising it. She sometimes treated him with petulant caprice, enjoying the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... harsh judgments made me a philosopher. I heard myself called obstinate and wilful, only because I believed myself in the right, and persisted in it. I felt that I was not maliciously disposed towards any one, but wished well to all; and I offered my services not only willingly, but cheerfully, wherever they could ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... in either, and the dogs somewhat alarmed him. His cousin, a little discouraged, led him away into the woods where the ancient pines stood snow laden far apart with no intrusion between them of low shrubbery. Leila was silent, half aware that he was hard to entertain, and then mischievously wilful to give this indifferent cousin a lesson. Presently he stood still, looking up at the towering cones of ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... although the penalty was only a few months' imprisonment and detection certain, unless under peculiar temptation or provocation. It is a crime naturally abhorrent even to the thief, and the majority of those men capable of committing wilful murder would on the whole, I believe, prefer to be hanged out of their misery, than remain in prison all their life. If all hope of release could be utterly extinguished, very few of such men would chance perpetual imprisonment, if they had ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... distress Wearied, I fell asleep. But now lead on; In me is no delay; with thee to go, Is to stay here; without thee here to stay, Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me Art all things under heaven, all places thou, Who for my wilful crime art banished hence. This further consolation, yet secure, I carry hence; though all by me is lost, Such favor I unworthy am vouchsafed, By me the promised Seed shall ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... Crawford might have withstood the moving appeal of even his daughter's presence, changed by grief, labor, and suffering, as she was. But his anger, upon which he had suffered the sun to go down, fled before her artless, confiding, innocent child. He thought not of Fanny—as the wilful woman, acting from the dictate of her own passions or feelings; but as a little child, lying upon his bosom—as a little child, singing and dancing around him—as a little child, with, to him, the face of a cherub; and the sainted mother of that ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... London merchant was committed to the Lollards' Tower for refusing to submit to an unjust exaction of mortuary;[99] and a few days after was found dead in his cell. An inquest was held upon the body, when a verdict of wilful murder was returned against the chancellor of the Bishop of London; and so intense was the feeling of the city, that the bishop applied to Wolsey for a special jury to be chosen on the trial. "For assured I am," he said, "that if my chancellor ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... derided the inexperience of thy brethren—stoop thyself in turn to their derision—tell what they may not believe—affirm that which they will ascribe to idle fear, or perhaps to idle falsehood—sustain the disgrace of a silly visionary, or a wilful deceiver.—Be it so, I will do my duty, and make ample confession to my Superior. If the discharge of this duty destroys my usefulness in this house, God and Our Lady will send me where I can better ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... "A wilful man must have his way" is a proverb the truth of which was illustrated by the blacksmith on ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... pleasantly in the talk. She had often seen Miss Fleet in London, but she did not know her well. At once she realized that Charmian had found an excellent friend. And she was not jealous because of the confidence given but not given to her. Youth, she knew, is wilful and must have its way. The nearest, for some inscrutable reason, are generally ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... shoulders. 'I have been told that a woman will usually be more or less attracted by the most successful man in her circle. Of course we cannot realize how a wilful, dominating personality like his would influence a girl whose affections were not bestowed elsewhere; especially if he laid himself out to win her. It is probably an overwhelming thing to be courted by a man whose name is known all over the world. She had heard of him, of course, ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... is here taken by the Psalmist. He looks shrinkingly and shudderingly into a possible depth, and he sees, going down into the abyss, a ladder with three rungs on it. The topmost one is wilful, self-conscious transgression. But that is not the lowest stage; there is another step. Presumptuous sin tends to become despotic sin. 'Let them not have dominion over me.' A man may do a very bad thing once, and get so wholesomely frightened, and so keenly conscious of the disastrous ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... or abandoning; more particularly, the wilful abandonment of an employment or of duty, in violation of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... it, from the despite and contumely to which they are guiltlessly born; and when I thought how irreparable was this disgrace and calamity of a black skin, and how irreparable it must be for ages yet, in this world where every other shame and all manner of wilful guilt and wickedness may hope for covert and pardon, I had little heart to laugh. Indeed, it was so pathetic to hear this poor old soul talk of her dead and lost ones, and try, in spite of all Mr. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... and gentlemen of the jury," he began; "the prisoner at the bar is charged with the wilful murder of John Smith, on the night of ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... calming the ardor of the lady, who was evidently a woman of social distinction. "Don't have any friendship for me," he writes; "I need too much. Like all people who struggle, suffer, and work, I am exacting, mistrustful, wilful, capricious.... If I had been a woman, I should have loved nothing so much as some soul buried like a well in the desert—discovered only when you place yourself directly under the star which indicates it to the ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... appeared, for this was Paul's first appearance below stairs. And his mother, who at the first glance saw that it was her old, happy Paul who had come back to them, and that all the shadow which had come between them had been cleared away, felt happier than she had for many a long day. For one wilful mischievous boy can not only make himself thoroughly unhappy, but everyone about him ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... and scones! I know your days in town. Ah, well, a wilful woman must have her way! If you have made up your mind to go, it's no use arguing; but I don't know what it can be you need so badly. We seem to have ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... Garston to wear some of my picking, what then, Elizabeth?' he asked, in a laughing tone, and Lady Betty tossed her head in reply and led me away; but a moment afterwards he followed us with the roses, and mollified the wilful little soul by asking Ladybird—his pet name for her—to fasten them in my dress. Both the sisters wore white gowns. I thought Gladys looked like a queen in hers, as she moved slowly under the oak-trees to meet us, the sun shining on her fair hair. As I looked ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... said John Fairmeadow, letting the foundling fall softly into his arms, "I'm not going to preach to you to-night, though God knows you need it! I'm just going to pray for the baby. Dear Father of us wilful Children of the Vale," he began, at once, lifting a placid, believing face above the smiling child in his arms, "we ask Thy guardianship of this child. In us is no perfect counsel for him nor any help whatsoever that he may surely apprehend. In ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... means could there have been any armed resistance to the passage of the Huns. It was simply frightfulness on the part of the Uhlans, and what we saw later on the ground at Pezarches, Coulommiers, and La Fere was a clear indication of wilful and unnecessary destruction of private property. The sight of a draper's shop with every window smashed, every shelf emptied, and the contents thrown into the street ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... she, "I do respect Sir Simon very much as your friend, permit me to repeat; but cannot for his wilful failings. Would it not be, in some measure, to approve of faulty conversation, if one can hear it, and not discourage it, when the occasion comes in so pat?—And, indeed, I was glad of an opportunity," ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Belknap in 1872, on the Secretary's recommendation. Finally, in consequence of grave intimations of wrong-doing made by the Secretary and his subordinates, General Howard was court-martialed in 1874. In both of these trials the Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau was officially exonerated from any wilful misdoing, and his work commended. Nevertheless, many unpleasant things were brought to light,—the methods of transacting the business of the Bureau were faulty; several cases of defalcation were proved, and other frauds strongly suspected; there were some business transactions which savored ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the eyes of prudence and worldly wisdom, an objectless and unprofitable folly[319]." But by the middle of June the American irritation at the British Proclamation of Neutrality, loudly and angrily voiced by the Northern press, had caused a British press resentment at this "wilful misrepresentation and misjudgment" of British attitude. "We do believe the secession of the Slave States to be a fait accompli—a completed and irreversible transaction. We believe it to be impossible now for the North to lure back the South into the Union by any compromise, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... story is very interesting. It is the history of four school-fellows. Margaret, the heroine, is, of course, a woman in the highest state of perfection. But Lotty—the little, wilful, wild, fascinating, brave Lotty—is the gem of the book, and, as far as our experience in novel reading goes, is an entirely original character—a creation—and a very charming one. No story that occurs to our memory contains more interest than this for novel readers, ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... glow, dull on the sands. Fain would I pluck, out-reaching eager hands, Save that a marvel grows of ruddier rind Out-flinging fruity breath upon the wind, Beneath harsh spines half-hid. Nor drains My wilful spouse such nectars fine. Nor gains His patient care the fruitage rare, these plains That heaps unheeded. Nay, nor bearded grains Golding this ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... true as far as the fidelity of human recollection is usually to be depended upon, that is, must be true in substance and in their principal parts, (which is sufficient for the purpose of proving a supernatural agency,) or they must be wilful and mediated falsehoods. Yet the writers who fabricated and uttered these falsehoods, if they be such, are of the number of those who, unless the whole contexture of the Christian story be a dream, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... not keep her in such fits of laughing. Sometimes the laughter would be provoked by the composition of extempore verses, such as those given in the Memoir[211] celebrating the charm of the 'lovely Anna'; sometimes the niece would skim over new novels at the Alton Library, and reproduce them with wilful exaggeration. On one occasion she threw down a novel on the counter with contempt, saying she knew it must be rubbish from its name. The name was Sense and Sensibility—the secret of which had been strictly ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... Lord,—on that day four-fifths of the traditional polemics of the Protestants against the Church will with one blow be set aside, like chaff and rubbish; for four-fifths consist of misunderstandings, logomachies, and wilful falsifications, or relate to personal, and therefore accidental, things, which are utterly insignificant where only principles ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... appointing one wide and comprehensive means of salvation: a salvation which all are invited to partake; by a means which all are capable of using; which nothing but voluntary blindness can prevent our comprehending, and nothing but wilful error can ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... much of the unusual, of the unheard of in its beginning, that she was afraid of the end. I was so inexperienced, she said, and so was the young lady—poor motherless thing—wilful, no doubt—so very taking—like a little child, rather. Had I comprehended all my responsibility? (And here one of the hurried side-allusions to the errors of Rome came in with a reminder, touching the charge of another immortal soul beside my own.) ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... jerked up. I took a bad degree. My mother died—I had very little in common with her: she was an invalid without any hold on life, and I took no trouble to be kind to her—I was perfectly selfish and wilful. Then I had to earn my living. I would have given anything to stay at Oxford: and you know, even now, when I think of Oxford, a sort of electric shock goes through me, I love it so much. I daren't even set foot there, I'm so afraid of finding it altered. But when I think of those ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was, and held a great deal, though so tiny. Meadow-land came first, set with flowers, blue and red, like gems. Then a white road ran, with wilful, uncalled-for loops, up a steep, conical hill, crowned with towers, bastioned walls, and belfries; and down the road the little knights came riding, two and two. The hill on one side descended to water, tranquil, far-reaching, and blue; and a very curly ship lay at ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... in countenance. Therefore indulgence is desired for one further count in this distasteful recital of ineptitudes inherent in this institutional scheme of civilised life. This count comes under the head of what may be called capitalistic sabotage. "Sabotage" is employed to designate a wilful retardation, interruption or obstruction of industry by peaceable, and ordinarily by legally defensible, measures. In its present application, particularly, there is no design to let the term denote or insinuate a recourse ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... remission, provided that in praying for forgiveness the sinner forgave those that had sinned against him. If he lacked the time, were he dying, a priest might yet save him with words whispered in the ear. That was the extreme unction, hardly administrable, however, in case of wilful omission of ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... was wilful, like all Eastern Princelings, and he shrieked to match at the suggestion. So there arose such a hubbub, which was only calmed by Baby Akbar being allowed to ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... wilful being struggling to get obdurate things round impossible corners—in that symbol Mr. Polly could recognise himself and all ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... not long: For we cannot lodge and board a dozen or fourteene Gentlewomen that liue honestly by the pricke of their Needles, but it will bee thought we keepe a Bawdy-house straight. O welliday Lady, if he be not hewne now, we shall see wilful adultery and murther committed ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... though I have myself noted not a few faulty passages in Homer and in other authors of the highest rank, and though I am far from being partial to their failings, nevertheless I would call them not so much wilful blunders as oversights which were allowed to pass unregarded through that contempt of little things, that "brave disorder," which is natural to an exalted genius; and I still think that the greater excellences, though not everywhere ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... shook her head. "You have done a wilful, blind, impetuous thing. You were piqued, proud, angry, and so you gave yourself, body and soul, to this ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... spheres, was "the best way of producing war." The Balkan policy of conquest and strangulation "was not the German policy, but that of the Austrian Imperial House." What better testimony is required to prove that Austria was not the blind tool, but the willing and wilful accomplice ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... and the Regulus, and the Manhattan, and the Wilful Girl, and the Deborah-Angelina, and the Sukey and Katy, which, my dear young lady, I may say, was my first love. She was only a fore-and-after, carrying no standing topsail, even, and we named her after two of the river girls, who were flyers, ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... a Hudson Bay Company's Post we put her "on the hard," photographed the hole, with all the splintering on the outside, and had a proper survey of the hull made by the Company's shipwright. The unanimous verdict was "wilful murder." In the fall as her own best witness, we tried to tow her to St. John's, but in a heavy breeze of wind and thick snow we lost her at sea—and with her our own case as well. The law decided that there was no evidence, and my friend, making out that he had lost ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the discouraging days. Lisa was wilful; the twins had a moral relapse; the young minister came again, and, oh, the interminable length of time he held Rhoda's hand at parting! Is it not strange that, with the whole universe to choose from, his predatory eye must fall upon my blooming Rhoda? I wonder whether the fragrance she ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Philadelphus) and his Greek court at Alexandria, and had therefore to evince a respect for the great Greek classic which he may not always have really felt. Herodotus is not, of course, accused of any wilful misstatement in this or in any other matter in which his accuracy is suspected. He merely wrote down what he was told by the Egyptians themselves, and Merpeba was sufficiently near in time to Aha to be easily confounded with him by the scribes of the Persian period, who no doubt ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... real parentage does not diminish the claims which Alice has on me, does not lessen the grateful affection that is due to her from yourself. Yes, Evelyn, we are not the less separated forever. But when I learned the wilful falsehood which the unhappy man, now hurried to his last account, to whom your birth was known, had imposed upon me,—namely, that you were the child of Alice,—and when I learned also that you had been hurried into accepting his hand, I trembled at your union with one so ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... nearer the heart. A something which has found its way there; which, while it amused, has made us happier; which, gently interweaving itself with our habits of thought, has increased our good-humour and charity; which, insensibly it may be, has corrected wilful impatiences of temper, and made the world's daily accidents easier and kinder to us all; somewhat thus should be expressed, I think, the charm ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... an able Minister in many respects, was a wilful, hot-headed man, who was over-fond of acting on the spur of the moment without consulting his Sovereign. His dispatches, written as they so often were in a moment of feverish enthusiasm, frequently gave ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... Stephen is scaring me most to death; he is wild to go, too. And, oh—do you believe it? Captain Lent has gone with Curt to the camp, and Curt means to recommend him for his major. What a regiment!—all the soldiers are mere boys, they say—wilful, reckless, hair-brained boys who don't know—can't know—where they're going. . . . And Curt is so blind without his glasses, and Captain Lent is certainly a little mad, and I'm most ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... at the preliminary examination, it is evident that it did not occur to him as a possibility that human nature could be capable of the guilt of such a wilful fabrication and imposture on the part of the "afflicted children." He beheld their sufferings, and he knew his own innocence. He felt, whatever his theological creed might have been, that a Devil was required ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... naturally become the prejudices of at least a part of the public, and it has become necessary to show that the small minority of artists who still follow the old roads do so not from ignorance or stupidity or a stolid conservatism, still less from mere wilful caprice, but from necessity, because those roads are the only ones that can lead them where they wish to go. No more magnificent demonstration of the qualities possible to the purely modern methods of painting has been ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... were all consciously expecting, and had brought him in with David Gillespie and his girl. She was tall and straight, like her father, and her hair was red, like his; her eyes were gray blue, and the look in them was both wilful ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... as though it had fed upon flesh resting upon a gravel bank, and had swallowed the pebbles that had adhered. Mixed with the pebbles was a greenish, slimy matter that appeared woolly. In the midst of this were three undeniable witnesses that convicted the crocodile of wilful murder. A necklace and two armlets, such as are worn by the negro girls, were taken from the stomach! The girl had been digested. This was an old malefactor that was ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... fixed his sad and expressive eyes on hers, which, in her ecstasy of doubt, terror, and perplexity, she cast up towards him, "I have ever remarked that when others called thee girlish and wilful, there lay under that external semblance of youthful and self-willed folly deep feeling and strong sense. In this I will confide, trusting your own fate in your own hands for the space of twenty-four hours, without my interference by word ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the evidence adduced; and the magistrate at once committed Alfred Bourdon to Chelmsford jail, to take his trial at the next assize for "wilful murder." A coroner's inquisition a few days after also returned a verdict of "wilful murder" against him on ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... a sweet child she was a wilful one, and very early in life manifested a dominant nature. This was a secret pleasure to her father, who, never losing sight of his old idea that she was both son and daughter, took pleasure as well as pride out of each manifestation of her imperial ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... the gigantic budgets of our own day, we listen with something like wonder, now that two centuries and a half have passed, to the fierce denunciations by the war party of these figures as wilful fictions. Science has made in that interval such gigantic strides. The awful intellect of man may at last make war impossible for his physical strength. He can forge but cannot wield the hammer of Thor; nor has Science yet discovered the philosopher's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... practical standpoint these eleven offenses can be narrowed down to eight. The severity of the slave code can be shown by comparison of the capital crimes for white persons at the same time. These were four in number, (1) murder, (2) carnal abuse of a female under ten years of age, (3) wilful burning of the penitentiary and (4) being an ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... povert' me repreve,* *reproach The highe God, on whom that we believe, In wilful povert' chose to lead his life: And certes, every man, maiden, or wife May understand that Jesus, heaven's king, Ne would not choose a virtuous living. *Glad povert'* is an honest thing, certain; *poverty cheerfully This will Senec and other ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... at writing, still the History, such is my wilful whim. Twenty pages now finished—I suppose the clear fourth part of a volume. I went out, but the day being sulky I sat in the Conservatory, after trying a walk! I have been glancing over the works for Gillies's review, and I think on them between-hands ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the whole Christian world the authoritative teaching of the Church of England appeared to be in strict harmony. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion, a discourse which inculcates, in unmeasured terms, the duty of obeying rulers, speaks of none but actual rulers. Nay, the people are distinctly told in that Homily that they are bound to obey, not only their legitimate prince, but any usurper whom God shall in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... favour that thou hast done me to-day. And what is my recompense for thee? To show thee how to turn from the evil and slippery road which thou hast trodden until now, and to journey along the straight and saving pathway which thou hast avoided, not in ignorance, but by wilful wrongdoing, throwing thyself into depths and precipices of iniquity. Understand then, Nachor, man of understanding as thou art, and be thou zealous to gain Christ only, and the life that is hid with him, and despise this fleeting and corruptible world. ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... and advised me to seek my berth and lie down; and on my replying with haggard defiance, took my arm gently, as if I had been a wilful child, and led me below. I passed beyond one of the mahogany doors leading from the main cabin; and in that seclusion I ask you to leave me face to face with the next forty-eight hours. It was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vices. Woman is the spoilt child of the age. No one tells her of her faults. The World with its thousand voices flatters her. Sulks, bad temper, and pig-headed obstinacy are translated as 'pretty Fanny's wilful ways.' Cowardice, contemptible in man or woman, she is encouraged to cultivate as a charm. Incompetence to pack her own bag or find her own way across a square and round a corner is deemed an attraction. Abnormal ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... well what I am doing. I am hardly so stubborn or wilful as you think. But if it is unwise for me to be in the neighborhood referred to, is it ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... honey dew of inner lip she plies me: I brought the chess board and my liefest lover plays me * With white and black,[FN197] but black cum white ne'er satisfies me: 'Twas as if King for Castle I were fain to place me * Till wilful loss of game atwixt two queens surprise me: And if I seek to read intent in eyes that eye me * Oh man! that glance askance with ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... trouble. Crowner's Quest was held on the "Beau;" and I only wonder that they did not bring it in murder against Me. The jury sat a long time without making up their minds, till the Parish constable ordered them in a bowl of Flip, upon which they proceeded to bring in a verdict of Wilful Murder against some person or persons unknown. I can scarcely, to this day, bring myself to suspect my pretty maid, that should have married the Pewterer, of such a bold Act, and the rather believe that ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... nod and smile from her went a long way towards reassuring Angelot, who had been a little puzzled by the sudden appearance of the soldier. But he was not curious; his father was by no means in the habit of telling him everything, making indeed a thin cloud of wilful mystery about some of his doings. It had always been so; and Angelot had grown up with a certain amount of blind trust in the hand which had guided his mother and himself through the ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... said, "and you, most sweet and gentle ladies, our sport hath been but poor, hitherto—methinks I can show you a better, 'tis a game we play full oft in my country. Would that our gracious lady of Mortain were here, nor had balked us of her wilful company. Ho! Gefroi!" he called, "come you and break me the back of this 'honest' rogue." And straightway came one from the rear, where rode the servants and men-at-arms, a great, bronzed fellow, bearded to the eyes of him, loosing ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... I've sinned much more deeply than that, and I've never been able to really cry!" And she began the fifth commandment with such enthusiasm that she did not hear the stifled sobs of her niece. It was only when she stopped after the commentaries on wilful homicide, that she perceived the groanings of the sinner. Then in a voice that passed description, and a manner she strove to make menacing, she finished the commentary, and seeing that Maria had ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... loved display and ostentation and was proud, wilful and self-confident; nevertheless, there were times when for a moment he feared, but in spite of that timidity, he went on in his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... their employment, and to seeing that the hopelessly diseased were eliminated from the herd of slaves. The rest of the "protection" looked to the physical well-being of another portion of the community—the fornicators. If physical harm came to them from wilful sin, the Chinese women would be punished by imprisonment for it, though their sin was forced upon them. This was ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... say that you cut well?" the little maid went on, with a strange, wilful persistence in ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... betrays With its exhilarating flow, And I confess that now-a-days I prefer sensible Bordeaux. To cope with Ay no more I dare, For Ay is like a mistress fair, Seductive, animated, bright, But wilful, frivolous, and light. But thou, Bordeaux, art like the friend Who in the agony of grief Is ever ready with relief, Assistance ever will extend, Or quietly partake our woe. All hail! my ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... proportion as self-will sways him, whatever seems to oppose or hinder his plans will disturb or annoy; and, instead of quietly leaving all such hindrances and obstacles to the Lord, to deal with them as He pleases, in His own way and time, the wilful disciple will, impatiently and in the energy of the flesh, set himself to remove them by his own scheming and struggling, and ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... not more wilful and wayward than is often the case with lads of his age, nor was he idle, or inclined to do less than his just share of what was to be done. On the contrary, he had great good sense and perseverance in carrying out any plans of work which suited ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... in religion at all. With Demas, he loves the things of this world. Very attractive and interesting does he find this life; and for the life to come he is content to chance it. This is crass ignorance of religious truth. Such a man is not a formal heretic, for he is not altogether wilful and contumacious in his error. Still neither is it wholly involuntary, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J. |
